A sense of calm settled over her as she watched him, powerful and graceful in the water. Much like her brother, Asher was in his element here, which shouldn’t have surprised her but somehow did.
She’d never really thought about Asher in that way. Why he was drawn to the water. Why he’d become a SEAL. She’d always known Jackson had followed his love of diving, but had Asher?
Turning, he began to tread water only a foot or so away. Sunlight streamed through the surface above them, sparkling off his mask and making his eyes appear even darker, more intense.
A shiver raced down Kennedy’s spine.
Using hand signals, Asher asked if she was okay, and when she gave him an affirmative, indicated they should start the descent to the wreck.
A tiny flutter of panic erupted in her chest. Something on her face must have given her away because Asher grasped her upper arms and pulled her close. She could see the question in his eyes through the thin plastic masks covering their faces.
Shaking her head, Kennedy tried to tell him she was fine, although that wasn’t quite true.
She’d been diving before. Not only was her brother a master diver, but her dad and mom were both amateurs. Everyone else in her family loved to be under the water, which she’d never understood.
She didn’t like the sensation of pressure on her chest that came with descending deep beneath the waves. Whenever she was under, she had to constantly fight the panic that something was going to go wrong and she was going to drown.
But she did it anyway. She tried to push out of Asher’s hold. His fingers tightened, keeping her in place.
One hand dragged up her arm, tangled into her hair and tipped her head back so he could get a better look at her. Those intense green eyes speared her straight through.
Kennedy wanted to blink, look away, something, but she couldn’t. Not for the first time around this man, she felt bare and vulnerable from nothing more than his gaze. Asher might be brash, bold and overly confident, but he was also observant. Too observant for her peace of mind.
Kicking out with his powerful legs, Asher sent them both to the surface only a few feet overhead. They broke free, and the pressure squeezing Kennedy’s chest eased, as it always did.
Asher spit the regulator out of his mouth, letting it splash down into the water beside him, and pushed the mask onto the top of his head. Kennedy did the same, but he didn’t let her go. His fingers stayed entwined in her wet hair.
“Why didn’t I know that you’re afraid of diving?”
“Because I’m not.”
He frowned, his eyes narrowing. “Don’t lie to me, Kennedy. I’m intimately familiar with the signs of fear and could see it all over your face.”
“I’m not afraid of diving.” Because she refused to be. “It’s not my favorite thing in the world, but I’ve got plenty of hours under my belt. Not as many as you, Jackson or Knox, but enough. I know what I’m doing.”
The grooves between his eyes deepened. “Why would you spend so much time doing something you don’t enjoy?”
“Because the rest of my family does it? Because I work for a diving company? Because I don’t like giving in to anything, including fear?”
It took Kennedy a few seconds to realize just how much her response revealed. Way more than she’d intended.
Asher’s face relaxed. His hold on her gentled, not that it had been particularly harsh. But now, instead of feeling like solid bands against her skin, his fingers stroked, soothed.
Threatened to suck her into something she shouldn’t want.
“You know what? I changed my mind, you don’t have to dive with me.”
A couple of weeks ago, his statement would have pissed her off. She would have seen it as a backhanded challenge. A dig at something she wasn’t good at. Today, she didn’t see any of the underlying antagonism that had swirled between them.
Right now, Asher watched her with understanding and acceptance in his eyes.
Which only made her resolve that much stronger. “Yes, I do.”
“Why? The team is fine. The camera crew are experienced and know what they’re doing.”
“I’m fine, Asher. And I’m going down there. Now, will you please let me go, so I can do my job?”
A smile bloomed across his face. Before she realized what he’d intended to do, his mouth settled over hers. Salty and hot. Tempting and reassuring. His tongue breeched her lips, sweeping inside and sending a blast of red-hot need coursing through her veins.
How could the man turn her inside out with nothing more than his mouth?
The kiss was quick and vivid, passionate. Over when it had barely begun.
Picking up her regulator where it floated on the surface of the water, he cleared it, said, “Cupcake, you have more balls than most of the men I know,” and stuck it into her open mouth before she could even respond.
It wasn’t until he let her go that Kennedy realized just how dangerous that kiss had been. Out in the open, anyone from the Trident team could have seen them. And that would not have been good.
What the hell had Asher been thinking?
Anxiety mixed with residual desire, twisting in her belly and completely eclipsing any fear that remained.
Gently, Asher pulled the mask from the top of her head and fit it back over her face. He replaced his own mask, but it didn’t hide the cocky grin twisting his lips. Bastard, she thought, though there was no heat behind the word.
Twining his fingers with hers, he led her back down into the water. And didn’t let her go. The constant pressure of his hand in hers helped to steady her nerves.
They took their time, descending slowly into the murky depths. And suddenly, she was there, right in front of them—the Chimera.
If they’d been above, Kennedy would have lost her breath. The ship was that gorgeous and tragic.
She’d seen plenty of pictures over the past several months. Even some video footage from the remote-controlled cameras they’d sent down to survey. But it wasn’t the same.
And abruptly, Kennedy understood why Jackson had risked so much to find the wreck. She hadn’t before, never quite getting her brother’s obsession with this ship.
People swam around the broken pieces of the ship, cataloguing, painstakingly preserving and recovering. But not even the flurry of activity could displace the eerie quality to the wreckage.
One hundred and fifty years ago she was a hundred feet above, floating on the water just like the Amphitrite. But one powerful storm had sent her tumbling straight to the bottom of the sea, ripping a jagged hole into the side of her wooden hull.
Kennedy felt a squeeze on her fingers and looked down to where Asher’s hand cupped hers. Her gaze traveled up to his face, where she saw the same expression of awe and wonder that she knew must be filling hers.
7
ASHER FLOATED, SOAKING in his first encounter with the Chimera. He wasn’t as into the historical side of things as Jackson and Knox were. He enjoyed diving, loved the men he called brothers and had been more than happy to open Trident and start a business together. If they’d told him they wanted to learn underwater ballet, he probably would have been on board.
Okay, maybe not...
But his desire to be part of this had less to do with actually discovering the wreck than it did with continuing to be part of the family he’d found with Jackson and Knox. He’d been pleased for his friend when Jackson’s years of work had paid off and he’d found the ship. And happy from a business standpoint when Knox’s efforts had secured their exclusive salvage rights.
He wanted the business to succeed, and in order to do that they needed the funds from the salvage. Were desperate to recover the gold everyone prayed was hidden inside the wreck.
But floating there, Kennedy’s small hand gripped firmly in his, he stared at the majesty of the Chimera and couldn’t stop the wave of emotion that stampeded through him.
She was gorgeous in a tragic way. For some reason, she reminded him of the empty house he’d come home to after Krista left him. Desolate and vacant, absent of the sounds, smells and sights that should have inhabited her.
Against the backdrop of the gorgeous turquoise Caribbean Sea, red, yellow, purple and orange fish swam in and out of the wreck, their liveliness somehow punctuating the tragedy of what had happened here so long ago.
Asher couldn’t even imagine the panic the crew must have felt in the middle of the storm that had brought her down. Had they reached a point of resignation, knowing they would never see their loved ones again?
Had his father experienced that same moment? Thought of the wife and son he’d left behind?
A lump crowded his throat. Squeezing his eyes tight, Asher forced the thoughts away. This wasn’t the time or place for his own grief.
Kennedy’s fingers squeezed his harder. He didn’t look over at her. Didn’t want her to see the evidence of yet another weakness he couldn’t seem to conquer.
Luckily, at that moment two of the cameramen swam up to them.
Kennedy disentangled their fingers. Asher tried to keep hold of her but couldn’t. He didn’t like the idea of her letting him go, although he refused to examine the feeling too closely.
Before descending, Daniel had given him some instructions for the shots he needed today. The cameras would follow him as he inspected the wreckage and the work their salvage crew was conducting inside.
For the next hour, Asher tried to ignore the cameras, pretending they weren’t present. He watched one of the dive team document the position of an artifact from one of the crew cabins before stowing it so he could take it up. There was no telling what the barnacle-encrusted hunk of metal was. He’d hand it off to the preservation crew, who would stabilize the piece for transportation to their lab where the painstaking process of uncovering years of grime and salt would begin.