He pulled her out, dropping the knife so he could get one arm around her slim waist and use the other to propel them toward the surface as fast as possible. Even so, he was gasping for air when his face broke through the waves, and the woman had to finish coughing up seawater before she could turn to him and say, “Hey! That was my favorite knife!”
* * *
THE CREW HAULED Marcus, the woman, and the remains of the net up onto the deck. Before he’d even had a chance to catch his breath, he heard his father’s gruff voice say, “Marcus Henry Dermott, what the hell have you done now?”
Only his da could hold Marcus responsible for some mystery woman slicing through their net. Of course, given half a chance, the old man would blame him for everything from the weather to the lack of fish to the high price of beer in their favorite tavern.
For a brief moment, Marcus actually found himself wishing he was back in the dusty, arid deserts of Afghanistan. Yes, people had been trying to kill him there, but it was still a lot more restful than being trapped on the memory-haunted boat he grew up on with the tough, brutal old fisherman who shared his name and way too much unpleasant history.
The two men who made up his father’s regular crew looked on with wide eyes. Chico had been with his father for as long as Marcus could remember; an illegal immigrant who had come across the border thirty years ago, around the time Marcus was born, he was as tough as shark hide and about as pretty. But he was dependable and knew how to fish, and that was all Marcus Senior cared about.
Kenny, on the other hand, was a weedy kid barely out of his teens who had more enthusiasm than experience. He’d only been working the boat for about six months, after Marcus’s father had chased off yet another in a long line of crewmen who got tired of being cursed at in a strange mixture of Gaelic, Spanish, and English.
Kenny peered down at their visitor with open curiosity. “Um, are you okay, lady?” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a buoy on rough waters. “You’re not a mermaid, are you?”
The woman stood up with a Valkyrie’s warrior grace despite the mangled fibers still wrapped around her bare feet. “Sorry,” she said in a voice that sounded like music. For a moment, Marcus could have sworn he smelled fresh strawberries on the salty breeze. “Not a Mermaid. Just an innocent passing surfer girl, I’m afraid.”
Marcus’s father snorted and spat on the deck. He had no time for people who used the sea for play instead of work.
“Not so innocent,” Marcus pointed out, crossing his arms over his chest and ramping up his stare to a level that used to make the men under him drop and give him twenty without even being asked. “You sabotaged our net, and we lost the better part of the first good haul we’ve had in a very long time. What are you, one of those crazy Greenpeace idiots?”
His father let loose with a truly impressive stream of profanity at this, but their unexpected passenger seemed unimpressed. Probably didn’t understand most of the words under his father’s anger-heavy Irish accent, which was just as well. Marcus was about as furious as he got, but he still didn’t believe in swearing at women.
Bright blue eyes looked from the hole in the net to him and back again as a slight flush slid over tanned cheekbones. “Look, I’m really sorry about your net, and the fish and everything. But there was a baby . . . dolphin trapped in it, and I had to get the poor thing out before you killed it.” The blue eyes widened in an attempt to look innocent, but Marcus wasn’t buying it. He’d had a kid in his unit that used to give him the same exact look, usually when he was caught doing something illegal, immoral, or both.
Marcus scanned the waters on either side of the boat. “I don’t see any dolphins. Haven’t seen any all morning, for that matter.”
The woman hummed a little under her breath and made an odd swiveling motion with her hand before turning toward the bow and pointing. “They’re right there,” she said confidently.
And damned if there weren’t a half a dozen dolphins, including a small one, right where he could have sworn the sea was empty a minute ago. Weird. He was usually more observant than that—old habits die hard, and after three tours in the Marines, all of them spent in places full of snipers and killers disguised as civilians, he still hadn’t learned to stop watching everything and everybody in the nearby vicinity.
“I don’t give a crap if there was three nuns and the Virgin Mary in them damned nets,” his father snarled, gray beard bristling. “You don’t go cuttin’ a hole in a man’s equipment. Who the hell is going to pay to get that mess mended, I ask you? And who’s going to pay for all them fish I lost?” Righteous ire painted a wash of red over his father’s too-pale face, but Marcus could see the shakiness in his bull-like stance.