Chrissy had been shot.Shot!That wasn’t supposed to happen in real life.
“How can you be sure?” she asked.
Romeo lifted a shoulder and let it fall. The move drew her eye to the tattoo on the inside of his forearm. Those black, stylized words all the owners of Deep Six Salvage sported.For RL.
One night after a hard day diving down on the wreck, she and the rest of the crew had been relaxing around a beach bonfire. When Alex noticed Mia staring at Romeo’s tattoo, the diminutive historian had explained about the ink. About how the Deep Six guys had lost a SEAL brother, and about how that loss had precipitated all of them leaving the Navy and starting the salvage company.
Strange to think the men Mia had come to know, the ones who donned scuba tanks and swim fins, who ran around in sunglasses and flip-flops, had once been counted among the best of the best, the very tip of Uncle Sam’s spear. They seemed so…normal.
Then again, what did she know about normal?
“I’ve witnessed my fair share of gunshot wounds, and hers isn’t bad,” Romeo explained. “It’s not much more than a flesh wound, eh?”
“Okay, Monty Python.” As soon as the words left Mia’s mouth, she wanted to suck them back in.
Peeking over at Romeo, she expected to find him insulted. Quite the contrary, his head was cocked at an angle. “Did you just make a joke?”
“Sorry.” Shame stained her cheeks. “Now’s not the time, I know. Blame it on my hatred of hospitals. Is it hot in here, or is it just me?”
She fanned her face, unsure if she was sweating due to anxiety or because she could feel Romeo’s immense body heat wrapping around her. The man was literally and figuratively H.O.T.
“I wasn’t sure you knew how to make a joke,” he said and she frowned. “Shit,” he added quickly. “That didn’t come out right.”
“It’s fine.” She waved a hand. “You’re not the first person to assume I lack a sense of humor.”
People often confused her saturninity for an absence of whimsy, but she enjoyed sarcasm and the occasional bout of witty banter as much as the next person.
“Does that bother you?” he asked.
“No.” She shook her head. “I stopped caring what people think of me a long time ago.”
His glittering, black eyes tracked to her new haircut, and she automatically touched her freshly highlighted roots.
“I can see how you’d be skeptical,” she murmured. “But I don’t do this for anyone but me. I like to keep myself put together. I always have.”
It was a coping mechanism left over from her childhood. Back then, her mother had been drunk as much as she’d been sober. Her father had been absent as much as he’d been present. Every nanny or housekeeper Mia ever loved had eventually left, unable to stomach the poisonous atmosphere of the Ennis household. And Mia had lacked control over all of it. The one thing she’d had agency over was herself. Her skin, her hair, her clothes.
“I guess it’s true what they say,” Romeo murmured. “Still waters run deep.”
“You think I’m still?” She hadn’t stopped squirming since she sat down. Even now, her knee bounced.
“Maybestillis the wrong word.Quietis probably more apt.”
“You know, when people comment on how quiet I am, it always catches me unawares.”
“Really?” He looked shocked.
“My brain makes so much noise inside my head, I forget other people can’t hear it.”
“And what are you thinking about right now?”
When he stared at her like that, gazing so deeply into her eyes, she got the unsettling impression he could see into the very heart of her.
Heaven help her, she hoped not. Then he’d know she had a crush on him. Like, a silly, schoolgirl, write-his-name-on-the-cover-of-her-binder crush.
How pathetic am I?
Romeo was way,wayout of her league.
