bobbed down, then up again. “Hey, fisher boy! Could you pay attention? There’s a drowning—” she spit out more seawater “—woman here!”
Calling him “fisher boy” did not induce him to give her a helping hand. “You’re not drowning. And you look like you can take care of yourself,” he said. “Land’s only about three, four miles away.”
“Get me out of this water,” she said, pronouncing each word with the precision of the Catholic nuns who’d taught him multiplication. “Now.”
He didn’t move. “Why are you in it?”
She gave him a look that said she thought he was an idiot. “I fell in. Obviously.”
“Or did your friends push you in?”
Behind him, Gigi barked. Clearly his chow thought he should stop torturing and start rescuing.
“And what on earth—” more water out “—is that supposed to mean?”
“Well frankly, you don’t seem very pleasant.”
“Excuse me?”
He had never seen anyone look so haughty while they were treading water. “I’m choosy about who rides in my boat.”
She gave him a glare that could have melted a diamond. Her arms started moving even faster at her sides, her legs kicking like hyperactive jackrabbits beneath her. “I’m wet. And late for a meeting. And getting very angry. Before I yank you in the water by your flannel shirt and use your head as a life preserver, would you please get me out of here?”
If he’d been raised a jerk, he’d have left her there. Her “please” had sounded about as pleasant as turnips for lunch. Maybe he should leave anyway. Start a new trend of jerkiness. Being a nice guy certainly hadn’t gotten him much in life thus far.
But…she did have pretty green eyes. And green happened to be his favorite color. Despite her words, he felt himself relenting. A little. “Gee, when you ask so nicely, how can a guy refuse?”
She gave him another glare. She was really good at those. Must have practiced glaring a lot in finishing school or wherever it was that gave her that attitude.
Brad put out a hand. She caught it and started to haul herself up. “Whoa, not so fast or you’ll pull us both in. Do it slow and easy, a little at a time. Here, use the edge of the boat and slide in.” He grinned. “Just like landing a marlin.”
Her answering scowl told him she didn’t like being compared to a hundred-pound prize fish.
It took some effort, and some delicate balancing on his part, but he managed to get her into the boat. When he did, he noticed she was slim yet strong, and only a few inches shorter than his six-foot-two-inch height. Even wet, she was a gorgeous woman, all legs and long blond hair.
She plopped onto the single seat in the center of his boat, minus a shoe. A high-heeled strappy kind of shoe at that. What kind of person wore high heels on a boat ride?
“It took you long enough,” she said. With a hand over her eyes to block out the sun, she scanned the horizon for the still departing Lady’s Delight.
“How’d you fall in anyway?”
She shook her head. “I swear that old woman tripped me when I walked by her. Was she just looking for a lawsuit?”
Brad decided that was a rhetorical question and let it stand unanswered, even though he had a few ready replies.
She pressed a hand to her chest and winced. “You know, you could have broken a rib dragging me in like that.”
“You could be more grateful I got you out at all. The sharks are always looking for something to eat.”
“Sharks?”
He took in her wide emerald eyes and flushed damp skin. The side of his brain ruled by testosterone contemplated some nibbling of his own, but of a very different kind. If he ignored everything that had come out of her mouth thus far, she was a very attractive woman. Maybe she was just having a bad day. A very bad day.
And maybe he was too damned nice. Hadn’t his mother told him that? More than once in his twenty-nine years of life? Being nice didn’t get you ahead. Didn’t get you a plum research position. Didn’t get you the notice of the top brass at the Smithsonian.
Being nice got you on a dinghy in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico with a dripping wet, ungrateful woman with more attitude than common sense.
“I’m sorry,” she said, letting out a sigh. “Thank you for helping me.”
Okay, not so much attitude.
“Apology accepted.” He reached behind him for a towel and tossed it her way. Gigi had wisely stayed in her corner of the boat, avoiding the whole thing. Dogs had damned good instincts. “Here. Dry off.”
“While I do,” she said, waving a manicured hand his way, “you gun the engine and get me over to Torchere Key. If I hurry, I have enough time to change, redo my hair and makeup and look like a human again before I meet with the Phipps-Stovers.” She started to rub at her hair with the towel, then paused. “Well, go ahead.”
“I don’t take orders.” Brad picked up the charts beside him and made a few notations about the squid he’d seen, ignoring her. Gigi let out a little bark of support. She didn’t much like being bossed around, either.
“Pull that cord thingy, will you?”
Brad dipped a container into the ocean for a water sample, capped it and labeled it with the date and time, using a waterproof marker.
The woman let out a sigh. “What are you doing?”
“Right now? Taking a water sample.”
She let out a gust. “Why?”
“I’m looking for something,” he replied, answering the water-sample question. Much easier to talk about his work than debate her communication skills. Or lack of them.
“What? Your lunch?”
“Giant squid.”
She looked a hell of a lot better speechless. Almost beautiful. Even wet and dripping and half shoeless.
“A…a…giant what?” she finally managed.
“Squid.”
She blinked. Several times. “There is such a thing?”
“Well, no one’s ever seen a live one, but yes, there is.”
She snorted. “Like Bigfoot, I’m sure.”
He gave her a glare and dipped his thermometer into the ocean, busying himself with the reading. “They exist.”
“Yeah, and so do happy marriages, I hear. I think it’s all a bunch of fairy tales people tell their kids to keep them from wandering the streets at night.”
He
