Windswept by Anna Lowe Read Free Book Online Page B

thinking, giving her that cold stare?
    Then the camera jumped over to dolphins and underwater views of the wreck and Brenda’s cleavage and colorful fish until finally it surfaced and panned and…
Boom!
    Everybody watching flinched as if the ship were being blown up again. Mia shuddered then turned to speed-walk down the dock, and he followed.
    Two figures leaned over the railing, watching the yellow lights of salvage boats working around
Neptune’s Revenge
. It was listing badly but still afloat.
    “A miracle they’ve managed to contain the oil…” said one.
    “A miracle no one was killed,” said the other.
    The night was warm, but his blood ran cold. What if someone had been killed? What if it had been Mia?
    Mia, he noticed, kept her eyes studiously away from the wreck. She knelt by a tangle of lines, slipped off her shoes, and maneuvered her way into a small rubber dinghy.
    “Hop in.”
    The minute he got in, she pushed off from the dock, started the outboard with an expert yank on the starter cord, and took off, speeding into the night. There was about an inch of water in the bottom of the dinghy, but she didn’t seem worried about that. She just picked up a cutoff milk container and started bailing.
    “I got it.” He took it from her hand and got to work. Scoop, splash. Scoop, splash. A cupful of water at a time, he got it back overboard where it belonged as they chugged onward.
    The wind whipped Mia’s hair as she looked forward, one hand steering the outboard, and damn if she didn’t look as much at home as she’d been stepping into a subway car in New York.
    “Why the purple outboard?” he asked, trying to melt the ice.
    She shrugged. “My cousin Seth painted it to discourage thieves. He and—” She stopped abruptly and slapped her thigh. “Shit.”
    A word that could have applied to just about every part of his day, except maybe the moment she’d taken his hand.
    “I was supposed to go food shopping today.” She sighed. “My sister is going to kill me.”
    So her sister was on the boat. Good thing? Bad thing? He wasn’t sure.
    “I’m sure she’ll cut you some slack after you tell her what happened.”
    Mia throttled down and looked at him so fiercely, he leaned back. The moon cast her face in black-and-white shadows as she snapped, “Do not tell her what happened. Do not!”
    He blinked at the sudden outburst.
    “She’ll flip out,” Mia said. “She already thinks diving is dangerous, and I get enough lectures from my parents about that. No way am I telling her what happened. No way. Got it?”
    He put his hands up. “Got it, got it.”
    She nodded firmly and got back on course, throttling up again. He kept his mouth shut and watched the water ripple by, because Mia was Mia, and he’d do as he was told, if only to prove she could trust him.
    If she ever would. But she’d trusted him this far, so that was something, right?
    The outboard was only a little four-horsepower thing, so the dinghy wasn’t setting any speed records, but from that close to the waterline and in the dark of the night, it still felt fast. A little like his whole day — zipping by in a blur of shadows and shapes.
    “Where’s your boat?”
    “Over there.”
    “Where?”
    “Way over there.” She motioned into the darkness, marked only by dots of masthead lights.
    “You didn’t tell me about the boat,” he murmured, trying not to let it sound like an accusation.
    She shrugged. “You didn’t you tell me about your job.”
    Yeah, he hadn’t told her about a lot of things.
    They chugged along in mutual silence, listening to the hum of the engine.
    “We’d been planning it for a while, my sister and I.” Mia started talking so quietly, he nearly missed her first words. “This trip.” She let a second tick by before continuing. “I gave my job in Boston notice and everything.” She paused again, and he had the sense that every sentence could have been a chapter in her life. “We were all set to fly