brown leather belt wrapped around her waist beneath the fitted blue-and-white-striped blazer. She looked fresh and energetic. The cruise ship woman eyed her outfit and he could practically feel the two guys melting. Piper had that winning effect on people.
“I’m not falling for your game,” he warned softly.
“And I’m not playing.”
She turned away to introduce herself to the Fiesta executives, rings flashing on her fingers as she worked the room. He eyed her ring finger and discovered it was bare. Of course, he couldn’t imagine who would take her on for keeps, but there were plenty of crazy men out there. Or men who’d abandon caution when they got a good look at those high-heeled shoes of hers, which made him think of bondage clubs. Not, of course, that he’d ever been to one, but he had internet, and the tan straps crisscrossing her feet were suggestive.
She finished her meet and greet and turned back to him. Sal Britten paused in the middle of a long-winded story about his most recent shark-cage dive off the coast of Australia (Cal would have killed for a look at the man’s logbook, because he had his doubts about the man’s dive creds) and looked between them. “Do you two know each other?”
“You bet,” he said, deliberately needling her.
Piper’s eyes narrowed, then she winked at him. “Cal here was hoping I’d be a no-show.”
If Piper didn’t get her butt in gear soon, they’d run late, so he ignored the wink and headed for the back of the room. “This meeting starts now.”
She grinned at him, keeping pace with him. “Ready to lose, big boy?”
She made everything into a competition, a game. He was tired of it, frankly, but she wouldn’t let it go. If she wanted to compete, he’d compete. He was a SEAL. He didn’t ring out. He didn’t quit. Except when it came to diving, the unwelcome voice in his head pointed out.
The cruise ship guy looked over at them. “We’re ready to get started when you are. Who’s up first?”
Time for the opening salvo. “Ladies first. I insist.”
* * *
PIPER KEPT HER professional smile painted on her face, but her rescue swimmer wasn’t playing fair. Cal waved her to the front of the room, inviting her to lead off the pitches with a lethally charming, “Ladies first,” when they both knew going first was the weaker position. Their judges would hold back on scoring to leave room for the last diver.
He grinned and settled back in his seat, arms folded over his chest. If he looked good in nothing more than a pair of jeans and a faded cotton T-shirt, he cleaned up even better. He wore an open-necked shirt—she’d never seen Cal bother with a tie for anything other than funerals and weddings—and a dark suit jacket, which didn’t disguise the breadth and power of his shoulders. He had the build of a swimmer, his body advertising that it was trained to pull him through the water at a killer pace. She’d seen him swim, and it was a thing of beauty. She’d give him that much credit.
He was also big and bad, irritatingly calm as he sank back onto his seat, leaning slightly away from her, his legs stretched out in front of him, his arms crossed over his chest. The conference-room table hid his feet, and she fought the urge to peek and see if he was wearing steel-toed work boots. It was hard to imagine him in dress shoes, but he radiated control and competence.
He raised an eyebrow. Right. Her pitch. She hadn’t prepared slides or a formal talk, but she knew her message. She’d also loaded up her laptop with images she’d shot at the diving sites she was promoting, because a picture was definitely worth a thousand words. All she had to do was get Sal, Ben and Margie to imagine themselves in those waters, and she’d have them. She quickly tugged on her ear, hoping the lucky gesture would bring her the same good fortune she’d had every time she’d climbed the dive tower and competed.
“You’ve got a cruise ship full of passengers, most of whom have never dived before. The number of newbies seriously outweighs the number of certified divers. I’d like to go after that segment, grow your tour numbers. Why wouldn’t those passengers want to dive?”
She’d fallen in love with recreational diving during her own summer trips to Discovery Island. As soon as she’d turned twelve, she’d been fitted up with gear and taught to dive. Her first excursions had been off Discovery Island pier, fifteen-footers, where she could have dived to the bottom without the gas, but the tank meant she could stay under for thirty minutes. She’d loved it and she’d been hooked. Sharing her passion through her dive program just seemed...natural.
Cal sprawled in the back of the room, all hot-eyed, hard-bodied charm as she started walking the executives through a cost comparison of land-based tours with diving excursions. There was more money to be made on booking diving than most of the other shore excursions, and pretty soon her audience of three was nodding along. Except for Cal, of course. His expression said he wasn’t convinced.
“If the passengers have never dived before, are you proposing resort dives?”
“Good question.” She smiled at the woman and launched into the next part of her talk, walking the room through the shallow, baptismal dives she’d planned for the harbor as she displayed different images on the screen. At thirteen to fifteen feet, anyone in reasonable physical health could give diving a try. Pointing out the window at the gorgeous, light turquoise water, she asked, “Who wouldn’t want to get in there and see what’s happening beneath the surface?”
Cal raised a brow. She knew that look of mocking disbelief. It was, she decided, too bad for him she had every intention of winning this contract and wiping the smug look off his face.
* * *
PIPER HAD THE room in the palm of her hand, which further irritated Cal. Letting her go first had seemed like a smart tactical move, but now he was second-guessing himself. She’d been every bit as unprepared as he’d expected, talking off the cuff without a formal set of slides—and she’d captivated the room with her charm and casual photos. The Fiesta executives leaned forward in their seats, hanging on her every word as she walked them through a novice dive. Her sassy suit probably didn’t hurt, either, because looking at her while she talked was no hardship.
She strolled past him as she returned to her seat, mouthing, “Gotcha,” and then shifted her monstrosity of a bag to his seat when he stood up.
If she thought he was going down without a fight, she was even crazier than he remembered. The Piper of his childhood had relished a good fight. Even as a girl (or maybe because she was a girl with three older brothers), she’d always done her best to outrun, outjump and generally outdo anyone who crossed her path. She would have made an excellent SEAL, if Uncle Sam allowed women on the team. So he bumped her shoulder casually with his hip, leaned down and whispered sotto voce in the most condescending tone he could dredge up, “Good job, Piper.”
He wasn’t going to make this easy for her at all.
Firing up his PowerPoint presentation, he started stepping his audience through the slides. He’d planned a series of challenging adventure dives, along with a mission theme and faux combat training for college-aged divers and older. “All of our dive masters are former Navy SEALs. We can train divers to get to the next level.”
The female executive looked intrigued. “So you’re proposing extreme diving.”
“We’ll coach you to dive like a U.S. Navy SEAL.” He
