Vortex (Cutter Cay) (13 page)

Yeah, well, if she hadn’t been so damned good at following directions she would’ve realized early in her relationship with the senator from Maine that his directions and suggestions were actually
orders
.

There was nothing
benign
about Victor Stamps. His faults had turned out to be so numerous, Daniela was still trying to sort through them.

There’d been no indication of what he truly was in the beginning and she’d been swept off her feet by his charm. Victor was handsome, amusing, well educated, and well liked in Washington. He was on the fast track to becoming president. She’d been stupidly starry-eyed, taken in by the glamour and glitz of his world.

She’d had six months of a fairy-tale life before the gloss started wearing off and she was able to see beneath his shiny façade. And by then it was too late.

Security? Ha. That was a joke. He’d made her whole world crumble. Wealth? He’d stripped away her livelihood the moment he’d forced her to allow his illegal activities behind the scenes of her gallery.

Enough.

Breathe.

Victor wasn’t anywhere near her. She had time to regroup. Time to wait while Special Agent Price brought things to a close and tied Victor up in a neat bow.

Daniela used the faucet over the stove to fill a large pot, threw in a handful of salt, then went back to deveining the shrimp while the water boiled.

Under Chef’s benign dictatorship, and with Dell’s help, Daniela built enormous seafood salads and squeezed lemons for fresh lemonade. She might not be proficient wielding a paintbrush, but she had an artistic eye and discovered she could make a mean tomato rose.

The galley smelled of the hot yeasty rolls Hipolito slid from the oven. “You,” he instructed Dell, pointing at the salads Daniela had built. “Put those in the fridge until they’re ready. You,” he indicated her, “go now and enjoy the sunshine.” He shooed her out of his kitchen with a charming smile, and laughing black eyes.

He’d given her busywork and they both knew it. The gesture touched her, and foolish tears stung her lids. She put a hand on his arm. “Thanks.”

“Dinner prep starts at five,” he told her gruffly.

She smiled. “I’ll be here.”

Daniela’s heart played ping-pong as she made her way down to the lower deck where the dive team apparently ate their meals together. A two-hour reprieve and she was back to hard decisions, and presenting a false façade.

Dell had gone to deliver a fresh tray of fruit to the dive team, and he met her in the hall as she left the kitchen, greeting her with the news that some of the men were getting ready to dive the new location.
Sea Wolf
had dropped anchor barely an hour earlier, and Logan was already diving? Excitement gripped her, until she realized that the sooner Logan found the treasure, the sooner the cousins would descend.

For Logan’s sake she hoped he found what he was looking for. For her cousins’ sake, she hoped they took whatever deal Logan Cutter offered them, because she suspected he’d only make one offer. And that offer only once.

And for herself, she hoped that nothing exciting, or attention-drawing, happened for the next two weeks and a day. She’d had enough high-octane cloak-and-dagger action in the last months to last her a lifetime. When she got home, she was going to make some drastic changes. What, she wasn’t sure. But she’d never be that trusting ever again. Right now, she was forced to put all her faith in Price to resolve the Victor problem once and for all.

He was the only one who knew what had happened, and knew all the players. He’d arranged false papers so her parents could go on a monthlong cruise, stay out of danger, and not worry.

He’d offered her the same thing. In her case, fake passport and all, but Victor’s people had found her in three days. She prayed nightly that her parents had fared better. She’d learned that an association with Victor had the unsavory side effect of shortening one’s potential life span.

She rested her hand below her belly button, where the bullet had burned her. She wasn’t dead and she planned on staying that way for as long as possible.

It was good to want things. Too bad life rarely unfolded the way people wanted it to.

She hadn’t slept well after she’d left the library the other night. Falling into Cutter’s lap had been clumsy and embarrassing. What man wouldn’t presume the woman had done so intentionally? She hadn’t, of course, but he’d taken the opportunity to kiss her anyway.

She remembered the feel and taste of him in pulsing Technicolor even now, days later. She’d braced her fall with her hand on his belly—and now her fingers flexed in memory of his muscles contracting as he’d kissed her. His skin had been hot and silky smooth to the touch. She wanted to kiss him there. The thought shocked the hell out of her.

The instant his mouth found hers, she’d felt a long-dead ember erupt into flame. Daniela was stunned at her response to his kiss. Stunned and shocked. She had honestly believed that Victor’s actions had stripped her sexual feelings raw, then annihilated them completely. Yet she’d forgotten everything that had gone before and melted into the heat of Cutter’s kiss.

She remembered the feel of his fingers spearing through her hair, the way her scalp tingled at his sensual touch. The brush of his hand against her cheek. The way her mouth opened beneath his and her tongue had met his. Her entire body had felt electrically charged, buzzing with currents that moved like fire through her veins.

Like her numb feet, her libido had reawakened with a pins-and-needles vengeance. Talk about bad timing.

Squinting against the sharp sunlight dancing off the water, she stepped out of the wide sliding door of the library/multipurpose room onto the aft deck. The divers were seated at the large table in the shade of the wide awning. As soon as they saw her, they all, with various levels of enthusiasm, started getting to their feet.

She’d never seen so many half-naked men in one place. They all wore swim trunks or shorts and not much else. In her borrowed jeans and T-shirt she felt almost overdressed. Except for the braless part of the program. It was fortunate that she wasn’t a large-breasted woman, but she wasn’t comfortable in front of all these strangers without wearing one. She hoped Wes had remembered it was on her short list.

She waved the men back into their seats. “Please. There’s no need.” Wes came around and pulled out a chair for her, and she gave him a smile as she sat down. “How was your trip into Lima?” she asked generally, studiously avoiding glancing at the dive platform, a small deck a level lower than where they sat. Since Logan wasn’t at the table, she presumed he was diving.

She let the men’s conversation flow around her, accepted a soda from Wes, and welcomed Dog as he leapt up the five-foot drop between the deck and platform and trotted, dripping, up to the table. He shook, spraying everyone, then stood still while Earl, who was closest, unhooked a long lead from his vest, then unbuckled the vest itself.

Earl patted Dog’s rump, and barking, the animal took off, running as if the hounds of hell were after him, down the deck.

“Is he all right?” Daniela watched the dog scrabble around a corner, and nearly spin out on the deck as he sped out of sight.

“Excess energy,” Wes told her, rubbing a hand over his crew cut as he stretched his legs out under the table. Daniela could see herself reflected in his sunglasses as he said, “He’ll be back. I brought you some stuff. I’ll bring it to your cabin later.”

“Thanks, Wes, that’s—” A loud noise overhead made her start and cover her ears. “What on earth…?”

“Blower!” Cooper yelled, waving a hand in the general direction of the water. “Moves the sand around.”

Wes touched her arm. “Good news,” he shouted when she turned to face him. “That means they found something.”

Too damned soon! The cousins would descend like ticks on a dog the second they knew Cutter had found their treasure. Daniela looked out over the sparkling water. No sign of the fishing trawler, just water as far as the eye could see. She relaxed just a little; she’d almost expected to see the stinking trawler tied up alongside Cutter’s magnificently, pristinely white
Sea Wolf
.

She turned back to Wes, and mouthed, “How soon will we know?” How would
they
know?

With a wide grin, he shrugged his massive shoulders. The guys all lifted their soda cans and toasted across the table, grinning from ear to ear. Their excitement was palpable, their energy infectious.

Dog came running at full speed back from the direction he’d disappeared to. Tongue lolling, he flopped down under the table on Daniela’s bare foot. He was wet, but she used her other foot to rub his back. The noise of the blower didn’t seem to bother him as he put his head down on his paws, sighed, and closed his eyes.

The blower stopped. “They’ll be down another half hour or so,” Wes told her. “Wanna go up to your cabin and see what I scored for you in Lima?”

The blower started up again. Daniela nodded, and got to her feet. Dog got up with her.

Accompanied by the roar of the blower, they went up to the main deck where the divers’ and owners’ cabins were. Daniela waited out in the corridor while Wes went into his cabin for the bags. He came out wearing a tank top, which somehow made him appear more muscle-bound than he’d looked shirtless.

“Good grief, Wes! Does Logan know how much stuff you bought for me?” Daniela eyed the pile of bags he carried. “I’m only going to be here a little while, you know, not the next twenty years!”

He swung a handful of bags toward the other end of the corridor, waiting for her to precede him. “Logan won’t mind, I promise.”

“
I
mind.” She used a key card to open her door. “He’s already letting me stay on board, I don’t want to outstay my welcome.” Turning, she asked, “Are you coming in?”

“I got the impression when you arrived that I … I’m kinda intimidating…”

Yes. He was. And her body instinctively recoiled. But she couldn’t spend the rest of her life tarring every man she met with Victor’s brush. “It wasn’t you.” She pushed the door open and stepped inside. “Come in.”

Wes followed her. “I told you I’m gay, right?”

“Believe me, that has no bearing on it. It’s your sheer size, that has me—I—I had a really bad experience with a guy, and I’m still a little freaked out being in close proximity with large men. Especially in such tight quarters. I’ll get over it.”
Eventually
.

He dumped the bags on her bunk, and sat down on the end of the other one. Dog jumped up beside him, looking alert and ready to play. “Logan would never hurt you, Annie,” Wes told her, gently rubbing Dog’s ear. “I can swear to that.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Who was talking about Logan? But since we are—tell me who he is.”

“Über intelligent, takes care of things, hates liars, loves his brothers, lone wolf, doesn’t like crowds, loyal, can be ruthless, controlled, hardheaded, and stubborn.”

“No vices?” she asked dryly, because those pretty much all sounded like vices to her.

“Not that I’ve seen in the six years I’ve sailed with him.”

“You know the trouble with someone with no vices? They usually have a lot of pretty annoying virtues. How come this cabin’s empty?”

“His cabin’s next door,” he said, then told the dog to lie down. Dog did so and gave her a hopeful look. “He likes a buffer.”

She shot a glance at Wes. “The dog or Logan?”

Wes cocked a brow.

“A buffer from
what?
Does he do primordial screaming in the dead of night?”

Wes grinned. “Never heard him. This cabin’s a buffer.”

Amused, Daniela shook her head. “Let’s see what we have—Oh, my God, Wes,” she laughed, holding up a short, slinky black dress. There was about an ounce of fabric. “Where would I wear this? To dinner on deck?”

“It’ll look amazing on you. I got shoes, too.”

“Lord, you really know how to shop, don’t you?”

“It’s part of my gay gene, I don’t defy the stereotype. Plus my sisters trained me well. I loved my Barbies, what can I say? Underwear in that one.”

“This isn’t underwear, it’s two pieces of black licorice!” She put the thong aside, and opened another bag; this one held a selection of T-shirts. “How many sisters?”

“Three. One older, two younger. Three brothers-in-law. Five nieces, one nephew. A mother and a father. Two dogs, five cats between them. All live in Akron, Ohio. We’re really close. I miss them on long trips like this. But my folks sailed with us a couple of months ago when we left Cutter Cay for this salvage. They had a blast. Go into the head and try that on. I wanna see.”

“I’m going to change into these shorts and this T-shirt, and—thank you, Fairy Godfather—put on this bra, thank you very much.” She went into the head and shut the door.

“What do you think of Logan so far?” Wes raised his voice.

“I don’t think about him.” Unfortunately, another lie to add to the ever-growing list.

“He’s one of the most decent men I’ve ever met, and that’s saying a lot.”

“Hmm.”

“What you see is what you get. He’s one of those strong silent types, steady as a rock.”

“I’ve been dashed on those rocks one too many times. What do you think?” She came out of the bathroom wearing white shorts and a lime green T-shirt. The bra and bikini panties underneath fit perfectly. Armor in place, she felt ten times better already.

“Color looks amazing with your skin tone, and you have great legs.” Wes paused, giving her a serious look. “Are we talking physical abuse, Annie?”

She dumped out all the bags on her bunk, then went to open what she figured was one of the closet doors. It was locked. “Do I need a key?” she asked over her shoulder.

“That’s the door leading through Logan’s closet on the other side. When we have family on board, he sacks in here and lets them have his cabin.”

Lovely. Having him next door wasn’t enough. There was a connecting door. The very thought gave Daniela goose bumps. She yanked on the other door, and it opened to reveal a small closet, with a bunch of empty hangers, and two drawers.