Runaway Girl (Girl 2)

“Um.” I clear the hoarseness from my voice. “What are we going to see down there?”

“This shallow? Sand. Rocks.” He moves in front of me in time to wink, reminding me of a sea captain I read about once when I stole a paperback romance novel from my grandmother’s library. “Might bump into some grouper or mullet.”

“That would be lovely.”

Hearing the simpering belle quality to my voice, I order myself to pull it together. Easier said than done when he’s got that wolfish expression. I’ve been living across the driveway from this man for over a month and yes, there’s been an often unbearable attraction…but I’ve been getting by lucky. He’s actually trying to seduce me now and at this rate it’s going to work. If he brings that mouth around my ear one more time, I’m going to reach such a temperature that this wetsuit will melt and harden right onto my body. And then no one will be having sex because I’ll be mummified.

“Naomi.”

“Yes?”

“I already have a hard enough time deciphering your thoughts. Get your finger off the fast forward button.”

A laugh puffs out of me. “What are you thinking about?”

“Besides what I’ve been thinking about non-stop since last night?”

“Yes,” I croak.

“Diving safety.” An edge of his mouth ticks up. “Don’t trip over all the excitement.”

More tummy flips. He’s flirting with me. I…like the way it feels. Like the way he enjoys me, seems to savor and look for layers in everything I say. There are layers. There’s more than what’s visible on the surface. I’m not sure I believed that before coming to St. Augustine. “I do think it’s exciting, actually,” I rasp, sounding like a fallen woman. “This is what you love.”

“Yeah.” His jaw ticks as he looks at me. “What I love.”

I tip my head to one side and let the sunshine bathe my neck. “Scuba diving. Thousands of people do it only once. Out of that thousand, you were the one who it drew back. Your purpose found you.” His fingers run over my vest, inspecting it, but his touch seeps through and warms me, tickles my nipples. “It doesn’t do that for everyone.”

“Pageant coaching found you, didn’t it?”

“In a way. I looked for the job at the exact time you needed me. O-or someone like me,” I rush to add, and our eyes clash. “I wouldn’t call it my purpose, though.”

“Do you love it?”

“I…love Birdie.”

His fingers pause on my vest and it takes him a moment to respond. “I love the ocean. Scuba is just a means of getting there.” Finished inspecting, his hand lifts, hesitates, and cups my cheek. “Maybe it can be about the contestants for you and not the…”

“Frippery?”

“Ceremony,” he returns, eyebrow raised.

“Nice save.”

We stand there for a moment, rocking on the water, our bodies separated by nothing more than a few reaching rays of sunshine. “You can do anything, Naomi.” I’m going to kiss him. I’m going to kiss—but he clears his throat and steps back, hoisting on his own vest, complete with tank. “Speaking of the exciting world of safety. Do not hold your breath. That will be your instinct at the beginning, but you need to trust the equipment to do its job. Trust me. We’re going to work on it here, before we dive.”

I nod and we get started, applying defogger to our masks and putting them on. Jason is right—I definitely would have held my breath, thinking the water would steal it. Learning to breathe through the mouthpiece feels unnatural. But after a few minutes, I get used to relying on the tube to feed me oxygen. There’s a steady whoosh sound effect that stops being foreign and turns comforting, reminding me to continue the in and out pace. That and Jason’s unreadable eyes, shaded even in the sunshine. They hold mine, daring me to look away. Asking me not to. By the time Jason leads me to the panel attached to the back of the boat, I’m breathing a little faster than I was in the beginning, but he waits, giving me grounding instructions as we poise ourselves to step off into the blue.

The boat sways underneath me and the water seems to rise, beckoning. Dry snowflakes whip through my arms and legs, twirling around my bones. I’m doing this. Am I really doing this?

His hand encompasses mine, small in big and he squeezes, lifting it to his bristled cheek, since his mouth is occupied by a mouthpiece. That simple gesture settles the riot inside me, dropping the snowflakes into a haphazard pile. I won’t let anything happen to you. He doesn’t have to say it out loud. The sentiment is there in every line of his hard body, barely contained in the shiny black of his wetsuit. Outlined by the sun, he looks like something that rose out of the water holding a trident and my God, my God I’ve never been more attracted to anything in my life. My blood sings toward him, even as my mind tells me I’ve got to conquer the blue in front of me.