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Darcy smiled and clammed up, her standard mode for the afternoon, then turned her back to him and gathered her dive gear. What was wrong with her today?
Shrugging off nagging unease, Max slipped into his own gear by instinct, tracking Darcy’s every move to ensure she didn’t misstep. Her diver certifications reassured him somewhat, but he was leaving nothing to chance when it came to this woman’s safety.
With precision, she checked her pressure gauge, then slipped on the vest and tank. Weight belt next, she buckled it well clear of her vest so it could be popped off fast for an emergency rise. Darcy spit in her mask, then swiped her finger around the seal to keep the mask from fogging up. Max grinned at the ritual. Yeah. She knew her stuff. No one had ever been able to explain why the spit-factor worked. It just did. One of life’s great mysteries.
Like why opposites attract.
He pitched that thought overboard before it could tempt him.
Darcy strapped on her fins and slipped the regulator in her mouth. One more glance at her pressure gauge and she taste-tested the air. She shot Max a thumbs-up, sat on the edge of the boat and fell over backward into the water. Following, he let the ocean swallow him with familiarity.
Lukewarm water. Sunshine streaming through. The roaring of the breathing, a Darth Vader, rushing-in-and-out sound.
Floating into sight, Darcy swept her arms by her sides in a siren welcome. Gorgeous, a natural beauty that had nothing to do with makeup or artifice. A novelty for a man who lived with deception.
Max let the air out of his BC vest—buoyancy compensator—and began his descent. Sinking along with him, Darcy pinched her nose through the flexible mask to equalize the pressure.
Down.
Down.
Down with Darcy into the clear water toward the blanket of luminescent greens and rainbow streaks of color below, leaving the world above until it was only the two of them. Maybe he was overcomplicating things. Likely her silence meant she was ready to cut ties, which was for the best.
He would just enjoy this afternoon on his turf with her. He’d learned young to make the most of every moment before the next move. Ignore the rest.
Seventy feet down, Darcy slowed. A cautious diver. Good. Only pros should dive below a hundred feet where nitrogen narcosis, rapture of the deep, kicked in fast. He didn’t need a doped-up Darcy on his resistance-weak hands.
Pausing, she stared at yellow coral fingering out of denser pink bunches, giving a wide berth to the red coral that held skin-burning poison in its spines. Max pointed toward the looming aircraft. Darcy nodded. He clasped her hand and tugged her with him, kicking, propelling them through the maze of corals painting a Technicolor path ahead of them.
Technicolor? Where had that poetic notion come from? From seeing the same stretch of water he’d covered countless times the past week in a new light through Darcy’s unjaded perceptions.
As he viewed the underwater world around him through her perspective, the depths became about more than a workplace full of hidden secrets. Her eyes smiled through the mask at a blue starfish. When had he forgotten about blue starfish? Long before Eva.
Darcy swam in the midst of a streaming school of spotted grouper, then alongside with a manta ray until the four-foot batlike creature finally glided away. Dozens of times he’d kicked through these same waters right past this same wreckage and never once had he thought to stop and explore. Not until now. With Darcy.
He’d narrowed his focus for so long while Darcy flung open doors, inviting him into her world. And right now, he couldn’t stop himself from joining her, even if only for one day.
* * *
Darcy sprawled on the sandbar, diving gear a few feet away, their boat bobbing in the distance. Max beside her.
She was in serious trouble.
The late-afternoon sun cooked her as surely as the time with Max had fried her brain. Something had happened between them underwater, some surreal connection. He’d watched her with such intensity, his eyes all but searing her through his mask until she’d felt linked to him.
Since she’d first seen him, she’d been attracted to his body, to his intelligence, even to the boy who watched old sitcoms and played with dolphins to combat loneliness. Today, though, she’d met the real man in his world. All the elements of Max Keagan pulled together into a total package that touched her. Here, alone on their patch of sand away from the mainland, the boundaries stayed down and she couldn’t scavenge the will to resurrect them. She was weary with fighting the pull between them. Maybe the time had come to take an even bigger risk.
Time to talk. Really talk. “How long has it been?”
Max turned his head along the sand toward her. “I’m not sure what you mean?”
Darcy forced herself to ask the question that would hurt both of them but needed to be voiced. “How long has it been since you lost her?”
He didn’t look away, blue-green eyes deepening to the color of a storm-tossed sea. “Two and a half years.”
“Time doesn’t always help.”
“No, it doesn’t.” His chest pumped a half pace faster. The ocean crashed up the shoreline, tipping their toes. Waves drowned out the world and eroded the sand beneath them so walls didn’t have a chance of being resurrected. “She was pregnant.”
