Gianna’s hold remained tight when I cut the engines. We coasted the rest of the way. Oleg pulled me from the water as Gianna climbed off me and over the hull. The monochrome green world through my goggles darkened. I blinked and tried to pull them off but blackness took me.
15
Gianna
Alexei twitched but didn’t wake up as I dabbed the gunshot wound on his thigh with alcohol. The towel I’d covered him in shifted with his movement. For a brief moment, it drew my eyes away from the task at hand but I shook my head and started wrapping the bandage around his wounded leg.
Oleg had carried him up to his cabin when we’d got back to the yacht. After Alexei had passed out, I’d used the dinghy’s first aid kit to stop the bleeding but we needed to redress the wound once we got him out of his wetsuit.
Unfortunately, when it came time for that, Oleg left it to me. I almost took a knife to the damn thing, should have just cut the leg off, less distracting that way. The towel didn’t cover his chest or face. In sleep, his features relaxed, offered me a mask-free view of him. After everything that had happened, I found my eyes darting to that calm visage.
The bullet had been a through and through. The exit wound on the back of his thigh was almost as clean as the entry. It had hit only muscle, though I’d already known that. If it had gone through his bone, he wouldn’t have been able to stand, let alone walk on it. A lucky shot – one he’d gotten saving me.
The once insistent voice, yelling that the man had kidnapped me only sounded as a whisper in my head. My conversation with Katie had helped quiet those words but Alexei’s actions had played a bigger part. If he only wanted revenge against my father, he could have left me to those men.
My eyes drifted up to his face again. The adrenalin had faded back to nothing but my excitement remained. Even now, my fingers twitched as I finished wrapping the bandage around Alexei’s leg. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so alive. Nothing like a life or death situation to hammer into your head what was really important.
Alexei’s head rolled to the side. He groaned and his eyes fluttered before opening. His gaze fell to me. Flat lips curled upward into a genuine smile before his brow furrowed. He looked around the cabin before returning to me.
“How’d we get here?” he asked and a hint of that smile made it through his mask. “My shirt looks good on you.”
One of my hands moved to the collar of the shirt, pressing it closed almost unconsciously. He chuckled and propped himself up on his arms. A hiss escaped when he shifted his leg, the only indication of the pain.
“You passed out in the dinghy. Oleg carried you up here like a baby,” I replied and waved to my soaked dress hanging on the wall. “Since someone decided to get me soaked, I needed something else to put on.”
“Did Oleg strip off my wetsuit?” he asked with a teasing tone. “As good as you look in my shirt, I wouldn’t have complained if you’d left it off.”
“I took care of that.” Heat burned on my cheeks. I dropped my eyes from his, but they just focused on the rise and fall of his chest.
“So, you wanted to get another look?” The teasing took over his voice. He chuckled and tugged at the towel I’d covered him with.
My fingers snatched the other end of it, holding it in place. Another chuckle took him but he held his hand up and away, rolling his eyes.
“I wanted to keep you from bleeding out,” I hissed. “Your yacht’s first aid kit is pretty damn comprehensive. Maybe I should have shot you up with some of the propofol. I think I prefer you unconscious.”
“Well, that’s a strange way to say thank you for rescuing me,” he said. His head dropped back and he sighed. “I’d have kept it simple: ‘Thank you, Alexei for saving me from those thugs’.”
“If it wasn’t for you, I never would have had to deal with them,” I shot back and that superior smile on his lips faltered.
“I would have moved faster if I realized they knew where you were on that ship,” he said, his voice as genuine as his expression had been when he was unconscious. “I still don’t know how they found you so quickly.”
“My only guess is they figured out the room number of Nicola De Luca, the woman whose badge I stole. I didn’t stick around but I’m sure she got arrested,” I replied. “They got the right deck, but missed that room by about ten cabins.”
Over the course of my time with Alexei, he had often provided half answers to my questions. He’d done it to test me, I finally realized. All the intelligence he’d gathered hadn’t painted the full picture, he probed for more insight.
As complicated a man as he was, my assessment needed no such test. Still, watching him think my incomplete answer through excited me even further. Intelligence was an aphrodisiac as far as I was concerned.
“You really were a worthy adversary,” he whispered with a smile and a nod. “I couldn’t figure out how you got on that ship. If you’d just swiped someone’s badge, they’d still come back to the ship, and your jig would have been up. I almost wondered if you’d killed someone, but I don’t think you’d do that.”
“No, only framed a woman for shoplifting at a jewelry store,” I replied and pressed my lips together for a moment, “and I felt so bad about it that I memorized her address. She’ll get an envelope full of cash in the mail when she heads back to New Jersey.”
“Does Hallmark have a ‘Sorry I got you arrested in a foreign country’ card?” He barked a laugh that turned into a hissed groan. “I still don’t know why you were in that cabin if it wasn’t the right one.”
“My plan didn’t work out as well as I hoped,” I admitted and bit my lip. “Ship security was knocking at the door. They had to have known I wasn’t Nicola De Luca which means she got out of jail in Sicily and contacted the cruise line. When security came, I climbed across the balcony.”
“Another reason to stick with me.” He shook his free hand at his chest, thumb pointed down. “My plans always work out impeccably. And we still have to finish our snooker game.”
“Was getting shot part of your plan?” I couldn’t help but giggle. “Are you hoping I’ll go all gaga over you after taking care of the wound? Banking on the Florence Nightingale effect?”
