Piper shrugged. Maybe she should chalk it up to one of life’s little mysteries. Just because Cal usually had a plan didn’t mean the man always did. Perhaps he was human, after all. Beside her, Carla started taking pictures. Their plan was to pitch a “hike through an underwater forest,” followed by a swim with sea lions, and these pictures would seal the deal.
And yet, as she worked to catalog the site and mentally mapped out the course she’d use with the Fiesta divers next week, Piper kept one eye on Cal, her curiosity killing her. What was he up to? He was a highly trained diver who specialized in extreme dives. This shallow site with its easy currents wasn’t his cup of tea, but he should have been down here, swimming circles around her and Carla.
Nope. It was none of her business.
He dived again, a shallow, graceful arc ending fifteen feet beneath the surface. His body bucked and jerked. Cal never panicked. A little water or a faulty snorkel tube? Those kinds of problems were merely a blip on his SEAL radar. She’d heard the stories about Hell Week, a training week all U.S. Navy SEALs went through. Stories included passing out at the bottom of the pool and near drowning.
And yet Cal was in trouble.
She tapped Carla on her shoulder and pointed up. When Carla nodded and flashed her the okay signal, she started her ascent, slowly rotating upward in a circle toward the surface. When she reached fifteen feet, she stopped for a safety check, hanging in the water. Overhead, Cal disappeared. He’d either grown wings or gotten back on board. She counted down three minutes, then moved steadily to the surface. Racing to the top would be a rookie mistake, and she’d already made too many of those around Cal.
As soon as she broke the surface, she motioned for Carla to get back on the Feelin’ Free. And then hesitated. This had to be one of her stupidest ideas—and she’d had plenty of those. But, instead of getting back on her own boat, she was going to go stick her nose in Cal’s business. Make sure he was really okay.
After passing her gear up to Carla, she swam over to Cal’s boat and hauled herself up onto the gunwale, kicking hard. Cal was sprawled in the captain’s seat, looking like a pirate. His board shorts rode low on his hips, exposing the tantalizing ridges and shadows of his abdomen. Despite the towel in his hand, water droplets slicked his face and his chest. It really wasn’t fair how good he looked.
She swung her legs over the side and watched him.
He didn’t look like he was in trouble.
“I think I get to shoot unauthorized boarding parties.” He stood up in a smooth rush of power and padded toward her, all lazy, masculine grace.
She made a show of looking around his boat, ignoring the gunwale digging into her butt and the Feelin’ Free’s motor sputtering to life behind her as Carla got her boat going. “Where’s your dive buddy, Brennan?”
He held the towel out to her. “I came out here alone. Apparently, I’m giving you a lift back to the marina.”
A free towel was a free towel. She took it and scrubbed at her face. “Way to go breaking the rules. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
He crouched, sliding his hand around her ankle and tugging off her fins. She felt the curl of his fingers right through her dive bootie.
“What happened down there?” Because something had. She’d watched him jerk frantically toward the surface, and yet she hadn’t seen any cause for alarm.
“Nothing happened.” His level gaze met hers as he pulled off the bootie and set it on the deck before reaching for her other foot.
“I know what I saw. You got in the water, you dove and...”
“And what?” His tone dared her to complete the sentence. The problem was, she wasn’t sure what she’d seen. Cal was a master diver and U.S. Navy SEAL. There shouldn’t have been too much he couldn’t handle, and she’d never seen him panic.
Not once.
And yet what she’d witnessed was suspiciously close to panic.
“You couldn’t finish the dive,” she said. “You started down and then you surfaced.”
He shrugged impatiently, turning back to the boat’s control panel. A quick flick of his fingers, and the motor started up.
“I wasn’t dressed for diving,” he pointed out.
He hadn’t geared up. True. And yet she couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong. That she’d overlooked something obvious.
“Nothing went wrong,” he said firmly. “I decided against free diving. I had a malfunction.”
“Bad snorkel?” She gave him a question of her own.
“Something like that.” His dark eyes were unreadable.
She knew prevarication when she heard it. Playing for time, she unzipped her wet suit to her waist, prying her arms out of the Neoprene rubber. She was absurdly glad she’d gone with her favorite bikini top this morning.