"Well, if I could say the same thing about you, we wouldn't be here right now, would we? And no one has ever called me a ball buster before. Is that what you really think of me?"

He put his hand to his face and squeezed his mouth to try and hide the grin trying to break free, but his eyes almost watered, she amused him so much. "Okay, I'll start with being mean. I was really angry with you for lying to me."

"I lied to you? When?" Her shock was genuine.

"Our conversation at Tanked. I asked you to come home with me . . . you turned me down, said you were gay."

"I never said I was gay." Her mouth gaped open.

"I know that, now! But at the time, I thought that's what you said." He still couldn't quite understand how he'd misunderstood. Now that he knew her better, he wondered how he never figured it out. "I don't usually have to do the asking, and I don't get rejected. When Tracy told me you weren't gay, I just assumed you said you were . . . to brush me off. I went out on a limb for you, broke my own pattern, I was pissed." His voice got quiet. He really was embarrassed. "I told myself you deserved to be messed with . . . the way you'd messed with me."

"Wow. All this time, that's what this has been about." She snorted, dumbfounded. "Why didn't you just say something? I could have explained, and saved us all the drama."

"The last explanation I expected to hear was that you're a virgin. My pride . . . I thought you shot me down because you thought that I was an idiot." He looked at her. "It never occurred to me that . . ."

"You've been horrible to me. All this time, for one bruise on your ego, one unintentional bruise. You were going to cheat me out of my money. You knew it was all the money I had in the world."

"You're angry again." He sighed and she didn't respond. "I have a plan to make it up to you, if you'll agree. I know it won't make up for everything, but it's a start." She looked to be listening so he continued. "Stay. I'm going to give you a full refund, regardless, but if you stay, you'll have money to live on while I get you certified. You can take the dive master course and even become an instructor if you want, all on the house."

"I wish I could. I don't want to go back, I wish I never had to go back, but my plane leaves when it leaves."

"Um, you can delay your flight. They'll probably charge a fee, but I'll pay it for you. It's the least I can do after everything I've put you through." They both sat quietly, Paul watching her as she considered his proposal. "Do you really want to stay?"

"Well, I really don't want to go home." She glanced at him and he remembered what she'd said about a change of scenery.

"The island is a good escape." He cast his eyes down and pretended to study the blanket. "I know a little about that."

She nodded. "This island, the shop . . . feels more like home to me than Utah, now that my parents-if it weren't for one very grumpy owner."

"If you want to stay, you should. I'll tone down the grumpy, to you anyway. I promise. Stay as long as you like."

"I can stay as long as my money holds out." She stared at the ground. "And you'll stop yelling at me, and burning holes in the back of my head with your eyes?"

"And no more bathroom or tank duty, except when it really is your turn, and no more Dailies."

"I don't mind the Dailies. I don't know why you think they're so awful."

He raised one eyebrow and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "Okay . . . you'd still have to do the Dailies." He laughed, but cautiously.

"So . . . how will it be . . . I mean, between . . . us?"

"What do you mean?"

She looked at him skeptically. "Just what do you expect to get from me for all this sudden compassion? Forgive me, but I'm not sure you can pull off being nice to me, unless you think there's something in it for you."

That hurt, but he knew why she'd asked.

"What's the catch?"

"There's no catch." He stared at the ground.

"I hate to point out the elephant in the room, but . . . Shelli?"

"Shelli? What the fuck does she have to do with anything?" He regretted his edgy reaction when he saw her expression.

"See? I knew you couldn't do this. You're going to have to stop yelling at me all the time."

His jaw tensed and he started manipulating his mouth. "I'm sorry. It's not really you. I've been in a bad mood for years."

"Really? I didn't notice," she said sarcastically.

"I promise to stop yelling." She made him laugh. "If you'll promise to stop provoking me." He looked at her sideways again, his tongue in his cheek.

She giggled and he liked the sound.

"You haven't addressed my question." She sounded serious again. "This isn't just some underhanded plan to . . . do what Shelli said."

"Just friends."

"Friends." She tried the word on. She flopped back on the blanket, looking up at the sky. His eyes grew wide, and it took him a second to rein in his nasty thoughts-this might be harder for him than he realized. He looked away, forcing himself to think about insects. His lips twisted into poses they didn't often get to.

"All right," she finally said.

He stopped trying to concentrate on anything and everything except her, to see if he heard her right. "You'll stay?"

"I'll stay until I run out of money."

"Friends . . ." He tried it on.

"That part is a little harder for me," she said. "For now, maybe we could stick with the term acquaintances."

Randy drove the boat right up onto the sand and Paul helped Rhees aboard, pushed off, and they headed back to the shop. It didn't take Paul long to realize what everyone thought the two of them had been doing for the last three hours. They all knew him too well.

"I've convinced, Miss Eternally-Virtuous, to stay on at the shop a while longer so I can make up for my poor behavior toward her . . . so get your minds out of the gutter. Apparently, I'm still not her type."

Rhees turned bright red.

Chapter 11.

Later that afternoon, the boat headed out for a round of afternoon dives, as Paul had promised. Rhees sat on the edge of the boat, her bottom hanging over the edge, the heavy tank and all her gear pulling at her to drop. She tried to collect the courage to let go of the rail, but in the meantime, she hung on for dear life.

She was supposed to fall backward into the water-the ocean, the real ocean, not the shallow, sandy bottom bay she'd finally warmed up to back at the shop. She knew she needed to get over her fear of the ocean, but she never knew how hard it would be to let go and fall blindly backward into it. She almost hyperventilated.

"I don't think I can do it!" she yelled.

"Yes you can." Shelli rolled her eyes, swearing under her breath. "It's not that hard. Just let go."

The boat rocked with the swells. Her gear, agonizingly heavy, made it next to impossible to hang on. The tank alone weighed a fair amount, a fact she'd become all too familiar with from her long tour on tank duty, but now hanging on her back, combined with the heavy weights in her integrated pockets, she struggled just to bear her own weight. The others had to pull her to a standing position, help her climb up on the boat's side, and position her so she could do her back roll . . . but she couldn't bring herself to do it.

A larger-than-average swell hit the boat and became her undoing. It tipped the delicate balance and she couldn't hold on any longer. She panicked, grasping desperately at the air and searching for anyone on the boat to save her. The only face she saw was Paul's, leaning over the edge to check on her, laughing at her.

The stark jolt of the cold water hit her and she gasped. You don't gasp under water, stupid, her brain told her. She knew she was going to die, but-Wait! I'm not drowning. I can breathe. Oh yeah. I have my regulator in my mouth. She slowly glided down, listening to the muffled sounds of bubbles all around her, watching them envelop her as her senses gradually returned.

The water wasn't as cold as it seemed when she first hit, and she orientated herself. She kicked and her head broke the surface. She looked up at the boat to see Paul still leaning over the edge.

"You okay?"

She nodded. He smiled at her and put his fist on top of his head, reminding her to give the "I'm okay" signal.

"Oh yeah." She returned the gesture and he smiled again. She kicked to move away from the boat and made her way to the other waiting divers. They seemed to be drifting farther and farther away from the boat and it concerned her, but they didn't seem to be worried about it at all. It must be fine. Her heart pounded and she couldn't steady her breathing. Scared but determined, she put a little air in her BC and let herself float toward the others.

Everyone else in the water had taken their regulators out of their mouths to conserve their air for the impending dive. They floated so casually on the surface, talking and laughing, while they waited for the rest of the divers on the boat to make their entrance into the water.

Rhees took her reg out too. She put a little more air in her BC and tried to stay calm. A second later, she put her reg back in her mouth. It embarrassed her to be in such a constant state of on-the-verge-of-panic, but she couldn't seem to keep her head above water while fighting the swells. It felt like she had to kick constantly to stay afloat. She added a little more air to her BC.

Geeminy, how do they make it look so easy? She worried she would wind up using all her air just to keep afloat . . . before they even started the dive. The thought reminded her to check her air pressure gauge. The needle held just below three thousand. No problem. She remembered that from her tank duty days. The tanks were always filled to three thousand psi, but some would wind up a little over, some a little under.

It's fine.

The next thing she knew, her head had slipped under water. She kicked to resurface, but she'd descended farther than she realized. She added more air to her BC and checked her depth gauge.

Something's wrong!

Once she hit nine feet, her descent accelerated. She cleared her ears and added more air to the device designed to make her float, maintain equal buoyancy, not sink-she wasn't supposed to be sinking. It didn't matter how much air she put in her BC, she continued to fall. She looked up to see if anyone noticed. They would help her.

Shelli, where are you? She stared upward at all the divers, still on the surface. No one had started their descent. No one was coming for her.

They don't know I'm having a problem. She fidgeted with her gear, not knowing what she hoped to accomplish, but her mind grew increasingly flustered and her ability to reason vanished with every second.

"Don't panic," she whispered into her reg. Just wait for them on the bottom. Shelli will know what to do. She looked down to see how much farther to the bottom, and flushed pale. The sandy shelf they planned to dive lay thirty yards away. Beneath her lay nothing but deep blue sea, no bottom in sight.

She leveled out and began to kick, no time to waste. Her fins propelled her through the water, but in spite of her progress, and to her horror, she watched the shelf slip by. She went numb, knowing she'd missed her landing, and still continued to slip into the abyss.

The last diver finally went over the side and Paul routinely counted the heads bobbing in the water before he slipped into his own gear . . . one missing. He turned instinctively to check the boat again. It wasn't a very big boat and he knew Randy, the captain, stood alone at the front, but he had to make sure. He stepped port side and scanned the water. He turned a complete circle, looking for the missing person, but didn't see anyone.

"Randy! You have the best eyes for bubbles. Find my missing diver."

Paul leaned over the boat and yelled at the people waiting in the water. "Hey! Where's . . ." He examined the faces. It didn't take long to figure out who was missing. His heart spiraled to his feet.

"Oh, no, no, no!" He didn't hesitate to jump to action. He yelled out orders as he put his gear on in record time. "Get back on the boat. Now!"

"I see bubbles! Over there, 'bout fifteen meters," Randy called before anyone had a chance to do anything.

Paul stood on the back of the boat, all geared up and holding an extra tank with a regulator already attached. He looked to see where Randy pointed and took a giant stride into the water. He didn't bother to surface before starting the fastest descent he'd ever made.

The visibility over the sandy shelf they'd planned to dive was as good as it usually was at eighteen meters but he didn't see her. Oh my God. She's over the wall. A string of swear words purposely coursed through his mind to ward off the dread he knew would dull his senses if he gave into it.

He dropped the extra tank on the shelf and headed in the direction of Randy's bubbles. He had nothing more to go on. His eyes strained, looking for any sign of her, but over the wall, into the deep, the visibility grew cloudier, darker. He hung over the edge, looking for any sign of her. Where is she? The visibility didn't cooperate. Damn it! Where are the bubbles?

He studied the tiny bubbles, little pockets of gases floating gently upward from the depths, a usual phenomenon in the ocean but Paul searched for what a regulator would put out.

If she panicked-if she went deep-she's already out of air! With that thought, he reached the edge of the wall, exhaled, and plunged head first, rocketing straight down.

He didn't have much to go on-his only hope, more an instinct. He took a quick look at the computer on his wrist. One hundred and forty-five feet. He kept going. Suddenly he saw it and moaned, thankful his hunch had been right. He continued to drop. The apparition that had been nothing more than a fuzzy black blob now came into focus.

He leveled himself at forty-eighty meters-one hundred and sixty feet below the surface-and grabbed Rhees from behind. She startled and gasped as she jerked around, shocked to see him appear from nowhere. He watched helplessly, the haunting desperation and terror in her eyes. There was no air left for her to gasp.

He yanked the regulator from her mouth, and it set her off. She frantically kicked and struggled to free herself from his grasp. He snatched his own reg from his mouth and rammed it into hers, clearing it for her as her mouth wrapped around it. It still hadn't registered in her frenzied mind that he wasn't trying to finish her off. He had to assume she suffered from nitrogen narcosis at that depth and he hurried, wanting to ascend before it got to him too.

Reflexively, she inhaled once, a tentative breath like all the breaths she'd taken the last several minutes. Her brain finally allowed her to believe the air would be there for her and she inhaled violently. She stared wide-eyed into his.

She clung to a rock overhang on the wall. He put his hands on hers, signaling to her to not let go. He removed his hand from the shoulder strap of her BC and reached down, tugging his octo, the backup regulator, from the casing attached to his BC, and he put it in his mouth. He checked his air pressure and frowned-down more than he'd hoped. He had to take into account the greater depth and the exertion of his descent, and now, Rhees sucked it up as if it were food, and she hadn't eaten in a week.

He put his hand on her chest to tell her to calm down but her eyes grew wide and she pushed away from the rock to get away from him. She sunk, which started her clamoring to get a hold of something again. He rolled his eyes, grabbed her again, and put her hands back on the rock. He reached down and released her integrated weights, noticing how heavy they were before letting them fall into the abyss, but he didn't take the time to check. She watched in shock but didn't dare let go again to protest.

This time he put his hand over his own chest and pumped it slowly, simulating his heart beat. Then, he put his hand to her chest but stopped before making contact, asking permission with his eyes to touch her. He patted her chest rapidly hoping to tell her to relax. She nodded with understanding and closed her eyes. He watched her take another deep, calming breath, and it made him grin.

"You're too cute for your own good!" he said into his reg, knowing she wouldn't hear him. "But you're wasting our air."

He took her by the shoulder strap again and started upward, careful not to ascend too quickly. After what seemed a lifetime under the circumstances, he pulled her onto the shelf and headed toward the extra tank he'd left. He checked their air pressure . . . almost gone.

He knew it wouldn't hurt to stay at eighteen meters for a moment to off gas a little and clear their heads after going so deep, even if they were only at depth for a minute or two. He wasn't sure how long she'd been down there. He tried to calculate it in his head while he adeptly switched her spent tank out for the extra one without having to remove her BC.

Next, he gave her BC a thorough inspection and found one of her dump valves tangled in a D ring, holding it in an open position-the reason her BC wouldn't hold air. It took some manhandling but he managed to remedy the problem. She dazedly watched him going through all the motions, allowing him to do what he needed.

He gave her the OK signal by forming his fingers into the shape of an O, but with a question on his expression. Scuba masks and regulators didn't help when trying to convey facial expressions but he'd never had trouble saying what he needed with his eyes.

She nodded, but he repeated the signal again, still trying to teach her. She finally responded with an OK signal of her own. He checked her air pressure, full. He checked his own. He knew he only had a few minutes left and he would have to switch to the octo on her fresh tank. He glanced up, wondering if they would make it on one tank.

To be on the safe side, he wanted to make a slow ascent, since he wasn't sure exactly how long she'd been down. A full tank would normally be sufficient and not an issue, if it weren't for her state of mind. She still sucked through the air too fast.

His eyes dropped from the water's surface, still sixty feet above, to look at her. When their eyes met, she lunged at him and threw her arms around his neck. The movement in the water knocked him backward, and he sat in the silty sand with her practically in his lap. Initially he thought she was still afraid, but when she didn't let go, he realized it must have just hit her how lucky she was to be alive. He hugged her back and didn't let go until she was ready, relieved himself.

Thank you, God, for sparing this beautiful person. The world is a much better place with her in it. He took a deep breath, but before his lungs could finish their draw, the air was gone. She noticed and pulled back to see what he planned to do next. He put her octo in his mouth and gave her the thumbs up, time to ascend.

He took hold of her inflator hose, raised it, and to her horror, let the air out of her BC. He started up, dragging her with him. She held perfectly still as if she didn't dare move for fear of doing something to kill them both. He repeated the procedure on his own BC.

As they rose, she must have noticed how he struggled to wrestle with both of their inflator hoses and watch his computer and air pressure while keeping a hold of her. She grabbed his BC strap and pulled herself into him as she watched his eyes. She held on like she never planned to let go. He smiled and let go of her so he could use both hands to manage everything. He'd stopped trying to signal to her to calm down because every time he did, she took a deep breath. It made him smile, even though there was no humor in the situation.