Rolling in the Deep: Hawaiian Heroes, Book 2 (16 page)

His gaze holding hers, he twisted the top off, lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long drink. Her body reacted predictably, her nipples tightening, her pussy clenching, readying itself for him. She wanted to grab him and kiss him; she wanted to bash him over the head with his beer bottle. She glared, confused and angry.

At that instant, Jack turned. His gaze flicked from Claire to Daniel, and he smiled crookedly.

She looked away, using her hands to slick the water from her skin. Her cheeks burned. Why couldn’t Daniel just stay away? She’d been having a nice flirtation with Jack. Then
he
had to show up again, and suddenly she felt like a high school girl again. Well, she’d be damned if she’d let him rattle her. Even if she did want to cover her near nudity up with her hands and scuttle over to wrap a towel around herself. She should never have let Grace and Bella talk her into buying this bikini. She was too big for it.

Wait a minute—what was she doing? Holy sand sharks, this was Hawaii. She’d seen a lot plumper women than she walking on the beach by the hotel in bikinis. And Jack certainly seemed to think she looked good.

Shoulders back, she walked back to the seating area to don her sarong before turning to choose a beer from the cooler. Sitting down on her lounger, she patted the empty place beside her, smiling at Jack. He gave her a quizzical look but sat down, the chair sagging under his weight.

Daniel sat on a low stool, his back against a tree. Gabe and Sara were on either side of one of the small tables.

Leilani had fixed pulled-pork sandwiches. Claire took a bite of the tender meat folded into a fresh bun and sighed with pleasure. “Mm, I could eat this every day.”

“Nah, say ‘fo’ days’,” Zane instructed her.

Claire grinned at him. “I could eat dis fo’ days,” she said in a deep voice, mimicking him.

“Dese grinds da kine,” Jack agreed.

“You grind li’dat, you come
momona
,” Daniel put in dryly, and the other men laughed.

“He said I’m going to get fat if I keep eating like this,” Jack explained to Claire. He took another huge bite of his sandwich.

She flicked a glance up and down his muscular torso. “Doesn’t look like it to me, moke.”

Jack smirked at Daniel, who snapped a large carrot stick in two with his teeth. Claire blinked as he and Jack shared a challenging look. Why the heck were they glaring at each other? It couldn’t be over her. Daniel had made it only too clear that to him she was just another woman.

She took a drink of her beer and pretended she was still having fun. Which, in a perverse way, she was. She felt…alive when Daniel was around, even though he pissed her off.

“How do you say ‘hand me another piece of pineapple’?” Bella asked.

“That works.” Daniel held the container out to her. His cheeks creased over his beard, his teeth white as he smiled at her.

Claire wanted to throw her plate at him. “I can’t wait to go snorkeling.” She looked out at the reef protruding from the turquoise water. “I want to see a
humu-humu
…”

“
Humu-humu-nuku-nuku-apua’a
,” said Jack.

“Yeah, one of those.”

“Reef triggerfish,” Zane said kindly. “Easier for haoles to say.”

Bella and Claire pelted him with their crumpled napkins.

After lunch, Frank outfitted everyone with brightly colored snorkels, masks and fins. Claire’s were hot pink. She loved them. She wriggled into her new rash-guard shirt, white with a blue turtle on the front, and then hurried back to her lounger to slather sunscreen on the backs of her legs.

“You betta get your
‘ēlemu
wit dat cream,” advised a deep voice behind her. “If you wanna sit on it tonight.”

Claire straightened so fast her spine twinged, whirling to glare at Daniel. “Is that your sweet way of telling me I need to sunscreen my ass?”

“Nah, only da parts stickin’ out.” His gaze followed the curve of her hip, and Claire was stingingly aware that there was quite a bit sticking out of the bikini.

“Maybe you’d like to help,” she shot back. “Since you’re so interested.”

Then she blushed hotly as his gaze swept up to hers, ebony heat arcing through the damp air between them. “Just say the word, wahine.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, does your girlfriend know you make offers like that?”

His gaze followed as she squeezed the sunscreen too hard, and a huge dollop squirted over her hand and onto the sand at their feet.

“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s a woman, all da way. College girl.”

Claire heard the growl emerge from her throat, but she was too angry to quell it. She turned her back on his smirk of male satisfaction, flung the sunscreen onto her lounger and swiped sunscreen down her arms, trying to use up the excess dripping from her palms.

“Gonna sit on your hands instead, yeah?” Having had the last word, Daniel sauntered away.

Claire made a horrible face at his broad back. Nevertheless, she made sure to cream the skin above her bikini bottoms as well as under the edges. He was a jerk, but he was right—she did not want a sunburned ay-lay-moo. Even a strip of sunburn was miserable if rubbed by shorts or undies.

Daniel led the group out to the reef. Claire hung back with Jack. But she was soon so captivated by the swarms of tropical fish on the reef she forgot who was around her. The fish flickered through the shifting light and shadow, bursts of color and pattern. Some yellow tangs were bright as underwater canaries. Others had black-and-white triangular patches and only a little yellow. Another set was striped.

The coral itself was just as fascinating. Some clusters were white, others pale pink, yet another pale gray. And every crevice was inhabited, by black spiny sea urchins, red pencil urchins, or even tiny shrimp waving their feelers for bits of food.

The fish swarmed back and forth with the rhythm of the surf, a waltz of underwater life. Their eyes on the snorkelers in their midst, they darted away whenever someone came too close. Claire kicked her way along, using her flippers and slow motions of her arms to move through the water.

Bella grabbed her arm and pointed to a large fish shaded in delicate turquoise and lavender, munching on the reef itself. His big face and beaky little mouth were in such contrast to his lovely colors that Claire laughed through her snorkel tube.

Daniel beckoned to them. Without waiting, he swam over the end of the reef to the deeper waters beyond, and Claire followed.

A school of small brown-and-white fish scooted along underneath Daniel, turning when he did, their little fins whirring. In spite of her pique, Claire had to smile at his comical escort. Then she blinked as she noticed the tangs swirling around his shoulders, also. None of the denizens of the reef fled from him—quite the opposite. They seemed to consider him one of them.

Daniel looked back again and hung motionless in the water, waiting for her. She swam up beside him, and their eyes met. His were nearly friendly behind the mask—must be an optical illusion. One she neither trusted nor welcomed, she assured herself. He was a retro jerk, and a man-slut besides.

He pointed down at the outer edge of the reef below. Claire looked and nearly swallowed her snorkel tube. Without thinking, she grabbed his arm, warm and hard in the cool water.

Two long, impossibly graceful shapes slithered out of the shadows of the reef only a few feet below. Eels, each as big around as her arm and twice as long. They were chocolate brown, with small, pretty white polka dots, but their open mouths revealed rows of needle-sharp teeth. Fins rippling like lace, they passed just below Claire and Daniel and away into the shadows of a large clump of coral.

She grinned at him jubilantly around her snorkel, squeezing his arm. He winked at her and then swam on, towing her with him. Realizing at last that she was hanging on him, she yanked her hand away and lingered, waiting for Jack and Bella. Bella pantomimed the length of the eels excitedly.

Daniel led them along the reef, pointing out a pair of long, translucent needlefish swimming just under the surface, and a pair of beautiful Moorish idols lingering by a coral outcrop, their long dorsal fins dangling like loose ribbons.

Jack pointed to a colorful striped fish swimming busily along the top of the reef, and Bella gave him a thumbs-up. She tapped Claire’s shoulder and swung her feet down to stick her head out of the water. Claire surfaced to join her, pulling her snorkel from her mouth.

“What?”

Bella laughed. “That was your humuhumunukunukuapua’a.”

“Oh, good. Wouldn’t want to miss him.”

Daniel surfaced beside them, water streaming from his ebony hair and the broad, golden slope of his shoulders. He pulled his mouthpiece free. “We should head back.”

“Oh, not yet,” Claire protested. “We’ve only been out for a little while.”

“Few minutes longer. You’ll burn.”

They continued on to the end of the reef, and then Daniel pointed decisively back the way they’d come. The others turned, but Claire looked longingly at the low ridge of lava jutting out into the beckoning blue and the clear sandy bottom beyond. She really wanted to know what was on the other side.

The water swirled around her, and a big hand grabbed hers. Daniel pulled her upright to face him above the water. He was frowning through his mask, his snorkel mouthpiece hanging by his jaw.

“I know this island and this sun,” he said to her. “You listen to me and to Frank, you got it? You stay out here too long, you gonna burn your pretty ass.”

Claire blinked. Somewhere in there had been a compliment. But he was lecturing her like her father when she’d been a kid, fooling around his fishing boat.

He stroked backward in the water, towing her with him. His grip on her hand was firm but surprisingly gentle. She wanted to hold on, but she reminded herself of her resolve to stay away and pulled at her hand. His grip tightened.

“And don’t come out here by yourself,” he went on. “There are tides and currents you don’t know that will carry you clear down past the south end of the island. Not to mention
manō
.”

She spit her mouthpiece out. “
Oh, you and your manō. Are there really any right around here?
”

“Tiger sharks all over these islands.” He snapped his strong white teeth at her. “They’d love to take a bite of dat ‘
ēlemu. Sunburn like barbeque fo dem.
”

Claire rolled her eyes at him and his pidgin, but she was suddenly happy to follow him back across the reef, hand still tucked in his. She looked over her shoulder as they crossed it, swearing she could feel flat, cold eyes watching her from the blue depths.

When she stood up in the shallow water by the dock to take off her fins, her legs were rubbery. “Whoa, I still feel like I’m moving.”

“You rode the waves over an hour,” he said at her shoulder, his deep voice rumbling in her ear. “Your body gets used to it.”

The waves weren’t the only thing keeping her off balance. Trying desperately to ignore him, Claire handed her fins and snorkel up to Frank on the dock. “Thanks, Frank. Do you want me to rinse these?”

“I’ll do it, thanks,” he said, squatting down to accept the gear. “See anything good?”

“Eels and turtles and lots of fish. It was great.”

Frank looked over her shoulder. “You got your eels to come out and show off, huh?”

Daniel reached past her to hand his snorkel and mask to Frank. “They gave a good show,” he agreed, his breath gusting on her cheek, his chest brushing her back.

Claire sidestepped away, jittery as a sand crab. So now he couldn’t keep away from her? She waded onto the hot sand, peeling off her rash-guard shirt as she headed for the shower.

Bella waded out to join her. “You okay?” she asked quizzically as Claire rinsed off. “You look ticked off.”

“I’m fine, thanks.” Claire smiled, stepping aside so her friend could rinse off. She was not getting into a discussion of her weird, tangled relationship with Daniel, even with Bells.

The way he blew cold and then hot. The way he’d kissed her, and then pushed her away. The way he’d flirted with her earlier today. The way his gaze on her nearly naked self at once thrilled and confused her.

He must think she looked all right in a bikini. He hadn’t offered her a muumuu, yet anyway. Of course, his girlfriend was even heavier, she thought sourly, remembering the tall, plump Hawaiian woman.

Back at the beach lanai, she pulled two bottles of cold water from the cooler and handed one to Bella. Claire sank back in her own lounger, sighing with pleasure at the heat of the sun. She just wanted to catch some rays and forget about men. From the corner of her eye she watched Daniel stroll out onto the dock where Frank was working. Daniel said something, and Frank looked over at the beach. The two men laughed, the low rich sound carrying across the bay.

“I’m going for a walk with Zane,” Bella said.

“Are you kidding?” Claire groaned. “Where are you getting all this energy?”

“I don’t know. There’s just so much to see. I can’t sit still.”

“Well, have fun.” Claire didn’t understand Bella’s fascination with the rain forest above them, but whatever made her friend happy.

She closed her eyes and relaxed until a large hand closed on her arm. She opened her eyes to find a broad silhouette blocking the sun. Daniel, of course. He was trying to drive her crazy.

“Time to move into the shade.” His fingers trailed down her arm as he straightened. She sat bolt upright, struggling to control her shiver of reaction.

Daniel shook his head at Jack, sprawled in the lounger next to hers. “Hey, haole boy, gonna fry yourself, first day out.”

Claire didn’t usually burn; she tanned fast and well. But annoyance at Daniel aside, the tropical sun was strong, and she didn’t want to ruin her vacation.

She swung her feet to the hot sand and rose. She looked down at Jack, who did look flushed. “Come on,” she invited. “Let’s go for another swim.”

“You go,” he said, yawning. “I’m just gonna move into the shade.”