attention. Ever since she’d walked out on the stage something had bothered him, something other than how dire his need to fuck her had become. A faint memory tickled the back of his brain.
He’d seen the blue before. The glow of St Elmo’s fire.
Jamie went back to an old reference book he’d found days ago, tucked onto Braden’s shelf, the pages yellowed with time. He traced a finger over the page, the words he’d read earlier leaping out at him. St Elmo’s fire—watchers, saviors—legends are told by sailors of the fortune of the ships guided by their light. Sailors recovered from the storm-tossed sea speak of mermaids bestowing the kiss of life to their drowning souls.
Damn it all, where had he seen that glow before? Jamie walked out on the balcony to stare at the ocean again. It wasn’t a picture he was trying to remember, he was sure of it. The water crashed against the shore and another memory intruded.
The rush of waves, the taste of salt on the air…
It teased him. Like the faintest of memories, hidden in the recesses of his mind. There’d been surf. The blue shimmer and waves, the heat of the night and…music. Jamie twirled and raced back to the computer in search of pictures from one of his earliest assignments. He flipped through the shots, one after another, until he hit a snapshot from New Year’s Eve. Party hats and tipsy faces smiled back at the camera. He tapped his fingers on the screenshot, over the shoulder of the people. This was a part of what he needed.
Black rocks on the beach. Black on white…
He remembered attending the start of the party, but not the end.
Jamie poured himself a drink and took it out on the balcony, descending the stairs to the beach. The wind picked up, cool on his skin as he sank into one of the lawn chairs clustered together under the condo’s umbrella stands.
The wind had been warm…
He tossed back the fiery liquid, letting it roll down his throat and burn away part of his restraint. He closed his eyes and leaned back. Breathed in the sea smells, the salt and the moisture. The organic scents of seaweed and flotsam.
The sweet fragrance of a woman’s body…
They’d completed their project. Palma de Mallorca—he’d been taunted good-naturedly by his friends back home that his first excursion as an archaeology student was to a location that was a resort destination for many. Even his stuffy parents had somewhat approved. Oh, they would have been horrified at the tiny pensione rooms he and the other students were housed in like the serfs they were. Grunt labor at a dig was not glamorous. Digs were not attractive. Dirty, painstakingly boring maybe, never life-threateningly exciting like an out-of-control Indiana Jones movie. But the excitement came for him in other ways. Digging deep into the past and recovering missing information. Experiencing new cultures.
The strong espresso served in delicate porcelain cups…
New Year’s Eve and it was time to party. Their month-long session of fieldwork was over. In a day they’d fly home and return to digging for clues in books instead of diving beneath the waves or brushing away millennia of grime and dust from ancient sites.
The brush of soft female skin under his fingers…
“Happy New Year!”
Jamie raised his glass again, the cries of happiness around him contrasting with the bitterness in his belly. He wasn’t ready to leave. The new find was too fresh, too unexplored to abandon without knowing what other treasures it held.
He stayed at the party long enough to see his fellow students slip away with willing partners. Jamie was drawn in another direction. He fought it for all of a minute before giving in and returning to his room to grab flippers, mask, snorkel and his headlamp.
Swimming alone was stupid. Insanely stupid. He turned off the part of his brain that screamed at him as he strode toward the water. He wasn’t really going to dive, just like he’d never dream of actually touching