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Shrugging, the man extended his hand to help her on board, then swept his arm in the direction of the boat’s stern. “He’s already turned away three today, señorita, but buena suerte to you.”
Thanking him, Brenna rolled her shoulders. She’d take all the good luck she could get. But what three—
Her steps faltered. Three women. He’d already had others coming to find him. And she’d bet her entire collection of first-edition Yeatses that they hadn’t come to call him out about his unethical research practices.
Were the women of Palmer’s Island that hard up?
She found him leaning against the railing at the very back of the boat and focusing on a stack of papers held in his hand.
She was somewhat prepared for the wavy, sandy-brown hair, pulled into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck, but as she moved toward him, he lifted his head. His hazel eyes and the disarming dimples in his cheeks had a lot more impact live and in person than on her computer screen or in the newspaper.
But the circumstance that had her heart threatening to jump out of her chest was the fact that he was wearing a wet suit. At least from the waist down. The top half of him—all tan skin and lean muscle—was completely bare.
He sighed as she continued to stare at him mutely. “Let me guess, you’re an amateur diver and you’ve always been fascinated by history.”
She blinked at his deep voice, heavy on the Southern accent. Texas maybe. With reluctance, she raised her gaze to his face.
And all the moisture in her mouth dried instantly.
“Ah … no,” she managed to say.
He straightened to his full height—a solid six-three—then strode toward her. “Look, honey, I’ve got a lot of work to do, so …” He stopped a few inches away, and she broke out in a sweat that had nothing to do with the blazing summer sun overhead. “How tall are you?”
By now, she should be used to the question, but he managed to startle her anyway. “Is that relevant?”
“You can’t be over five feet.”
She glanced down at her platform sandals, which added a good four inches to her height, and defiantly told the truth. “Four-eleven and three-quarters.”
When she looked up again, his gaze was pinned to hers. “What do you do?”
“I’m a teacher.”
“History? Social studies?”
Finally getting her bearings with his remarkable looks, she crossed her arms over her chest. “English literature, if you must know. Again, how is that relevant?”
“Oh, hell. Another Brontë groupie.”
“I prefer Jane Austen.”
If possible, he looked even more disappointed. “I was in a good mood today. I really was.” He folded the papers in his hand, then walked past her toward the cabin area in the center of the boat.
Seeing little choice, Brenna followed him and didn’t dare drop her gaze to see the back view of the skintight wet suit. “It’s urgent that I speak with you, Mr. Fortune.”
To her surprise, he didn’t correct her about his title, fake as it might be. “It’s Gavin, and I’m sure your cause is extremely important, but I have work to do.” In the doorway of the cabin, he turned. “If you’ll excuse me …”
Then he slid the door closed.
For several seconds, Brenna stood mutely on the other side of the glass barrier with her jaw hanging open. Only the prospect of humiliatingly facing Sloan and telling her she’d been aroused, intimidated, then turned away in less than three minutes by the same man she’d called the devil forced her to wrap her hand around the chrome handle and push the door aside.
Inside the cabin was a table bracketed on either side by black vinyl bench seats, a matching sofa on the opposite side of the boat, a kitchen area and a roomy cockpit. On the stern end was a closed door, presumably leading to a bedroom. Since Fortune was nowhere in sight, she assumed he’d gone into these private quarters.
She tapped on the door. “Mr. Fortune, I represent the Palmer’s Island Historical Society, and it’s imperative that I speak with you.”
Silence.
Pressing her ear to the door, she thought she heard water running. Was he in the shower?
Fine. She could wait.
She sat on the sofa and mentally recited Robert Frost poems to keep her mind from wandering to the sure-to-be-enticing-and-distracting visual of Gavin Fortune standing naked under a spicket of water.
“The Road Not Taken,” however, simply led her to stare in the direction of the closed bedroom door and wonder what lay beyond.
With monumental concentration, she reminded her libido she wasn’t some creepy celebrity chaser. She was here with a serious purpose. She had justice, history and truth on her side.
He walked out in khaki shorts and nothing else.
She literally bowed her head. Was the man determined to derail her indignation?
To further annoy and embarrass her, he didn’t even notice she was sitting on the sofa until after he’d retrieved a bottle of water from the fridge and turned to head back to the bedroom.
“How did you get in here?” he demanded, grinding to a halt.
Pleased she’d finally caught him off guard, she crossed her legs. “I opened the door.”
“Then use it to go back out. I’m really very busy.”
When he started toward the bedroom again, she lurched off the sofa directly into his path. The scent of sea air and woody citrus wafted from his skin, and she fought not to inhale too deeply. Droplets of water still clung to his wavy hair, which, released from its binding, hung nearly to his shoulders. If possible, the change made him even more attractive.
She cleared her throat. “Mr. Fortune, I represent the Palmer’s Island Historical Society, and—”
“Why not the Society for the Defense of Boring Books? Or the Society for Unnecessary Exposition?”
Brenna narrowed her eyes, but she wasn’t lowering herself to his insulting level.
Before she could so much as open her mouth, however, he rolled on. “Look, honey, I meet your type in every town I go to.”
Brenna didn’t think it was possible to be more insulted or enraged. Yet she was. “My type?”
“Sure. A crusader. No man, nothing better to do than harass hardworking people and write scathing letters to the local newspaper and city council. Do you have a cat?”
What did Shakes have to do with this?
“I’m here,” she began in her sternest English teacher tone, “to discuss the graves you’re disturbing, and the great tragedy you and your gang intend to profit from.”
He laughed. He actually laughed. Again, annoyingly increasing his appeal. “My gang?”
“Yes, well …” That had been rather insulting, she supposed. After all, the Hispanic gentleman had been very gracious. “Your crew then.”
“Who have five PhDs between the three of them. And you do realize this great tragedy happened nearly a hundred fifty years ago, right?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“And this was a pirate ship, not the USS Benevolent Cruise Line?”
“Many so-called pirate ships were merely privateers who helped the war effort.”
“For a price.”
“Well, this ship aided the South, it was sunk by Yankees and I’m here to stand for the crew’s noble sacrifice.”
He cocked his head and studied her, as if truly looking at her for the first time. “Green eyes,” he mused. “Fair skin, red hair, temper like a hurricane. Irish, by any chance?”
She raised her chin. “I’m a Southerner—eight generations worth, to be exact.”
Very gently, he laid his finger in the dent in her chin. “Maybe so, but there’s an Irish vixen some generation way back.”
Desire shot into her stomach. She was pretty sure the same thing had happened to him, because the gold in his eyes suddenly deepened. His gaze fell to her lips and held. She curled her hand into a fist by her side to prevent the impulse to reach out and glide her fingers across his tanned chest to see if the muscles below felt as hard as they looked.
“Well, this is damn inconvenient, isn’t it?” he asked in a low tone.
“I—” She stepped back, unsure if her embarrassing reaction to him or his acknowledgment of the chemistry between them worried her more. “We need to discuss the shipwreck.”
“Fine.” He moved around her and headed to the bedroom. “Let’s go get a beer, and you can tell me all about your tragic cause.”
She glanced at her watch. “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.”
“So? I’ll just throw on a T-shirt.”
When he returned, he was wearing a gray T-shirt and had pulled his hair back with a leather thong no doubt also used by the pirates whose treasure he was so adept at finding.
Lost in thought, she dimly registered that he’d stopped in front of her.
His impressive chest rose, then fell as he sighed, and he, too, checked the time. “It’s not a complicated proposition. Beer, no beer?”
Spending any more time with this man than was absolutely necessary seemed unwise. And yet it had been so long since she’d looked at a man with anything approaching desire, she was reluctant to let the feeling die. She’d been sure her ex had killed all her sexual impulses as well as their future together.
“How about iced tea?” she finally suggested.
He curled his lip as he laid his hand at the small of her back and guided her to the door. “For you, maybe.”
Outside, the wind had picked up, and Brenna flattened her hands against her sundress to keep it from flying up and giving Gavin Fortune and his crew an up-close-and-personal shot of her purple lace panties.
The blond-haired guy with wire-rimmed glasses smiled and nudged the Hispanic guy as they approached. “Pay up, Vasquez.”
“Poker, boys?” Fortune asked. “I thought you were programming the ROV.”
“No cards, amigo,” the Hispanic man, presumably Vasquez, said with a quick glance at Brenna. “A different kind of wager.”
“ROV?” she asked.
“Remotely Operated Vehicle,” Vasquez said, pointing at a device sitting on a table near him.
It was clearly mechanical, with lots of interlocking metal parts and tubing. It looked heavy. And complicated.
And that was pretty much all she could grasp.
“Basically, an underwater robot,” Fortune said, obviously sensing her confusion. “It allows us to take video and gather data without a human diver.”
She nodded. He’d certainly been right about his crew’s brains. “Oh.”
“Pablo, this is—” Fortune stopped, regarding her with surprise. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Brenna,” she said, sending him a reproachful look, realizing he’d never bothered to ask. “Brenna McGary,” she said to Pablo, extending her hand.
“Pablo Vasquez,” he returned. He indicated the blond man next to him. “This is Dennis Finmark. Over there is Jim Upton.”
Brenna shook Dennis’s hand and waved at Jim, a tall, thin, dark-haired guy who was wrapping a thick rope around a metal prong. They all seemed like nice, normal guys. Not minions of the devil at all.
She considered the implications of that as Fortune helped her off the boat, but it wasn’t until they were walking down the pier that she finally understood the bet. “They wagered on whether or not I could pick you up.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ve already turned away three other women today.”
“How do you know that?”
“Pablo told me.” She halted, studying him from head to toe. “Does it ever get old, being infamous and irresistible?”
“Hell, no.”
Ignoring his amused expression, she waggled her finger at him. “This isn’t a pickup. It’s a business discussion.”
“Whatever you say, Miss McGary. It is miss, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but how is that relevant?”
He resumed walking. “Just want to get your title correct.”
No doubt that was a dig to her insistence on ignoring his doctorate. Well, if he wanted to change that, he’d have to show her his diploma first.
And the one from the University of Hot Bare Chests and Dimples didn’t count.
When they reached the end of the pier, Fortune steered her right instead of continuing straight, which would have led them to The Night Heron, the marina bar. “The bar’s this way,” she said, pulling to a stop.
“Let’s walk down the beach to Joe’s.”
