Deeper Than The Ocean by Julie Ann Walker
Chapter 10
1:04 AM…
Romeo watched Mia attempt to slide her key card into the slot on her hotel room door. She missed and dropped the plastic rectangle on the floor when her cell phone buzzed.
The damned thing had been going off at regular intervals all night. While they waited in the emergency room. While they hung out with Chrissy at the hospital. On the short cab ride to the hotel.
Each time it did, Mia glanced at the screen, read whatever was there, and then put the device away again.
He’d initially thought she was receiving desperately adoring messages from a boyfriend or a lover—and never mind that twinge of jealousy; we’re just going to ignore that—except she never responded. Which meant whoever was texting her was having a monologue, not a dialogue.
That’s not how a woman acts with a lover. At least not in his experience. Women, the wonderful creatures, were only too happy when they were chitchatting.
And never mind that rush of relief; we’re just going to ignore that too.
“You getting stock price updates or what?” He bent to retrieve her key card. When he handed it to her, their fingertips brushed—hers were cool and soft compared to his hard calluses—and a current of awareness shot up his arm.
Douchebagistan, he thought to himself. Population: you.
He had no business being attracted to the likes of Mia Ennis.
For one thing, she screamed relationship material.Which he did his best to steer clear of. When it came to the ladies, he liked them easy like Sunday morning.
Mia was a Monday morning for sure.
For another thing, she was a girly-girl, all sweet and shy and soft-spoken. Too refined, too wholesome, and far too good for a reformed gangbanger like himself.
Not that she’d give him a chance even if he were inclined to ask for it. Which he wasn’t—No, really. I’m not—because while he might’ve worked his way around to ignoring that she was too damn good for him, or rationalizing a way to get her naked despite her striking him as the kind of woman who wouldn’t know the first thing about a one-night stand, he couldn’t discount she was scared of him.
Like, straight up panic-stricken. She shuddered every time he touched her. And nearly jumped out of her shoes when he opened his mouth to speak.
He wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve her fear. They’d only had a handful of interactions. In fact, barring their short conversation in the emergency room and the two times they’d been paired as dive partners on the wreck and had been forced to do equipment checks together, they were looking at a big, fat goose egg.
Although, on second thought, a lot of things seemed to agitate Mia. Hospitals. Having a hair out of place. So maybe he shouldn’t take her reactions to him too personally.
“No.” She shook her head. Speaking of having a hair out of place, her new haircut was shorter in the back than the front, styled in loose, beachy waves. Even in the dimness of the hotel hallway it caught the light and shimmered with health. “It’s my cousin,” she explained. “When I come here and get cell service, he takes it upon himself to fill me in on the family drama I missed while I was out of range.”
Romeo lifted an eyebrow. “Must be a lot of drama.”
“You have no idea.” She rolled her eyes.
This time she succeeded in unlocking her door. He waited until she opened it and turned on the interior light before telling her, “I’m right next door if you need anything.”
It’d been one hell of a day, and he was beat. In fact, the last time he remembered being this tired, he’d still been with the Teams. The minute his head hit the pillow, he knew he’d be lights out.
He was halfway to his hotel room when Mia’s voice reached out to him. “Do you want to come in for a drink?”
He stopped in his tracks and considered the possibility he’d misheard her. Was exhaustion making him hallucinate?
Do you want to come in for a drink? He turned the words over in his head, replacing them, rearranging them, trying to come up with something that sounded like them but wasn’t really them.
Nope. He was at a loss.
Okay, so she had asked if he wanted to come in for a drink. And usually do you want to come in for a drink was a euphemism for I want you to come tear off my clothes and bounce me around on the mattress until the sun comes up, big boy.
But this was Mia Ennis. So…
He turned slowly and found her watching him with big, worried eyes. If she wrung her hands any harder, she might pull off a finger.
She certainly didn’t look like a woman who was itching for a little sumpin’ sumpin’. In fact, she looked like a woman who was two seconds away from losing her shit.
“I—” Her mouth opened and closed. She tried to shutter her expression, but he could read the message in her amber-colored eyes—those cat eyes that’d mesmerized him since the moment he caught sight of them.
She was agitated. But this time it wasn’t because of him.
“Breathe,” he instructed instinctively. The woman had a terrible habit of holding her breath. It made her anxiety worse.
Once she released a shuddery breath, he asked, “Is everything okay?” as he moved closer and closer to her, ignoring the urge to turn around and dart into his hotel room when it grew stronger and stronger.
Damsels in distress were his weakness. They called to the part of him that wanted to defend and protect.
“I, um.” She kept twisting those thin finger of hers and it took herculean effort not to reach out and grab her hands to stop her fidgeting. He had to shove his fists deep into the pockets of his jeans. “I’m keyed up after everything. I think some gin or vodka would help calm my nerves, but I make it a point never to drink alone.”
He watched her eyes cloud over. “My mom is an alcoholic,” she explained. “Like, the blackout drunk, smash things, hurt herself and those around her kind of alcoholic. According to Carter…” She lifted her phone. “That’s my cousin. The one who’s been texting? Anyway”—she shook her head—“according to him, she’s fresh out of rehab. Again.”
Her face contorted around a look of…he wasn’t exactly sure. Pessimism, maybe? Mixed in with a smidge of grief? Before he could respond, she continued.
“I’ve read enough books on the subject and been to enough Al-Anon meetings to take seriously the science that says it runs in families. Hence my hard and fast rule never to drink alone. Which is why I’m trying to convince you to come in and share one with me. What?” She cocked her head. “What’s that look for?”
“I’ve never heard you string that many sentences together at one time.” He shook his head in wonder. She had a nice voice when she wasn’t keeping it to barely above a whisper. It was low and raspy. The voice of one of those old film noir actresses.
“Which goes to show I wasn’t lying when I said I was keyed up. So? How about that drink?” Now there was a beseeching look in her tired eyes.
He recognized it well. He’d worn that same look plenty of times when he’d been young and trying like hell to stay out of ‘the life,’ and then again at the end of just about every mission he’d ever run for the SEALs where he’d been forced to mete out death and destruction. It was the look someone wore when they weren’t physically tired, but instead suffering from a mental exhaustion that made them want to crawl into a hole and never come out.
Against every single ounce of his better judgment, he pressed open her hotel room door and gestured for her to precede him. “By all means then, lead the way.”
I will not look at her ass. I will not look at her ass. I will not…
He looked at her ass as he followed her into the room because he couldn’t not look.
Mia was a slight woman, with thin arms and legs, a narrow waist and small breasts. But when it came to her posterior?
Sisquo said it best. The woman had dumps like a truck. One of those perfect peach-shaped butts made for twerking or for smacking gently when a man was doing her from be—
Head out of the gutter, pendejo!
He gave himself a mental slap and forced his gaze away from her juicy behind. Since the only other thing to look at was her hotel room, he gave it a once-over.
Queen bed, wood veneer desk, and mini-fridge. It wasn’t the Ritz-Carlton, by any means. Certainly not the luxury she’d grown up with in Chicago. But exactly as she had done while settling into the Wayfarer Island beach house, she seemed to have made herself at home.
Her expensive skincare products were neatly arranged on the bathroom vanity, perfuming the air with their scent. It was an aroma he liked to call “money.” Her overnight bag was open and some of its contents were laid out on the bed. A pink T-shirt. Pink sleep shorts. Pink panties.
When she saw the ensemble, she blushed and hastily shoved everything back into her bag. Her cheeks were the exact color as the garments she’d hidden away.
What other parts of her are cotton candy pink? he wondered. Then, No, goddamnit! You’re here as a friend, a compadre, a drinking buddy. Get that through your thick skull!
Moving to the mini-fridge, she squatted and scanned the little bottles of liquor. “What’s your poison?”
When he was quiet for too long because he’d forced his gaze to the ceiling, she turned to frown at him over her shoulder.
“Would I be a total cliché if I admitted it’s tequila?” He tried to insert levity into the awkwardness of the situation.
He’d never been in a woman’s hotel room without taking her in his arms and kissing her lips until she begged him to kiss other parts of her that were decidedly lower than that.
What the fuck am I supposed to do now? Sit on the bed? Grab the desk chair? Keep standing here like a complete and total assclown?
“Why would that be cliché?” She blinked at him.
“Uh.” He drew his eyebrows together. “Because I’m second-generation Mexican-American?” He pointed to his face. “If this doesn’t give it away, then surely my name does. Spiro Delgado?”
“Oh.” She looked embarrassed. “Right.” She shook her head. “I’m usually quicker on the uptake than that. Blame it on the letdown of adrenaline.”
Grabbing a plastic cup, she upended the mini bottle of Jose Cuervo into it. “Ice?” she asked.
His grandmother had always taught him good tequila was for sipping, straight up, or with a sangrita chaser. But Cuervo wasn’t made with one-hundred-percent blue agave, so he told Mia, “Couple of cubes,” as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, feeling like the walls were closing in on him.
One drink, he told himself. You can endure this for one drink.
After handing him the tequila, she chose the bottle of Bombay Sapphire for herself and emptied it into a cup she’d filled to the brim with ice. Taking a quick sip, she motioned with her hand toward the desk chair. “Sorry. I’m being a terrible hostess. Please, make yourself comfortable.”
He settled into the faux leather seat, feeling each one of the hours since he’d risen with the sun that morning. She arranged herself cross-legged on the end of the bed.
He thought they might sit and sip in awkward silence, so he was relieved when she said, “Your name is Spiro, but everyone calls you Romeo. Why is that?”
“Well…” he began, absently scratching his chin and then smoothing the goatee hairs he’d ruffled. “I tell my mother it’s because I’m like the character in the play, handsome”—he wiggled his eyebrows—“intelligent and sensitive.”
She smiled slightly over the rim of her drink. “And what’s the real story behind the nickname?”
He was a little chagrined to admit, “In my younger years, when I was a fresh-faced squid, I was known to be a bit of a…” He searched for the right phrase. Horn dog? Nah. Too middle school. Man whore? Nope. Too disrespectful. “Ladies’ man,” he finally finished.
“Why do I get the feeling that’s an understatement?” She looked like she was biting the inside of her cheek, and he relaxed back into the chair.
Some light, flirty banter with a woman? Even one he had no intention of bedding? This was familiar territory. He could do this with his eyes closed.
“I don’t know.” He batted his lashes innocently. “I can’t imagine.”
She chuckled while she took another sip. Then she screwed up her lips. “Spiro. Hmm. I like it. Does anyone still call you that?”
“Sure.” He nodded after a quick drink, loving the harsh bite of the tequila on his tongue and longing for a hit of salt and a squirt of lime. “My mother.” He knew his face darkened when he added, “And my brother.”
She cocked her head, having picked up on the change in him. Talking about Alejandro always made a pit form in his stomach, so he was glad when, instead of asking about his brother, she said, “But no one else?”
He shook his head. “I joined the Navy when I was seventeen years old. I celebrated my thirty-fourth birthday this spring. So I’ve officially been Romeo as long as I was Spiro.”
She held her drink in her lap and regarded him for so long he was hard pressed not to shift beneath her searching gaze.
What does she see when she looks at me?
A delinquent from the bad side of L.A. who’d been forced to leave or else wind up like his older sibling? A foul-mouthed military man? A scruffy salvor with engine grease stuck under his nails?
He was all of those things. And he couldn’t imagine any of them were anything she’d be interested in.
“Do you mind if I call you Spiro?”
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected her to say, but it certainly wasn’t that.
He’d left “Spiro” Delgado, that world-class fuckup, behind years ago—good riddance to bad rubbish—and he was only reminded of that snot-nosed punk when he called home to talk to his mother. Or phoned up his brother in Pelican Bay.
Yet…his given name on Mia’s tongue sounded sweet. Almost like a benediction.
“If you want to,” he agreed, and then felt as if someone punched him in the nuts when she smiled at him.
Mia wasn’t only careful with her words, choosing them wisely when she chose to use them at all. She was also careful with her expressions. In fact, he’d never met a woman more inscrutable.
He’d seen her lips twitch in amusement. He’d even witnessed a grin or two. But he’d never seen her smile. Not a full blown, ear-to-ear smile.
Now he was glad of that. Her smile was so blindingly radiant he was struck dumb. All he could do was sit and stare.
“So, Spiro,”—this time when she said his name, chills rippled up his spine—“what’s the plan for tomorrow?”
“Fuck,” he swore. “With all that’s happened, I forgot everyone on Wayfarer will be expecting us to fly in with a plane full of metal detectors.”
She ran a finger over the rim of her glass, her expression contemplative. “We can still make that happen. I mean, if the way Wolf is hovering over Chrissy is any indication, I suspect he’s going to be spending the foreseeable future glued to her side. But I can help you get what’s needed.”
More time alone with Mia. Exactly what Romeo didn’t need.
Especially now that I’ve seen that smile.
That thing was going to haunt his dreams. And undoubtedly make more than a few appearances in his fantasies.
Okay, time to adios yourself.
“Sounds like a plan,” he told her. “I’ll knock on your door around oh-eight-thirty. That’ll give us time to grab breakfast before heading out to finish errands, eh?”
Her face fell when he pushed up from the desk chair, tossing his empty cup into the wastepaper basket. She wasn’t ready to be alone, but damned if he trusted himself to stay in this room with her for one more minute.
The urge to sit beside her, to run his finger down her cheek to see if it felt as satiny as it looked, had become overwhelming.
He was nearly to the door when the book on her nightstand caught his attention. “You read P.J. Warren’s Night Angels series?”
She glanced at the book, then blinked at him in surprise. “Yes. Don’t tell me you do?”
He nodded. “My brother got me hooked on them.” Prison afforded a guy a lot of time to read, apparently.
“But…” She shook her head. “They’re romance novels.”
“And?”
“They’re…well… I thought they were for women.”
“That’s sexist, don’t you think?”
She blushed. “I—I—”
“I’m just giving you shit.” He waved off whatever stuttering response she would’ve made. “I know romance novels are marketed to women, but the truth is, every guy on the planet could benefit from reading them. Some real insider information in there, if you know what I mean.” Again, he wiggled his eyebrows.
Her blush deepened when she realized he was talking about the sex scenes. P.J. Warren wrote top-notch, set-your-eyeballs-and-sheets-on-fire sex scenes. Romeo wasn’t ashamed to admit he’d been known to reenact a few of them.
“There’s so much more to these books than that.” Her voice had gone back to its quiet timbre. And she seemed to have found something of incredible interest in the bottom of her cup.
“You’re right.” He took pity on her. “There are angst-ridden vampires, warring werewolf clans, mayhem and mystery and suspense and even some comedic relief thanks to Winifred the Legless Ghost.”
“Oh my god!” Mia’s gaze jumped to his face. “I love Winnie! She’s my favorite character. In the third book, when she—”
“Stuffed napkins into the toes of everyone’s shoes!” he said with her and they dissolved into laughter.
“Everyone in Wisteria Manor thought their feet had grown or their shoes had shrunk!” There it was again, that beaming smile that lit her entire face until it shined like a beacon in the night. “You have no idea how I would love to pull that trick at the beach house. Unfortunately, everyone there wears flip-flops or goes barefoot.”
“Mia Ennis.” He tsked. “You’ve had us all fooled for a full month. Here we thought you were this shy, retiring sort when secretly you’re a prankster.”
What had caused her to hide her light under a bushel? To shutter herself away behind a demure demeanor and a silent mouth?
Up until tonight, he’d simply assumed her properness was a result of her upper crust upbringing. Had thought she held herself separate from the rest of the Deep Six crew because they were too proletarian, too loud and foul-mouthed and unrefined.
Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe there was more to it.
Maybe there was more to her.
“Have you read this one?” She held up the hardback with its embossed cover. The title was In Darkness and Dreams.The Night Angels books were always titled In Darkness and…fill in the blank.
“No.” He shook his head. “What number is it?”
“Seven in the series. It might be my favorite yet.”
“I stopped at book six. I didn’t even know seven was out.”
“Oh my god.” She scooted over and patted the mattress beside her. “Come lay down. I have to read the first chapter to you. It’s amazing!”
When he hesitated, her smile faded. “No. I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s late. We’ve had a big day and we have another one ahead of us tomorrow.”
She actually assumed his hesitation stemmed from him wanting to go to bed? Alone? In the other room?
Fuck, no. His hesitation stemmed from wanting with every fiber of his being to crawl into bed beside her, to feel the mattress move when she did, and to listen to her read in that film noir voice of hers.
But then what? What happened when she stopped reading?
He knew what he’d want to happen. He’d want to turn to her. To touch all that soft, warm skin and—
“I’d love for you to read to me,” he assured her, and then lowered himself to the bed. Reclining back against the pillow, he was careful to keep as much space between them as he could. In fact, if he moved any more toward the edge, he’d fall onto the floor.
“Oooh, goodie!” She clapped her hands and settled her back against the upholstered headboard. “You’re in for such a treat,” she added, opening the book.
He closed his eyes against the sight of her next to him. Tried closing his nose to the smell of the expensive lotion that wafted from her skin. But he refused to close his ears to the sound of her soft voice as she began to read.
It wrapped around him. Wound through him. Filled him up until it seemed as if she inhabited him.
Never had he thought he’d like being possessed. Then again, never had he thought his possessor would be the wildly intoxicating Mia Ennis.
“Lazarus Luxido”—her tone infused the vampire’s name with dramatic significance—“had just murdered a man…”