Chapter 18
Kat
Holy shit.
Oh my fucking God.
Shark.
Shark.
Shark.
Every curse word in the English language reverberates through my head as my eyes lock onto the fin heading for us. Ice freezes solid in my chest, and I start to shake.
Dane’s dark eyes meet mine, and I know in that instant he didn’t want a freaking drink of water. He saw the fucking shark and was trying to get me to safety.
“Go!” he yells, pointing at the catamaran as Captain Tisdale waves me forward and shouts at Fedor and Vander.
Shaking off the paralysis, I paddle as hard as I can. Like when you’re a kid and you jump off a raft in the middle of the lake but swim back to the ladder as fast as humanly possible because you’re afraid of what might get you before you climb out. Or maybe that was just me.
But there was never a shark in the water before.
Sharks can sense fear, right? If that’s true, it’s guaranteed he can sense mine right now because I’m about to lose my shit.
My splashes become more violent, and I hope I don’t look like a wounded seal. Jesus. I’m going to die.
I’m not ready to die.
Oh my God, what if it gets Dane?
I will murder it and make shark steaks and a shark purse and shark slippers.
I’ve officially lost my mind, but when my hands hit the metal of the ladder, I reach down and rip my fins off and throw them at Captain Tisdale, not caring if they actually make it aboard.
“Come on! Come on!”
“I’m coming!” I scream through my snorkel, so it sounds like gibberish.
I scramble up the rungs like the fires of hell are after me. But nope, just a motherfucking shark.
I yank my mask off and scream at Dane. “Hurry! Oh my God. Oh my God.”
I drop onto my knees over the ladder and reach for him, trying to haul him out of the water faster.
His gaze meets mine as he tosses his flippers over the side and climbs up. “It’s okay, baby. I’m fine.”
I throw myself into his arms, shaking uncontrollably. “Oh my fucking God, there’s a fucking shark out there.”
Dane squeezes me tight. “It’s okay. It’s fine. They’re not usually aggressive. Just curious.”
I pull back and stab a finger into his chest. “You knew! You saw it. That’s why you wanted to get me in. How could you not tell me?” My tone shifts a tad toward accusatory from terrified.
Dane grabs a towel and wraps it around me. “Shhh.”
“Do not shhh me right now! I will not be shhh’d. There’s a motherfucking shark out there. What about the others? Oh my God.”
My husband, who apparently doesn’t fear sharks or bogeymen or those little geckos that sneak up on you in the showers in the tropics, just wraps his arms around me again. “They’ll be fine.”
My attention cuts to the water, where I’m anticipating a giant cloud of blood to form any moment when the shark tears them into tiny shreds like in Jaws.
Captain Tisdale finally cuts in. “Fedor is trained. He will not panic. And Mr. Cross is correct—they are not usually aggressive. Usually we only see nurse sharks, and very rarely anything else.”
“I saw the blacktip, so I figured it was a good time to move out.”
Tisdale’s eyes narrow on Dane. “I’m surprised you were able to identify it so easily. You must have spent a lot of time in the ocean in order to do so.”
Chapter 19
Dane
Tisdale is looking at me a little more intently than I’d like, but I’m not about to give him the rundown of the two times I’ve tangled with sharks that were more curious. Once was a hammerhead off the coast of Nicaragua, and the other was a blacktip another time in Belize that decided it was pissed off at the world.
We all watch the fin as it moves away from the catamaran and Fedor and Vander.
“What’s going on?” Anya carefully walks down the side of the deck, returning from the bow where she’s been sunbathing. She holds a hand over her mouth to cover a yawn.
“Oh, nothing,” Kat says. “Just Dane spotting sharks in the water and not mentioning it to me while I swim to safety.” She glares at me. “I don’t know whether to thank you or strangle you.”
“A sh . . . shark?” Anya stutters, and her voice breaks. “Are you fucking serious?” She scans the water, looking for Vander, I assume. “And you just left them behind?”
Captain Tisdale, probably sensing the fit she’s about to throw, places a hand on Anya’s shoulder. “It is unlikely the shark will come any closer. The worst thing you can do in a situation like this is panic. They sense fear.”
Fedor and Vander turn toward the catamaran and make their way back at a leisurely pace.
Captain Tisdale steps back, and Anya screams. The pitch is so high, my eardrums protest. It takes a moment before I realize she is screaming a name. Strangely, it doesn’t sound like Vander.
His head pops up from the water and turns toward us. Anya starts waving her arms and pointing in the direction where we last saw the fin.
“Shark!”
Fedor lifts his head and looks around, searching the surface, before he goes under to no doubt try to see it from beneath. Vander surprisingly doesn’t panic like his girlfriend. Instead, he follows Fedor’s lead and does a scan before increasing the pace of his strokes on his return to the boat.
“Please, ma’am. Just stay calm. I’m sure it will be fine, and you’ll all be able to laugh at this memory in the very near future.”
But the cloud of fear surrounding Anya is palpable. There will be no laughing at this in the near future for her or for Kat, I have a feeling. She’s still shaking, wrapped in a towel in my arms.
Anya turns to me. “How could you possibly leave them there? What is wrong with you?”
I give her a hard look for daring to question my actions. “My priority—first, last, and always—is keeping my wife safe. They’re men. They can handle themselves.”