In Too Deep (7 page)

“Not usually.”

“How come I'm hearing a ‘but' in that?”

The corner of Ian's mouth kicked up. “Because there is one. Lately she's been preoccupied.”

“The murder trial?”

“For starters. Giving up a great position at her old university, handing her lab over to someone else, selling her house, moving two thousand miles away. It all adds up. So, maybe she did leave the keys in her car.”

“Any chance there's some fallout from the trial that has followed her?” Quinn asked.

After a moment Ian shook his head. “I think she would have talked to me if there had been.” He stared out at the water a moment, then added, “Lily is one of the best people I know.”

In a scant day Quinn had come to the same conclusion.

Ian folded his arms over his chest. “I don't want to see her hurt.”

Quinn kept his gaze focused on the water in front of them and counted himself a fool. There was no point in telling the man that nothing had happened. For all practical purposes, he'd made love to the man's sister-in-law under his own roof.

“You might as well spit out whatever's on your mind and get it over with,” Quinn finally said.

Like himself, Ian continued to stare across the expanse of the dock to the water and the distant islands beyond. “Lily has this way of accepting people without asking enough questions or being suspicious.”

“She's an innocent.” The truth in Quinn's mind, but he sure hadn't intended to say so out loud. From the corner of his eye, he saw Ian nod.

“Stay the hell away from her,” Ian said. “She doesn't need any of the heartbreak your kind would give her.”

The echo of his own thoughts didn't keep Quinn immune from a flash of anger. “What would you know about
my
kind?”

Ian took his time before pushing himself away from the warehouse wall and turning to look at him, starting with his feet and moving up until their gazes locked.

“You take what you want and you don't care about how you get it or what the cost is to other people. You're a love-
'em-and-leave-'em kind of guy. Relationships—they take more work than you'd be willing to give.”

Until that instant Quinn hadn't realized how much he hated the man he had become, even in the name of self-preservation.

He focused on the expanse of water beyond the dock. “Maybe Lily should be making up her own mind about who she wants to see.”

Ian took a single threatening step closer.

“Like you said, Morrison, she's an innocent.” His chin jutted. “You don't want the kind of trouble I can cause you.”

“Trouble?” Quinn shrugged and gave the man a devil-may-care grin, playing this out the way he always had—by acting like he didn't give a damn. He had no intention of pursuing things with Lily, but no way would he give her brother-in-law the satisfaction of knowing that. “Stay away from me, and there won't be any.”

“W
inch on,” Lily called from the stern of the boat.

She stretched, the move vividly reminding Quinn of the morning he had held her supple body with only their night-clothes between them. Dangerous ground, thinking about that. Deliberately, he reminded himself of the reasons why Lily was off limits. White picket fences, her sainted dead husband, and she worked for him—not necessarily in that order.

“Clear,” Quinn returned from his post under the awning next to the bridge.

His gaze strayed from Lily to Patrick Riggs, who was sitting on a box packing away the monitors they had used to sample water temperatures. As was usual for him, the kid was only half paying attention, which was beginning to irritate Quinn more with each passing day. At the stern, Lily waited for the kid to sound off that he was away from the winch.

“Let her know you're clear, Patrick,” Quinn called to him.

Patrick looked up with that dazed look he often had, then back at Lily. “Oh, sure. Lily. Clear.”

She turned on the winch, and cable began to wind around the big drum behind the A-frame at the back of the craft, dripping sea water that looked nearly black in the fading light.

Patrick's inattention was no doubt due to the nearly nightly partying that had Will Baker at its center. Quinn's gaze moved on to Will who stood inside the bridge, flirting with the boat skipper, Rona Petrokov. Everything in her body language suggested she couldn't be less interested in him, which seemed to make Will even more persistent.

Quinn went to the back of the boat. “Are you doing okay?” he asked Lily.

She gave him her usual bright smile and her usual answer. “Fine.”

He grinned at her. “Fine, huh.” It was the one piece of conversation from that afternoon they acknowledged, sometimes teasing each other. “How are you really?”

“Tired, but I'm doing okay.”

There was nothing remotely sexy about the orange life-jacket or the shapeless, bright yellow wet gear that covered her from head to foot. In his mind's eye Quinn imagined her naked. He hadn't seen her, only touched through the slippery fabric of her gown, but even that now haunted him nightly. Maybe that was why he kept thinking about it—maybe that was all he really needed. To see her naked. Just once.

Yeah, right. Like once would be enough.

Over the last three weeks he had constantly reminded himself that he preferred the course they were on, the one of colleagues and friends. Except, every time he was with her, he had a tingling awareness of her. She had put together an outstanding draft for a grant application needed for the program to move forward. As the project leader, he was thankful for her knowledge and professionalism. As a man who hadn't known he was hungry for her approval, he had read and reread her handwritten note attached to the draft. “Brilliant
idea, Quinn. Once your theory is proven, it will become the touchstone for the research that follows.”

Despite the guarded invitation he sometimes caught in her eyes, she hadn't once tried to take their friendship beyond the boundaries he had set. Just like he wanted.

Liar.

He realized she was watching him. “And how are you?”

“Fine,” he promptly said with a grin.

She laughed, just as he had hoped she would.

“I'm going to see if I can't get Patrick moving a little faster and Will interested in helping.” Quinn touched Lily's arm. “Holler if you need anything.”

She nodded, her attention going back to the cable climbing out of the water. Quinn knew that she was tired. They all were. It was the end of the day, the end of a busy three weeks. They had been on the boat eight times, mapping, collecting water samples, monitoring water temperature and collecting data—work that would keep the team busy through the winter months when the water was too rough and the days too short to do this kind of fieldwork.

“Are you seasick?” he asked Patrick, who was looking queasier by the second. He hadn't made much progress on putting the equipment away.

Patrick nodded. “I was doing okay until the wind came up.”

Clouds had been building up all day as had the ever-increasing swells that kept pace with their trek home. A sure sign a storm was coming in from the west.

Quinn urged him to stand. “You'll feel better if you can see the horizon.” He went to the bridge and called Will to come give a hand putting things away. “And put on your wet gear,” Quinn said.

Will, always interested in looking good, hadn't yet donned the bright yellow Gortex waterproof pants and coat, that obviously didn't fit his definition of cool. Grumbling, Will pulled on his coat and came outside to finish the task that Patrick had started.

Quinn went to the computer tucked in one corner of the bridge where he checked the data that methodically came up row after row on the computer monitor.

“We're going to get rained on before we make it home tonight,” Rona said from the wheel.

Quinn noted the bank of clouds that seemed even lower over the water than they had earlier.

“Good thing we came today, though,” she said. “I think the sea will be too rough tomorrow.”

That was Quinn's hunch, too. “Think we'll make it back before it's dark?” For some reason the question always made her laugh, so he always asked.

As expected, she chuckled, her easy humor as much a part of her as her quiet efficiency in handling the boat. “Hate to tell you, boss, but it's dark now.”

She was right. Dark, and getting darker by the minute. Quinn looked at the horizon behind them. Ahead of the boat's bow, Kantrovich Island was shrouded in another heavy bank of clouds.

He made his way toward the stern, past Patrick, who looked even more seasick than he had a few minutes ago, and Will, who seemed more interested in the cable coming out of the water than in the task he'd been assigned.

“Hey,” Quinn said, joining Lily. She had an ease of being on the boat that she said came from growing up in a fishing family.

“Hey, yourself,” she returned with a quick smile.

“Those two are a pair.” He nodded toward Patrick and Will. “I can't imagine how Patrick survived on the N.O.A.A. expedition last summer since he's constantly seasick.” Quinn had great memories of his own summer research on an expedition sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The research that summer had been the most exciting of his career until he had come here.

“Hate to tell you this, but they have a bigger boat. That makes a difference.”

“I suppose it's held together with a little more than chewing gum and spit,” he said.

She chuckled. “Try pulling the other leg, Dr. Morrison. Your adaptations to Rona's fishing boat are pretty ingenious.”

Necessity borne of a tight budget had made thinking outside the box a requirement. Ingenious, though? He'd never thought of it like that.

“I've heard there's a state-of-the art lab right on board,” Lily said.

He glanced around the boat, his attention coming back to the cable, dripping water across the deck. “I'm not sure where we'd put one.”

“You've made progress,” she said. “You got Will out of the bridge.”

Quinn glanced back at him. “For the moment. If he just had a little initiative.”

“I've seen worse.” Lily's attention remained focused on the cable. “And he might even manage to learn without taking a dunk in the water.”

A gust of wind swept over them and with it a spray of water that felt like shards of ice.

“Spoken like someone who knows.”

She nodded, pulling her knit cap more firmly over her ears and the collar of her vinyl coat higher on her neck. “It takes only once.”

“Were you ever—”

“Thrown overboard?” She shivered, then finally looked at him. “Yes. Like I said, once was enough.” She nodded toward Patrick. “I feel bad for him. I'd hate to be that miserable.”

“He's no sailor, that's for sure.”

“If you had ever told me that you'd get me back on a fishing boat,” she added, “and liking it—”

“That bad, huh?” he teased.

“Not bad,” she replied. “Just hard work. Long days.”

He chuckled. “Nothing much has changed, then.”

The days they sailed to the vent site were fourteen hours long if they were lucky. Not once had she complained about the early mornings or the grueling work or the late evenings back that would have gotten her home after her daughter had gone to bed.

When she met his gaze, he added, “And you like it.”

“I do.” She was silent a moment, then casually added, “My sister Dahlia always told me she loved fieldwork. Now I understand why.” She shivered when another mist-laden gust of wind hit them.

Quinn glanced back at Patrick who had retreated to the awning next to the bridge. Will had finished his project and returned to the bridge to resume flirting with Rona.

“I like days like today,” Lily continued. “The whales…” She closed her eyes for a second and a soft smile curved her lips. “Truly amazing.”

Quinn agreed with her. For a time today they had been surrounded by a group of gray whales swimming south. For a while, the work had stopped and they had all watched. Some of the whales were half as long as the forty-foot craft. A thirty-foot baby had stayed close to his mother, but he'd watched them, his dinner-plate-size eye reflecting an eerie intelligence. Lily's captivation with the animals had intensified Quinn's own pleasure in the moment.

“No weights yet,” Quinn said, mostly because he wanted to stand here and talk to her. Knowing the depth at which samples were collected, coupled with their locations from the global positioning system, should provide clear picture of any variations among their subject locations.

“It shouldn't be much longer,” she said.

The one part of the job Quinn disliked was getting the equipment out of the water. They were always later than he wanted to be, and the numbers of things that could go wrong in the dark grew exponentially.

“Think we hit the jackpot with today's samples?” she asked him.

In addition to collecting survey data, today's quest had
been to collect organisms that metabolized sulphur rather than oxygen for their energy production. He was determined to unlock that particular secret, research that could take years.

“It's going to be a long, boring winter in the lab if we didn't.”

He glanced down at her and their gazes locked as had been happening more over the past few days. The sound of equipment around them faded. Instead of feeling the icy spray of water that blew across them with each gust, he remembered her breath hot against his cheek, her soft body relaxing against his as she inched toward sleep. She swallowed, and he expected her to look away. But, she didn't.

What kind of stupid fool had he been to think he could ignore the chemistry between them? Standing here with her now, he was more nervous than if he'd been standing at the edge of one of Denali's crevices, hoping the ice wouldn't crumble beneath his feet.

He forced himself to look away and to breathe evenly, though he felt as though he had run to the top of a steep hill. What had they been talking about? With effort he remembered. Water samples.

“As for the samples, they're not
my
collection. There are enough to share,” he added. “If it were your lab, what would you want to work on?”

“Barophiles,” she immediately answered, her gloved hands gripping the gunwale.

Barophiles were a type of bacteria that thrived in high pressure and high temperatures. Based on what he'd read of her research in California, they would be a natural compliment to work that she had spent years doing.

“Think you could get a grant?” he asked.

She glanced sharply at him. “Probably. The real question is whether I want to. I gave up my lab, passed on my grants, remember?”

“I remember.”

Her attention returned to the cable and the sound of the
winch and the rhythmic grind as the line came through the pulleys.

“My own research—that isn't why I came here,” she finally said. “I wanted to be closer to Rosie and my parents.”

“I know.” Her connection to family was clearly the most important thing to her. “Do you see your parents much?”

She grinned. “Not nearly enough to suit my mother. She's trying to talk my dad into buying a float plane so the trip from here to Petersburg would only be a couple of hours instead of all day on a boat.” She glanced at him. “What about your parents—where do they live? Texas?”

“Why Texas?”

“Why, the accent, cowboy,” she drawled, doing her best to copy his Texan. In her own voice, she said, “So, your parents don't live in Texas?”

He wished he'd kept his mouth shut.

“Quinn?”

“My mother is dead,” he said. Why did it always come down to exchanging the old stories? “If my dad was ever around, I don't remember it.” Quinn gave Lily his practiced devil-may-care smile. “I'm lucky that the name he left me on a birth certificate was Morrison instead of Frankenstein.”

“Oh, I don't know,” she said. “Quinn Frankenstein, Ph.D. That doesn't have such a bad ring to it. Better than Quinn Jeckyl, Ph.D.”

He gave her points for her casual response. “About that research—”

“It's a nice thought, Quinn, but—”

“Don't answer now,” he interrupted. “Just think about it.”

When she had first approached him about a job, he had been focused only on how lucky he was to have someone with her skills. Then he'd read her papers, had seen the breadth of her research, had come to realize how bright she was. If she wanted her own research project again, he wanted that for her. It was the one thing he could do for her.

“You wouldn't have the same pressure here that you had
before. Don't tell me that you can be satisfied doing work for me that any first-year grad student could handle.”