Escape (6 page)

The different shapes and colors of the corals mesmerized Lucy and she stared at her underwater surroundings in amazement. It was like a different planet down here, as though she had entered a new and magical world. Even Rudy’s presence was forgotten as she absorbed the sights of the reef.

Other divers swam around her and Lucy looked around, searching for Rudy. With all the equipment, she struggled to tell people apart, but then she recognized his strong, swimmer’s body ahead of her and she swam after him.

Rudy swam down, heading beneath an outcropping off the reef. He motioned for her to follow, pointing at something beneath the rock.

The sinister black head of a conger eel peeped from beneath a rock, baring vicious teeth and evil-looking eyes. Lucy’s face was only a foot from the eel and suddenly the fish darted out at her.

Lucy screamed into her regulator and thrashed to get away. She kicked out and her flipper caught a delicate fan coral. She watched in slow-motion horror as it snapped and slowly fell, sinking to the bottom of the reef bed.

Even behind the Perspex mask, she could see the dismay in Rudy’s eyes.

She shook her head, her movements in slow motion through the water, trying to tell him
,
through eye contact alone, that she was sorry.

She couldn’t believe it. Why did this kind of thing always happen to her?

The laughter had left Rudy’s eyes and he turned away from her, using just a nod of his head to tell her to follow the rest of the dive. She did as she was told, but she followed with a heavy heart, the pleasure of her surroundings drained.

Lucy pulled herself up
the ladder on the side of the boat, out of the wa
ter and into the sunshine. E
ven the warmth of the sun on her skin wasn’t enough to melt the freeze around her heart. She was so conscious of where Rudy was, of the tension that now
existed
between them
,
and she was hugely embarrassed. She wished she could take back what she had done, but that was impossible. All she could do was
apologize
.

Rudy stood sorting through equipment on the other side of the boat and with a thumping heart, Lucy crossed the deck. He was bent with his back to her and she still couldn’t help admiring the narrowness of his waist and the strength of his shoulders. If only he wasn’t so damned good-looking, she would find this a lot easier.

“Rudy,” she said tentatively. “I’m really sorry about the coral.”

He turned at the sound of her voice, a frown on his face.

“What were you thinking?” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I told you
not
to touch the reef, so what did you do? Knock down a whole damn branch of it!”

She couldn’t look at him. “I’m sorry. The eel darted at me and I just reacted. It was an accident.”

Rudy ran a hand over the top of his short wet hair and shook his head, his lips pressed together. Lucy didn’t think she had ever been so humiliated in her life. Even
when the consultants at the hospital ran her up in front of patients, she had never felt as small as this.

Then he seemed to remember himself.

“It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.” Rudy seemed to be angrier with
himself
than her, but it didn’t make her feel any better. “We shouldn’t be allowed to take incompetent divers out onto reefs that are suffering from over-diving because people don’t know what they’re doing.”

Incompetent divers.

His words rang in her ears and she felt her cheeks burn with shame. “I’m so sorry,” she said again.

Then she saw Rachel watching them. Lucy caught her eye and Rachel smiled at her, a closed mouth smirk.

At that moment in time, Lucy would quite happily have thrown herself overboard if she thought she wouldn’t just humiliate herself further.

“Don’t wor
ry about it,” he said, but he’
d lost the playful friendliness that had always been so apparent about him and she knew he was looking at her differently.

If only she hadn’t over-reacted.

Chapter Four

As soon as they docked
, guilt pressed heavily on Rudy’s shoulders. He shouldn’t have spoken to Lucy like that. He
’d
meant what he said; it was his fault the accident had happened. After all, he was the one effectively exploiting the reef he professed to care about so much in order
to make a living. He made his money
through diving and taking divers out onto the reef, but if they didn’t come, the reef wouldn’t suffer the damage caused by the boats and the tourists.

He
’d
reacted so badly because he was nothing but a hypocrite and he knew it. He shouldn’t have taken out his own self-doubt on Lucy.

W
hy did it have to be that girl who managed to kill a whole branch of coral? Of all the people he took out diving, it had to be the one who had caught his attention.

Someone touched him lightly on the arm, dragging him fro
m his thoughts. He turned to find
Rachel standing behind him.

“Everything al
l
right?” she asked. “You seem kind of down.”

He gave a slight shake of his head, trying to clear himself of his doldrums, and then gave Rachel a smile. “I’m fine, just pondering life.”

She grinned back. “That sounds ominous.”

“You know me; always trying to figure things out.”

“You think too much,” she said, winking at him.

Rachel always seemed the chilled out, fun-loving Aussie. Rudy wished he could be like her. Yet despite how he appeared to others on the
outside, he worried about life
. The things he wanted never came easily. At thirty-four years old, despite his achievements, he was living the life of a much younger man, and not in a good way. He had always thought by the time he hit his thirties, he would be married, possibly even with children by now. But deciding to come to this island and leave his more ‘conventional’ life behind meant he had cut himself off.

The women who came to the island only ever wanted to have some fun. They were all young and either traveling or on holiday, and the last thing they wanted was a relationship.

The one time he thought he had met someone
different,
he nearly lost everything he’d worked for. Rudy didn’t intend on putting himself through that again.

For Lucy, the trip
back
to the resort was the longest drive she had ever been on. When they finally got back, Lucy washed her gear with the rest of them, packed it into the store room, and went straight up to her room. She was hiding away from everyone—well Rudy and Rachel at least. It was so stupid, hiding in her room because she broke a damn piece of coral.

She threw herself down on her bed and flung an arm over her eyes.

Why did she always end up feeling like this, like she wanted to hide away from the world?

She had to wonder why she was letting this guy get to her so much. It wasn’t just that when he focused on her with those amazing, deep brown eyes she felt like they were the only two people in the world, or that ever since she met him all she could think about was what his skin would taste like under her lips.

She still technically had a boyfriend at home—she still had a
life
at home. He was just some handsome dive instructor who had probably never even lived in the real world or done a day’s proper work in his life. Why the hell did she care what he thought?

Lucy took the little spark of indignant anger inside of her and fanned it. What right did he have to make her feel badly about an accident? She was the paying guest here; he
should be doing everything he could to make her feel welcome, not make a fuss about a piece of god-damned rock.

It was a live
creature,
a voice rang out in her head.
Coral isn’t a rock; it’s a group of little animals.

But Lucy ignored the voice and focused on her own self-righteousness instead.

She wasn’t going to let some dive instructor make her hide in her room when she had paid all this money for her holiday.

Still fired up, she showered and dressed, choosing a strapless sundress and a pair of jeweled sandals. The outfit was far dressier than she normally wore, but she didn’t care. It was about time she had some fun. She was sick of always being so serious. She wanted to be more like girls like Rachel who did what they wanted, when they wanted and didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought of them.

Even so, the memory of what had happened made her cringe and she forced herself to think of something else.

She went down to the bar, except this time she didn’t take her book with her. It was just after lunch and though she hadn’t eaten, she ordered a beer and sat on one of the stools beside the bar.

The beer arrived and she took a long swig, the bubbles making her eyes water. Self-co
nsciously, she tugged at her clothing
, making sure she was as covered as she could be in the flimsy dress. She looked
up to check
if anyone had noticed and saw Stacy and Leanne sitting at a table with two men. One of them was Paulie, the overweight guy she had sat next to on the truck, and she recognized the other one from the dive, but didn’t know his name.

Stacy saw her and waved. Lucy raised a hand in response and Stacy beckoned her over. Lucy shook her head and tried to sign that she was fine at the bar, but
Stacy wasn’t having any of it. B
y now the others had noticed and encouraged her over as well. She felt rude not to go.

“Hi,” Stacy sai
d as Lucy
approached their table. “Y
ou look nice.”

Lucy tugged at her dress. “Oh, thanks. I thought I would make an effort for once.”

“So it’s not for any pa
rticular man?” Leanne teased
.

“Err, no. I don’t think that particular man
and I
are on speaking terms right now. And anyway,” she added quickly, “he was only doing his job.”

“It was only a piece of coral, right?” said the man whose name she didn’t know. “It’ll grow back.”

Lucy forced a smile, but her cheeks flushed. She couldn’t believe everyone seemed to know about the accident.

“Do you want another one of those?” Leanne asked, motioning to her almost empty bottle. “I’m getting another round in.”

“No, I’m fine, I’ll get it.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, already getting up from the table. “We’re off to a party later if you want to come. Everyone on the island will be there—it’s a half-moon party.”

Lucy frowned to show she didn’t recognize the name.

“Like a full-moon party on
Koh
Pha
Nang, only the moon is
half-f.”

“Oh, right.”

It sounded like an excuse for a party to her, but who was she to argue?

One drink turned into several and Lucy finally felt herself relax. She wished Rudy would turn up s
o he would see her with friends
. She didn’t want him to think he had affected her, yet he lingered in the back of her mind. She watched out for him, distracted, the whole afternoon.