Free Diving In by Gretchen Galway Page A

back and tilted her face up to the sun.
    The guy across from her noticed. He was almost as big as Miles, built like an action figure. Rivulets of water ran down his pecs—and his own erect nipples—and she decided he either came from a sunny location back home or had been in Hawaii for a while, because although his hair was lighter than hers, his skin was perfectly bronzed.
    Under the tufts of hair. He was kind of like a blond gorilla.
    From her peripheral vision, she watched him stare at her breasts. It took every hot, steaming drop of her willpower not to cross her arms over her chest and dive under the water. If she weren’t terrified of drowning, she might have.
    “Hey, baby, come here,” he said.
    All the breath—which apparently she’d been holding for the last six minutes, because it came out in a tight, stale whoosh —burst out of her. Under her erect nipples, her heart pounded against her ribs. “What?” she whispered.
    “I saw a turtle, Daddy!” A little girl jumped fearlessly into the spa and splashed over to the big man. “In the ocean! Come see!”
    Smiling broadly, the man lifted the little girl up in the air. A snorkeling mask hung around her neck, and a single flipper clung to her tiny left foot. She was very young, maybe four, but she wore a spongy rubber wet suit from neck to knee that fit her perfectly.
    “It probably swam away by now, honey, don’t you think?” he asked her.
    “No, I told him to wait. He likes me. Come on, come on!”
    The man turned away from the little girl to gaze above Nicki’s head. “She told him to wait,” he said, grinning.
    A woman who’d been blessed by God’s airbrushers strode around the spa and squatted down behind the man and the little girl. She wore a black-and-neon-orange athletic bikini with the crotch coverage of, approximately, her clitoris.
    It seemed the blond gorilla had all the hair in the family. Not even a single razor bump was visible. My God, didn’t that hurt?
    All at once, the sporty trio glanced up at her. Nicki quickly smiled at the little girl. “Cute,” she said. Not you, she added silently to the woman, who’d caught her staring at her shaved labia.
    The woman smiled tightly. The man didn’t look at her. “She wants to go back in,” the woman said.
    “I told him I’d be right back,” the girl said.
    “Well, we don’t want to be rude.” The man stood, slinging the girl over his shoulders, and stepped out of the pool, water streaking down his hairy legs like balls in a pachinko machine.
    The woman rose and they walked toward the ocean. No doubt the turtle was glancing at his watch.
    When she’d stopped hyperventilating, Nicki climbed out to try the baby pool again.
    * * *
    Ansel looked at the pizza on the counter, then at the clock on the microwave. It was past eight. Shouldn’t she be back from swimming by now? He’d seen her go out hours ago, though she hadn’t noticed him sitting in the living room.
    It had been three days since she’d refused his invitation to dinner, long enough, he hoped, that she’d share a pizza with him. The delivery guy had just delivered it, and it was getting cold.
    He went to the door and put on his shoes. The hotels and resorts along the beach all looked the same to newcomers; maybe she was lost.
    Imagining her gratitude when he rescued her, he was a little disappointed to find her floating on her back in the wading pool within two hundred yards of the condo tower, exactly where she’d stood the other day, laughing about swimming.
    He stopped and considered going back inside without bothering her, but then he saw the scowl on her face. She was glaring at the sky and breathing heavily.
    “Nicki?” he asked. The pool was as big as a soccer field, but the western half of it, near the hot tubs, was only a foot or two deep. This late on a Thursday night, she had it to herself. Ansel scanned the deck chairs. Mostly to herself. A couple of guys near the bar watched her, drinking silently.