Page 5 of Hold Your Breath
“Of course you can, dear.”
Lou paused.What?“What?”
“Of course you can come home.”
“What? No!” It was beginning to sink in just how bad an idea this had been. Lou didn’t have the patience for the upcoming discussion, even on noncorpse-discovery days.
“Oh, don’t worry about anything. Your stepfather and I won’t even say a word about this silly…hiatus of yours. I’ll book you a ticket out of DIA and email the boarding pass to you. You’ll be home by Wednesday.”
“No! Seriously, Mom, donotbook a flight for me.” Lou closed her eyes and let the back of her head hit the dive van. She’d holed up in the van, which was really a converted ambulance, to get some privacy for her anticipated nervous breakdown. It would be nice to be able to get around to that breakdown so she could just get it over with, but she’d been dumb and called her mother first and was now paying the price.
A heavy sigh gusted through her cell phone. “Louise Dutton Sparks, don’t start second-guessing yourself now. Coming home is the right thing to do.”
“My home is here now, Mom, in Colorado,” she explained for the thousandth time. “I’m not going back to Connecticut.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Louise,” her mom snapped. “That…shed you live in is not your home. It doesn’t even have running water.”
“It does too have running—” Lou cut herself off with a brisk shake of her head, reminding herself not to get sucked into one of her mother’s arguments. In all of her twenty-six years, Lou had never won a single one. “Whatever. Never mind. I have to go.”
“So, I’ll email you that e-ticket then.”
Lou started thumping her head rhythmically against the side of the dive van. “No. No ticket. I’m not going to Connecticut.”
Her mom tsked. “I don’t know why you insist on being stubborn. I’ve beentryingto reach you for goodness knows how long now. And Brenton told your stepfather the other day that you’re not returning his phone calls either. We didn’t raise you to be rude, Louise.”
Oh God.
“Now’s really not the time, Mom.”
The rear door of the dive van flew open, making Lou jump. Callum’s backlit figure filled the opening. It was almost ridiculous how broad his shoulders were.
“Gotta go, Mom. Love you. Bye.” Lou ended the call while her mother was still sputtering.
“What was all the banging about?” he asked.
She shrugged and waved a hand toward the side of the van. Example one gazillion and three of Callum catching her at her most embarrassing moments. “My mother.” To her surprise, he didn’t press for details. After he stared at her for a moment, he seemed to accept her nonexplanation.
“Help me out of this, would you?” He turned and presented her with his back. After the coroner and sheriff had been called, Callum and Wilt had changed into less buoyant dry suits and scuba gear so they could dive and look for evidence. Lou had stayed on scene, intending to do her job and help get the body out of the water, but Callum had taken one look at her shivering miserably along the sidelines and sent her back to the dive van to change.
Chad had also been sent back to the van, although he was currently pacing in the parking lot. He hadn’t fared as well as Lou and had puked up his guts at the first glimpse of the body.
Sliding her cell phone into her dive-team jacket pocket, she shifted toward Callum, pulling the Velcro loose and then unzipping the heavy, waxed zipper that ran the length of his back. Even with everything that was going on, Lou couldn’t help but notice that the neoprene did nice things to his ass. It wasn’t the first time she’d made the observation. She wished she could be as oblivious to his obnoxiously perfect form as he appeared to be to her much-more-average one, but sometimes he just couldn’t be ignored. And at those times, it was almost impossible to control the stupid things that came out of her mouth.
“First body?” he asked, peeling the suit off his massive shoulders. His thermal underlayer had a wet ring that spread from his collar halfway down his chest, outlining the shape of his pecs.
She shivered. “Yeah.”
“Doing okay?” He wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he was stepping out of his suit, his focus on his feet.
She considered the question. “I think?”
The uncertainty in her voice brought her a quick glance. He considered her for a long moment, but then must have decided she wasn’t going to collapse in shock. “Good. Rob wants a word.”
The idea of reliving the past hour was not appealing. Lou made a face that was wasted on Callum, since he’d grabbed the back of his thermal top and was pulling it off over his head. Her heart sped up, though she blamed it on the upcoming chat with the sheriff. It had absolutely nothing to do with the beauty and definition of Callum’s stupidly perfect chest. “Maybe I should, you know, recover here a little longer?”
“You’re fine. Go.”
She sighed and went. The half second of sympathy from her team leader was obviously over.
