Chapter Twenty
Lucas liked to feel the sun slanting onto his back while he hosed seawater from wetsuits and hung them on plastic hangers to drain.
He’d been in the water today with Polly while Lars provided surface cover. Polly was possibly his favourite instructor, just because she looked as if she was a bumbly, shy, awkward woman and he liked to see the clients’ faces when she actually proved to be confident and incisive.
Today, two buffoons, Bryan and Jim, had decided to break a golden rule and drink alcohol between dives.
Polly had tried to indicate how bad an idea it was with a friendly, low-key request. ‘Come on, guys, don’t buy beer if you’re diving this afternoon. Alcohol accelerates your no decompression limits and makes it difficult for your body tissue to reabsorb oxygen. Decompression sickness is easier to contract.’
Lucas grinned to remember Bryan and Jim rolling their eyes as they went ahead with their order at the beach bar.
Knowing that entertainment was about to follow, Lars and Lucas had just waited.
Polly watched Bryan and Jim hand over their euros. ‘How’s the beer, guys?’ she called.
‘Good!’ Jim called back, lifting his foaming pint in a mocking toast to her.
‘Glad you’re enjoying it.’ Polly turned to Lucas. ‘Put Jim and Bryan’s tanks back on the pick-up: they’re spending the afternoon waterside unless they toss the beer right now.’
The grins fell from Jim and Bryan’s faces. They tossed the beer.
Lucas wasn’t sure whether they realised what idiots they’d made of themselves by indulging in a thinly disguised sulk for most of the afternoon but the other four guys in the party, pleasant Irish lads, all experienced Open Water Advanced Divers, didn’t let Bryan and Jim spoil their date with the sea. They loved everything underwater from orange fireworms to the encrusted remains of a gun from a World War II ship and happily signed up for the next day’s dives.
Bryan and Jim had not signed up for more and were probably already in some bar, downing their long-awaited beer and bitching about Polly.
As Lucas worked, moving the wetsuits up the rail once rinsed, he paused to put on his T-shirt. He’d learned to respect the sun in California.
Vern popped his head around the corner of the team building. ‘Can you clean up the stuff from my dive, too, so Harriet can go? Hot date.’
‘No problem.’ Lucas grinned as small, dark Harriet instantly appeared with three more clients to hang up their wetsuits and BCDs. Harriet would repay the favour some time and, today, nothing was a problem.
Elle had spent last night in his bed.
Thinking about it made his heart flip like a coin. Preparing equipment, supervising and assessing the divers, participating in the briefs and debriefs, checking logs, Lucas had had to keep his mind on the job because safety was everything. But now that he needed only two per cent of his mind for this end-of-day chore he could let Elle occupy the rest.
Last night had been hot . This morning . . . His hands slowed. This morning, the old pattern had shown signs of emerging. He’d told Elle that her sharing her past with him had made him happy, and her own happiness had drained from her face.
He moved the last wetsuit over on the rail and began on the BCDs, letting the chill fresh water splash over his bare feet as he washed the sea from each of the padded waistcoat-like devices in turn.
Vern’s head reappeared around the corner. ‘We thought we’d go over to Fat Harry’s. Polly and Lars are coming.’
‘I’ll give it a miss this time.’ Lucas hung up the last dripping BCD and ran the water over the row of fins standing up against the wall before turning off the tap. He was hoping that Elle would be waiting for him at the boat.
* * *
To his disappointment, when Lucas jumped off the bus and sauntered through the gardens, he found the Shady Lady locked up. Hoping Elle would soon show, he put on the air con and showered.
As he finished towelling himself his phone began to ring from the pocket of the cut-offs on the cabin floor. He snatched it up, frowning slightly to see not Elle’s name on the screen, as he’d hoped, but Simon’s.
‘What’s up?’ he asked shortly.
‘Nothing.’ Simon sounded wary. ‘What’s up with you?’
Lucas laughed. ‘Sorry. Nothing.’ He extended his arm back into the shower room to lodge the towel on the rail. ‘Everything’s good.’
They chatted for a few minutes. Lucas reported all OK on the Shady Lady and Simon asked him to see the harbour master and check that his last lot of mooring fees had arrived, as he hadn’t received an acknowledgement.
Lucas yawned as he listened to Simon talking about the grapes swelling in California. The day’s diving after a happy and energetic night with Elle began to have their effect. Yawning even more widely, he scratched those parts of man that sometimes demanded scratching.
A giggle made him swing around. Elle stood in the galley, eyes dancing, a bag of shopping in each hand.
Simon’s voice continued in Lucas’s ear. ‘I talked to Elle on e-mail and she indicated the two of you were getting along.’
Lucas felt himself begin to harden as Elle put down the bags and came to lean on the door frame while she looked at him, her blonde hair pouring over one shoulder. ‘Glad that she feels that way,’ he said, truthfully.
Elle smiled and Lucas felt her gaze like a caress, making it difficult to concentrate on anything else. ‘Got to go,’ he said into the phone. ‘Something’s just come up. Bye, Simon.’ Lucas ended the call.
Elle prowled closer. ‘Naked man,’ she breathed.
He drank her in, those cool blue eyes almost predatory beneath her fine blonde brows. The tops of her breasts rose where the fabric of her dress crossed over and narrowed into straps, blue and green and all the colours of the sea. He had to swallow before he could speak. ‘Care to join me?’
‘Love to.’ The corners of her mouth lifted slightly but there was no laughter in her eyes. Instead there was wonder, tenderness. Hunger.
Slowly, she reached under her dress and pulled down her underwear, stepping from the white thong and dropping it to the floor. Then she stretched behind herself and tugged until he heard the soft hiss of a descending zipper. Dropping her arms, she shrugged, and her dress began to slide south. The colours seemed to shimmer as the fabric caught briefly on her breasts, or maybe it was Lucas’s vision that shimmered. He did seem to have stopped breathing.
The dress slithered to the floor.
Lucas wasn’t sure who reached out first but in an instant hot naked woman was jammed up against him and his only recognisable thought was that he must get inside her.
* * *
Elle knew it was unlikely that she’d die of pleasure but when there was so much of it, it was difficult not to at least cry out as if wounded. After the initial urgency, Lucas had created a breathtaking rhythm, pulling oh-so-slowly out of her, to pause, then push urgggggh -so- slooooowly back in. Another pause until she was grinding against him, then he started all over again.
The intensity, the concentration, was ferocious. Despite the air conditioning, the cabin pulsed with heat.
She gasped as he pulled out of her. ‘This would be almost frightening’ — he slid back inside her and she groaned — ‘if it didn’t feel so good.’
Sweat shone on his cheeks. He screwed up his eyes. Then his control broke and the urgency flooded back and Elle couldn’t make her breathing sync with her heartbeat to even say his name.
If it were possible to die of pleasure, she realised, she didn’t care.
* * *
Slowly, their breathing calmed. Lucas had rolled onto his side, done the gentlemanly thing with the condom and pulled Elle against his skin, holding her as their sweat dried.
Elle’s phone chirped. She’d abandoned it with her purse on the floor by the door. She managed to open her eyes. ‘That might be Charlie or Kayleigh. They’re off for a romantic dinner but they asked us if we’d go for a drink first.’
‘Right.’ Lucas’s eyelids flickered but didn’t completely open. ‘Are we going?’
Elle stretched. ‘A drink does sound good. Then we could come back to the boat for dinner. I bought the food.’ She hoped she sounded normal, but her heart shivered. Over dinner. That’s when she had scheduled telling him the rest of the Ricky story. She’d even put the romantic meal idea into Charlie’s head to try and prevent him and Kayleigh turning up at the boat or suggesting that they all ate together.
Although she was bone-deep thankful to have at least this one time with Lucas, she repeated, ‘A drink does sound good,’ creating a reason to get out of bed. Once she was no longer tangled in the sheets with him, it wouldn’t be so tempting to put off the conversation she was dreading. But if she put it off once she’d put it off again and again and sooner or later the indecision would come back to bite her rear end.
‘Better shower, then.’ He pulled her a little higher up his body so that he could kiss her.
Elle was trying not to dwell too much on the evening before them. But it was hard not to let various scenarios run through her head. ‘Do you m-mind—’ She took a breath. ‘Do you mind if we don’t tell Charlie anything, just for now?’
Lucas looked faintly surprised.
She pressed an apologetic kiss on his neck. ‘I’d just rather not have to face a barrage of questions about this.’
He tipped her face up, frowning into her eyes. ‘Before you understand what “this” is?’
‘I suppose so. I know you don’t like secrets, but—’
After a thoughtful stare, he shrugged. ‘But you’d be more comfortable keeping our business as our business?’
She smiled, gratefully. ‘At least for now.’ And if ‘this’ was all over by the end of the evening, then it would be a hell of a lot less embarrassing not to have accepted Charlie and Kayleigh’s congratulations and exclamations. Especially for Lucas.