Crazy for Love

Elliott lay back down without a word.

“So. Do you think I should’ve tried to help Chloe out?”

“What, exactly, could you do for her?”

Well, that was a stupid question. He could be there to stop her from doing something foolish. Anything foolish. Like getting engag

ed to a mama’s boy who was too much of a pussy to break up with his fiancée in a normal way. Okay, the danger may have already passed on that one, but she clearly wasn’t a genius at making life decisions. “I don’t know. Anything.”

“I think you should get back to being your normal self. Worrying doesn’t suit you. You’re not even being logical about it. I don’t know why Chloe’s got you so tied up in knots, but she’s gone now. Let it go.”

“I could say the same thing to you,” Max snapped.

“When the hell was I ever carefree?” his brother shot back, and then they were at an impasse, because Max refused to reveal the truth.

I’ve never been carefree, either.

In the end, talking to Elliot was only making him feel worse. He hunched over his beer, miserable.

Still, he couldn’t help sneaking a few looks toward his bedroom as he finished his beer. He’d given Chloe his number before she’d left. Working on the ship, he wasn’t in the habit of keeping his phone close by. Satellite phones weren’t exactly cheap, so he had to keep it clear of the water. But now he was wondering where a guy could get one of those dorky phone clips to keep it on his person at all times. He wandered casually into his bedroom to pick it up.

The voice-mail icon on the display may as well have been made of pure, uncontained electricity, because it sent a painful shock through his body. Had something happened? Did she need him? Shit, he should never have let her sail away without him.

He fumbled with the buttons, briefly forgetting his password even though it was his birth date.

Finally, he pressed the phone to his ear and held his breath…then let it out on a great rush of disappointment when he heard his captain’s voice.

“Hey, Max!” he said in his thick Greek accent. “Listen, you know how much I respect you, and I know how you feel about Randy Martin.”

“Aw, shit,” Max muttered.

“I don’t know what went down between you two, and I don’t need to know. You wanted him off the ship and so he went. But he called me up. Wants to come back. He promises not to cause trouble this time, and he’s a great diver, Max. One of the best young guys out there right now. Think about it, okay?”

“Shit,” he said more loudly. The message clicked off.

“Everything all right?” Elliott called.

“Yeah, yeah.” Randy Martin, that fucking bastard. He’d shown up for the new season two years before, a hot-shot young diver with a huge chip on his shoulder. He hadn’t had any use for a safety-conscious dive supervisor and he’d made that clear. But Max’s word was law on that ship; he could even override the captain when they were at a dive site. Randy had tested Max one too many times, staying down for forty minutes on a strict thirty-minute dive. He’d smirked at Max when he’d finally emerged from the water. The same smirk he offered every time he put a foot over the line. After two weeks, they’d stopped to restock in Tangier, and Randy had found himself waving goodbye to his new friends.

But the entire crew, the captain included, had bought into Max’s subtle hints that it had been more than his recklessness that had triggered Max’s temper. There may not have been a fight over a girl during that first night onshore, but no one needed to know that except Max.

And now Randy wanted back onboard. What a prick.

Max’s first instinct was to call the captain back with a drop-dead refusal. He’d never even come close to losing a diver on a job and he wasn’t going to let this bastard ruin his reputation. Or his sanity. Even if he hated the guy, Max wouldn’t be able to live with that on his conscience. That was the entirety of his job: keeping people alive while they did something immeasurably dangerous.

And how in the hell had he ended up with the worst job in the whole damn world? He supervised a dozen people who threw themselves into harm’s way every damn day. People who whined and argued when he set time limits based on visibility and dive depth. People who refused to rest when he ordered a day off. People who thanked him for keeping them safe, even as they cursed him for treating them like children.

He couldn’t count the number of times he’d had to bite back a shout of “I won’t treat you like a child if you stop acting like one!” That didn’t fit with his image, after all, so Max had perfected peaceful smiles and friendly winks. And really, they weren’t all bad. Most divers were educated and well aware of the dangers and respected his efforts. But there was one on every goddamn trip. And none had been as bad as Randy.

Max pulled up the captain’s number, pretending for a moment that he was calling to quit. He didn’t need a job. He’d received a full share of the profits made on every single dive for the past twelve years, and it wasn’t easy to spend money when you spent three-quarters of your life at sea.

So he could quit. But he wouldn’t. After a dozen years of being tempted by this very thing, he knew he wasn’t going to walk away. These people’s lives were in his hands.

“Sullivan?” the captain’s deep voice said over the tinny line.

“Hey, Cap. How’s Greece?”

“Lovely. I’d invite you to come for the rest of the month, but I have my daughters to think of. They are beautiful, and you are not the marrying kind.”