He pushed something up toward her. Mira, startled, had no choice but to reach for it. She had a brief impression of a large plastic object, and then realized that she was being given a blue and white plastic cooler. Baffled, she tried to pull it up just to get it out of the way, then found that it was shockingly heavy.
Dane boosted it from below. Mira deposited it onto the rocks without much thought; what she was really worried about was pulling Dane out of the water before he got hypothermia and drowned. She held a hand down for him.
After a hesitation, Dane grasped her hand and let her haul him out onto the rocks. He came with the sleek grace of a wild sea creature, although the goosebumps prickling his shoulders and puckering his pecs made it clear how very human he was.
"Sorry," Mira mumbled, her cheeks heating. She hastily looked away before she could give in to the urge to dry him off with her shirt or possibly her face. "You're—don't you know how dangerous swimming in these northern waters is? You could get hypothermia! Where are your clothes?" she added, intently aware of little rustles as he moved around.
"Over here," he said. She glanced around to see him pulling a bundle of clothing out of a crevice in the rocks. She hadn't even noticed it. There was also a towel. As he started to dry off, Mira sat on a rock, clasped her hands between her knees, and firmly did not focus on all the naked, incredibly sexy man very close to her.
"Aren't you going to open it?" Dane said.
"What?"
"The cooler. I got it from your boat."
"What?"
She took a closer look. Most plastic coolers were made along similar lines, but now that she was paying attention, this one had RIVERS written on the lid in laundry marker. She marked most of her stuff that way, a habit going back to her military service.
Mira pulled the lid off. It wasn't completely watertight, and she found herself looking at some sandwiches and cans and bottles of drinks, sloshing around in seawater. No wonder it had been so heavy.
"Oops," Dane said, looking over her shoulder. "I didn't realize."
"How did you get this?" Mira asked in utter disbelief. She picked up a floating bottle of Pepsi. The sandwiches were goners, saturated in seawater, but the sealed drinks were fine, fresh, and cold. "My case might have floated, but this wouldn't have, not with all the water in it."
"I told you, your boat's near here." But there was something oddly evasive about the way he said it, not like he was lying, but more like he was embarrassed.
"Where?"
After another of those brief, strange hesitations, Dane turned and pointed out to sea. His finger was firm and unerring; he clearly knew the exact direction. All Mira saw were waves.
Hecouldn'thave free-dived, with no equipment or breathing gear, all the way to her boat. He certainly couldn't have come back up hauling something the size of the cooler. He would have drowned. But another possibility was dawning on her, as completely insane as it seemed.
"Do you have a pet orca?" Mira burst out.
Dane jerked in visible surprise. "A—uh—which?"
"An orca, a killer whale. I saw one just now, and I remembered one helping me in the storm. I thought I must be dreaming, but now that I've seen it for certain, that's what's going on, isn't it? You have an orca that's trained to dive for things." She tried to remember if the orca had been pushing a blue and white plastic cooler. She had been far too interested in the animal itself to pay attention, but now that she thought about it, there might have been a flash of something white near its nose.
Without quite making eye contact, Dane said, "Yes, my orca found your cooler for you."
"That's amazing!" If Mira had been a different type of person, she would have jumped in the air and squealed. She was neither the jumping nor the squealing type, but instead she gave Dane a quick, impromptu hug. He had put a shirt on, but he hadn't buttoned it. The feeling of his bare chest against her body made her release him just as quickly, before she yielded to the temptation to plaster herself all over him. As it was, the feeling of his muscular shoulders under her hands and her chest pressed against his was going to stay with her for a long time.
"What was that for?" Dane asked. He looked stunned.
"For—well—for you! That's amazing! I knew there was more to it than you were telling me." She looked around, scanning the surface of the waves. "Where is it? How do you call it? Do you whistle, or make some kind of noise?"
"It's, uh, gone for now," Dane said. He scratched his chin.
"Oh well, you'll have to show me later. How incredible. How long has it been coming around the island?"
"A long while," Dane said. He seemed oddly uncomfortable about it.
"That's incredible." As her elation faded, she started to feel bad about pushing. He clearly didn't want to talk about it, for whatever reason. "Here, can you help me with this?"
She grasped one handle of the cooler, Dane took the other, and together they tipped the water out.
"The food's no good, but you're welcome to help yourself to anything else in here."
