Stormchaser Page 4

  Callie quirked a brow as Rydell had taught her to do. “Seriously?”

  “Close.”

  Callie obediently held out flattened palms, closing her eyes. With one sense turned off, she was more aware of the smell of Jonah’s skin, of the scent of polish on the deck, of sea, and salt, and fresh air. Of Jonah. Damn, damn da—

  “It’s heavy,” he warned. Something rough, and indeed heavy, was placed gently on her palms. Fortunately, Jonah had his hands beneath hers, because the weight almost made her drop it. Eyes still closed, Callie let her thumbs explore the object. “A rock? Thanks.”

  Rough, heavy. She hefted it. Twelve or fourteen pounds at least. Jonah’s hands cradled hers. The sooner she got free of him, the better it would be for her equilibrium. “Can I look?”

  “Go ahead.” He sounded both excited and amused as he said, “What do you think it is?”

  “A rock? A chunk of coral?” God. Could it be…? “A piece of the Ji Li?” A small scratch in the surface where the outside crust of oxidation and surface accumulation had been removed revealed a metallic sheen that was too orange to be gold, but not yellow enough to be brass.

  “Orichalcum,” he said the word as if it tasted sweetly delicious.

  No such thing. Orichalcum, a metal mentioned in ancient writings, was considered second only to gold in value, and said to be mined only in Atlantis. “Impossible.” Her eyes rose to meet his six inches away. Callie felt like iron filings to his magnetism. “Plato was a romantic, and creative.” Her face felt hot. Hell, her body felt hot. Jittery, as if she’d consumed too much coffee.

  “No metal matching his description really exists,” she continued, not recognizing her own voice, it was so thick and raspy. “And even if it did—anything found in Greek waters can be seen but not brought to the surface, so keeping whatever you’ve found is illegal as hell.”

  “It’s not in Greek waters.”

  Of course Plato’s Atlantis, if the mythical place existed, was in Greek waters. Damn, she now wished she hadn’t dug her heels in about diving today. Giving her this tantalizing clue made it hard for her to remember common sense. And a deep immersion into cold water would help her sexually charged heat flash.

  “I told you, we’re anchored right over the city, and over who knows how much of this.” He tightened his fingers around hers.

  “Here. You’d better take it before I drop it.” Callie maneuvered the rock into Jonah’s broad hands, then sat back. “Does anyone else know about this?” She absently twisted her wedding ring again.

  He shook his head. “Me. You.”

  Rydell Case? “The rest of the dive team?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Your brothers?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? A discovery of this magnitude will make Cutter Salvage’s name go down in the history books.” Whatever this was. No way could it be Atlantis. But whatever it was would still be an amazing and thrilling find.

  “Dr. Calista West is one of the world’s authorities on Atlantis. Should she be the one to discover the actual location of the Lost City, she could write her own ticket in the future. So—” His eyes, so blue they looked fake in the sunlight, met hers. “Yours, too.”

  “Mine, too. That looks very uncomfortable, why don’t you sit over there?”

  He gave her a wicked smile and rose lithely to his feet. Making her eye level with his—dear Lord, was this what it was going to be like working with this man for the next few weeks? Callie had never experienced anything like this insane, raging lust for a man in her life. She didn’t like it one bit. Thank God, pretending to be married would keep them both in check. It had to. This much lusty thought was going to make her implode if it didn’t abate pretty damn soon.

  She waited as he poured ice and tea. “Thanks. Why haven’t you told your brothers about this?”

  He leaned a hip against the table right beside her. It was as though he were tethered to her by an invisible, very freaking short, cord. “Zane’s wife, Teal, is pregnant with their first child and has hyperemesis gravidarum. They have enough on their plate to think about. Nick has a massive salvage on his hands, and Logan is dealing with a problem in Cape Town. Let’s just say everyone has their hands and minds full. This is my baby, and I’m going to tie it up in a bow and present it to them as a fait accompli.”

  Callie knew well and good that the “problem” Logan Cutter was “dealing” with in South Africa was Rydell. “And you want to do—what if it really is the lost city of Atlantis?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  Three

  The dive team had had several weeks to get to know one another on the maiden voyage from Cutter Cay to the Mediterranean. Callie was the odd one out.

  After he’d made his big announcement and shown her what he claimed to be orichalcum, they went downstairs together. She could contain herself until tomorrow, when rest and a clear head would ensure she saw what Jonah wanted to show her with a scientist’s eye.

  Jonah gathered the members of the dive team on the second deck to make introductions. He wasn’t quite as conspicuous among them, most of whom were shirtless and in shorts. “Some of you met Dr. West when she arrived this morning.”

  The problem was, Jonah was … he was more. More good looking, more commanding. More sexy. More everything than anyone else. It was as though everyone else were in faded sepia, and Jonah in Technicolor. It was odd and, frankly, disconcerting as hell. She smiled at the group, seated around a large teak table, with comfortable rattan chairs. “Callie, please.”

  Jonah introduced the deeply tanned, athletic-looking blonde in her early thirties as Leslie Scott. The flirty Matthew McConaughey look-alike, Brody Turner, she’d met when she arrived, as well as Saul. A hugely tall, dark-haired guy named Vaughn Leader, who seemed the quietest of the bunch, gave her hand a shake with paws as big as hams. Callie wondered how he’d ever found scuba gear to fit.

  A compact, dark-haired young woman, wearing the white shorts and golf shirt of the Stormchaser crew, came out on deck carrying a tray of sliced fruit and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. “I’ve brought sustenance,” she said cheerfully, indicating where she wanted the platters placed on the table.

  Jonah smiled. “One of the most important members of the crew, this is our chef, Tina Hamilton. Anything you need as far as food and drinks go, she’ll find for you. You’ll meet our captain, Maura Sennett, and our first mate, Gayle, at dinner. Okay, now that the people are squared away, and everyone about to be fed and watered, let’s recap for Dr. West so she’s up to speed.”

  Jonah reached behind his chair, pulling out a wide, shallow drawer from the crisply painted white sideboard behind him. Callie enjoyed the play of muscle under his smooth bronzed skin as he moved. She realized she was staring and jerked her attention to his hands. But that didn’t help the heat coursing through her body much.

  She crossed her arms to hide the peaks of her nipples.

  God, she was a mess. This hyperawareness was disconcerting and uncomfortable and, damn it, wrong six ways from Sunday. It felt as though her blood were hot as it pumped erratically through her veins. This was a complication she’d never dreamed of.

  Please God, let her be over it by morning. Or sooner. Because attraction to the enemy was not only unprecedented—she wasn’t prepared for it—but also the very last emotion she wanted to feel for a Cutter.

  She didn’t do well with out-of-whack emotions. Not anyone’s and especially not her own. She tried to anticipate chaos and did everything in her power to master it. She’d corralled, as best she could, all the drama her parents had thrown at her. She’d learned their triggers; she’d figured out how to minimize the madness.

  She’d never—not in a million years—considered herself a sexual being. Sex with Adam had been good. Sometimes really good. But … calm. Rational. Never in her life had she experienced this heightened awareness, this kind of visceral reaction to a man, when she thought of nothing else but sex.


  Even the tantalizing prospect of discovering an ancient city wasn’t enough to redirect her thoughts. Unprecedented on every level.

  Oblivious to her chaotic thoughts and rampaging hormones, Jonah spread out a nautical chart. The location of the Ji Li wreck circled.

  “X marks the spot.” He grinned, then unrolled a hydrographic chart on top, weighing the corners down with four leather paperweights to deter the gentle breeze drifting beneath the awning.

  The breeze played with his too-long hair. Damn it. She wished he’d at least pull on a shirt.

  “And this is our girl.” Everyone shifted in the seats to lean forward for a better look as he layered a sheaf of color photographs on top. “The Ji Li is a Chinese junk. She’s pretty much intact.” He slid out each photograph and pointed. God. He had gorgeous hands. Strong, long fingers, mouthwateringly masculine. Just looking at his tanned hands made Callie practically feel the skim of them learning her body. Shut up!

  She poured herself a glass of lemonade and held the pitcher aloft to see if anyone wanted some. Vaughan took it from her, poured a glass over ice, and passed it to Brody, leaving Callie to take a long draft of the tart, frosty drink. It quenched her thirst at least.

  “The poopdeck is in one piece, just as it was in 1252. The long rudder is whole, too. She’s resting on—” There was an infinitesimal pause. “—on a bed of lava and pumice. Other than her sails, it’s as if she went straight down and is beautifully preserved, just waiting for us.” He grinned, encompassing his team in his excitement.

  What, Callie wondered, would their reaction be if they knew he’d been about to say, resting on the Lost City of Atlantis?

  “Except for a massive hole in her hull,” Saul said drily, grabbing five cookies as if they’d disappear in seconds. “We have no record of survivors. From a written account of someone on the island over there”—he pointed to a small smudge off to the north.

  Jonah picked up the answer. “The volcano erupted, spewing lava and ash. Everyone aboard must’ve been asphyxiated by the ash. The hole is probably from a projectile from the volcano.”

  “What volcano? The closest active, or even inactive, volcano is thousands of miles away. Are you talking about a submarine vent?” Callie asked Saul, her gaze skimming briefly over Jonah sitting between them. His dark hair was tousled as if he’d just slunk out of some woman’s bed.

  “There’s a small extinct volcano on the island here.” He leaned back, taking the filled glass Leslie handed him. He took a drink, his strong throat working as he swallowed. Callie’s temperature spiked. “We believe it last erupted seven hundred years ago, sinking our junk.”

  Sinking his junk sounded obscenely suggestive to Callie, who’d never had an erotic thought before meeting Cutter. She picked up her glass and rubbed the condensation across her forehead.

  It was pretty handy that the wreck and the underwater city were in international waters. The Cutters were a sneaky bunch, and Callie had no doubt that Jonah hadn’t shared his information with any of the authorities who should be informed. They could dive out here, in the middle of nowhere, for months, without anyone being the wiser.

  “Who was she registered to?” she asked, adjusting her depth of field so he was a blur.

  “China, but sold to Greece, so provenance is in dispute,” Jonah shrugged his broad shoulders. There was nothing soft or vulnerable about this man. He exuded strength and a raw masculinity that should’ve infuriated her, but instead turned her on. Even blurry.

  “The purchase paperwork is being thoroughly researched. We’ll take our cut and Greece and China can fight over ownership long after we’re gone.”

  Color her surprised. “You’ve filed paperwork?”

  “China, Greece, and Turkey, hell, even Spain is making noises,” he informed her. “Everyone wants a chunk of whatever we find.”

  “You don’t seem particularly concerned by it.”

  He shrugged again. “That’s what lawyers are for. We’ll do a fantastic job, retrieve and preserve, and enjoy the hell out of the experience.”

  He wasn’t being blasé or altruistic. Ji Li wasn’t his focus. The city was.

  “To a fun and lucrative salvage!” Leslie toasted.

  “Hear hear.” Everyone clinked glasses. Their excitement and enthusiasm expected at the start of a salvage.

  Callie pulled one of the large photographs toward her on the table. “She’s resting on what looks like a magma flow, but the rock formations here can be deceptive.” She frowned. “One volcanic eruption below her, and another brought her down? Doesn’t seem—” She looked around the table. “So she was unfortunate enough to be caught in a volcanic eruption, and just coincidentally also happened to sink on top of another? Call me skeptical, but that kind of coincidence is highly unlikely. All we have are vague references to an eruption, possibly at the time she sank.” She took another sip of her drink, then put her glass on the table. “Nothing before. Not localized here.”

  The divers just stared at her as if she’d spoken in tongues.

  “I know a volcanologist,” Callie said into the silence, her tone conciliatory. “I’ll check with him, see what the likelihood of that was.” If Jonah was right, the volcanic rock and pumice beneath the Chinese junk correlated to the Thera eruption that was purported to have felled Atlantis.

  “Chinese records describe an eruption in the late seventeenth century BCE, and document the collapse of the Xia dynasty there due to a ‘dim sun, then three suns, frost in July and famine’—indicating volcanic action. But that was thousands of miles away from where we are currently anchored.” Callie glanced—briefly—at Jonah. “Are you planning to move us?” Was he playing some kind of elaborate shell game to distract anyone from stealing his thunder?

  Callie wondered if the Ji Li crossed the known world, not to deliver silks and spices, but to search for Atlantis? The possibility was intriguing.

  “No. We’re staying put,” Jonah assured her, his impossibly blue eyes glittering with the secret knowledge they shared. Callie damn well didn’t want to be in on the secret.

  “What does your husband think of you being away for months on end?” the athletic blonde asked with more-than-casual interest. Leslie. Actually glad for the non sequitur, Callie automatically twisted the plain gold band on her finger and shrugged, aware of Cutter’s intense blue eyes watching her from across the table.

  “He knows I love what I do, and appreciates me when I come home.” Adam had loved her, and whatever fulfilled her and made her happy had made him happy. He’d have totally understood why she continued wearing her wedding ring four years after his death. And why she was doing this for his brother. Rydell had been more like a father to Adam, even though the brothers were only three years apart in age. Like Callie, Rydell had been the one in charge of his family. He’d taken her under his wing, too.

  “How long have you been married, then?” Leslie asked.

  They’d been married for six years. Adam had died four years ago. “Our tenth anniversary is in a couple of weeks.”

  “Any kids?”

  God, the woman was like a dog with a bone. “No, not yet.” Not ever. Plenty enough bonding for Callie. “That reminds me, I need to call him to let him know I arrived safely.” Shoving her chair back, she got to her feet. “Excuse me.”

  Not running, but walking at a fast clip, Callie climbed several ladders and stairs to get to the top deck where she and Jonah had been earlier. A quick glance showed that no one was around to overhear her. She punched Ry’s number on speed dial.

  “Are you on board?”

  “Just got here.” She hesitated. “Are you okay? You sound … strained.”

  “Just a shitty connection. I’m good, honey.” She didn’t expect Ry to say anything else. He took stoic to a whole other level. “Are you going to be all right to do this?”

  “I told you I would,” she assured him. “I don’t know how you figured it out, Ry,” she said when he didn’t respond. “But you w
ere right to send me. Jonah Cutter claims he’s found the Lost City of Atlantis. If it’s true, I’ll tie it up in a bow and deliver it to you on a silver platter.”

  * * *

  Otherworldly.

  Spellbound, Jonah observed the sinuous descent of Dr. West as she floated down from the shimmering surface a hundred feet overhead in their first, early-morning dive. Lithe grace, smooth powerful strokes, lean silhouette of a mermaid. Sunlight shimmered through the dappled ceiling of their silent blue world, illuminating long tendrils of dark hair drifting over her head and wrapping around her body like seaweed—okay, the floating hair was a figment of his imagination.

  The good doctor had all that shiny dark hair tucked away and pinned, he was sure, within an inch of every strand’s life. Still … a man could fantasize, couldn’t he?

  She was covered from head to toe in skintight black neoprene. Fins, not a fishtail, but watching the glide of her body through the water conjured up some pretty racy thoughts. She paused above him, then slowly floated down to the rocky seabed about fifty feet from his position.

  Aw, hell, everything about her challenged and aroused him, which wasn’t good. He reminded himself that she was skeptical, uncooperative, and cold.

  And, go figure, he wanted her anyway.

  Sand puffed around the tips of her fins to hang in the clear water as regulator bubbles climbed toward the surface. Not so much as a wave in greeting. Her people skills could do with a little work. But with the way she moved in the water? He’d bet she warmed up just fine.

  Jonah couldn’t quite get a bead on her. Not much of a sense of humor, but he’d seen suspicious glimpses of drollness, so maybe it took her a while to relax around new people. She seemed a little too buttoned-up to blend well with his rowdy dive team, which was something of a disappointment. Spending long days together was easier if the team meshed. Time would tell. He pointed to the ocean floor with a thumbs-up.

  Visibility was incredible but would be shot once they started running the blower. For now Jonah enjoyed the crystalline view. Did the doctor appreciate the scenery? Or was she going to remain all-business?