Riptide (19 page)

She was quiet for a long time. Then, her expression pensive, she lifted her troubled gaze to meet his. “I honestly don’t know.”

*   *   *

Despite his frosty demeanor, Nick was surprisingly easy to talk to. Perhaps because she’d shared very little of her background with her friends, who just knew her as Bria. That fiery unemployed Italian girl who was looking for a job.

She’d told Nick more about her life than she’d told another living soul. Nobody in Sacramento knew or cared that she’d once been a princess. And why should they? That wasn’t who she was in California. It wasn’t really who she was in Marrezo either.

And what had she found out about him? Nothing she didn’t know already. He was good. He could have made it as a spy if he ever gave up salvaging shipwrecks.

She got up from the deck and grasped the towel beside her, careful to keep all the parts Nick had already touched covered. The dress, short enough, had to be tugged down to cover another inch of thigh.

The conversation had given her a glimpse, a
tiny
glimpse, into another part of Nick Cutter and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. One thing was certain—she’d keep her lips to herself from now on. Stretched out, his hands clasped lightly on his flat belly, he looked the picture of relaxed. She, on the other hand needed to move. To do.
Something
.

She dried her legs and feet.

That testosterone poisoning thing … “I don’t suppose you have a tennis court on board?” God only knew, the
Scorpion
had everything else.

He cocked a brow, not shifting from his languid stretch. “A fully stocked gym. But it’s almost midnight, Princess. Bit late for exercise isn’t it?”

Bria enjoyed a good, sweaty run when she was stressed, and she was
extremely
stressed. Wondering just where Nick intended for her to sleep tonight wasn’t helping. A gym would be great. Sweating off the intense unwanted attraction she felt toward him before they went belowdecks would be greater.

It wasn’t Nick and his intentions that bothered her. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t force himself on her. Pretty sure.

It was herself she was worried about.

“Would you mind?” She asked because if she went there, he’d have to go too. She wasn’t going anywhere alone until the killer was caught.

“Not at all.” His easy acquiescence surprised her. “Let’s go down and change.”

They went down to his cabin. Her brightly colored pillows were stacked on the chair by the window. She couldn’t ignore the bed, which had been turned down on both sides. Bria’s heartbeat escalated, and she felt perspiration prickle her hairline. For a moment, her feet were stuck to the floor as her mind filled with images that made her hot and sweaty, her heartbeat racing alarmingly.

Oblivious, Nick went into his walk-in closet and came out carrying his clothes and a pair of tennis sneakers. “Aren’t you changed yet?”

Bria scooped up shorts and a tank top and darted into the bathroom. For a moment she leaned against the closed door, her hand over her skittering heart.

This was going to be awkward and uncomfortable, and possibly embarrassing. For her. Clearly Nick didn’t have a problem with any of this.

Fixing her hair into a ponytail to keep it off her neck, Bria came out of the bathroom wearing borrowed white shorts and a lime green top. On her feet, brand-new running shoes that had been delivered with the clothes.

Nick was nowhere in sight. The bed didn’t look any less inviting now than it had three minutes ago. Her heart went into jogging mode and she hadn’t even
stretched
yet.

“In here,” Nick called from the other room. Bria went through to his office, found him waiting for her, dressed in black shorts and a ratty old gray T-shirt that stretched over his ripped torso like a glove. The sleeves had been torn off and exposed his biceps. This wasn’t a man who got his killer body from gym workouts, though; those muscles came from exacting physical labor and hard work. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

“Ready?”

Not even close. “Sure.”

They took the stairs back up to the sundeck. They passed the media room. The door was open, the inside dark. The movie marathon was over. They were alone on the sundeck. Lovely, Bria thought, feeling a little panicky.

Nick pushed open one of a set of double doors and led the way into the gym, turning on the lights. It was state-of-the-art, with every conceivable piece of exercise equipment one could need or want. Several large flat-screen TVs hung strategically on three walls; the fourth was all glass that overlooked the helicopter pad and the water beyond. Now it reflected the two of them in a mirrored sheet of black.

“Pick your poison,” he said, gesturing as if he offered her a banquet.

“Treadmill.” There were two, side by side.

Nick turned on the TV and glanced over his shoulder. “Country road? Running track? City streets? What’s your pleasure?”

A safe, quiet cabin all to herself. It was good to want things. “Country road.” God, she’d never been this jittery, this hyperaware of a man, in her life. It was if she’d inhaled his pheromones and now her female antennae were fine-tuned to his frequency.

Silly. She knew nothing about the man. She wasn’t even sure if she trusted him. She’d spilled her guts over dinner, and he’d barely shared a snippet about his own life. Was that his way of interrogating her in a social setting?

Yes, she thought, turning her nerves and trepidation about her sleeping accommodations into righteous indignation. That’s
exactly
what he’d done.

His blasted boat. His blasted rules.

She did a few stretches. It didn’t matter how long she ran, eventually she’d have to stop and go to bed. But for now, nobody was touching anybody else, and she could let her defenses take a well-earned rest as she tired her body, and recently awakened libido, out.

The image on the screen brightened to a bucolic, tree-lined dirt road, with fields on either side. The sky was blue, birds tweeted, and a light breeze kissed her face as soon as she stepped onto her treadmill. Cool. Very cool.

She warmed up slowly, then sped up to six miles per, passing two grazing cows and an oak tree. She was silent, focused on her breathing as she listened to the sound of birdsong and the thud-thud-thud-thud of her and Nick’s sneakers hitting the rubber belts. She couldn’t see him running beside her, but Bria was all too aware of him beside her, and if she shifted her gaze, she could see their reflection in the midnight black windows across the room.

Which was a quick way to earn herself some road rash.
Focus on your pace
.

After two miles, she was barely aware of him beside her; after five she almost forgot he was there. Somewhere around mile seven, she caught his reflection in the window as he pulled his T-shirt over his head while he ran. He used it to mop his face and chest, then tossed it on the floor.

Great, now she couldn’t
not
watch him run with his shirt off. God. She was already hot and bothered, and seeing his muscled torso gleaming with sweat and his rock-hard six-pack shift with each pounding step made her light-headed. Bria forced her eyes back to the screen.

They ran up hills large and small, forded shallow streams, and ran across fields of yellow wildflowers, then met up again on the dirt road. All without a word.

Good. She’d spilled her guts enough for one night. Nick Cutter now knew more about her than anyone else on the planet.

It was an odd feeling.

She sucked in air as they rounded a bend. She was breathing hard, sweat pouring off her. She was running harder and faster than she was used to, and the killer pace was getting to her. The alternative—going back to that cabin, and the turned-down bed—made her speed up a little more. She pressed her palm against the sharp stitch in her side.

“That’s enough.” Nick’s curt voice cut the companionable silence like a knife.

They’d run, flat-out, for well over an hour. Bria’s shorts and tank were glued to her body, her hair was sticking to her sweaty face and neck, and she was breathing hard. Her heartbeat synced with her pounding footsteps.
Thud-thud-thud-thud
. “I’m. Good. To. Go.”

Nick flipped a switch somewhere, and the peaceful country road, happy cows, and tweeting birds cut off mid-hill. He grabbed her arm to steady her as she stumbled at the sudden cessation of the visual. The treadmill was still moving.

Already annoyed at his domineering behavior and doubly so at being grabbed when she was hot and sweaty, Bria shook him off. His fingers slipped from her arm as she resumed the rhythm of her run.

Her temper, simmering since she’d left California and the prospect of a new job to fix her brother’s mess, spiked. Unfulfilled sexual tension added a layer on top that she was finding unmanageable, to say the least.

“I … usually … run … for … two … hours,” she huffed. Mostly because she’d been unemployed and trying not to end up weighing seven hundred and two pounds from eating all day.

“And I usually run for none,” Nick told her, rubbing his face and hair with a white towel. “Time’s up, Princess. It’s late. Let’s go to bed.”

Exactly her point for running like a madwoman in the middle of the night. But in case he hadn’t gotten it yet—“I’m … not … sleeping … with … you!”

“Who has energy for sex after you wiped the floor with me?”

She knew
she
hadn’t—he was barely perspiring and he wasn’t panting. Both of which she was.

“I still have running energy in me,” she panted, putting on a little more speed, but she was flagging and she knew it. Could have,
should
have stopped fifteen minutes ago.

That cool, not quite condescending tone of his bugged the hell out of her. She’d be damned if she gave in just because he told her to. “Go ahead and go down,” she said between breaths. “I’ll be fine.”

Bria got that there was a killer on board, she got the sense in not being anywhere alone until the man was caught. She got it. Got it. Got it. But at this stage of the game, she’d almost rather fight off a determined attack—which she knew how to handle—than deal with Nick Cutter’s chilly attitude, which she didn’t.

He was a freaking ice-capped volcano. A dormant one. All stone and hard edges on the outside, nothing but molten lava underneath. Not quite still enough to be empty, not nearly emotional enough to erupt.

He confused her, aroused her, and frigging
annoyed
her. She couldn’t figure him out and was too emotionally drained to try. And she sure as hell didn’t want to test that leashed control in his bed.

She was a pressure cooker ready to blow. Nerves. Stress. Yes, fear too. If he just didn’t touch her, she could try to get a grip on the roller-coaster emotions she was feeling.

He didn’t share her reserve. Without warning, he grabbed her around the waist and hoisted her clear off the treadmill. She gave a little scream of surprise.

“Time’s up.” The machine stopped as he swung her out of the way of the controls and set her on her feet.

The muscles in her legs vibrated, and her heart pounded hard enough for her entire body to shake. Between one manic heartbeat and the next she realized she’d been hanging on by a thread all day. Him grabbing her like that—him touching her when her antennae were already short-circuiting, kicked her over the edge. Her outburst after he’d damn well locked her in his cabin all freaking day hadn’t done anything to relieve her overall tension.

Dinner had lulled her into a false sense of thinking that she had the upper hand.

This wasn’t the first time today that she’d felt out of control and so furious she could chew nails.

The man was infuriating!

She. Just. Lost it.

With a shriek of outrage, a surge of adrenaline, she lunged at him. “Don’t tell me what to do!” Balling up her fist, she punched at the wide target of his chest as hard as she could, so angry she couldn’t see straight.

He rotated sideways, just enough to make sure all she hit was the outside curve of his arm.

“Calm down,” he said coolly, his voice soothing enough to pump up her fury by 20 percent. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

Bria dashed her forearm across her mouth, wiping away the sweat on her face. And gave him a hot look that should’ve melted him to the carpet. “I’m going to hurt
you, figlio di troia
!” She hit him again; this time her fist skated off his gleaming shoulder. It was rock-hard. Her knuckles stung, which made her madder still. She danced around him, fists raised like a boxer.

“Stop bullying me!” Jab. “And man—” Punch. “—Handling—” A Thai kick to his ribs had his eyebrows winging upward. “—Me!” she finished, all but frothing as her temper spilled out like the volcano she’d silently accused him of being. “Go to hell, you—you
estupido
!”

She went for a knee to his groin. He shifted out of the way, and his blue eyes turned molten. Ignoring every danger sign on his face, she hauled back a foot and kicked his shin.

He flinched this time, as the tread on her sneakers rasped against his bare leg. “Gabriella, s
top
.” His hand shot out—Oh, God, she’d pushed him too far!—but instead of a blow, he merely placed his palm in the middle of her forehead so she couldn’t get any closer.

Her momentary fear flipped to another spike of fury.
“Callate el osico, gordota,”
she spat, struggling to reach him, arms swinging.

Nick suddenly laughed. “Shut your snout, fatty? Is that the best you can come up with?”

Her mouth opened and then closed. “You don’t like my insults? How about this?” She swung for him. Everything Marv had taught her went out the window. Everything. Particularly the discipline.

Nick damn-him-Cutter had frozen that right out of her.

She saw herself, crazy and out of control, and it scared her that Nick—God
anyone
—could make her forget herself and be
this
angry. The hard pressure of impending tears built up behind her eyes.
Calm down. Calm down.
Damn it, she’d rather hit him than let him see her cry.