Seduced by the Storm by Sydney Croft

from the rain that began to fall
nearly sideways.
    "I
don’t want you with other men," he said suddenly, because whenever he was
feeling strongly enough about something those thoughts tended to fly the fuck
out of his mouth.
    Faith
stared at him, again as if he were crazy. Didn’t matter—when his feelings
pulled him, he went with it. But before she could answer him, the platform’s
alarms began to ring.
    "What’s
wrong?" Faith asked.
    "Could
be a blowout," he said.
    "Len’s
not coming up!" Don shouted from the upper portion of the platform.
"He went down to fix one of the leg floats. He should’ve been up by
now—he’ll be out of air soon."
    Len
was one of the divers—a job Wyatt would’ve much preferred, and had the training
for, thanks to his SEAL days. But being under the water most of the time on
this hunk of junk would not be conducive to destroying the weather machine from
hell.
    "Why
the hell was he down there alone?" Wyatt demanded.
    "Clarence
didn’t feel well. It was calm as shit ten minutes ago—the weather wasn’t
supposed to turn like this."
    The
way this storm was behaving, it had to be man-made.
    Yeah,
that weather machine had to go, and soon. But right now, there was a man down
and Wyatt had too much training to ever leave a man behind. He knew that no one
else on the dive team was going to volunteer to go either, even though they
wanted to. They weren’t rule breakers and refused to go against the foreman most
of the time. Pussies.
    "I’ll
go," Wyatt said. "Get me a drysuit, fins and a weight belt."
    "You
can’t go until we unload the tanks and rebreathers off the supply boat. Give it
ten minutes," Don said.
    "He
might not have ten minutes."
    "There’s
no other choice. He’s too deep."
    "I’ll
free dive."
    "Are
you fucking insane?"
    "Yes,"
he said calmly.
    He
yanked on the equipment Don brought him without further argument and prepped to
head into the swirling ocean.
    He
looked at Faith. "Stay under the deck. Hang on tight—it’s going to be
wild."
    "Are
you sure you should be doing this on your own?" Faith’s voice held an
urgency, let him know she heard what he’d told her about not being with anyone
else. And she liked it. "Wyatt, it’s dangerous."
    "So
am I, Faith," he drawled. "So am I."
    FAITH
WATCHED WYATT jump into the water at the crest of a swell, her heart pounding
harder than it did even during situations more hazardous to her own life. The
man was insane, diving with no air tank. Though she had to admit that watching
him strip in order to put on the drysuit had been half the reason her pulse
rate had doubled.
    Wyatt
sank into the dark depths after shooting her a cocky wink that set fire to her
blood. Even up to his neck in water, he was a menace to women everywhere.
Mermaids would probably flock to him in the deep.
    "Ma’am!"
the foreman shouted from the deck above, "get off the dive deck! It’s too
dangerous."
    A
medic crew had arrived, the men waiting in yellow slickers at the top too,
because as the storm churned up the ocean, the swells were crashing into the
platform, splashing her with water. Soon, the low-hanging dive deck would be
overtaken by the waves. But no matter how freaked by the tempest she might be,
she couldn’t leave until she knew Wyatt and the other diver were safe.
    "Faith!"
She looked up to see Sean hurrying down the caged metal stairs, toward her. His
black overcoat billowed out behind him in the wind, and rain had plastered his
sandy blond hair to his head.
    Sweat
dampened her palms, a silly nervous reaction that irked her even as her heart
seized up for just a moment. He was striking, as handsome as she remembered,
and she drank him in like a recovering alcoholic facing an open bottle of
expensive Scotch.
    He
was shorter than Wyatt, but broader in the shoulders; light in coloring, where
Wyatt was dark; and why in the hell was she comparing the two? She had a job to
do, and her hormones would have to wait.
    Sean
halted at the base of the steps,