Eyes of Fire

want. Wrong. She wanted to…just touch his hand….

Run her nails down his back….

No, just her fingertips….

She wasn’t breathing! she reminded herself. The first rule of diving was to breathe continuously. She tore her eyes from his. Darlene was still staring at the barracuda. At last Adam set a hand on Darlene’s shoulder and gave her the thumbs-up sign.

They moved by the barracuda without incident.

Sukee and Brad were just ahead of them. Sukee motioned them over, and they all watched a ray try to cover itself with the sand to escape their curious eyes. Sukee shot down lower, following the Steps. They followed.

It was a beautiful dive. They followed the Steps until they suddenly disappeared into the ocean floor, pointing out fish and sea fans and exceptional pieces of coral along the way.

At fifty-five feet the group was still basically together. The Emersons—hand in hand as they floated through the water—studied the ground. Brad and Sukee remained near. Lew and Judy Walker, too, seemed happy to stay hand in hand, cruising along the bottom.

Both Jim Santino and Liam Hinnerman seemed to be studying the stones.

Well, they had all wanted to see the Seafire Isle Steps. Everyone had seemed avidly determined, beyond eager. Now they were here. So just what in God’s name were they all looking for? she wondered.

Something. All of them.

And all of them somehow suspect.

Even if her father—and Hank—had met with foul play, she told herself sternly, it was only Adam’s presence making her feel that her father’s enemy was now among the guests on Seafire Isle.

Sam found herself studying the stones, seeking some elusive answer herself. Here, at the fifty-five-foot mark, they didn’t create a clean trail as they did at the lesser depths. It seemed that someone had tired of his task and thrown the last few any which way.

Ahead was an ocean ledge, leading to deeper water. Sam, with Darlene right beside her, was still staring at one of the Steps, studying the craftsman-ship, when she realized that Adam had gone ahead of them.

He had disappeared over the ocean ledge.

Curious, she caught Darlene’s hand and shot after him. When they reached the drop-off, he was already returning.

His right hand was clenched, as if he was carrying something. She stared at him questioningly, but he pretended not to notice and tapped his watch. It was time to go up.

Back on the Sloop Bee, the guests all talked excitedly about the Steps. Sam was quiet.

She’d tried very hard to watch Adam, to see what he was up to. But he’d never let her see what he had been carrying, and when she’d asked him outright, he denied that he had found anything, and the hostility between them made it difficult to insist he tell her the truth.

“Where next?” Liam Hinnerman demanded.

“Nellie’s Reef,” Sam said, forcing herself to forget Adam and whatever he was up to. “Our second dive of the day will be at a small outcropping of coral we call Nellie’s Reef—supposedly because a girl named Nellie chose it as a place to throw herself into the sea to drown.”

“Did she? Drown?” Darlene asked.

Sam smiled, shaking her head. “When she threw herself in it was low tide, and the coral was so high that she ended up standing on it—and then she was rescued by the young man she had thought had forsaken her.”

“That’s nice,” Darlene decided.

“Don’t tell her the rest of it!” Adam warned.

“The rest of it?” Darlene said.

Sam shrugged. “Some people say there’s more to the story. And it’s really not bad. Actually, it’s kind of nice.”

“Then tell me,” Darlene insisted.

Adam did the telling. “Nellie and her beau had a wonderful wedding, a half dozen children and lived happily ever after.”

“That’s still nice,” Darlene said.

He shrugged.

“Yes, they lived to ripe old ages—then had themselves buried at sea on Nellie’s Reef,” Sam said.

“Oh,” Darlene murmured. “So do they haunt the reef?”

“Well, only as really nice ghosts,” Adam assured her.

“Even if they were thrown in here,” Liam Hinnerman said, “the currents probably carried them elsewhere, and then the sharks probably ate them up right after their carcasses got tossed into the drink anyway.”

“Liam!” Jerry North—slicked down beautifully in suntan oil—moaned.

But Darlene laughed. “Mr. Hinnerman, you are very pessimistic!”

Nellie’s Reef was a nice dive, but it seemed almost anticlimactic after the Steps.

When the divers were all aboard the Sloop Bee after their second dive of the day, Sam realized just how compelling the Steps had been when Jim Santino said, “Great day, dive mistress! But let’s do the Steps longer, maybe tomorrow or the day after? That was the most fascinating dive I’ve had in a long time. Don’t you all agree?”

A chorus answered him affirmatively.

“Jerry will even go in if we go back,” Liam said.

Sam glanced at the blonde, who looked miserable. “Jerry, if you hate to dive—”

“I don’t hate to dive. And if you decide to go back to the Steps…” She shrugged. “I guess I’ll join the party.”

“See, Sam!” Joey Emerson said, his arm around his wife. “Even Jerry will dive.”

“Well, we’ll see,” she murmured.

Adam was staring at her. She returned his stare. What the hell had he been holding in his hand?

When the Sloop Bee returned at last to Seafire Isle, the guests were quick to disembark and disappear.

Except for Adam. He helped Jem rinse down equipment as if he’d been doing it every day for years. The two men worked naturally and well together. Sam watched them broodingly for a while, then felt Adam’s eyes on her.

Like a touch. Just like a damned touch.

She turned away, then started along the path to the main house and her own cottage.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

She turned to see him standing on the dock, his hands on his hips. He was barefoot, wearing just his swim trunks.

Damn. She wasn’t breathing again.

He was sleek and toned. Bronze muscles rippled along every hard inch of his body.

She threw up her hands, exasperated with him and with herself. “To bathe and change,” she said.

“Not alone, you’re not,” he told her.

She arched a brow. “Oh?”

“Damned right, oh.”

“Well, I’m going. So if you’re coming…”

She turned and started along the path again. Fine, she decided. If he was going to follow her, he could tell her what he’d had in his hand.

She didn’t look back, but she was certain that Adam and Jem had exchanged a look assuring one another that women were indeed cantankerous creatures. A man couldn’t live with one, but then, he couldn’t shoot her, either.

It didn’t matter. She knew he was behind her. She could almost feel his breath, sense his warmth.

She unlocked the door to her cottage and stepped inside. She left the door open.