A hard hand grabbed her arm, hauling her back onto the grass and clamping her against an equally hard male body, and Brodie let fly an explosive word that seared her ears.
The car, which had almost scraped her jeans, accelerated away. Still held against Brodie's unyielding chest, her face pressed to his cambric shirt, her nose inhaling his warm male scent, and the palm of one hand splayed against his hammering heart, Sienna trembled with reaction, her knees watery.
"What the hell did you think you 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.
® and TM are trademarks of the publisher.
For more romance information surf to:
http://www.eHarlequin.com
