A rogue thought slapped over her like a wave tearing sand from beneath her feet. She'd accepted the possibility of dying in combat, but she'd never considered how it would affect anyone other than her family.
Max had already lost someone special to him. Was she? Special to him?
Sure it might be overconfident to think she could lure him in for something more. Yet if she did, how would he hold up under the stress of sending her off into danger? Because, damn it, she was not going to spend the rest of her career sitting on the sidelines.
Regret crept up and pricked at her like the sand crab scuttling across the gritty wooden floor to nibble her toes. This really was it for them.
Darcy nudged aside the nipping crab. She intended to make this a farewell to remember, while keeping them busy. No chitchat. Definitely no more touching. Part of her wanted to forgo the farewell altogether, but their time together the past weeks demanded a better end than that.
Darcy waited while the beach bum attendant swiped her credit card and tallied up the day's rental fee for dive gear. The young man with bleached-blond dreadlocks passed her her receipt while his mother scurried behind him in her magenta muumuu.
Flipping the pressure gauge in her hand, Darcy checked the reading for her tank. "Thanks for hooking me up with gear on such short notice."
"No problem, hon." The muumuu mama leaned past her son and over the counter, hoop earrings swaying. "You're not going alone, are you? Vinnie here can dive with you. He's always looking for ways to clock out early, right son?''
The guy was already rubbing zinc oxide on his nose.
"No need." Darcy hefted the gear onto her shoulder. "I'm meeting up with Doc Keagan."
"Good enough, then." The older woman angled back. "Enjoy the day."
"Bummer." Vinnie dropped the tube and whipped a boxed underwater camera off the display hook. "Here. Take one of these. It's on the house if you show me the pictures later."
"Deal." Darcy hitched her gear over her shoulder.
Jogging down the steps, she tore the wrapper off the camera and arced the garbage into the industrial-size trash bin. Her hand clenched around the camera. Apparently, she would be making her own stack of Kodak memories with Max after all.
A low drone hummed in the distance. Max steered the boat toward the dock. Toward her.
Her stomach pitched just before the scope of her vision broadened and she saw the second figure in the boat. Perry Griffin stood beside his boss. They must have penned the dolphins together.
Damn, but she'd become too well versed in Max's work habits the past weeks. The notion left her feeling more than a little uncomfortable. Of course, he had asked her to join him often enough. Some days it seemed the guy wouldn't let her out of his sight.
Max pulled up alongside the dock, eyeing the gear slung over Darcy's shoulder. "I thought we'd planned to meet at the pen."
Was that disappointment she heard in his voice. What a heady notion that he would miss her, too. "I changed my mind. Woman's prerogative and all that."
The boat bobbed and swayed as Perry made his way toward the back to tie off. He nodded to Darcy's gear. "Going somewhere?"
"I was hoping to, if Max is still free." She turned to him. "You said you weren't planning any dives today, just unpenning Lucy and Ethel. The waters are warm enough to dive in swimsuits. So I thought maybe you could show me some of the dive sites if you haven't timed out on underwater minutes yet..." She shrugged.
And if he had? There was a limit per day of how much time a body could stand the depths without succumbing to decompression sickness, the bends...or worse, an air bubble in the heart, a concern for her, as well, if she didn't give herself the proper time between a flight and diving. She prayed her plan for a no-talk day wouldn't be derailed.
She held her breath and waited.
Max turned to his assistant. "Perry, why don't you head on in? I'll join you later."
Darcy exhaled her relief.
His assistant tugged a stark white T-shirt over his head and tucked it into his navy swim trunks, a preppy antithesis of Max. "Sure, boss. We can review our data later. I need to give my wife a call, anyway." He leaped onto the dock and nodded to Darcy. "Take it easy, Darcy."
Darcy waited until Perry's thudding footsteps along the planked dock muffled onto the beach before turning to Max. "Wife? I didn't know he was married."
Max draped an arm along the steering wheel, his chest gleaming deep bronze in the late afternoon sun. "Going on eight years now."
"Wow. That's incredible. Kids?"
"Three." He frowned.