Page 28 of Obsession Under the Southern Stars

I grin. “It’s a beautiful day and I’m taking you diving. Of course I’m happy.”

Man, she’s beautiful. I’d love to kiss her. But I need to stay focused, so I push my desires away and say, “You and I are going to be dive buddies, okay? I want to run through some safety stuff.”

When she nods, I begin asking her to show me the standard scuba-diving hand signals. Okay: just as you’d expect, with the thumb and forefinger forming a loop with the other fingers extended. Not okay or a problem: holding the hand out flat, palm down, and tilting it from side to side the way you’d say ‘so-so’, and then pointing to the problem. A thumbs up to go up or end the dive. Thumbs down for descend. Out of air: a slicing motion across the throat. Stop: holding the hand up, palm out, like a traffic cop. Look: pointing your forefinger and third finger at your eyes and then indicating the object you want observed. A few others that relate to safety stops and leveling off.

“We’ll dive for thirty minutes at a time,” I say. “First I’ll show you around the top half of the ship so you can get your bearings. Then later we’ll join Hori and Manu deeper down in the hold, depending on how comfortable you are.”

“Do they need to decompress at that depth?” she asks.

“They can stay for twenty minutes and decompress as they’re surfacing as long as they do it slowly. Any longer andthey’d need staged decompression. We’ll all be keeping a close eye on our dive computers, don’t worry.”

She nods. “Okay.”

“Any problems, anything you’re worried about, any issue at all, you communicate immediately with me.”

Her lips twitch. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m not kidding, Zo.” My heart gives a bang at the thought of her getting into trouble. She has her certificate, but she doesn’t have many dives under her belt, and it only takes one fuck up to cost you your life.

She bites her bottom lip. “I know.”

“If you need to get to the surface, and for whatever reason you can’t find me, ascend as slowly as you can, and try and make a safety stop about five meters down for about five minutes. If you run out of air and have to make a controlled emergency swimming ascent, exhale continuously as you swim toward the surface, and stay as calm as possible.”

“Okay,” she says softly.

“It won’t happen,” I tell her, “providing you do everything I tell you.”

That makes her lips curve up. “Sorry,” she says as I glare at her. “I didn’t realize you were so bossy.”

“I am when I have someone’s life in my hands.”

She presses her lips together and nods, glances at the others, then looks back at me, eyes dancing.

“Stop it,” I scold. “Are you happy with everything?”

“Yes, sir.”

Wow, that sends a wave of desire through me at the thought of her saying that in the bedroom.

I turn away and leave her to it, muttering to myself as I join Clive at the wheel.

“Having fun?” he asks, amused, obviously having overheard the conversation.

“She’s driving me insane.”

He laughs. “I haven’t seen you like this before.”

“Like what?”

He gives me an amused look and doesn’t answer.

I lift my face to the sea breeze and try to calm myself as the boat speeds along. We’re close to the western end of Moturoa Island, and Clive heads for Kent Passage, taking us along the south side of the island.

It’s a beautiful day. It’s coolish out at sea, but it’s going to get hot later, and I’ll have to remember to tell Zoe to put on sun lotion when she’s on the surface or she’ll get horribly burned. The sea here is a deep blue, and the hills of the island are a lime green fringed with dark-green forests, studded with the tiny white dots of sheep.

We round the eastern end of the island, pass the large-ish island known as Battleship Rock, and then approach the group of small islands and the fringing shallow reef known as the Black Rocks. These complex volcanic rock formations have lots of vertical faces, cracks, and overhangs. The Relentless foundered on the shallower reef, but part of the ship—including, unfortunately, where we think the chest might be—floated down to the reefs that are around thirty meters deep. I want to make sure Zoe is comfortable diving before I take her down that far.

Clive drops the anchor, and Hori gets in the water and descends temporarily with it to attach it to the wreck. Clive attaches a poly ball to the chain to mark the location of the wreck on the surface and cleats the other end to the boat. Now we have an ascent line and a point of reference for the boat to return to, if at any point Clive has to detach from the line to retrieve a stranded diver.

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