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He smirked and said, "I don't believe my offer included you having me. But we can negotiate on that part."
Isabelle's face heated uncomfortably at Dax's gaze scanning her body. "That's not what I meant. I meant if you want to dive with me then you need to know it's going to be strictly business between us."
"If that's what you want."
"It's what I want." Despite the fact his eyes burned through her, as if he could see into the deep recesses of her heart. Something about Dax Seagrove was familiar, and it nagged at her. Certainly he was gorgeous and charming in a boyish way. She'd seen a face like his on countless fashion magazines and in hunk-of-the-week movies. But there was something else about him that she couldn't put her finger on. A sense of deja vu, as if she'd met him before.
"Would you like to get started or did you want to stare at me awhile longer?"
Would the embarrassment never end? Gawking like a teenager. Hell, she hadn't gawked at a guy when she was a teenager. So, why now, and why him? "Yes, let's get started. There's plenty of daylight left and I have to catalogue some coral anyway."
"Great. I'll help you."
She grabbed her gear and they headed outside, but she stopped him before they reached the water. "You know how to catalogue coral?"
"Yes."
"How? You're not a marine biologist."
"I'm familiar with coral."
"Tell me what you know about the coral indigenous to this area, then," she asked, determined to expose him as the fraud she knew he was.
"I'm assuming you don't want a running list of every species in this area, so I'll limit the number of descriptions. Fire coral is orange-yellow in color and appears to not have any pores which is a typical coral characteristic. Mountainous star coral has no specific coloring but is considered to be an important reef-former in this area. It does have one distinguishing characteristic in that its cups rise above the coral surface. Now the pillar coral is fuzzy and looks like giant fingers. Or there's the--"
"That's enough." So he did know his coral. Didn't mean he wasn't a fraud in other areas.
"Did I pass the test?" he asked with a wink.
"For now. Okay, Mr. Expert, let's go." She'd see if he really knew one end of the ocean from the other. Then she'd decide if she'd let him come along on any further dives.
She threw on her gear and grabbed her camera and notepad, then waited for Dax to fetch his tank and fins from his bungalow.
But he didn't. He just stood there.
"Don't you need to get your stuff?"
He frowned. "What stuff?"
"Your dive gear." And he was an expert? Who the hell was this guy, anyway? She began to doubt her instincts. For all she knew he could be a drifter.
"I don't use dive gear."
She looked at him, hands on her hips. "No dive gear. You dive without an oxygen tank?"
His grin irritated the hell out of her. "Yeah. I can handle it. Trust me. You ready to go?"
"Fine, but if you drown don't expect me to save you." She trudged into the water, her fins slapping at the waves. Refusing to look back at Dax, she dove under, fully expecting to do this dive alone.
He was completely full of shit and she'd called his bluff. Treasure hunter, Pegasus, diver her ass.
Determined to ignore the irritating Dax Seagrove, she dismissed him from her thoughts and concentrated instead on the coral samples she was to catalogue. Her blood pressure leveled off as soon as she nestled among the beautiful creatures under the sea.
It had always seemed kind of strange to her, but she felt the life force of these creatures. All the sea creatures. They weren't mindless objects that swam aimlessly or clung to the sea floor. They were intelligent beings and they called to her in a way that even she couldn't understand.
Which was why she spent most of her time alone. Mentioning her feelings about sea life to any of her colleagues would make her the laughingstock of the Institute. So she kept her opinions and her feelings to herself and went about her business.
Alone. Just the way she liked it.
She quickly turned when something brushed against her shoulder. Her heart pounded a staccato beat at the thought of the shark she'd encountered earlier. But this time, it wasn't a shark.
It was Dax. Sure enough, no dive gear. She shook her head and motioned with her thumb upward, hoping he'd hightail it to the surface before he ran out of air. No such luck. He merely shook his head and smiled.
What a fucking lunatic! He was going to drown. She tried again to signal him to surface, but he waved her off and pointed to the coral.
Damn difficult trying to communicate under the ocean.
No, it's not. Just listen, Isabelle. Can you hear me speaking to you?
What the hell? There was that whispering voice again, the one she'd heard earlier, the one she was convinced didn't exist. She turned to Dax to see if he showed any reaction. He hung suspended in the water, that goofy smile plastered to his face.
Moron. She hoped he'd drown soon.
And she was not hallucinating! She'd heard someone talking to her, almost in answer to her silent musings about the lack of communication under water.
She gave up. She was slowly losing her mind. There was no way in hell that someone could be speaking to her underwater. People didn't talk underwater.
People didn't. Humans didn't. But what about something else? Some other kind of being? Maybe she'd discover more than just a Pegasus Turtle on this expedition. Maybe, there was intelligent life in the sea that could communicate with humans.
Then again, maybe she just needed a nap.
She immersed herself in the coral review, throwing the other odd thoughts out of her head. She'd completely lost track of time until Dax tapped on her wrist and pointed to an unusual species of blue coral.
By then she was way more interested in him than she was the coral. Dax had been holding his breath and hovering next to her for more than five minutes. By rights he should have lost consciousness and drowned by now.
He wasn't dead and he was still smiling. Why wasn't he dead? What the hell, or who the hell was fucking with her?
Dax. He was the one screwing with her head. Everything in her neat and orderly world had fallen apart from the moment she met him. True, maybe even before she'd met him, but how did she know it hadn't been him before?
Are you gonna finish that job or just hang out here and wax existential the rest of the day?
There it was again. Thoughts. Not words spoken aloud, but thoughts. Someone else's thoughts, yet she heard them as if they'd been spoken. Goosebumps broke out on her skin and she flushed hot at the same time.
She looked at Dax, and made the connection.
Dax?
Yeah.
You're speaking to me. Or thinking to me.
I know.
Under water.
Yes.
It's really you? Despite the fact this could not be happening, she already knew the answer. It was the same whispering voice she'd heard in her dreams last night, the same one that had warned her about the shark this morning. Not like his regular speaking voice at all, this one was soft, like a caress near her ear.
How are you speaking to me? How are you breathing under water? What the hell is going on here?
It's a long story.
I've got time. I'm the one with the oxygen tank.
Later. Finish your work and we'll talk topside.
Before she could utter another word...or thought, he swam away so lightning quick her eyes barely registered his departure. Other than a wake of bubbles, there was no sign of him.
Stunned didn't even begin to explain her mindset right now. Unbelievable, unfathomable, couldn't possibly happen.
She'd just dreamed this whole episode. Dax had never even dived with her. She was hallucinating and needed some kind of psychiatric help.
That, at least, would be easier to accept than the fact that Dax could breathe underwater and think his thoughts to her. But the bottom line was, s
he was a scientist and as a scientist sometimes the unbelievable had to be taken at face value.
Cataloguing coral no more than a distant memory, she quickly made the trek toward the water's surface, her thoughts filled with Dax and the wondrous magic he'd just revealed to her.
