Vortex (Cutter Cay) (11 page)

Midnight-blue eyes watched her unblinkingly, as he drawled, “We’ll see just how petty they are when I contact the cops in Lima.”

She found she couldn’t look away from those startlingly blue, suddenly predatory eyes. A shiver of apprehension or anticipation skittered through her. Of course he’d contact the authorities. Except Daniela didn’t want anyone to know she was involved, however marginally. “Of course you’ll do as you like. But since you haven’t even headed out to the site, or found anything yet, why not wait a while?” She kept her suggestion casual.

“I’m sure they won’t do anything until they see you’ve salvaged the treasure. That could take weeks or months, right?”

“Sometimes
years
.” Absently, he rubbed a hand across his chest.

Daniela flexed her fingers, almost feeling the damp glide and the crispness of the hair there, as if it were her hand touching him instead of his own. Dog lifted his head, and she realized she’d fisted her fingers in his fur. She stroked an apologetic hand down his back, and he put his head back on her curled legs with a sigh.

“Since I presume their intent wasn’t to kill you,” Logan said, “aren’t they expecting you to contact them?”

“No.” Daniela wanted to go back up to her cabin. Her life was fraught with complications already, and her hyperawareness of Cutter wasn’t helping. It was as though he was sucking all the air out of the room, making it hard for her to breathe, or swallow, or think rationally.

A hell of a time for pheromones to kick in.

Another minute or two to finish the conversation she’d started, five minutes tops, and she’d excuse herself. “These guys aren’t the brightest. I presume they’ll follow you to the location and skulk while you do all the work.”

Even in the muted lighting, his eyes were an impossible shade of cobalt, and disconcertingly direct, making Daniela want to fidget. She stroked Dog. One of them might as well feel soothed, because she sure as hell wasn’t anything close. She felt wired, and so jumpy, she wanted to have hot, wild s—Wanted to go for a long hard
run
.

“I suspect you’re right.” Cutter showed not an iota of the tension she was feeling. He was as relaxed as a big cat on sunny tree branch in the savannah. He looked as though he was settled for the duration, but Daniela didn’t want to sit there in the far-too-intimate semidarkness with him. His hot gaze felt as tangible as warm honey on her face, her throat, her chest …

Her breasts felt heavy, and she was insanely aware of him. His contemplation was as possessive as if he was running his hands all over her, and that look filled her with an aching, nameless longing.

No, not nameless at all.

Inappropriate. Inconvenient.
Wrong time, definitely wrong place.

Her body wasn’t getting the memo.

He smelled … hot. Salty. His skin was still sheened with the sweat he’d worked up doing whatever he’d been doing out on the dark deck earlier. Dear God. It should be illegal, if not immoral, for a guy to look as mouthwatering as Logan Cutter did. She could barely catch her breath. Everything about him tantalized and aroused her senses.

Easy
.

Get up
.

Walk out
.

Now
.

She’d told him about the cousins. Warned him. Told the truth—that bit of it anyway. Time to remove herself from temptation. She yawned, not totally faked, and stretched out her legs slowly, dislodging Dog, who groaned and cast her a reproachful look as he found himself on his feet between the sofa and the coffee table. Daniela slid her feet to the floor, and stood.

Ow! Ow! Ow! Her feet had gone to sleep, and the rush of blood to them felt like thousands of pins and needles stabbing her skin. Logan’s gaze drifted up her body to rest on her face. Slightly light-headed from lack of oxygen, she wiggled her toes to get back some feeling. “It’s been a long day. I’m going to turn in.”

She kept her voice cheerful, determined to escape without giving anything else away. “Thanks for the hospitality. I’m sure you want Poseidon to stay with you. Night.”

“Poseidon?”

She looked at the dog. The dog looked back. Daniela sighed as she kept wiggling her toes. She didn’t trust in her ability to walk away in any sort of dignified manner while her feet were still numb. “Yeah. I see he’s not crazy about that name either.”

“He has a name.” Logan’s lips twitched ever so slightly. Possibly a trick of the light. But his amusement, or her demandable imagination of it, brushed like a cat’s tongue across her nerve endings. Amused or not, tension pulsed in the air between them.

“Dog is not a name.” Her voice sounded soft and breathless She cleared her throat. “If his name was Cat
that
would be a—”

With all the dignity of a clown getting out of a clown car, she toppled over Dog as she shuffled on numb feet, trying to make a graceful exit.

She was at least three feet away from Cutter, who lounged at the other end of the sofa, but when she fell, somehow she landed hard against his chest, her hands splayed on his flat belly, her legs sprawled between his.

Hot skin. Engulfed by sizzling sensations.

A predatory gleam sparked in his eyes. Tilting her chin up with his fingertip, he watched her from beneath lowered lids and murmured, “Well, hello, Annie Ross.”

Daniela blinked as his lips descended. “Who?”

*   *   *

Her lips were slightly puckered, and petal soft as Logan brushed her mouth with his. He moved his lips over hers in a slow, lingering exploration. When he swept his tongue into the warm cavern of her mouth he tasted chocolate, and something elusively sexy that aroused him as if they’d been having foreplay for hours.

He felt the galloping of a heartbeat against his chest, and wasn’t sure if the heavy, rapid beat was hers or his own. He threaded his fingers through the silky strands of her dark hair, tilting his head for better access. She canted her head the other way as she swept her slick warm tongue over his, giving no quarter and expecting none in return.

Her cool fingers flexed against his belly, ratcheting up his heat. Logan wanted to twist their bodies so she lay beneath him along the length of the sofa, but a tiny part of his reptilian brain that could still function, remembered, despite her response now, the way she’d retreated from him in the cabin the night before.

That small show of nerves could be anything. He didn’t know her well enough to know what might be a hot button, but he didn’t want to spook her. Not now when her body molded against his, soft where he was hard, smooth where he was rough. Her touch sparked fire on his skin and sent arcs of heat racing through his veins.

Careful not to scare her, he kept his body relaxed, no matter how hard, literally, it was not to take control of the situation.

He savored the soft shape of her mouth with a sweep of his tongue, enjoying the silky glide of hers as she explored. He drank her in, caressed her mouth when he wanted to caress her body. Logan disciplined himself to keep his hands in the luxuriant fall of her hair. It was a lesson in restraint, but he shook with it.

It took several rapid heartbeats before he realized she was no longer engaged, and that she was trying to break free, her body stiffening in resistance. Logan immediately untangled his fingers from her hair, lifted his hands as she sputtered, “Mfft!” and jerked her head away.

She rolled off him so quickly that he had to shoot out a steadying hand to prevent her from crashing into Dog, or the coffee table behind her. She held up her hand, and he dropped his as she scrambled to her feet beside him.

Expression closed, she was breathing as if she’d just run a marathon, but far from the heavy breathing of passion, he suspected it was panic. He frowned. He didn’t take her for a woman who’d back off from anything, including passion. And it had been that for several minutes.

Overreaction?

Fear?

Jesus. Was she afraid of him? What the hell had happened to her to make her react this way?

Her hair was a sexy tangled mess from his fingers, her cheeks flushed. The peaks of her erect nipples showed clearly beneath the thin gray cotton of her T-shirt, which was hiked up beneath her breasts, the fabric twisted.

She looked down at him with dark, flashing eyes. “I told you. I appreciate your hospitality for letting me stay on board, but I won’t pay you back with benefits.”

She yanked the bottom of her shirt down over her midriff, but not before Logan saw the three-inch scar on the velvety, vulnerable skin just below her navel. His gut went cold. The thin red line was recent. Not as recent as yesterday, however. Had she been in a car accident? Surgery? Could be a burn, or a bad scrape …

He cupped the back of his head with both hands to keep himself from reaching for her. The temptation to haul her back into his arms, to cradle her, to stroke her and pet her, was ridiculous.

Like encouraging a porcupine to sit on his balls.

“Did you completely make up the story about the guy on the fancy ship mauling you,” he asked conversationally, “or was that fact?” Because if it was fact, he was going to find the son of a bitch and swab the deck with his dick.

“There’s always a mauler on a fancy ship to contend with,” she said sweetly. “It wasn’t that much of a stretch. Do you want Malcolm to stay with you, or can he come to bed with me?”

The dog made a low rumbling noise in his chest, as if to disagree with that name too. She glanced down. “Sorry, boy. Did I hurt you?”

“He’s fine. To err is human, to forgive, canine.” She didn’t crack a smile. “Dog needs to take his evening constitutional. I’ll bring him to your cabin when I turn in.”

*   *   *

Logan saw no point in wasting time. He roused Jed before dawn and they took the chopper to Punta de Bombon, stopping briefly to refuel en route. Upon arrival, they chartered a boat and headed out to the site indicated by the emerald map. En route, he called Wes to tell him that the team could have an extra day of R&R in Lima. Jed overheard him and raised an eyebrow.

“You’re getting soft.”

Logan shrugged. “If this turns out to be the right place, they’re not going ashore for a long time. May as well let them stay in Lima, instead of coming back to the
Wolf
to sift more sand.”

It was Jed’s turn to shrug. “We’ll see. What about Annie?”

“What
about
Annie?”

“She’s going to wake up and find us gone.”

“I left her a note.”

“But—”

“Are we there yet?” The subject was closed.

“Almost. Get out the fish.”

The fish was actually a metal detector on a long line. Logan got it set up and they dragged it back and forth across the area, looking for hits. It was a painstaking process, but one they were both accustomed to; they knew how to wait. This time, it paid off. There was definitely something below them. A something large enough to be the
La Daniela
or one of the other gunships. The map had been off by several miles, but considering the location and the centuries of tides and winds that had passed, that was literally a drop in the ocean.

Logan called Piet and told him that the dive team was spending the extra day in Lima, and to get ready to move. No way that he was giving any details via a cell phone; the signal was too easy to intercept, something he’d learned the hard way. He resisted the urge to ask about Annie, said he’d be back that night, and rang off. Whereupon he had to deal with some uncomfortable facts.

Logan knew he’d never have found the frigate without the bowl. And never would’ve known what the bowl was telling him, without Annie.

And, he reluctantly acknowledged, her imbecile cousins.

When he returned that night, Logan holed up in his office, making calls and sorting out paperwork. He wanted every i dotted and t crossed. He still had a business to run.

Family first. His youngest brother Zane was planning an island wedding to Teal. No surprise. But they wanted to get married as soon as possible because Sam, Teal’s father, was seriously ill.

Fortunately, Sam seemed to have a new lease on life since Teal had come back to Cutter Cay, and right now he was doing great. Zane and Teal wanted her father to walk her down the aisle. A fine sentiment, Logan thought. He liked both of them, and he was happy to see Zane relaxed and happy, and not trying so damned hard. Teal, well, Teal was practically his little sister anyway. She’d grown up among the Cutter boys, so he was glad to have her back in the family again.

Nick had landed himself a princess, and added a new brother to the mix. The whole dynamic of the family was about to change. Logan wasn’t sure he liked it, but change, like shit, happened. He’d roll with it.

Speaking of shit happening, he put in a call to Nick to fill him in on the amusing message he’d gotten from the company’s insurance agent, who’d heard about Nick blasting his own ship to hell. The man was only amused, Logan was sure, because his company didn’t have to foot the bill for a new ship. The “friends” Nick had been helping had deep pockets, and they were the ones paying to replace the
Scorpion
. It was a good story, though.

*   *   *

Daniela woke up to the sound of Dog scratching at the door. She looked at him blearily for a moment, then realized that he needed to get out of the cabin.

“Give me a second, Dog.”

She got up, let him out, and headed for the bathroom, stretching and yawning. She woke up in a hurry when she saw that a note had been taped to the bathroom mirror.

“What the—?”

It was from Logan. Short, to the point. He and Jed were checking out the site, he’d be back by night, she was to relax.

Well, gee, thanks, buddy. And how the hell had he put that note in there without her knowing? She’d have a word with Dog later, the turncoat.

So, what was she going to do all day? It suddenly struck her that it had been entirely too long since she’d been able to answer that question with a firm “Nothing.” Not only was she beyond Victor’s reach for the moment, she didn’t have to worry about keeping her guard up around Logan. Those blue eyes saw far too much, and she didn’t mind having a break from being observed so closely.