HIGH TIDE (20 page)

There was a blockage in her throat that no matter how many times she swallowed did not dissolve.
It was fear
. With his shoulder hitched against the jamb, and one long leg crooked over the other, she saw Nick’s head hung low. It was a defeated stance, and she dreaded his thoughts.

In one night she
had given up so much of herself—exposing her fears, and revealing a passion that still shocked her.  Through it all, Nick had been there, supporting her. She ached for him right now. She wanted to go to him and knead his tense shoulders, and delve her fingers through the dark hair. Instead, she anxiously whispered,

“Regrets?”

***

Nick straightened and stole a quick breath before turning around. Briana sat with the sheets clutched to her chest, and a tumble of blond hair
around her face nearly concealing the anxious eyes that followed him. Those eyes were too expressive—wells of her very essence, divulging the same fear and desire that waged a battle within him.

Oh God, they were in trouble.

“I’ve had a few—” he replied with a quick grin, but when he saw her eyelids flutter down, quickly added, “but
you
are not one of them.”

Briana looked up again.

“For twenty years,” she said, “the touch of the ocean on my skin brought back memories of the hurricane and my parents.” She reached up to pull a lock of hair behind her ear. With a husky voice she added, “Now I have something else to remember.”

Nick crossed the room. He stopped at the bedside, and reached out to draw loose the golden lock from behind her ear, letting his thumb graze her cheek in the process.

Slowly he sank down beside her, his hand still cupping her face. Where were the words? How could he convey what was constricting his chest right now? Anything he could conjure up would do no justice. Instead, he expressed his emotions with a soft kiss.

Briana leaned into that caress, and before his eyes closed he saw hers clamp down, with moisture leaking from under the lashes.

“I intend to keep your mind on me from now on when you’re in the water,” he whispered.

“What is this, Nick?” Her voice caught. “What is it we have here?”

Nick regarded her silently. The furrow between soft amber eyebrows, the long lashes a shade darker, and the bottom lip that trembled so faintly he would only notice because he was focusing on her mouth.

What did they have here?

It had to be something grand, or else he wouldn’t take the flying leap he was just about to.

“Let’s find out,” he answered. “Slowly, if necessary, but let’s definitely find out.”

Eyes still closed, a smile exposed Briana’s prominent cheekbones. She leaned forward and dusted her lips across his jaw.

“Okay.” She sighed, and then slipped backwards under his weight as he maneuvered her back against the sheets.

***   

“
Nine o’clock. How could you have let me sleep so late? My God, Naoki must be in a state of panic that I’m not in the office.”

Nick glanced at the clock
and then dipped to bite Briana playfully on the neck.

“Would you like me to call
him and tell him where you are?”

Briana considered where she
was
. In a king-sized bed, nearly void of its soft cotton sheets after they shifted to the foot of the mattress and finally slid off. Sprawled across her was the pleasant weight of a man who watched her with sizzling sable eyes. The hint of a smile teased the corner of his mouth. She reached up with both hands and pulled his face down so that she could kiss that flickering dimple.

“Mmmm, I’d like to listen in on that conversation.”

“You don’t think Naoki would approve of me?”

“Naoki is protective.”

Nick rested back on his elbow. “So he wouldn’t be too pleased with what I did to you all night long?”

A blush stole across her cheeks.

“
I
sure was pleased.” She cleared her throat. “But Naoki has already done his research. He’s told me the pages and pages of incidents where you have been heralded as a hero, not to mention the credit you’ve received by your peers. He approves.”

Nick rested back against the pillow with his palms laced behind his head. He stared at the rattan fan whisking quietly from the stucco ceiling.

“Don’t believe all that crap.”

Briana
lay on her side, contemplating the sudden tension in his jaw. “I don’t have to read about those things. You have valiant qualities—that much is obvious.”

“Oh really?” He turned for a moment, cocking an eyebrow and then resumed his inspection of the fan. “Last night, when I saw you unconscious on that ship, I was not heroic, I was helpless.”

“And I came to your rescue.”

Ni
ck smiled. “That you did, Bree.”

“And you in turn rescued me.”

“Oh no. I can’t take credit for that.” He shook his head. “You are in control of your destiny. You controlled it when you stepped out on that beach last night and tossed your fears aside—”

“You gave me incentive,” she interrupted.

His dimple appeared and he declared in a husky whisper, “With one act, you cemented my love of the ocean for all eternity.”

Desire and emotion took its toll on her throat.
She wanted more. She wanted to know more of this man. “Nick, what happened in Kohala Gulch?”

He closed his eyes.

She waited, and saw the angst form wrinkles around those closed lids. She knew that anguish.

When he remained silent, she started to speak.

“Our house was dragged out to sea during
Paka.
”

Once she began, Briana found it remarkably simple to continue. “It wasn’t supposed to have hit us. Dad thought we would be safe. But it did, and before we knew it, we were out in the open sea.
”

The magnitude of that moment still terrified her
.  “It became more and more difficult to stay above water—so hard to kick. My Mother kept me going though. Her voice was calm. I don’t know how it remained so calm, and how it could carry over the noise of the storm.”

Nick was alert now, watching her, but Briana was oblivious. Her voice grew remote.

“I could see Mom only a few feet away from me, and Dad’s blond hair. There were so many waves. But then a real big one came—I swore it was our house about to crash on top of us. But it was a wave, and it hit, and knocked me under. No matter how hard I kicked, I couldn’t reach the surface.”

Briana felt the muscles in her calves ache. Her chest constricted as she searched the underwater maelstrom for the night sky. Her breath
hitched.

“When I broke through—they were gone. I looked
in every direction, and I cried out their names—”

Nick
’s hand fisted gently in her hair and drew her down to his chest to murmur against her ear. “Oh baby, what you’ve been through.”

Tears were there, but they did not spill. Briana was an adult now, and the pain lessened each year. Last night made the ache nearly fade away.

“I survived—but it’s not what
I’ve
been through that bothers me,” she whispered. “What torments me is thinking how scared they must have been. When I go in the water, it’s not
my
fear, Nick. I feel theirs. Like something alive inside of me.  I feel
their
fear.” Briana touched a finger to her forehead. It was so hard to explain something she had never really voiced before.

“You feel guilt,” Nick mused. “You survived and they didn’t. Briana, you were still a child. Don’t carry that burden through life with you.” He touched her hair. “Do you believe that your parents would have done anything to save you
—even sacrifice their own lives?”

Briana’s father had located the only piece of flotsam nearby, a section of the roof that remained buoyant enough to sustain her.
As long as I continue to kick.
That left her parents with only their waning strength to keep them afloat.

“Yes,” she replied bleakly.

“Of course they would. Heck, if we had a child I would do anything in my power to protect it.”

Seemingly startled by his own declaration, Nick’s eyes
connected with hers.

Her breath hitched. They had used no protection last night. For a moment they were locked in this wordless stare. Perhaps she imagined it, but the softest of smiles seemed to dust across his lips. Soft enough to infuse her with warmth. He had painted a tempting portrait.

But what he said was true—about her parents—about the guilt she harbored. She studied his brooding face and realized that Nicolas McCord was slowly tearing down walls.

Nick swung his legs off the edge of the bed, and glanced over his shoulder. For a moment he just sat there, silently watching her. Briana wondered what could possibly be going through his mind,
until he uttered hoarsely, “For the record—you were worth saving.”

“So were you.”

The reply jolted him. He rose and stood by the glass doors. “What do you mean by that?”

Disregarding
the tense set of his body, and that well-concealed glimpse of pain, Briana plowed forward.

“It was worth it. I was terrified, but it was worth it bashing those guys over the head—doing whatever I could—just to get to you. When I heard the punches, when I saw you go down
—I didn’t think—I just had to reach you.”

The shoulders visibly relaxed. “Oh, yes, that. Well, coming from the perspective where I can imagine all the things that could have possibly gone wrong, I’ve got to ask you to promise you won’t try anything like that again.”

“Don’t get yourself in that predicament again.”

“I’ll sure try not to, ma’am.” Nick turned and grinned.

He stayed reflective.

“You know,” his voice was sober, “it’s not the first time I’ve gotten myself into a mess. That
gulch was a bad scene. I—miscalculated.”

Briana waited for him to continue and budge from his self-paralysis, but save for a brief shake of the head, he remained stoic.

“How?” she encouraged softly.

Nick looked out towards the beach. “You remember the Sacred Falls landslide? It killed seven hikers?”

Nodding, Briana recalled the incident that occurred two years ago, shocked because it was a place she frequently hiked for relaxation.

“We went in afterwards—first an aerial reconnaissance, and then the Hazards team went in on foot to the impact area. It was like a scar on the fertile valley wall. I mean, looking at it made you sick inside. We scaled the full length of the valley for any other problem sites. Well, actually my team stayed below and I volunteered to do most of the scaling.”

He paused as if he expected Briana to inject. She watched and waited.

“I felt it,” he said. “I knew it was going to happen, and all I could do was go with it. The drop was steep—a freefall of rock down a waterfall chute—and the whole time I thought, my God, the people down below will never make it. I mean for me, for a few seconds, it was just a freefall, believing ridiculously that the water hole below would save me.”

Nick smirked. “I didn’t hit that, though. I hit the ledge above it. That ledge saved the rest of the crew. Of course for me—” his hand continued to rub at his neck and it took a moment before he resumed. “On impact I felt bones break, and then more debris landed on top of me.”

Briana flinched at the image and wrapped her arms about her. Impulsively, she scoured his body for remnants of that plummet.
She found them
. Perhaps in the dark—in the preoccupation of passion, she had not looked so closely. But now she discerned the meandering scar up the side of his left thigh. The welt was slightly paler than the rest of his tanned skin, and it rose to fishtail over a slim hip revealed above his briefs.

“W-what happened, Nick?”

“I knew I was hurt pretty bad, but I was sure that the team below was in worse shape.” He leaned against the doorjamb and met her eyes. “One of them was my fiancé.”

An image from the newspaper flashed before Briana as she recalled the olive-skinned beauty, and stifled a stab of envy. A slight rise of her eyebrow prompted him to continue.

“The wind was knocked out of my lungs. I couldn’t call out, and I was probably unconscious for a long time thereafter. I can remember watching the sun pass over me and disappear on the other side of the valley. I wasn’t sure anyone even knew I was up there. But then—” Nick stole himself, grimaced, and tensed his jaw. He rubbed at it unconsciously, and ground out, “Then I heard someone approach.”

“I couldn’t move,” he recounted, “but I saw the shadow
. And then I realized that it was Meleana standing there. I remember smelling her perfume, and thinking that I was saved. I think I tried to say her name, but everything hurt so much.”

Too worried about his safety to consider that rescue came in the hands of a woman she immorally
considered an adversary, she rushed out, “Thank God she found you.”