The Devil and the Deep - By Amy Andrews Page 0,19

had in her Lucinda dream.

‘Oh, come on,’ she protested. ‘We’d be pretty protected out here on the reef, surely?’

‘I’ll be sure to tell them that’s what you thought when they’re giving you the anti-venin.’

Stella shrugged. ‘I’m willing to risk it.’

Rick shook his head emphatically. ‘I’m not.’

He worked in an inherently dangerous field—there were a lot of things in the ocean that could kill a man—and his reputation for safety was second to none. He certainly wasn’t going to have to explain to Linda that he’d let her daughter die too.

He pointed to the stairs leading to the lower deck. ‘Go,’ he intoned.

Stella rolled her eyes. ‘Yeh, yeh.’

‘Don’t make me come down there,’ he threatened.

Stella felt the flirty threat right down to her toes. What would he say if she challenged him to do just that?

Rick smiled to himself as she slunk away, her one-piece riding up the cheek of one buttock. He looked away. When she reappeared a few minutes later she was zipped into light blue neck-to-ankle Lycra.

‘I hate these things,’ she complained as she pulled at the clinging fabric. ‘I look like a dumpling.’

Rick deliberately didn’t look. What Nathan’s daughter did or did not look like poured into a stinger suit was none of his business. He was still trying to not think about that half-

exposed butt cheek.

‘Everyone does,’ he said, handing her some flippers and her mask and snorkel.

Stella glared at him. No, not everyone did. Not size-zero six-foot supermodels. Which she wasn’t. And certainly not him, half zipped into his, his thighs outlined to perfection, the narrowness of his hips a stark contrast to the roundness of her own. He looked like an Yves St Laurent cologne guy or James freaking Bond walking out of the Mediterranean in his teeny tiny swimming trunks.

She fitted her mask to her head and looked at him. ‘Aren’t you coming?’ she asked, staring pointedly at his state of undress.

‘Right behind you,’ he said.

* * *

They snorkelled on and off for most of the afternoon. They stopped a couple of times to grab a drink of water and Rick found his state-of-the-art underwater camera but otherwise they frolicked in the warm tropical waters for hours as if they were kids again playing pirates and mermaids.

She’d forgotten just how magical it was with the sun beating on her back and her head immersed in an enchanted underworld kingdom. Where fish all the colours of the rainbow darted around her and cavorted amongst coral that formed a unique and fascinating underwater garden.

Where the dark shadows of huge manta rays and small reef sharks hovered in the distance.

Where the silence made the beauty that much more profound.

It was after five o’clock when they called it a day. Stella threw on her clothes from earlier; Rick just unzipped his suit to his waist and looked all James Bond again. They threw some fishing lines in to catch their dinner while they drank cold beer and looked at Rick’s pictures on her laptop. They laughed and reminisced and Rick showed her the pictures from their latest salvage—a nineteenth-century frigate off the Virgin Islands.

They caught two decent-sized coral trout and he cooked them on a small portable grill plate he’d brought up from below. It melted in their mouths as they dangled their legs over the side and watched the blush of twilight slowly creep across the sky to the gentle slap of waves against the hull.

Stella could feel the fatigue of jet lag catching up with her as the balmy breeze blew her drying hair into a no-doubt completely unattractive bird’s nest.

That was the one good thing about hanging out with a guy who’d known you for ever—he’d seen her looking worse.

Rick took her plate away and she collapsed back against the deck, knees bent, looking up at the stars as they slowly, one by one, appeared before her eyes. She could hear the clank of dishes below and by the time Rick rejoined her night had completely claimed the heavens and a mass of diamond pricks winked above them.

A three-quarter moon hung low in the sky, casting a trail of moonbeams on the ocean surface.

‘Are you awake, sleepy head?’ Rick asked as he approached.

She countered his question with one of her own. ‘Is it waxing or waning?’ she asked, knowing that a man of the sea knew those things without ever having to look at a tide chart—it was in their DNA.

‘Waxing,’ Rick confirmed as he took up position beside her, lying back against the