It was relaxing. Normally. But today there wasn’t anywhere to hide from his thoughts, and his daytime fantasies were anything but relaxing. They had his body primed in a way it hadn’t been in a long time. Not even the soothing croon of Adele’s latest was helping.
When the clouds thickened into gray mist, darkening the skies with a burgeoning storm, it only grew worse. The walls seemed to be closing in on him.
He needed to get some air.
He stood up and reached for the door just as it flew open.
Annie ran straight into his arms. At least it seemed that way at the time. But maybe it was just because he’d been thinking about her for most of the afternoon, and quite a few of those thoughts involved her showing up here, falling into his arms, and christening the wheelhouse for the rest of the day.
He’d never had sex at the helm, but he’d been imagining all kinds of creative ways to give it a try.
Reflexively his arms came around her to pull her in close. The feel of those spectacular breasts crushed against his chest and her hips pressing against the part of him that was stiff and throbbing released a little of the pressure he’d been holding in with a groan.
The sound startled her, cutting off whatever she’d been about to say. Instead her eyes locked on his.
Through the haze of lust he realized something was wrong, but he couldn’t seem to see beyond her eyes—they were such an incredible shade of green—her smooth and creamy cocoa-butter skin, and her really soft-looking mouth. A mouth that was red and ripe and gently parted as if waiting to be kissed.
The urge rose inside him, powerful and overwhelming. He didn’t think anything could stop him from lowering his head and putting his mouth on hers.
“Capt—” she started. “Dan.” The sound of the false name sounded so wrong coming from her it brought him harshly back to reality.
He let her go and stepped back.
Christ, what the hell was that?
“I... I...” She blinked a few times—as if clearing her head (he knew the feeling), and then seemed to remember what she’d wanted to say. “I need to talk to you.”
Furious at himself for how he’d reacted, and how easily he’d jumped to the wrong conclusion about why she was here, he found his response a little harsher than he intended. After he turned down the music, he said, “So talk.”
“Adele?”
Yeah, he liked Adele—so shoot him. Despite what most of his friends thought, there were more than two types of music: country and western.
Putting aside her surprise at his musical taste, she launched into what had brought her. “We have to do something. They are planning... Oh God, I don’t know what they are planning, but it isn’t good.”
Anger and embarrassment took a backseat when he realized how upset she was, but he was having a hard time following her. “Slow down, take a breath, and tell me what happened.”
His voice seemed to calm her. She looked up at him almost gratefully, nodded, and took that deep breath before continuing. “I wasn’t completely honest with you about what we were planning to do. It wasn’t just a dive or to make a film.”
He finished for her. “You are going to try to board the drillship and stage some kind of sit-in.”
She didn’t seem all that surprised that he’d guessed. “That’s what I thought, but then you gave me that look, and I heard Julien and Jean Paul talking about something, and I decided to become a superspy—more like Pandora actually.”
She was losing him again. What look? He had no idea what she was talking about, but whatever the hell it was, it was serious. “Just tell me what the problem is, Annie. I assume you aren’t just now realizing how out-of-your-mind dangerous it is to board a ship in the middle of the ocean or that you would be arrested.”
She gave him a glare that would have curdled milk. “Of course I knew that, but those were risks I was willing to take if it meant someone would finally listen to what we were saying and put an end to the exploratory drilling.”
“So your little illegal publicity stunt is okay because you have good intentions? A pirate isn’t a pirate as long as he has convictions—is that it?”
“Pirate?” She looked horrified by the comparison. But that was exactly what they would be doing. “We aren’t hurting anyone.”
“What about all the time and resources that go into getting you off that damned boat safely? Not to mention the men who risk their lives to do so. I hate to break it to you, but causing problems and putting others in danger isn’t the way to convince people to see your side.”
“I... God, why are we arguing about this? That isn’t the problem. I went into the storage room where the cases are being stored while the others were eating lunch. In one of them, I found something that looks like explosives.”
Dean’s demeanor changed in an instant. He got real serious, real quick. He took her arm and drew her closer to him, forcing her to look at him. “What the hell do you mean, it looks like explosives? What did you see?”
She described—a little hesitantly, given the change that had come over him—the plastic-wrapped cylinders that looked like cookie dough, taped together with black-and-yellow cording, which presumably was the det cord to set off the blasting cap.
