Free Devil and the Deep (The Deep Six) by Julie Ann Walker

ourselves.”
    She wanted to argue, unable to stand the thought of turning tail and running, leaving them all alone to face whatever fate waited for them on Garden Key. But arguing wasted precious time. Time when who knew what horrors were being perpetrated on that island. So she nodded and squared her shoulders. But inside she was saying, This can’t really be happening. This can’t really be happening. This can’t really be happening.
    When Mason chucked her on the chin with a scarred knuckle, she was forced to admit, Okay, so it’s really happening. Crap on a cracker!
    He pitched himself overboard. And she was left with nothing to do but watch him sink beneath the surface of the waves and contemplate the fact he’d willingly touched her for the very first time, and that their conversation had been the longest and most cordial of their acquaintance. Both struck her as unaccountably sad. Why did it take fully automatic weapons fire and a true life-and-death situation to make them stop taking digs at each other?
    It was a question that filled her with a million conflicting emotions. On the one hand, Mason McCarthy was sullen and cantankerous and prone to growling at her like a lion with a thorn stuck in his paw. On the other hand, she couldn’t ignore the appeal of his handsome face.
    Oh, not handsome in the traditional sense . His forehead was too heavy, not to mention perpetually furrowed. His nose was too wide and listed slightly to the left—evidence of a break he had never bothered to fix. And his jaw? Well, his jaw was a mile wide. And if it were any harder or more angular, it’d need to be carved from granite.
    But then there are his eyes. They were crystal blue. Like the water around Wayfarer Island on a sunny, windless day. And his hair. She sighed just thinking about it. It was thick and shiny and inky black.
    And that’s before you get to his body. Whoa, momma, what a body. He was so roped with muscle he could’ve been a contender for the WWE. She could easily imagine him throwing an opponent against the ropes or choking out an adversary with his beefy forearm. In short, Mason McCarthy cut a hard, forbidding figure. It was like he’d been built for destruction.
    Or something far more pleasurable.
    See? Conflicting. That one word precisely described their relationship.
    Or in more expansive terms, her girl parts were super interested in his boy parts. But every time he opened his mouth—which, let’s face it, wasn’t very often; a rock communicated more than he ever did—her brain became very annoyed with him.
    “Come on, Mason,” she grumbled, lifting the binoculars he’d pressed into her hand. Field glasses he’d called them. Through the magnified lenses, she could just make out the back of the fort—Mason had instructed her to sail the boat nearly two miles out to sea. Now she scanned the redbrick expanse for movement. But there was nothing. Not a damn thing.
    “Come on , Mason,” she said again, grimacing at the hitch in her voice. When she felt something hot and wet slip down her cheek, she hastily brushed it away. Unfortunately, another drop replaced the first, and that’s when she realized she was crying.
    That’s also when she realized just how much she’d come to care for the guys of Deep Six Salvage in the short time she’d been living and working with them. Not only were they men of rare courage and honor, but they were also incredibly… good.
    That was the best way she knew to describe them. They were all good men—Mason’s obvious aversion to her personality aside.
    The truth was, they’d shown her more respect and consideration than she’d ever received from anyone. In grade school, she’d been teased unmercifully because she never played Red Rover on the playground, preferring instead to sit quietly under a tree and devour the stories in her history book. And my Carrot Top hair, Casper the Ghost complexion, and Coke-bottle glasses didn’t help, I’m sure.
    In high