While keeping a sharp eye on everything she did.
The sooner she completed her task, the sooner she could be off his ship. And the sooner they could get back to business as usual. He could return to the uncomplicated existence he’d enjoyed for the past two years.
That was what he wanted.
Uncomplicated. Unhurried. A life doing what he’d come to love—spending his time in warm, tropical waters—with two of his best friends.
After the turmoil of the past sixteen years, he deserved a break.
Knox stared out across the vast expanse of open water. It was calm, smooth this far from any shore. It always managed to make him feel small and insignificant. For some people that might be frightening, but for Knox it was reassuring. Knowing that he was one teeny, tiny piece in a gigantic whole helped to take some of the pressure away. Not everything was his fault or responsibility.
Sometimes that lesson was difficult to remember.
As he usually did whenever the stars winked on for the first time at night and he happened to be in a position to see them, he looked up. Picking one out, he closed his eyes and murmured a few words to his big brother. About his life, his day—good and bad.
He was so caught up in the moment that he didn’t hear anyone approach until a soft voice murmured beside him.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
Jerking his gaze down, Knox stared for several seconds at Avery.
She wasn’t close. There was at least three feet of railing between them. Although it didn’t matter. His body reacted as if she’d whispered those words straight into his ear, as if the warmth of her breath had tickled across his skin.
Knox tamped down his reaction, controlling it as he’d learned to ruthlessly control everything else. Desire, just like pain, could be ignored.
And he had every intention of ignoring any reaction Dr. Walsh stirred within him.
At some point she’d changed clothes, probably into what she considered casual wear. Sure, she was in shorts, but they were linen and looked damned expensive. She’d paired them with a gauzy top in fading shades of blue and fussy sandals with straps that crisscrossed up her calves. And the damn pearls—although this strand was longer than the ones earlier, and swayed between her breasts.
She’d pulled her flame-red hair up into some kind of bun thing at the back of her head that managed to look both sophisticated and complicated. Not to mention tight enough to give her a headache. Knox just wanted to mess it up.
For the briefest moment, he contemplated whether or not to tell her a few strands had escaped the tight confines and were curling to trail down her neck and face. He decided not to, mostly because he knew she’d immediately try to tame them back.
As far as he was concerned, those wisps of red were the best thing about her outfit.
“What?” he finally asked when he realized he’d been staring at her a little too long.
“The stars, they’re gorgeous. It’s one of the best things about being on the open water. So bright. No matter where my family was, or how foreign our home felt, the stars were always the same. I could look up into the sky, and even from our first night in a new city or village, I’d feel centered.”
Her statement struck him as sad, wistful in a way that tugged at him. And curious.
“You moved a lot?”
She laughed, the sound soft and uneasy. “Every few months. My dad was an archaeologist but my parents liked having the family together, no matter how remote the location.”
Shifting her hips against the railing, Avery rested her weight there. She stared out across the quiet water.
Knox didn’t quite know what to do with this contemplative version of the woman he’d met. So he stayed silent and simply listened.
“My sister and I were homeschooled. My parents wanted the world to be our classroom, and I have to admit there were things about the experience I wouldn’t trade. But for someone who tended toward shyness, it became very difficult to dredge up the energy to make friends in each new place.”
Knox studied her, wary instincts clanging a warning deep inside his head. What was her angle? Was she playing him? Doling out information he hadn’t asked for in the hopes of tugging on his heartstrings—assuming he had any, of course?
Like any good intelligence officer, he let her continue in the hopes of discovering the answer to some or all of those questions.
“My sister and I would often wish on the first star of the night. But I suppose that would be too foolish for a big, bad Navy SEAL, huh?”
“Doc, I think you’ve got the wrong impression of me. There have been plenty of times in my life I would have prayed to wood nymphs, Aztec gods or, hell, Martians, if it meant saving lives. I believe in my training. I respect the brothers who fought beside me. And I’m wise enough to realize there are forces at work outside our control every single day. I value life and understand what’s important—people, not things.”
Her pale blue eyes jerked to his. “Interesting.”
“What?”
She shrugged. “Just not what I expected.”
Knox felt his lips curve down into a frown.
Slowly she cleared her throat, turning and folding her arms over the railing so she could stare down at the water churning beneath them. “Look, I think maybe we got off on the wrong foot.”
“Maybe?” There was no question they’d gotten off on the wrong foot.
“Hey, you’re the one who almost ran me over with that little car.”
“Doc, that wasn’t just any car. And she might be small, but she’s damn powerful.”
“And fast.”
Knox grinned. “And fast.”
He mirrored her position, sliding closer and folding his own arms over the railing.
“What’s so special about the car...aside from the fact that it came inches away from wearing me as a hood ornament?”
He could have rattled off a bunch of statistics, talked about the car’s racing history. Instead, Knox found himself saying, “First of all, like I told you that day, I was in complete control the entire time. You were never in any danger.”
“Excuse me if I don’t trust your judgment on that.”
Knox’s lips flashed up into a self-deprecating grin, the kind that acknowledged her statement and then immediately dismissed it. Because she was absolutely wrong. However, he was intelligent enough to realize that having this argument again wasn’t going to get either of them anywhere.
“But, more importantly, it’s my brother’s.”
Which wasn’t true since Kyle had never owned it, but Knox always thought of the car as his. It should have been his.
Kyle had talked about that car incessantly. Had put posters of the Shelby on his wall. Together, the two of them had planned to fix one up. His brother had even started saving.
Since Kyle hadn’t been able to follow through on the dream, in his spare time Knox had done it for him. It had been a labor of love, and of atonement. It was the least he could do since Kyle’s death had been his fault. That car was Knox’s single most prized possession.
The familiar guilt snaked through his chest, tightening everything to the point that he couldn’t breathe. It was a battle he’d fought for the past sixteen years. A battle that never seemed to get easier.
It didn’t matter that no one else blamed him for the accident that had killed his brother, his brother’s