His fingers worked the straps. Impersonal. Except it wasn’t. He was close enough she sensed the heat radiating off him despite the cold—could smell gun oil and salt water andhim.
He pulled the waist strap snug, double-checking the fit. His knuckles brushed her stomach through the coveralls.
“Breathe out.” His voice was gruff.
She exhaled, and he tightened it another inch.
“Good. Now the legs.”
The leg straps hung loose. He dropped to one knee in front of her.
Oh.
He guided the strap around her thigh, pulled it through the buckle, and adjusted the tension. His hands were sure. Professional. Like he’d done this a hundred times. Which he probably had.
He was Coast Guard, right?
But heat prickled under her skin. Not from his touch but from knowing he was close enough to feel her shaking.
If he noticed, he didn’t say a word. He moved to the other leg. Same process. The strap ran from her waist, between her legs, around her thigh.
She kept her breathing even. Focused on the rain. The wind. Anything except the fact that his hands were inches from?—
“Too tight?” he glanced up.
“No.”
“You’d tell me if it was?”
She wouldn’t. Not when her pride and fear were welded together this tight. “Yes.”
He didn’t look convinced, but he continued. Chest strap. Shoulder straps. Each one adjusted with the same meticulous care.
When he was done, he tugged on the front D-ring. Hard.
She stumbled forward a step, and he caught her by the shoulders, steadying her.
“If you fall, this rig will hold you. But it’s going to hurt. The straps will bite. You’ll swing. Don’t panic. I’ll get to you.”
“I won’t fall.”
“Ifyou do.” His eyes held hers. Gray-blue in the dusky light and utterly serious. “You’re my responsibility now. Understand?”
She should argue, tell him she wasn’t his responsibility, wasn’t his anything.
But the way he was looking at her—like her safety was the only thing that mattered in the world—shut down every protest before it could form.
“Understood,” she said quietly.
He nodded once, released her shoulders, then clipped her to the anchor line he’d rigged.
Jen peered down at the gap. Six feet of nothing between wet metal rungs. The harness suddenly felt very real and extremely necessary.
“I’ll go first. Get below the gap. Then you follow. I’ll talk you through every step.” His voice had the calm certainty of someone who had talked people through worse drops than this.
His eyes swept the area—the ladder, the hull, the water below. Then he swung out onto the wet metal.
No harness. No safety line. Just his hands and the wet metal and a twenty-foot drop to a platform over the ocean.
