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He now knew that was impossible for him and was ready to admit to himself he was crazy about her. It had been a very long time since he’d felt like this, if ever. Naturally, these thoughts led to the physical desire more difficult to deny.
Hope was attracted to him too. That was obvious last night, despite her mixed signals. She was holding something back—something made her scared to get closer to him. He snorted.
Like you’re any different.
Alex stopped to look at the ocean, standing straight with arms crossed. The sun had almost set, and a large cloud bank turned the sky purple. With a sigh, he understood if he got intimate with Hope, there’d be no putting that genie back in the bottle—everything would change.
The last thing he wanted was to take a risk like that, only to have her run away from him again. The question was whether he was finally ready for that step. His head was drawn back to the restaurant, remembering the feel of her hand in his.
Hell yes, I’m ready. I just wish I knew if she was.
CHAPTER 29
July . . .
Alex was leading a group of what he referred to as wanderers. No matter what he told them, the group would not stay together. Today he was like a sheepdog, trying to herd the eight of them around, especially one guy. They were on the second dive and running late. Usually they got back to the resort around noon, but it would be later today. Alex glided down the wall at seventy feet and turned around to check the group.
Sure enough, that one idiot was down at a hundred feet taking a picture of a turtle—the third turtle of the dive. Alex tightened his shoulders as he banged on his tank so hard he was afraid he might break his pointer.
The guy had been a problem since getting on the boat that morning, in Alex’s face from the start and complaining about everything. He finally heard the clanging and looked up. Alex glared and pointed at him, signaling to him to move to shallower water with the rest of the group.
Forget a sheepdog—this is like herding cats.
As they continued, the current increased against his face, so he moved the group up to forty feet and headed over the top of the wall onto the reef top. As he moved over the lip, the flow was stronger than on the wall. Nearby purple and yellow soft corals were bent and waving in the steady stream of water.
An increasing current and a group who wouldn’t stay together weren’t a good combination. A strong current could scatter divers far and wide, as well as rattle the hell out of them. Alex hoped he wouldn’t need to chase anyone down. He’d learned long ago to trust his instincts, and he was starting to get a bad feeling about the dive.
He checked behind him and counted only six divers. Dammit. Seeing bubbles coming from the wall, two other divers had never come up with the rest of the group. Alex swam hard against the current to the edge, banged his tank yet again and beckoned to them—they acknowledged and came up.
The flow of water continued to increase, and he’d need Tommy to throw out the trailing lines for the divers to use to pull themselves back to the boat. This is gonna be some work. The group was nearing the boat now, and he couldn’t wait for the dive to be over.
Alex gazed out over the wall and froze, not believing what he saw.
At first, his brain refused to process the image.
He stared in astonishment as Deep Diver sank directly in front of his eyes. Still upright and trailing debris above, she looked almost graceful as she disappeared into the deep water behind the edge of the wall.
Oh my God!
Alex snapped his head up. Debris was strewn across the surface of the ocean thirty feet above him.
What about Tommy?
Heart pounding, he spun around to his group. They were scattered about, but he saw at least six of them had blank, unbelieving looks on their faces. He signaled for them to stay put while he went up. Fat chance of that.
Alex surfaced and shouted, “Tommy! Tommy!” He whipped left and right, his vocal cords straining.
“I’m over here, Alex.”
He whirled around and spotted Tommy floating twenty feet away. Swimming hard, he neared and relaxed a little at Tommy wearing a life jacket and floating with his hands on his chest, calm.
“Are you ok?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” Tommy took a deep, quivering breath. “A little shaken up at first, but I’m doin’ better now.”
“What the hell happened?” Alex clenched Tommy’s life jacket, his voice tight.
“I don’t know, man. I was sittin’ behind the wheel and she started listin’ at the stern. There was nothin’ I could do. She went down so fast!” He ran a hand over his hair. “I got on the radio and called a Mayday. The Coast Guard got our position on GPS and they’re sendin’ someone out.”
