Night Diver: A Novel (10 page)

Or maybe it’s that I haven’t eaten much today.

“I hope you’re a believer in early dinners,” she said.

“Supper. Or tea.”

“Ah, the robot returns, and we are again divided by a common language.”

“As a child in school I was twitted mercilessly for my ‘odd’ speech,” Holden said. “So I learned, only to be cut by an American for my odd speech.”

The thought of him as vulnerable child with exotic eyes caught Kate off balance. It was so much easier to write him off as an upper-class British robot.

Safer, too.

Then a nonrobotic choice of words or inflections would remind her that he was a man, and a handsome one at that. Add in humor and intelligence and a kind of heat that made her itchy, and she was in trouble.

“I’m hungry,” she said abruptly. “Are you?”

“Quite.”

The speculative fire in his eyes made her wonder about the mating habits of dragons.

She looked away.

Holden was trying to decide whether to snack on her and forget supper when he grabbed his wandering mind and put it to use. He did a quick recon of the kitchenette, which consisted of single electric coils plugged into an exposed junction box, a bar refrigerator, a sink that sat on four metal legs fashioned out of galvanized pipe, and a dubious-looking burner sitting crookedly on a small propane bottle. He lifted the bottle. If it wasn’t empty, it was close to it.

“Do you have spare propane bottles?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see any by the back door.”

“Right. Electricity it is.”

He opened the cube-shaped refrigerator that was balanced precariously on a counter made of two-by-fours nailed to some packing crates. “So for protein we have reef fish.” He sniffed it. “Fresh. Lovely.” He kept searching. “Garlic. A pitcher of fresh tea. And an onion that has gone to the dark side. No wine or beer.”

“No problem. I rarely drink. Don’t like the taste.”

While Holden was looking in the refrigerator, Kate began rummaging in the cupboards. “Rice, coffee, tea, sugar, salt, canned milk—yuck—spices, and a bowl of fresh fruit, including coconuts,” she said. “Oh, and a really good olive oil. Do you suppose Farnsworth is a closet foodie?”

“Doubtful. How fresh is the fruit?”

She sorted through it. “Very. The oranges look yummy.”

“That takes care of the scurvy issue.”

“Thought that was limes.”

“Any citrus will do,” he said, closing the refrigerator door. “Limes travel well.”

“We have some of them, too.”

Kate watched him cook out of the corner of her eye. He was efficient and quick to improvise. After he washed his hands, he opened a coconut with a kitchen knife that looked like a machete—and had probably been used as such on the resident greenery. He poured the coconut milk into a small pot and turned to the rice.

“Instant rice,” he said, looking at the box. “Puts paid to the closet foodie theory.”

“A foodie in a hurry?” she offered.

“Contradiction in terms.”

She smiled and relaxed even more.

He poured rice into the pot, added water, and put the pot on one of the electrical coils. To his surprise, it heated very quickly. He stirred in spices and put one of the three unmatched dinner plates on top as a lid.

In surprisingly little time, the whole rental smelled of spice and coconut, sliced fresh fruit, and fish fillets being seared in olive oil. He singed his palm on the handle of the cast-iron frying pan, swore about “not a bloody potholder in the place,” and wrapped a piece of his shirt around the handle before he speedily transferred the half-cooked fish to the plate that rested on top on the rice pot. The steam from below would take care of finishing the fillets.

“You’re lucky that the electricity hasn’t yet gone out,” Kate said, trying not to drool over the food and the man. “All it takes is a tree frog or a sizable cockroach in a junction box and
zzzzzt!
you’re back in the Dark Ages.”

“Raw fish in coconut milk is quite good,” he said. “But I agreed to cook, and marinating doesn’t quite make the cut.”

Quietly she noted that he was a man of his word, even in such a minor detail. Too many men didn’t carry business ethics into personal life, assuming the men had any ethics to begin with. She had met a lot who would lie to get in a woman’s bed. She’d met her share of lying women, too.

He squeezed lime juice into the still-sizzling fish pan and left it to simmer while he put slices of fruit on two mismatched plates. He dished rice onto the plates, put a fillet on top of each mound, and dribbled the pan sauce over.

Kate wondered if she’d ever had a savory meal cooked by a man who was tall, dark, and different. Then she wondered if it would be shallow of her to be seduced by a handsome man who could cook.

Good thing he isn’t wearing an apron. I’d lose all dignity.

Silent laughter bubbled through her.

“Glasses?” he asked.

“I’ll see.” She opened the cupboards until she found two cracked teacups.

He filled each from the pitcher of cold tea and placed everything on the tiny, chipped Formica bar that had two stools crowded along it.

“I hesitate to inquire after forks,” he said. “Or chopsticks.”

“Forks are in the basket on the counter,” she said, washing her hands.

She sat down at the bar while he served the food. When he sat next to her, she barely had room to breathe. Part of it was the tiny eating surface. Most of it was Holden. Somehow he took up an unreasonable amount of room.

Both of them fell on the food with barely civilized greed.

“Wonderful,” she said after her first bites. “I nominate you chef.”

“I decline. Who knows what we’ll find in the refrigerator tomorrow.”

“You’d make something tasty of it.”

“Ever had snake in coconut milk?”

“Right,” she said. “I’ll cook tomorrow.”

He saluted her with his cup of tea.

In a comfortable silence she demolished her food, shook her head when he went to dish himself seconds, and sipped at her tea. A dreamy kind of mood settled over her, a mixture of time and food and fatigue. Idly she wondered how many hits she would get on Holden Cameron, UK, if she did a computer search.

“Some, I would imagine,” he said.

She started. “Do you read minds?”

A smile flickered over his mouth. “Only when people speak clearly.”

“Oh.” She felt heat moving over her face and knew she was blushing like a stoplight. “Want to save me some trouble?”

“You don’t even have a network connection here,” he said, neatly scraping up the last morsel of his second helping.

“Everything’s cellular on the island. St. Vincent is wired to the max. When it comes to the tropics, towers are cheaper to maintain than cables. Talk about yourself and save me a trip to the bedroom to get my computer elf.”

“What is it you’re so keen to know?” he asked.

“What did you do before you worked for the Antiquities Office?”

“I was a sailor.”

“Breaking hearts in every port,” she said, looking at his forearms. Golden brown, muscular, with a sheen of dark hair. Very different from the First Nations people who had been her clients in Canada. “How many years did you serve?”

“I believe I’ve answered your one question for the evening. Perhaps you can try again tomorrow.”

“Google never sleeps.”

“If you’re that curious, I suggest you take it up with him.”

“I will,” she said. “So you were a sailor . . .”

Holden shot her a look. “Royal Navy, ABCD.”

“What happened to the rest of the alphabet?”

He shook his head and held up the tea pitcher in silent question. She held out her cup. He filled it, then his.

“ABCD was my rank,” he said. “Able Seaman Clearance Diver.”

The lazy curiosity vanished. “You’re a diver.” She knew she shouldn’t be surprised, much less disappointed, but she was.

“Clearance diving is hardly glamorous work to a family of treasure divers,” he said.

“What exactly does a clearance diver do, rake debris out of shipping lanes?”

“I spent most of my time deactivating mines.”

“Mines?” she asked. Suddenly treasure diving seemed like a positively safe way to make a living.

“Yes. Dreadful business.”

“I didn’t know British harbors had that many mines left over from World War Two.”

“That would explain why I spent most of my time in other places.” When she opened her mouth to ask another question, he shook his head. “My turn. Where were you raised?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You eat like you’re in a mess hall, surrounded by larger upperclassmen.”

Kate half laughed. “Well, that’s a pretty apt description of my childhood, the smallest person at the table.”

“You were raised institutionally?”

“No, but perhaps I should have been institutionalized after it.”

He gave her a look that said he would wait for a real answer.

“That ship we were just on was where I spent my childhood,” she said. Her tone of voice said she didn’t want to talk about it.

“You lived aboard the
Golden Bough
?”

“With my grandfather, parents, and brother, plus assorted divers.”

“Close quarters,” Holden said.

She got up and began clearing the plates. “You have no idea. I had to share a cabin with Larry until that became impossible. He went to bunk with our grandfather.”

She rinsed, soaped, and rinsed the dishes again. There were no dish towels and no rack to drain wet cutlery. With a mental shrug, she put the plates back into the cupboard.

“I can understand how you might have wanted to get away from that,” Holden said into the silence. “How did the rest of your family take your departure?”

“Grandpa was angry. Larry was relieved because if I’d stayed, I would be captain. Grandpa made that very clear.” Her voice was ruthlessly neutral.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Holden said. “Your brother is looking thoroughly shagged. I gather that you were called in to pretty up the books?”

“Pretty up. Is that the Brit way of saying cooking the books?”

Warily Holden eyed the fork in her hand. “No.”

“Good answer,” she said, turning back to the sink. “I was brought in to translate Larry’s eccentric way of bookkeeping into something anyone can read.”

“I’ll be glad to help.”

“A diver and a bookkeeper, too. Fabulous.” Her tone of voice said the opposite. “Too bad you haven’t been aboard all along.”

Silverware hit the basket with a ringing sound.

“Is that a yes or a no?” he asked.

“Sorry, what was the question?”

“May I help you with the books?”

“If I hit a wall, I’ll run up a flag,” she said. “Excuse me, I’ve got a pan to scrub on the beach. It should give you plenty of time to go through my stuff. Just put everything back where you found it and we’ll both pretend nothing happened.”

Kate felt him watching her every step of the way. She crouched where water met dry beach, grabbed a fistful of sand, and scrubbed the pan. It took several tries, but finally there was only the smell of the ocean on the metal.

When she got back to the rental, Holden was nowhere in sight. The murmur of a deep voice coming from the back of the house told her that he was in his room, either talking to himself or to someone at Antiquities.

The cartons of papers she had left out looked exactly the same as they had when she went to clean the pan. A mess.

With a sigh, she put the pan away, pulled her computer from her luggage, booted up the spreadsheet she had been working on, and settled in for a few hours of sorting and entering.

From the back room, Holden listened to the small sounds Kate made while she sorted papers, dropped something, cursed softly, and began clicking away on the computer keys.

Probably entering receipts in columns, for all the good it will do. Whatever she digs out of that snarl of papers in the cartons won’t be enough to save the dive, so why did her family bother to fly her in?

No answer occurred except the obvious—a bit of sexual distraction. The oldest game in the world. Because it worked.

Holden couldn’t deny he was attracted. But distracted?

Bloody hell. Yes, I’m distracted, sitting here mooning about her, envying every bit of food that touched her lips. Sexy lips, those. Full, made for—

With a phrase in Pashto, he stopped his wandering thoughts, pulled out his cell phone, and hit Farnsworth’s number. While he waited for an answer, he shut the door to the tiny bedroom and booted up his own computer.

“Malcolm here.”

“About bloody time,” Holden said.

“The main generator’s packed it again. We’re down to flashlights because the captain is too stingy to eat fuel running one of the main engines. Have you ever tried describing, entering, and photographing under these conditions? Took a bit to even find my phone.”