Chapter Twenty-Two

Andrea’s heart lurched. “Fired? The whole team?”

“He’s upset,” Mitch said, in a tone that suggested the idea was logical.

She peered at him with raised eyebrows as if to say, “Well, duh.”

Mitch’s gaze went to Dillon. “He and Karli aren’t biological brother and sister. His father married her mother when Karli was still a toddler.”

“Stepsiblings?” She turned to watch Dillon. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t a complete scumball.

“Yes, but it’s not public knowledge. Dillon’s dad adopted Karli so she has the Stone name. Their relationship is weird, but it’s not incestuous. But the press won’t care. He’s concerned Karli is going to be smeared by the bloodthirsty media. And he’s probably right.”

“But he’s constantly being photographed with gorgeous models and starlets. He has a playboy reputation.”

“Diversionary tactic.”

Dillon headed toward a stairway and hurried through the door, slamming it behind him. She frowned. “Where’s he going? He looks ready to kill.”

Mitch shrugged.

She wanted to throw up her hands in frustration. “Men! We have to do something. You can’t just let him fire us and storm off.”

Mitch shook his head and shrugged again. “It’s his decision.”

Imagining being sent home surrounded by a shroud of failure, Andrea huffed out her breath and rushed after Dillon. The stairs he’d taken led to the ship’s boat garage. The large bay holding an inflatable tender, a speedboat, two Jet Skis, and a few kayaks and paddleboards was lit by fluorescent lamps and smelled of oil and gasoline. A wide door in the boat’s side was sliding upward, and the bright sunlight streaming in from outside blinded her momentarily. She spotted Dillon on a boarding platform.

A crewman shouted, “Stay back, please.”

She stopped and watched as the sleek ebony speedboat with orange and red flames painted along the sides bow to stern moved outward on two davits and was deposited in the water next to the Black Swan’s hull.

She caught up to Dillon as he was climbing into the speedboat. The boat was similar to the one he’d told her he sold at his dealership and looked as if it were doing two hundred miles an hour just standing still. Dillon stepped behind a console and a small windshield.

She called, “Wait, Dillon. Do you know who would do this?”

He glanced at the crewman holding the boat’s bowline and back at her with a warning glare. “Not now.”

“It might not be as bad as you think.”

“If you won’t shut up, get in.”

She shook her head. Get in that little boat? No way.

He turned the key in the ignition, and a rumble erupted from the high-performance engine. The noise quickly swelled into a roar. Dillon nodded to the crewman as his hand reached for the shift lever.

Before her brain could block the action, Andrea jumped and landed on the speedboat’s seat. A second after her feet touched down, the boat lurched away from the side of the yacht. Her stomach lurched with it. Ice flooded her veins. Shit, bad move. She longed for a time machine that could rewind her jump and put her back on the big, firmly-tied-to-the-dock boat. Geez. What if she got sick?

She closed her eyes, but decided pretending not to be here wasn’t the answer.

Scrambling down off the seat, she grabbed a handhold and yelled to be heard over the roar of the engine. “Where are you going?”

He motioned toward the harbor entrance with his chin. “Out there. To blow off steam.” He pushed the throttle forward and steered the boat along the side of the cruise ships lined up along the wharf.

“Couldn’t you just jog like normal people?”

He ignored her and steered the boat.

They were in a no-wake zone paralleling the wharf, and the boat cut through the water at a moderate speed. The harbor surface was flat. Okay. Not so bad. She could handle this. She licked her lips, sat, and reiterated, “The situation might not be as dire as you think.”

He glowered at her. “The camera’s been moved. Whoever planted it will know and act. If their goal is to shock the world, they’ll succeed.”

“The camera wasn’t recording while Mitch and I were in your cabin. It must be on a timer that’s set to be activated at night. We can get our tech guys to inspect the SD card and camera, then put everything back before nightfall. We can leave it in place while we figure out who put it there.”

He gave her a look of disbelief. “And let it keep recording?”

“Are you planning to have sex with Karli again anytime soon?” She gulped and raised her palms in a gesture of apology. “Okay, forget I said that.” Making herself slow down and think before she blurted out anything else stupid, she went on. “We can angle the camera away from your bed. The person who planted it will think a cleaning person jostled it or moved it while dusting.”

“You’ll only delay the inevitable. Karli will be devastated if pictures of her naked in my bed—the two of us making love—are published for all the world to see.”

A slideshow of images flashed in her mind’s eye. The pictures could have been of her trying to seduce Dillon, and worse, being turned down because he was in love with his sister. Stepsister. Focus.

“Believe me, I understand how she would be mortified. Most women, including me, would be. But better off mortified than dead. You can’t throw us off this job until her life is no longer in danger.”

They’d reached the stern of the last of the cruise ships, and the open harbor entrance loomed ahead. Waves with angry whitecaps marched toward the speedboat from the open sea, and the bow rose and fell. She opened her mouth to suggest he turn around, but before the words were out, Dillon jammed the throttle forward, almost jarring her off her seat. She gasped, grasped the bar in front of her with two hands, and held on, her knuckles turning white.

The boat accelerated and skipped over the waves as if preparing to lift off and fly. Dillon stood behind the steering wheel with his legs spread for balance. As they slammed into and over a series of especially big waves, he pushed the throttle farther forward until the engine noise combined with the whine of the wind in her ears was almost deafening.

She squeezed the handhold tighter. Droplets of salty spray wet her face.

He steered past a heap of nasty-looking rocks with waves crashing into their unyielding bulk and then down a narrow channel between two islands. A small fishing boat nosed out of one of the coves to the right. Dillon wrenched the wheel to the left and swerved to avoid a collision. The speedboat tilted precariously and stood up on its side. Smelling her own fear, Andrea held her breath. Would they tip over at any second?

When the boat settled back down and the centrifugal force lessened, she pulled herself to her feet and screamed into Dillon’s ear. “Knock it off before you get both of us killed.”

“I own a dealership and sell these things. I can handle my own boat.”

Anger boiled in her blood. “Oh for Christ’s sake. Don’t be such an ass. Think. Get all your high-paid media and PR people together and figure out a way to get ahead of the scandal. If you’re such a hotshot manager, act like one.”

He scowled and his eyes narrowed to slits. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

The tight look of fury he shot in her direction raised gooseflesh on her arms. This time her big mouth had gone too far. She saw herself shipped back to Boston, not only a failure at her first Ranger assignment, but out of a job completely for being impertinent and insulting a client.

Dillon wrenched the wheel all the way around and made a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn. He cut the throttle so quickly she toppled forward. He reached out and caught her before she slammed into the hull.

Pushing her back into her seat, he asked, “What are you suggesting?”

She gulped and grabbed a couple lungfuls of air. Thank God, the boat was no longer moving. “If we return the camera to the picture frame, we buy you some time to come up with a strategy. First thing, have Karli change her last name back to whatever it was before your father adopted her. Then get her on morning talk shows discussing animal rescues so that she can mention that you two aren’t real siblings. You have to make some sort of preemptive strike. Hire a reputation management specialist. Get your media people scrambling to find a way to defuse whatever bomb gets dropped before it can explode.”

He took a step to the side. “Take the wheel. I need to think.”

“I…”

He put up a hand to silence her, shook his head, and stared at the horizon.

A wave lifted the boat, then dropped it as the hill of water moved on. She wanted off these waves. She looked at the controls, felt another swell roll under the hull, glanced back toward the harbor entrance, then Dillon. He seemed oblivious to the ocean and the waves, lost in another world. Unless she wanted to sit here and risk getting sick, she’d have to handle this herself.

“Shit.” She pulled in a fortifying breath, grasped the wheel with one hand and the throttle with the other. Slowly, she increased the pressure and pushed the throttle a tiny bit forward.

The engine noise changed pitch from a slow rumble to a rhythmic drone, and the boat resumed moving. Okay. Pretty easy. She pushed the throttle another inch. Okay. She could drive this thing. She put both hands on the wheel and steered toward the promise of safety at the sheltered harbor entrance.

Before her breathing and heartbeat had a chance to steady, Dillon leaned over and jammed the throttle forward. “Don’t pussyfoot. We have work to do. You need to get back to impersonating Karli, and I need to plan an offense.”

The boat jumped forward. Panic grabbed her by the throat, and she pulled the throttle back. She shouted over the roar of the engine. “We don’t want to go too fast. We need to conserve. The fuel gauge is low.”

“There’s a quarter tank. That’s enough to take us another thirty miles.” He pushed the throttle forward again.

The boat leaped up and over the next wave. Her hair was swept back from her face, and a slick of evaporating spray supercooled her skin. She licked her lips and tasted salt. She clutched the wheel, as much to maintain control as to hold on, and spread her feet wide to keep her balance.

As the minutes passed, Andrea concentrated on the beast under her control and learned the sensitivity of the wheel. She experimented with various strategies and became more adept at judging where to cross or ride a wave. Keeping the boat steady became a challenge. Slowly, she let her rigid muscles relax. The bright sun warmed her face. The boat responded to subtle course adjustments like a well-tuned performance car. She couldn’t help but grin. Speeding over the waves could be a source of exhilaration.

By the time she steered into the harbor, her breathing had returned to normal. Somewhere along the way, she’d stopped worrying about getting sick. And as she slowed to the harbor speed limit and crept along next to the cruise ships, her blood pounded with the thrill of driving such a powerful machine.

She pulled the boat up next to the yacht, feeling buoyed by a sense of renewed hope, and understanding why Dillon would use a spin in the speedboat to blow off steam. Her mind seemed clearer. She was able to view the situation in perspective.

The video had complicated matters, but all was not lost. She still had an assignment and a job. As long they didn’t come across any more nasty surprises, she still had a chance to shine.