In Too Deep (7 page)

Shaye gnawed her bottom lip, her
gaze zipping to the left. “Sorry, I promised Kezia I’d watch Zoe
for a couple of hours. I’m sure West can handle Mum’s little
digital.” Her chair scraped against the wooden floor as she stood.
“I’ll meet you for lunch and bring Kez along—you’ll like
her.”

Ben grunted and elbowed West. “And
while you’re out, you’d better show Ms. Romance here how to set up
the shark cage. I booked five paying divers last night for
Wednesday.”

Piper bent to scoop up the fork
she’d knocked to the floor, glad for a brief respite from West’s
intense scrutiny. Being alone with him worried her more than the
idea of coming face to face with one of the ocean’s largest
predators. At least the Great Whites were forthright in their
desires. They only wanted to eat you.

“
I’ll make sure Piper’s clued up
on how we roll.”

She dismissed West’s baiting tone
and gritted her teeth. If she’d had a choice between a morning
spent in West’s company or the Great Whites—she’d opt for the
sharks.

***

Later that morning Piper resisted
the urge to poke her tongue out as West continued to shower scorn
on her romantic cruise idea by saying
nothing
. He navigated
The Mollymawk to each suggested location in Paterson Inlet and even
set the camera up on a self-timer to take a few shots of them in
their swimsuits pretending to snorkel side by side.

West offered no opinions, made no
snide comments and in fact, he resembled a cardboard cutout at the
boat’s helm—gaze fixed on the horizon, wind tussling his hair. His
perfectly-sculptured-with-product hair. Along with his perfectly
sculptured jaw, perfectly sculptured biceps, and perfectly
sculptured ass. Don’t forget his perfectly sculptured ego. No, it
wouldn’t pay to forget that.

Fine. He could just play the
chauffeur along for the ride.

“
You all done?” he
said.

“
For now. I’ll try to sweet talk
our first guests into allowing their pictures to be used on the
website. It’ll attract more bookings.”

West turned the boat in a wide
circle and headed back in the direction they’d come from. “Assuming
you get any bookings to start with.”

“
Yes, Mr. Positivity. Assuming we
get any bookings.” She sat on the helm seat and swiveled around to
drape an arm over the backrest. West, at the wheel, continued
practicing his thousand yard stare. Probably thought it made him
look windswept and interesting.

Dammit, it did.

The Mollymawk motored out of
Paterson Inlet and toward the open ocean. Fortunately, yesterday’s
wind had died down and the sea beneath them stirred in lazy
ripples—so her stomach behaved.

Piper sucked in a deep breath.
Even though she’d been out on the ocean many times, the air around
Stewart Island was unique. Maybe it was the earthy green scent from
the thousands of trees that covered the majority of the island’s
hilly landscape. Or maybe the uniqueness came from the countless
varieties of birds that called Stewart Island home and that extra
something in the breeze was the distant stench of bird crap.
Cynicism often kept the ache of homesickness at bay when she sat on
her postage-sized deck back in the city.

The Mollymawk powered down and the
boat slowed.

She looked around. Oban was
nowhere in sight. “Why have we stopped here?”

West cut the engine and brushed by
her outstretched legs. “You’ve had your fun with the camera. Now
it’s time for real work.”

“
Real
work?”

“
The shark cage? Ben wants you to
familiarize yourself, remember? Wetsuits are in the storage locker
down below.”

“
Ben never said anything about
going in the cage. He told you to show me how to operate
it.”

“
Yeah, but I’m running these shark
tours for the next six weeks, not Ben. You need to experience the
shark cage before you take a tour.” He paused in the wheelhouse
doorway, his lips twitching once with sardonic humor. “It’s okay to
be a little nervous.”

Which in West-speak translated to:
It’s okay to be a total pussy.

Hah. She wasn’t nervous—nervous
didn’t begin to cover it. But she’d inform West of that, oh, in
about
never
.

So she’d suck it up and get her
butt in the water.

Piper puffed out her cheeks and
with a gusty exhale slid off the helm chair and headed into a cabin
to suit up again.

Ten minutes later she stood on the
stern’s open deck, feeling exposed in a borrowed and ill-fitting
black wetsuit. West was still checking equipment next to the shark
cage poised at the boat’s edge. His chin dipped as she drew
alongside and across the top of his dark sunglasses his gaze
skimmed her length and returned to the regulator cupped in his
hands. Tugging a wrinkled bunch of neoprene out of her butt crack,
Piper grimaced.

Sorry sweetie, without a bra cup
size in double letters West’s tongue’s not hanging out over
you.

His words nine years ago rose like
a shipwrecked behemoth in her memory. “You’re too stubborn, too
tough, and too much one of the guys for my taste. There’s nothing
feminine about you. Sticking a party dress on doesn’t make you any
more of a woman.”

She ruthlessly shoved the memory
aside.

“
You’ve used a surface air supply
before?” he said.

“
I’m familiar with it.”
Familiar
—
huh!
She’d dived in rivers, tidal estuaries,
and in her least pleasant experience, a fetid, pitch-black pond at
the back of a farm searching for a share milker who’d taken a
stroll after a hard night drinking at a mate’s stag party. Paddling
around in clear conditions with a surface air supply would be a
lark in comparison.

“
Good. Getting the cage in the
water is the easy part. Dealing with first time divers, or divers
who’ve never been this close to a real-life shark,
isn’t.”

In between grunted instructions
and the whine of machinery lowering the cage into the water, Piper
asked, “Has Ben ever had any close calls with inexperienced
divers?”

“
Anyone who goes into the cage has
to be a certified diver or, if not, the dive guide takes them on a
ninety-minute theory and practical course for an extra fee. As long
as they don’t panic, there’s little risk involved.”

“
And
have
people
panicked?”

“
Once or twice. Nothing major.” He
finished securing the cage to the boat, stooping to dip his fingers
in the ocean. “Ah…just like bathwater.”

Cords of ropey muscle in his
exposed forearms drew her gaze. West had always been strong; he’d
grown up hoisting beer crates and boxes of canned food in his dad’s
restaurant. Once his body had been so familiar she could’ve
sketched every freckle, each scar. But the hard packed muscle
further up his arms and across his chest hadn’t yet formed nine
years ago. And the span of his shoulders seemed so much wider since
the last time he’d given her a piggyback ride when they were
horsing around as teenagers. Piper’s hand itched to discover if his
skin remained silky and hot-to-the-touch.

He glanced over his shoulder and
she diverted her attention to the sky, fiddling with her wetsuit’s
pull tag.

“
You scared? Want to pack up and
call it a day?”

The thought of going in sent tiny
stabbing pricks across her scalp. She let her gaze skim
disdainfully over the cage, as if she often hopped into the
territory of two-ton creatures with teeth sharper than Shaye’s
paring knives.

“
Hardly. I grew up diving these
waters too. I’ve seen the sharks.” Safely aboard a boat—and never
up close. Except for that one time, which she
would not think
about now
.

His grin was as dangerous as what
might lurk in the fathoms below. Almost as if he read her mind.
“All right, then. It’s simple. You get in before the paying guests
and you help them into position. During the dive you’ll signal me
if there’s a problem. Most importantly, you prevent any fool from
sticking their cameras or limbs outside the cage.”

“
Got it.”

“
Normally I’d be attracting the
sharks with some bait chunks, but today I didn’t pack any. You only
warrant a dry run, sorry.”

“
I’ll survive the disappointment.”
Piper’s voice came out smooth and even, not revealing the tremble
gathering momentum in her knees.

Stepping to the boat’s edge, she
gazed into the water. Clear blue and sparkling, good visibility. If
she’d paid for this opportunity she couldn’t have picked better
shark-viewing conditions.

“
Into the floating metal lunch
box, then,” she muttered and tugged on the wetsuit hood.

West’s snicker made it through the
layer of neoprene. She pulled her mask into place and descended
into the hole until her shoulders were submerged. Glad he found
some humor in the situation, as right now it took all her years of
training not to bolt back onto the boat. And not only because the
sea was freakin’ icy.

He laid out some air hose and
handed her the regulator. “Ready?”

“
Born ready.”

With the regulator plugged in, she
slipped under the surface. The frigid water slapped at her exposed
cheeks as she glided further into the cage, floating in a
slow-motion semicircle.

The water was a pretty turquoise
blue, darkening to azure under The Mollymawk’s motionless
propeller. Gentle waves buffeted her, shifting her neoprene
slippered feet on the cage’s mesh bottom. Her breath rasped in her
ears, and she held the cage’s handrail to keep steady.

Glancing up over her shoulder, the
blurry shape of West leaned against the gunwale, watching. See,
smartass? She was okay. She could totally do this. A smile formed
behind her regulator and she faced forward again.

Dull grey cut through the
turquoise right in front. Jagged teeth and scarred off-white flesh
flashed away to the left. Metal shuddered under her fingers as the
Great White’s tail struck the cage.
Sonofa
—her heart whomped
into triple time while her lungs squeezed shut.

Piper thrashed backward, her
shoulder blades bumping the bars behind. Incomprehensible shouts
overhead. A flurry of bubbles swarmed around her face as the
reptilian part of her brain remembered to breathe, even as the
mammal part wanted to curl into a ball to make the smallest
possible target. Her fingers cinched on the hand rail again—a small
miracle it didn’t snap off at the weld.

Her gaze zeroed in on the shark
cruising past; it was close enough that if she stuck her arm
through the gap that allowed tourists to take photos, she’d touch
the creature’s battered dorsal fin.

A hollow banging sound above.
Piper twisted her head up. West leaned over the boat edge with a
fishing gaff in his hand. He tapped the cage again, held his other
hand further out so she could see his thumbs up signal. She
returned his “come up now” gesture by showing him her back. Then
she raised a hand, one digit extended from her fist.

It wasn’t her thumb.

Give no quarter, show no
weakness.
Shark or no shark, bolting right now was not an
option.

More shouting. This time she
deciphered a few words—Piper, goddammit, and get-your-ass, before
she tuned out.

Piper looked for the shark, but it
had since disappeared into the gloom. The shifting of shadow and
light and the motion of the water dampened down her pulse rate to
almost normal.

No sharks. No dead bodies. Just
the ocean she’d always loved.

Always
had
loved.

She was unsure what her feelings
were toward it at the moment. Or toward the man above—and she
couldn’t avoid dealing with him for much longer.

Chapter 5

Once she
estimated a good five minutes had passed since West threw up his
hands and walked away, Piper swam over to the cage hole. Point
made—she was no coward. Quitting because panic nipped at her heels
was unacceptable. If she left the cage when West ordered, she’d
find it twice as hard to go back in next time.

And really—a police diver losing
it because of a big, dumb shark that
couldn’t even get to
her?
She confronted more danger patrolling the streets of
Wellington city on a Friday night shift.

Breaking the surface,

Piper spat out the regulator and
pulled off her mask and hood. The sunshine striking her face after
the chilly water was bliss. She climbed onto the boat and dropped
her mask into the bin with the other spares.

West lounged on one of the
cushioned benches, feet propped on an overturned fish bin, his
fingers wrapped around an open bottle of Coke. He drank deeply,
then placed the bottle on the table in front of him. “You
done?”

“
Yep.” She sat on a plastic stool
and peeled off the neoprene booties, wriggling her toes. “I can see
why the loopies like it. It’s an adrenaline rush.”

“
An adrenaline rush.”