Escape Read Free Page B

to lose their mouth pieces, so Lucy would know what to do in an emergency. He showed her how to equalize her ears, so she wouldn’t feel the extra pressure and pain caused by compressing the air in her sinuses. By the end of the session, Lucy had lost her self-consciousness and worries about panicking, and didn’t want to go back to the surface.
    But the session had to end and Lucy clambered back out of the pool, the weight of the tanks suddenly apparent now that she was out of the water. Rudy helped her struggle out of them.
    She turned to him, a big grin still plastered on her face.
    “That was amazing,” she said. “It was so weird, breathing underwater. I can’t believe I did it!”
    He laughed at her excitement and his eyes sparkled in the sunlight. “Wait till you go in the ocean and you get to see more than an old plaster floating at the bottom of the pool.”
    “I can’t wait. I want to go now.”
    “Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to, but the starter dive leaves here at eight-thirty tomorrow morning, so I suggest you come then.”
    “I’ll be there,” she said.
    “Great, but I hope to see you tonight, at the barbeque?”
    She smiled shyly as she wrapped herself in her towel. “Sure.”

Chapter Two
     
     
    As the last of the light bled from the sky, the party on the beach was just getting started. Loud dance music blared from several big speakers, the bass vibrating through the sand. All around, people stood or sat in groups, talking, laughing and drinking. Some people danced and others waded into the ocean, paddling and even swimming under the moonlight.
    The atmosphere buzzed with vibrant excitement. Young people filled the beach, either on holiday or traveling, with no more responsibilities than deciding where to eat the next day.
    Rudy stood behind the bar, helping out. Though busy enough, he couldn’t help but be distracted. His gaze scanned the different groups of people, but none of them contained the girl from the dive lesson today.
    Lucy.              
    He couldn’t explain how those eyes had stayed in his memory, but they had. He hoped she would show.
    “Hey, boss,” Jai, one of the local Thai guys who worked behind the bar called to him. He held up the crate of beer clasped in his hands. “Where do you want these?”
    Rudy nodded to a spot on the sand, behind the bar, and Jai dropped them down. Everyone at the bar was being served, so Rudy crouched and started loading the bottles into the fridge.
    It was probably a good thing Lucy hadn’t shown up. He shouldn’t have any kind of interest, other than a professional one, in one of the guests. He thought he would have learned his lesson by now— getting involved with another woman was the last thing he wanted to do. But something about this girl made him want to be near her.
    The warm night kissed his skin, but in the four years Rudy had been on the island, he’d become acclimated to the heat. However, t he women at the party had not and t he place was awash with girls in strappy tops and s hort skirts. Rudy wasn’t interested. Was it possible to become anesthetised to all the naked limbs and tanned skin?
    Ever since his last relationship two years ago, he thought he had hardened his heart. He tried to keep women at arm’s length, metaphorically speaking. Of course he’d had some dalliances, but he always knew the woman in question was in it for the same reason as him; purely physical.
    And so far, this had worked for him.
    Until now. Now a woman on the island interested him in a more than just physical way and though his brain told him to keep away, he couldn’t help but feel drawn.
    Rudy smiled to himself. This woman wasn’t like the usual people they got on the island. Pale-skinned and free from any tattoos or piercings, she looked as though she had just been plucked from city life and dropped into the wilderness.
    She fascinated him. With her impossibly long limbs and wide, strange colored eyes—somewhere