Page 118 of Sucker For You

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Wes woke slowly, heavy and warm, muscles relaxed as the fading edges of sleep slipped out of reach. He didn’t chase those disintegrating dreams; cracking open his sand-dusted eyes revealed Isabel’s smile on the pillow beside him.

Not even a dream—a fantasy—of theNauti Lassat sunset with a sherbet-dipped horizon off her bow could compare.

“You’re awake.” Heedless of their mutual morning breath, he brushed his own smile over hers.

“Yes.”

Wes gathered her closer, kissed her deeper. “It’s late.”

“Yes,” again, her fingers threading through his hair.

“Mmm.” He stroked his thumb down her ribs. “When were you going to wake me up?”

“A-ah!” She huffed against his ear and shifted to angle herself over him, nose-to-nose. “When. . .um, when I’d finished my research.”

“What research?”

“Your tattoos.” She traced his inked reef knot and compass rose, working across the pigment on his chest, along his Helen Keller quote. The edges of her nails raised shivers over his skin despite an urgent bloom of heat in his stomach.

“Wha—what about them?”

“I told you last night.” Sunlight glimmered in her silvery eyes, laughter crinkled her lips, and he couldn’t resist tasting thattempting little crease in her mouth, which parted for him with a confession: “I want one. I’ve been deciding on the location.”

“You weren’t joking?”

“No. Now I know what I want. Where, too. Because—I don’t like jewelry. Metal irritates my skin, and—”

“—octopuses are notorious shits when it comes to stealing rings and watches?”

“Yes. Did you know,” and her smile withdrew just out of reach, while her elbow planted on his chest with the weight of scientific fact, “that a giant Pacific octopus at the New England Aquarium nearly stole a handgun from a security guard?”

“Ha!” Her heat and her jab against his stomach expelled between them as laughter. “Well, someone needs to call Hollywood today. TheSharknadofilm franchise is about to get competition.”

He proposed possible titles in the shower—“Ocean’s Eightis taken, but how aboutOcean’s Seve-lopod?”—and Isabel snorted bubbles. After toweling off, they got wet again while rinsing their breakfast dishes and then by dunking their hands in the reef tank. Their own two-spot refused to take her shrimp, however, let alone a gun. When Wes dangled his dive watch in the water, even the lights and dials failed to rouse her from her addled drifting. Isabel’s thumb caressing Thalassa between her nubilous eyes elicited no response at all.

If that touch couldn’t stimulate her, what could?

Isabel’s gaze clouded into a deep frown as she studied the octopus. Rain eclipsed her clear-skied laughter. So Wes buckled his watch back on and demanded focus from his uncooperative brain, if only so that he could withdraw her attention from whatever storm churned inside her. Could coax her back to him. Maybe his voice was slightly too loud when he asked, “What’s your plan today?”

At least she blinked, surfaced. “. . . what?”

He forged ahead. “What do you want to do, now that you’ve booted Brianne from MORI and Chase off that restaurant’s balcony? You’ve done more than make waves, Buttercup. You’ve made a splash.”

“A splash.” For a moment, a small smile filtered through her clouds, quivering. But the curve of her lips was wistful while she traced the octopus’s faded eyespots. “I don’t know. I don’t know. . . because given how rapidly she’s declining, she doesn’t have much time left. Maybe hours. She’ll be safe at the institute with Dr. Solomon, and the care she’ll receive there will be better than anything I can give her. There’s nothing that anyone can do, though, and it’s selfish, but I don’t—don’t. . .”

Brrrriiinng!

A shrill chime cut off her faltering self-flagellation; Isabel startled and blinked now at her ringing phone propped on the credenza.

Brrrriiinng!

Incoming Call (unknown number, possible caller identified):Dr. Talia Kaplan-Horner (Monterey Oceanic Research Institute)

MORI’s director.

“. . . oh.”