Her Passionate Protector. Laurey Bright

were doing?” he demanded roughly.

      Sienna straightened shakily away from him. “I just didn’t see the car coming. It was stupid.”

      He released her, his gaze critical as she stepped carefully back, making sure she was still on the grass. “If you can’t be more sensible than that, maybe a dive expedition is no place for you after all!”

      Her chin jerking up, she said, “I think Rogan is the proper judge of that. I made a mistake—it’s not a habit.”

      “I hope not.”

      “If it’s any business of yours—”

      “It is.” The assertion was uncompromising and surely inappropriate.

      She protested, her voice rising. “Even if I were a complete idiot—which I’m not, thank you, he was going way too fast anyway—does it have anything at all to do with you?”

      “Of course it bloody does!” He was obviously angry too. “As dive master on this voyage—”

      “As—what?” Her voice lifted another octave.

      “As dive master,” he repeated with exaggerated clarity. “You didn’t know?”

      Slowly Sienna shook her head, stunned. “Nobody told me,” she said. And then, “Don’t you have a business to run here in town?”

      “I have well-paid, competent staff,” he said shortly. “I’m a partner in PTS—you didn’t know that either?” He peered at the shocked expression on her face.

      Dumbly she shook her head again.

      “And dive master,” he reiterated. “I’m the one who approves the dive team and I’m the one who has the say about who goes down, if and when, once we’re on the site.”

      “I’m sorry.” She’d thought he was being overbearing and meddlesome and annoyingly male, but apparently he’d been at least partially justified. “I didn’t realize you were involved.”

      “Up to my neck,” he said. After a small pause he conceded, “You gave me a fright. I guess you’re tired after your long drive, and that driver was gunning the engine.”

      An apology of sorts for snarling at her, she supposed.

      He took her arm again in a firm grip and checked for traffic on the road before guiding her across to the hotel. Clamping her lips together, Sienna reminded herself that the meek would inherit the earth.

      She didn’t feel meek. She felt unsettled, dismayed and vaguely angry, as though she’d been deceived in some way, though of course that wasn’t so. Everyone had probably taken it for granted that someone else had told her of Brodie’s role in the new company. And it didn’t really matter. Only, she wished the dive master were someone less irrefutably…male, in a way that disturbed her more than she wanted to admit.

      At the foot of the broad steps to the door he asked her, “Will you be all right now?”

      “Of course. I don’t need a nanny.”

      He grinned, his good humor apparently restored. Thrusting his thumbs into the belt of his jeans, his eyelids lowering, he said, “Good, ’cause I’m not one.”

      No, she thought, looking up into his gleaming eyes. There was nothing nannyish about his earthy sexual magnetism.

      She said hastily, “Good night, then. Thank you again for seeing me home.”

      “See you tomorrow,” he promised as she climbed the steps.

      When she reached her room she had an immediate sense of something alien in the air, a faint, indefinable feeling of intrusion. Looking around, she saw her replacement collapsible suitcase sitting open on the luggage rack with the so-far unworn clothes still neatly folded inside, just as she’d left them. Nothing seemed to have changed, except that the bed was turned down.

      A staff member had entered in her absence, that was all. Relieved, she went to draw down the old-fashioned Holland blind, pausing as she noticed Brodie’s broad-shouldered figure mooching along the foreshore.

      Something stirred inside her, a warm spiral of purely physical reaction. Uneasily, she recognized it for what it was—a sexual response.

      Brodie Stanner, with his lopsided grin and frank appraisal of her face and figure, was going to be one of the team she’d be living in close proximity with—for perhaps months. And that bothered her. He spelled danger, large as life and twice as threatening.

      He’d made no secret of the fact that he found her attractive. But by all the signs he found any personable woman attractive, and was one of those men who generously spread his favors around without discrimination. And without any particular thought. A here today and gone tomorrow sort of guy.

      Mindless, meaningless sex wasn’t something that had ever interested Sienna. Sex for her had never been meaningless, although it had not brought her the security she’d once hoped for, when she was too young to understand her own need and looking for love in all the wrong places. She’d long ago given up on that futile search.

      And she had little doubt that if Brodie Stanner had anything in mind, it was no more than a short, wild fling. That was not for her—and neither was he.

      Sienna’s GP had already assured her she was fully recovered from her earlier sickness, although a bit underweight, but she was relieved to emerge from the dive doctor’s surgery with the necessary certificate in her hand.

      The little town was quite busy, and when she reached the wharf the Sea-Rogue was abuzz.

      Alongside a couple of other men Brodie was loading boxes and bags from a pile on the wharf into a forward hatch, his shirt discarded and his fit, lithe body bending and straightening in a rhythm of physical exertion that had a sort of primitive beauty. Rogan stood by with a clipboard, checking things off and occasionally examining a label.

      Brodie stopped work for a second and lifted a hand in greeting. Rogan glanced up as she stepped aboard, and smiled at her. “Camille’s in the saloon. She’s expecting you.”

      “Thanks.” Sienna jumped lightly into the cockpit, and descended to the saloon where she found Camille studying a computer screen incorporated into a bank of instruments.

      The two women spent a couple of hours going over the documentation on the Maiden’s Prayer that Camille had collected from various sources and the information Sienna had garnered on the stolen samples.

      Sienna said, “Can we transfer my notes from the CD to your computer?”

      “Yes, that would be a good idea. We’ve been careful about it because the boat’s been burgled before, but we sail in a couple of days and the burglar alarm seems very efficient. You probably heard it last night, when we woke half the port.”

      “Last night? I dreamed about a fire engine…” She’d forgotten about it, but now she recalled a vivid dream involving sirens and fire, a feeling of impending doom as flames licked behind her while Brodie Stanner climbed a ladder to her window and held out his hand. She’d hung back, afraid to take it, until he’d said commandingly, “Come with me, I’ll save you.”

      Some chance, she thought now. From the fire to the frying pan…

      Camille was saying, “It seems to have been a false alarm. Rogan shot out of bed and raced up on deck, but no one was there. The thing might have been set off by a line flapping in the wind, although it’s not supposed to work that way. It did show that if someone tries to break in now, judging by last night’s performance, it’ll bring people running from all the boats nearby.”

      After transferring the information Camille handed the disk back, saying, “It’s a good idea to keep a spare, just in case.”

      “I wasn’t able to find much really.”

      “Still, you never know when something that seems unimportant or unrelated will match up with another fact and tell