One. Two.
On three, he stepped off the edge of the cliff.
Going down was the easy part. Gravity did all the work. All he had to do was keep his flippers pointed down and his arms crossed over his chest. Oh, and not think about what was coming next. He ripped through the surface and sank fast, the extra weight on his belt pulling him down.
Ten feet. Fifteen. He spotted, trying to orient himself and...cue the panic. His heart raced and he gulped air, his fingers going numb. Breathe, he reminded himself. Breathe and count. One. He passed twenty feet, his descent slowing. Two. His heartbeat deafened him, his chest constricting. Four. Piper smiling as she rode the swing ride. Five. Piper on the back of his Harley. Six. Piper on his kitchen counter. So, okay, that one hadn’t happened yet, but a man could dream. He forced himself deeper.
* * *
SPOTS DANCED IN front of her eyes. Chest burning, she reached for her regulator, but Sal wasn’t in a sharing mood. He jammed her regulator into his mouth and breathed frantically. Her tank was running dangerously light now, too. She stretched for her alternate air supply, hooking her fingers around the secondary regulator.
The thing was Sal had to calm down. Shooting the slide with him wasn’t an option—even if he hadn’t been in full-blown panic mode, safely positioning two divers sharing a single tank was out of the question. Her best bet was to get him to surface in a controlled ascent. Carla would alert Cal, and the dive boat could come around and pick them up.
The shark picked that moment to peek back out from its kelp refuge, and Sal started jettisoning weights from his belt. Darn it. If he made an emergency ascent too quickly and without the required safety stops, he’d definitely be paying a visit to the decompression chamber on the mainland.
She needed help.
A second tank.
Or, hey, since she was brainstorming, a big stick to knock some sense into Sal. She needed to breathe, and she needed to get Sal to the surface, but the man wasn’t letting her get on with either job.
Sal jerked hard on her harness a second time, clearly intending to take her—or her air supply—with him. Yeah. Good luck, since she was still harnessed in.
Big hands reached around her. Thank God, the cavalry had arrived. Piper had never been so glad that Cal was a big man. He effortlessly manhandled Sal away from her, inserting his body between them as he held up a small, bright yellow tank and regulator. He motioned for Sal to put the regulator in his mouth. As soon as the other man did, Cal activated the bottle of emergency air.
He’d brought a spare for her, too, and she gladly switched over to it. While he reweighted Sal, who was sucking on the backup air, she checked out Cal. He’d dived. The bubbles from his regulator were a little too fast and hard, but he wasn’t hightailing it for the surface.
She signed, “You okay?”
He nodded and signaled for an ascent.
She was so on board with his plan.
Ten minutes later, they were floating on the surface. Sal wouldn’t look her in the eye as he started ranting about faulty gear and a stuck valve.
“Who checked your gear?” Cal’s voice was icy calm as he cut Sal off midsentence.
Sal spluttered before admitting the truth. “Piper did.”
“And did she say your gear was good to go?”
“She did,” Sal admitted.
“And did you adjust your gear after she’d given you the good-to-go?”
Sal opened his mouth. Closed it. Yep. He apparently had a pretty good idea that he’d emptied his own tank. “I wasn’t getting enough air,” he said defensively.
“Piper did a damned fine job.” Cal’s tone dared Sal to contradict him.
Sal, not being stupid, kept his mouth shut.
* * *
PIPER AND CAL dropped the Fiesta team off at their hotel. Sal took the opportunity to get in one last crack at his defective tank—Piper was certain no one but Sal believed his story—and then she headed back to Dream Big and Dive. She needed to get out of her wet gear and into something dry. She also needed a drink after today’s drama, but that would have to come later.
“Are you coming in?” she asked, unlocking the door.
Cal shot her a look she couldn’t interpret.
“I didn’t deliberately sabotage your dive,” she said in self-defense. “I don’t think any of us could have predicted Sal’s overreaction to a horn shark.”
He took her gear bag from her and pushed the door open. “I never thought you did.”
“Oh.” She stepped inside and he followed, closing and locking the door behind them. “You look like someone kicked your puppy.”
“Today didn’t go as planned,” he admitted. “You had my back, Piper. I’d be a first-class asshole if I questioned how you did it.”