By the time they were halfway to Piper’s first site, however, his nerves were shot. All he wanted was to turn the boat around and head back to the marina. He’d tried a quick phone call earlier in the day to see if the Fiesta team would let him switch himself out for Tag or Daeg, but that approach had been a no-go. Fiesta wanted to see him leading his program.
He wanted to see the same thing, probably more than anyone.
Piper looked back at him and grinned. Her sunglasses were covered with the spray the boat had kicked up and she looked as if there was nowhere else she’d rather be.
“We’ve got a perfect day,” she called over the noise of the motor, sounding like she meant it. Of course, she didn’t have any issues diving. In fact, if she knew what he knew, she might be smiling even wider because he was going to lose. And she was going to win.
Think of this as a dry run, he told himself. It doesn’t have to be perfect—it just has to happen. Suddenly too hot, he stripped off his T-shirt. Piper slid him a look from over her sunglasses that only heated him up further.
Which was good.
Remembering their night together definitely took his mind off the upcoming dive. And...there it was. Adrenaline punched through his body in a sickening rush. The chemical rush taunted him with visions of failure as his head spun a thousand different scenarios in which he wasn’t able to do this.
The U.S. Navy SEALs trained a man to react well under pressure. Pressure like jumping fins first out of a Blackhawk into stormy water or searching an enemy bay for underwater explosives. He’d done those things and more, so he could handle one practice dive. He’d go under, and there’d be nothing lurking below the surface, waiting to kill him. It would be just him and Piper.
Everything would be fine.
He inhaled. Exhaled. Repeated the process while he did his best not to drive the boat off course.
Piper accidentally rescued him. When the cliffs rose up in front of them and he throttled back to guide the dive boat around the breakwater and into the sheltered cove, she knew exactly where they were. Or weren’t.
She sat up. “This is not Pup Alley.”
It also wasn’t the marina, where he desperately wanted to be. “My turn,” he reminded her when she eyed the site. He hoped.
They both knew she hadn’t put this on her list. The site was known both for its difficult entry and thrilling exit. Divers entered by jumping off the cliff. After that, things got deep, fast. There were plenty of barracuda plus the occasional shark. After the dive, participants timed the incoming waves and rode one over the rocky ledge to shoot into the sheltered cove. Chickening out of that ride meant a mile-long swim around the breakwater. Cal had dived the site every chance he’d gotten on previous visits to the island.
She muttered something he didn’t catch, but he figured she’d bring up whatever it was again later. Probably more than once. He bit back a smile.
Twenty minutes later, he wasn’t smiling, and the marina was definitely looking better and better. They’d anchored the boat a few feet offshore, unloaded the gear and walked through the dive plan. The slog up the path to the top of the cliff had taken far less time than Cal remembered, even with the necessity of loading the dive tanks into the hand-cranked elevator running up the side of the cliff.
“Are you sure?” she asked, walking over to the edge and peering down. She didn’t look bothered by the height or the difficulty of the dive he’d proposed. On the other hand, Piper could probably go face-to-face with a shark and keep her cool.
The screaming of the gulls overhead had him on edge, almost as much as the relentless slap of the waves against the rocks. No, he wasn’t sure. He also knew his nerves were a mental game his head was playing with his body. And, when he looked over the edge at the churning water, he was pretty certain his head was winning.
Piper backed away from the edge. Thank God. “After you,” she said.
He couldn’t.
His head kept running scenarios where she went under and didn’t come up, his heart pounding out an alarm with each unwelcome image. If he couldn’t be there for her, if he couldn’t guarantee he’d see to her safety then...he couldn’t dive.
“Piper.”
“Yeah?”
“I—” What did he say? How did he tell her that something bad had happened but he, conditioned SEAL and expert diver, hadn’t been able to wrap his head around it? He looked at the surface, imagined going under, and it was as though someone had cut the air to his brain.
“Come on.” She turned and strode back to the top of the path. Also known as the walk of shame. When he didn’t immediately head down the trail, she stopped walking, waiting for him to catch up. Good thing she hadn’t tried a wait-and-see move in the water, because he could admit to himself that he would have failed her. If she’d had trouble, he wouldn’t have been there for her, and that bothered him even more than his jacked-up head did.