In Too Deep (16 page)

“
Yeah, well, don’t let her trap
you in a dark corner is all I’m saying.” She gazed out the window
at the froth and spray kicked up by the boat’s bow. The Mollymawk
surged over another crest and Piper’s hand gripped the seat under
her leg.

“
Ah, do you think the weather will
hold?” she asked.

He braced himself at the wheel as
the boat rocked down into a trough. “Once we’re in the inlet it’ll
settle down, and the forecast was okay. Not great, but
okay.”

“
Great would be better,” Piper
muttered, barely audible above the engine and rhythmic smack of
waves on the hull.

West sneaked a sidelong glance.
She had one arm wrapped around her middle, molding her shirt’s soft
fabric to her breasts, and the other hand cupped by her mouth, her
teeth worrying the edge of a fingernail. What hid under her top—a
plain sports bra, or something wickedly skimpy and trimmed in
lace?

Jeez, West, stop thinking with
your dick.
He cleared his throat. “But no pressure or
anything.”

She looked at him then, hazel eyes
darkening to cool green chips, like sea glass buffed to a matt
surface. “It’s not you my family’s watching—they’re waiting for me
to stuff up in another epic fail.”

“
Nobody wants you to
fail.”

“
They don’t want me to fail. They
just expect me to quit.”

Funny that people might arrive at
that conclusion. But not so funny when his heart jerked out of
rhythm for a couple of beats. Like he cared if she left the island
again. “People’s expectations, huh? That sucks.”

Her casual slouch on the seat
unfolded until she sat bolt upright. “I’m not a quitter. I don’t
give up.” She read the cynicism on his face and added, “Extreme
circumstances nine years ago, West, and you know it. I didn’t
quit.”

“
Yeah, you did. You used Mike’s
death as an excuse to quit your family and leave Oban.”

She winced, but her flat, cop eyes
didn’t shift away. “My father dying was not an excuse. I was
leaving anyway. I had no reason to stay.”

“
There was every reason to stay.
Your mother needed you. Your little sister needed you. Even Ben
needed you, though he would’ve denied it.”
I needed you.
Not
that she could ever torture it out of him, not even with red-hot
needles threatening his balls.

“
Did
you
need me?” The
bitterness in her tone hauled him up sharp. “No, dumb question. You
didn’t. You were glad to see me go.”

Not glad—guilty. He’d tried to
talk to her, to apologize for being such a wanker before her father
died, but Piper refused to speak to him. So he’d done nothing, gave
up, and let her go. And the night she left he drank himself into
oblivion and woke the next morning on the bathroom floor covered in
regurgitated whiskey. Yeah, he handled her departure real
well.

He made a conscious effort to keep
his brow smooth and his jaw relaxed. “Regardless of what happened
between us—our teenage fumbling or whatever you want to call
it—your family needed you here.”

Piper lurched to her feet, her
eyes wide and shiny. “Teenage
fumbling
? You think our
teenage fumbling
was the reason I left everything I loved,
everyone I cared about, behind?”

Now he’d done it. Had he actually
made her cry? “Piper—”

Her pale face looked like she was
suffering a mixed-spirits hangover.

Shit. He hadn’t meant to be so
harsh, because he just didn’t do harsh with women. Women made him
laugh, made him lust, and sometimes made him crazy—but no one,
other than Piper, rattled him enough to lose control of his tongue.
She’d abandoned them all, but yeah,
ancient history
. And
nothing that should bug him enough to dredge it all up
again.

“
Listen, I shouldn’t
have—”

“
You, you—” she jabbed a finger at
him, clapped a hand over her mouth, and bolted from the
wheelhouse.

Not even the growl of The
Mollymawk’s engines could drown out the sound of Piper retching
over the starboard side.

West shoved a hand through his
hair and swore, easing back on the throttle.

Yep. He had a hell of a way with
women.

***

Piper sprawled on her bunk bed
with the crook of her elbow covering her face and her fingertips
resting on an empty just-in-case bucket by her side. A soft knock
at the door made her moan. Wife number three, who turned out to be
a nurse, no doubt returning to check she hadn’t choked to death on
her own vomit. Though as West pointed out, no one died of
seasickness.

There was always a first time, and
the only consolation in this humiliating experience was she hadn’t
puked on his shoes.

The door creaked open. “You
alive?”

Okay, now she wished she had, in
fact, puked on his shoes.

“
Go away, West. I’ll be out in
five minutes.”

He ignored her and walked over to
her bunk, draping something cool and moist across her brow. Another
moan oozed between her lips. God that felt good!

“
I take it back. You can stay and
keep bringing me cold washcloths.”

The mattress dipped as he sat by
her knees. “So. A seasickness prone police diver, hmm?”

“
Uh-huh. The squad thinks it’s a
hoot.”

“
Bet you don’t throw up in front
of them, though.”

She waggled her head from side to
side to indicate that no, she definitely didn’t toss her cookies in
front of the guys—when her stomach lurched again.

Oh, crap. She rolled onto her side
fumbling for the bucket, but West already had it in position. Maybe
she imagined it, hard to tell with her guts wringing the last of
her breakfast out, but she could’ve sworn he rubbed her back as she
heaved.

A small towel appeared under her
nose.

“
Here,” his voice was oddly
gentle. “Wipe your mouth.”

“
Thanks.” She dabbed at her lips,
blinked back tears, and squeezed the towel so hard the little
cotton loops were sure to leave indentations on her palms. “You’ve
done this before.”

His low chuckle had her gripping
the towel for entirely different reasons. “Your first drinking
binge. Both our dads would’ve tanned your hide if they’d caught you
that night.”

Sinking back down into the
mattress, Piper covered her face with her elbow again. “Luckily you
found me.”

A skinny sixteen-year-old girl
hunched up at the outskirts of the beach bonfire because she’d
decided to show West she wasn’t a little girl anymore by drinking
three bottles of beer in quick succession. That time she really did
barf on his shoes.

“
The first and only time you let
me take care of you.”

“
I didn’t want you to take care of
me.”

She’d wanted him to notice her as
someone other than Ben’s tomboy sister and one of the guys. She
wanted him to kiss her under the star studded sky with the
flickering flames shooting sparks high into the night. She wanted
him to kiss her, instead of Brittany the petite blonde staying with
her grandparents for the Christmas holidays.

“
Because you can take care of
yourself, right?” He laid the damp washcloth across her forehead
again.

“
Right.”

“
And you’re not going to make a
pass at me like you did back then?”

Oh Lord. Kill her now and spare
the humiliation. He remembered that too? “I deny making a pass at
you, Ryan Westlake. You’d had a few beers yourself, so your recall
must be flawed.”

“
Nope. I remember the aftermath of
your barf-fest well. You made drunken goo-goo eyes at me and tried
dragging me in for a kiss.”

She groaned and wrapped her other
arm over her face. “Oh, God. I did, didn’t I?”

“
Totally. And Ben would’ve kicked
your ass if you’d succeeded.”

“
And Brittany of the big boobs and
French manicure would’ve gone for me too.”

He patted her leg, leaving his
warm palm on her calf. “You could’ve taken her.”

“
Damn straight, I could’ve.” She
sat up a little, resting back on her forearms, testing her stomach
to see if anything else threatened to erupt. So far, nothing. “I
must’ve seemed pretty pathetic—drunk, and trying to kiss you with
gross vomit breath.”

A muscle twitched in the corner of
his mouth. “Actually, you shocked me. I couldn’t understand why you
wanted to kiss me.”

Piper sat up further and drew her
knees to her chest, so his hand slid off her leg. His touch dizzied
her senses more than the rhythmic rocking of the boat. “Like you
didn’t know I’d been crushing on you for ages.”

“
Believe it or not, I wasn’t
always so clued up on the mysterious hints women give.”

“
Well, I’m not such a cheap date
now. I don’t put out after only three beers.”

His rich laughter filled the room
and she smiled in spite of herself. It was the kind of laugh they
used to share, back before the drunken kiss fail, back when they’d
just been friends hanging out.

He stopped laughing and his gaze
dropped, alighting on her lips. Suddenly conscious of her breath,
Piper would’ve given a week’s wages for a mint Tic-Tac. What was
the protocol in this situation? The kind of situation where you’ve
puked in a bucket held by the man who still turns your insides to
jelly with only his laugh.

“
I’m flattered you didn’t kiss me
in my kitchen the other night because you were drunk—” and before
Piper could invent a blasé excuse or a sarcastic comeback, West
continued, “—but we have guests suiting up to snorkel. Maybe you’d
feel less queasy if you hopped in the water for a bit.”

Floating face down under the water
where no one could figure out the cool and collected cop wasn’t
actually all that cool, and with West around,
definitely
not
collected—that sounded preferable to barfing in a bucket while he
looked on. “Let them know I’ll be up in ten. The show must go
on.”

“
That’s my girl.” His warm fingers
wrapped around her ankle and squeezed, then he stood and exited the
cabin.

Piper swung her legs off the bunk
and dropped her head into her palms, cursing her foolish, foolish
heart for leaping into a wild calypso. Acting like the silly girl
she’d been would not get her through the next five weeks, or even
through the rest of the day.

Just because West briefly turned
on the
I care about you, babe
charm in her moment of
weakness, didn’t mean she should jump to unfounded conclusions.
She’d never been West’s girl, even when at eighteen she’d been
naive enough to think that sex with him automatically labeled her
as such. She’d been nothing more than a quick fling, an easy
conquest, another chick he’d banged.

The only thing that kissing West
proved was she was still too stupid to learn her lesson the first
and
second time around.

“
Not aiming for third time lucky,
pal.” Piper staggered to the cabin door and locked it.

Now. If she could just stop
thinking about the long night ahead, trapped in this cabin with
him.

And how she would prevent herself
from being stupid all over again.

***

Piper sliced strips of green
pepper for the green salad with the focused attention of someone
performing their first solo brain surgery.

Outside the galley, West’s
baritone rumble was cut into by wife number three’s piercing
giggle. “Oh, West, you’re too much.”

Wasn’t he, though. Too much of
everything decadent and yummy. An overindulgence she couldn’t
afford. She tossed the strips into the salad bowl, snatched up
another pepper and pierced its glossy skin with her
knife.

After West fixed the exhausted but
happy couples their early evening cocktails, which they currently
enjoyed on The Mollymawk’s deck, he helped garnish the plate of
smoked salmon blinis and carried the platter out.

Fortunately, the rest of the day
had gone without a hitch. Couples one and two snorkeled their
little butts off, while she thanked the gods her seasickness had
abated once in the water. Later in the afternoon she buddied up
with husband number three on the scuba dive, while his wife
chattered non-stop to West back on-board.

Afterwards West sidled up to her
and in a low-pitched voice, snarled, “Don’t ever leave me alone
with that woman again. She never, ever shuts up.”

“
Wiggles stories?” Piper whispered
back.

Wiggles being the woman’s spoiled
Maltese terrier. Piper had managed to zone out from most of the
Wiggles stories when Cynthia, aka wife number three, looked after
her earlier.

“
Did you know Wiggles has her own
wardrobe?”

“
She showed you her photos, didn’t
she?”

“
I wanted to poke my eye out with
one of those little cocktail umbrellas.”