Stormchaser Read online

  As long as she did what she was there to do, Jonah didn’t give a flying fuck about her personality.

  She smelled like warm coconut.

  Dr. West stared back at him behind the security of her shades as he led her toward the sliders into the salon. The harsh sun struck her face at a slight angle, and he noticed the faint scars on her lightly tanned skin. A quarter-inch white line cutting into her upper lip, another just under her left eyebrow. Both so faint only the change in light made them visible. Jonah wondered if her husband was a beater.

  Fuck, he hoped not. Men beating up on woman were dicks. He made a mental note to find out. For her, but also for the safety of the others on board. He couldn’t have some homicidal maniac showing up and possibly endangering them all. Although as far as he knew abusers picked on one target to make their lives a living hell.

  “I didn’t expect Stormchaser to be so…”

  “Big. Luxurious?” He could tell from the tightening of her rather luscious lips that she didn’t approve of Stormchaser’s amenities. Too bad. Everyone else had gotten used to everything the ship had to offer pretty damn fast.

  “Both. I’m used to spending months on end on salvages sleeping three to a cabin like sardines. No privacy, and barely enough space to get away from anyone for five minutes. The space here is worth hiring on for all by itself.”

  It had taken seven months of haggling to convince her to join the team.

  “Everyone has their own cabin.” Jonah indicated the slider. “She’s designed to give everyone a private luxury space for their downtime. We have a five-star chef to feed us, and a crew large enough to leave us plenty of leisure time.”

  “Sounds like a luxury vacation.”

  “It has been for a couple of weeks, but everyone is ready to get started.” The maiden voyage had given everyone time to get to know one another, and to iron out any kinks on board. “We’ll work hard, I assure you. This salvage promises to be long-term, and I want everyone to want to stick around.” Would this prove to be as lucrative, as lengthy as the salvage of the Atocha? Jonah suspected he and his divers would be anchored right here for the next ten years and still not uncover all the secrets of what he’d discovered.

  Dr. West was married. He wondered what kind of marriage it could be when she was here and the husband was presumably back in Florida. Not his problem. If this turned out the way he expected it to, everyone on board would get ample shore leave, and their families were welcome to come visit if this turned into years not months.

  Anticipation thrummed through his body in a pleasant rhythm at odds with the calmness of the glass-smooth Mediterranean surrounding his ship, and the brilliance of the sun beating down on his bare shoulders.

  He slid open the door, and she preceded him into the main salon with its wraparound windows and adjacent dining room. She gave a quick glance at the comfortable, crisp, white slip-covered furniture, the accents of chrome and charcoal, and the bold splashes of color provided by oversized paintings on the teak walls as they walked through the room.

  “You have my equipment? None of the containers were damaged, were they?”

  They’d picked up the crates in Miami on their way. “Everything looked to be in good order.” He indicated the stairs, and she headed toward them. He enjoyed the view of her shapely ass and long, sexy legs. “I gave you a dedicated space on the other side of the galley. Nothing was unpacked per your instructions.”

  “Good,” she said over her shoulder. “I’d like to unpack those before I do anything else.”

  God. He didn’t remember when last he’d been this excited about anything. But he’d waited this long to get started; a few more hours wouldn’t kill him. “First things first. I’ll show you down to your cabin so you can change.”

  She paused on the landing. “Change?” Her lips twitched as she removed her dark glasses, exposing eyes the color of the shallow water surrounding Cutter Cay. A soft, clear green. And another tiny, almost imperceptible scar on her nose, millimeters from her right eye. “Into what? A ballerina?”

  Okay, so there was a sense of humor lurking under the serious facade. He didn’t care. But damn it, the scars bothered him. A lot. “Change into your swimsuit. I have your dive gear ready.”

  She arched both dark eyebrows “I flew halfway around the world, and only just arrived. Surely a dive can wait until tomorrow?”

  Jonah backed up a step because the area was narrow and the scent of her skin was making his mouth water. A wholly inappropriate and completely unexpected reaction to the woman who very possibly held his future in her hands. “You can kick back for thirty minutes before we suit up.”

  “It’s not safe to dive when—”

  He edged past her to lead the way, expecting her to follow. “It’ll be a quick dive, then I’ll bring you back and you can rest up.” Glancing over his shoulder when she remained rooted to the spot, he used his shoulder to indicate she keep moving. “This way.”

  She started down the stairs after him. “We might want to establish some ground rules. You’re paying for my services—”

  “Very well.”

  “Nobody held a gun to your head or forced you to pay four times my customary fee,” she said pleasantly, a thread of fuck you in her tone. “You wanted me, and outbid someone else who also had need of my services. I’m here. I’ll do my job, but I refuse to be pressured into unsafe diving practices. I need time to decompress from traveling halfway around the world. I won’t dive today. End of conversation.”

  Jonah knew she’d been offered a job at the same time by Rydell Case, the Cutters’ nemesis. It had given him and his brothers a great deal of satisfaction stealing Dr. West from under Case’s nose. “You’ll understand my eagerness to get you under the water when you see what I have to show you.”

  “And I’m eager to see Ji Li,” she assured him. “Tomorrow. There are dozens of things for me to do right here on board until then. I like to have my environment in order before I get started.” Her lips curved. “It’s better for me not to drown. The red tape with the Hellenic police would tie you up for weeks.”

  He bit back a growl of frustration, hardly amused that she’d balked at his first order of business, but gave ground because she was right.

  “Fair enough.” But it ticked him off that she was being stubborn when he’d been counting the seconds waiting for her arrival. Okay, she was right, damn it, diving jet-lagged and as tired as she must be would be dangerous. Still—

  Jonah took her downstairs and shoved open the door to the owner’s cabin. “Here you go. I’ll wait and take you up to meet the others. Unless you’d like a couple of hours…?”

  She stepped inside. “I won’t be long … Whose cabin is this? Yours?”

  Jonah had no idea how she knew that. The luxuriously appointed room was empty of personal effects. He’d cleared out his crap and given her the slightly bigger room.

  “Y-yours.” Jesus, he hadn’t noticed up on deck, but in the lights in the corridor he saw the gleam of the thin white scar that seemed to run from beneath the short sleeve of her shirt down the length of her left arm. What the fuck had the sick son of a bitch done to her? Sliced her up? Jonah felt a sick rage against a man he didn’t know for a crime he wasn’t sure the guy had committed. All he knew was he didn’t like seeing the scars she wore. Didn’t like them a fucking great deal.

  “Thanks, but I prefer a smaller space.”

  Jonah dragged his gaze away from her arm. No use arguing. She was making it clear that she was a by-the-book, no-detours kind of woman. “Fine.” He just wanted to get out of there. “You can have the cabin I commandeered. For now go ahead and use this one to wash up.” The slightly smaller cabin was across the corridor. But it was full of his own stuff, stuff he didn’t necessarily want her to see. She was already a pain in the ass; he didn’t want her asking questions. “I’ll wait out here for you.”

  She shut the heavy door in his face. Jonah leaned his shoulder against the mahogany paneled wall
. There could be a problem: Both of them wanted to be in charge, and that wasn’t going to work.

  The door opened two minutes later. “Ready.” She hadn’t changed a thing as far as he could see. But her hairline was damp, and she smelled more strongly of coconut. Probably sunblock. It had never smelled so mouthwatering.

  “I understand your rationale for not diving right now, but I can’t wait to share what I discovered with you.”

  “I look forward to seeing it tomorrow. I presume we’ll gather as a group beforehand for a briefing?”

  He doubted she had a less-than-brilliant bone in her body, but damn was she stubborn. “Yeah. I wanted to wait and tell everyone together.” He started walking down the narrow corridor back toward the stairs. “I’ll introduce you to the others, then I’d like to discuss my findings with you in private before I fill them in in the morning.”

  “That sounds intriguing.” She waited for him to move so she could follow him down the companionway.

  “You have no idea.” Jonah glanced at her over his shoulder. “I’ve waited two weeks to have you in my hot hands. Once I fill you in, you’ll be even more eager than I am to dive and see for yourself.”

  This find blew everything else out of the water. Or could, quite literally.

  “If you were any more excited your tail would be wagging,” she said drily. “I can certainly look at pictures. Lead on, Macduff.”

  Annoyed at her lack of enthusiasm, he paused at the stairwell. “It’s tail-wagging news,” Jonah assured her.

  “Right. Tell me about your beautiful new ship.”

  Stormchaser was his if he wanted her. At some point this trip he had to decide if he wanted this new life, or if he was ready to go back to his old one in Spain. “Refitted, but they did a good job.”

  As a marine architect he would’ve enjoyed designing his own salvage ship, but that would take time—time he didn’t have right now. He’d been fooling with design ideas for his own vessel for years. “The hold was specially constructed,” he told her as they headed back upstairs. “Reinforced et cetera for this salvage—”

  “You’re anticipating a lot of what? Gold?” Her brow quirked and he wondered at the mostly concealed bite in her tone.

  “The Ji Li was one of the thousands of ships traveling the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean in the thirteenth century. She carried silk and spices, of course, but also a boatload of gold, emeralds, and silver coins.”

  “I’ve never worked with a Chinese ship, but I did some research on the flight. This’ll be fascinating.”

  Ji Li held a king’s ransom in treasure, but she wasn’t what had him so excited. No, it was what lay beneath the Chinese junk that had kept his heart pounding and his mind racing for months. Now he was so close he could taste it. Even one more day waiting for the marine archaeologist to confirm his finding was a pain in the ass.

  “You have no idea.”

  Two

  “Have you set up the grid yet?” Callie asked, walking up the inside stairs beside him. He was distracted by her. Not good. The scars. The shape of her neat ears, the no-nonsense way her hair was not only firmly braided, but then tucked up tighter than a miser’s purse, no hair out of place.

  Her lashes were thick and dark, not long, but they made her pale eyes look as if they’d been set by a smudged finger. He didn’t think she wore perfume, but her skin smelled delectable. Fresh. Tropical. Thank God she was married. His lusty thoughts could remain merely thoughts. A romantic involvement was always a bad idea in the close confines of a ship where everyone pretty much knew when someone else rolled over in their sleep. Not that they didn’t happen, they just tended not to end well.

  “Nope. Dropped anchor here late yesterday. Gave everyone shore leave for a couple of days beforehand while we waited for you.” He’d dropped in to visit his grandmother in Spain while the others had spent the weekend in Athens. “We’ll start setting up grids tomorrow.”

  “This really is a spectacular ship.”

  He stroked a hand along the mahogany paneling lining the companionway. “Yeah, she’s a beauty, isn’t she? My new home away from home. Hundred and twenty-eight feet, two hundred and thirty five tons, cruising speed eighteen knots. Crew of ten. Six divers, seven with you. We added a heavy-duty winch and some cool updated toys.”

  He’d captained for his half brother Nick for two years, but on this salvage he wanted a clear head and no additional crap to deal with so he could focus on the task at hand.

  He’d hired Maura Sennett, an old college friend, to captain Stormchaser. They’d met at Webb Institute when they’d both received their master’s degrees in marine science. Both had gotten their captain’s stripes at about the same time, too; the rest had been on-the-job training. Jonah trusted her. Maura was more than qualified to take care of a thirty-million-dollar ship and everyone on board. Her wife, Gayle, was first mate, which worked out well for everybody.

  His first solo trip was going to be a case of sink or swim.

  Jonah’s half brothers had their superpowers. Zane with his charisma and natural ability to make everyone love him. Nick with his special dialect skills, Logan with his phenomenal ability to make money. Jonah wanted—hell no—needed to earn their respect and find his place with them. And in the Cutter family there was only one way to do that—impress the hell out of them.

  This salvage would do just that. He was banking on it.

  “Sorry I couldn’t join you from the beginning,” Dr. West told him briskly as they walked back through the main salon. “I had another project to complete before I could join you.”

  Jonah had flown everyone in to Cutter Cay so they’d have a few weeks to learn one another’s rhythms on the five-thousand-nautical-mile journey to the Mediterranean. “It was a good way for the team to get to know one another and bond. You have a bit of catching up to do.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m used to being the one slightly out of step with the rest. I’ll work it out.”

  It was an odd comment. “Parents in the military?”

  She gave him a surprised look. “No. Why do you ask?”

  “I just presumed you moved around a lot as a kid.”

  “We did, but it wasn’t because my father was in the service. I tend to keep to myself, and frankly, I’ve always been more in tune with artifacts and history than with people.”

  Great. That was going to make for some fucking awkward dinners. Antisocial and not a team player. He hoped she’d be easier to get along with after a nap. “Your other job was with Rydell Case?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  “No, actually,” she said mildly. “He wanted me the same time you did.”

  Which was fine. He already knew he’d outbid the Cutters’ nemesis to get her. He just wanted to hear it again from her. But that wasn’t the only reason he’d hired her. With her background she was going to be the MVP of the salvage, and was worth every damn penny and more. “You’ve worked with him before?” Jonah asked as they climbed the stairs to the next deck. The ship was luxuriously outfitted in white and a neutral gray. He’d added artwork collected from his travels for splashes of color here and there. Stormchaser might be a working ship, but as he’d told her—she was also his home.

  “Several times.” She gave him a pointed look. “Cutter Salvage usually uses Maggie Berland, right? Why didn’t you bring her instead of hounding me so relentlessly? Why do you want me here? Neither junks nor the Silk Road is exactly my field of expertise.”

  Jonah decided she’d understand better once she saw the pictures. In fact, he looked forward to a nice long apology from her royal crabbiness. “No, you have other fields of expertise that will come in handy this trip.”

  He led her up to the third deck and slid open the ceiling-to-floor doors. A glass table with four comfortable chairs, shaded by a gray-and-white-striped umbrella, sat on the smallest of the ship’s decks. The nearby hot tub was covered, and a couple of Jet Skis were secured to the railing.

  She loo
ked around. The midafternoon sun sheeted the water with glistening silver. The sounds of male laughter drifted up from below. The coastline of Crete was a blur on the edge of the horizon, and a tiny, uninhabited volcanic island seven or eight miles away seemed to float, a tiny dot, off their port side like a green mirage.

  “Why the mystery? Surely your team knows about the Ji Li?”

  He hid his excitement behind half-lowered lids. “Ji Li, yes. Be patient, I’ll show you.”

  She pressed her lips together. “I don’t like surprises.”

  Of course she didn’t. “I thought all women like surprises.”

  “Not me. Not unless you plan on proposing to me with a ten-carat diamond, which would be a surprise—especially to my husband.”

  A timely reminder. “He’s okay with all the travel you do?”

  “Clearly, since I’m here.” Her tone said, None of your damn business.

  A project like this could take months, if not years, shit—if not decades. Not that she had to be there for the duration. But she hadn’t stated a time limit when she’d signed on. Was her husband okay with that? None of his business.

  Now that he’d seen the scars he couldn’t unsee them. Was her husband responsible? Also none of his business. But a fucking shitload better than acknowledging the energy he felt like an electric force field when he looked at her. “Fair enough. Want something cold to drink?”

  She glanced around. “Sure.”

  She checked out the rest of the deck while he called down to have someone come up with refreshments. “Who’re you sending up?” he asked Tina, their chef. He needed some shit from his cabin, but didn’t want everyone knowing his business. Not yet anyway. “Great, have Agyros go to my cabin and bring my iPad and the metal box beside the desk first, will you? Yeah—a snack would be great. Thanks, Tina.”

  He disconnected and strolled to the rail to join the good doctor, leaning over to rest his forearms on the rail. “That’s the extent of my host duties.” Some of the dive team were swimming and goofing off in the water. It looked inviting. He’d get in another swim later.