ISOBEL was trying to remember that line of poetry.
Something about a glassy, cool, translucent wave. So
appropriate for this beautiful, hot Sicilian day. Cobalt
sky, flat sea, ripples of lacy foam around her pale skin.
From the indigo horizon, a cone rose up against the sky:
Etna, just tipped with snow now that it was summer, and
with the customary feather of white smoke drifting from
the peak. A well-behaved volcano, doing its best not to
frighten away the tourists. But she was not a tourist; she
was here to work.
Yesterday's storm had stirred up the sand on the bottom,
making the water opaque, but it had settled overnight, and
today the turquoise water was wonderfully translucent
again. She could go back to the team and tell them to get
ready to dive again this morning, with excellent
visibility and calm seas.
She was floating past the rocks, right over what they had
dubbed 'Vector Alpha', the line they believed corresponded
to the keel of the wrecked ancient Greek galley, when the
movement caught her eye.
Despite the blazing sun on her back, her heart seemed to
freeze for a moment.
There it was. Or rather, there he was. About twelve feet
below her. A powerfully built male body. Golden-skinned,
with thick black hair floating around his muscular
shoulders. Naked but for black Neoprene shorts that hugged
his sleek thighs from waist to knee. He was wearing only a
mask, like her: no scuba tanks. A free-diver.
He was drifting right along Vector Alpha, propelled by
easy sweeps of his long legs, intent on the seabed below
him. Hunting. Her stopped heart exploded into life,
fuelled by anger. This intruder knew exactly where he was
going. Like a shark cruising after the scent of fresh
blood in the water!
She floated motionless, watching the predator tour the
line of the wreck, oblivious to her presence above him.
This was exactly why she and the others had travelled from
New York to Sicily — to protect this archaeological
treasure from marauders like this one. To defend the past
from such plunderers as this.
Isobel waited for him to run out of air. She needed
surprise on her side. He looked formidably powerful,
muscles rippling from that taut waist to the wide sweep of
his shoulders. Nor did her sharp eyes miss the hefty-
looking knife strapped to one sinewy thigh.
Damn. What if this visitor turned out to be a real bad
boy? And the others were still breakfasting on shore. She
had come down to the site early, alone, to assess the
chances for the day's diving. She could race back to them,
come back with the cavalry, but by then the pirate would
be long gone — carrying with him whatever booty he had
been able to steal.
Besides, Isobel Roche was not known to be afraid of
anything. Character flaws she might have aplenty — she had
been accused of arrogance, stubbornness and pride, and had
even recently been called an imperious, sarcastic iceberg
by her ex-boyfriend, who ought to know — but she had never
been accused of cowardice.
She caught sight of a tattoo on the powerful right
shoulder. An octopus, done in black, tentacles writhing
against the tanned skin. Oh, yes. A real bad boy. Damn,
again!
And he just wasn't running out of air, either. Those big
lungs were full of oxygen. He had almost reached the end
of the wreck, swimming with lazy ease, the long hair
spinning black swirls around his shoulders.
It was time to act.
Isobel drew a deep — and rather shaky — breath. Then,
kicking hard, she dived down through the clear water
towards the dark figure. He still seemed to be oblivious
to her as she snaked through the water towards him like an
avenging angel.
At the last moment, he seemed to glimpse her from the
corner of his eye, and twisted away from her like a big
fish. As he did so she saw the glint of gold in his
clenched fist. Damn a third time. He had found something
important and had seized it! Without thinking, she grasped
at the swirling clouds of his long hair, black as ink in
the clear water. Her fingers closed tight around the thick
tresses. Pulling as hard as she could, she kicked for the
surface, dragging him after her.
It did not occur to her until she burst through the
surface that he could have drawn that big knife and stuck
it into her liver. By then she was whooping for breath and
trying to hold onto what had turned out to be a very big
man indeed. A large hand closed on her arm and broke her
grip of his hair. She braced herself for his counter-
attack. But when she looked into his face, he was laughing
at her; laughing with dazzling white teeth through a
curling black beard, his bright eyes bluer than the sky
above.
"Give it to me!" she demanded fiercely in Italian. "Give
you what?" he replied, still laughing. "What you found
down there!" 'I found nothing down there." 'Liar!" They
were floating face to face, his muscular shoulders and
throat breaking the water. She grabbed for his hair again
but this time succeeded only in getting a handful of that
curly black beard. "Give it to me!"
"That hurts!" he protested, still laughing. She clenched
her fingers so that her knuckles dug into his warm
skin. "Then give it to me!"
"All right," he capitulated. "Let's swim to the rocks and
I will give it to you."
"Don't try any funny stuff," she warned grimly, releasing
him. But she was thinking of the knife strapped to his
thigh as she spoke so bravely.
They hauled themselves onto the rocks. The sandstone shelf
was slippery so they hunkered down, facing each other as
if they were about to wrestle. Her captive was certainly a
splendid specimen of the adult male. Built like a demigod,
with that long black hair and beard, he was like an
ancient hero sprung to life.
As if echoing her thought, he grinned and said in fluent,
but accented, English, "Odysseus captured by a siren. That
puts a new twist in the myth."
"You speak English?"
His voice was deep and husky. "And I walk upright, too.
But sirens didn't wear lime-green bikinis in Odysseus's
time, I believe." His appreciative eyes were roaming over
her body, exactly the way he must have assessed the wreck.
Her bikini was indeed lime-green, and none too big. She
had not been expecting company so early in the morning.
The skin of her breasts had tightened with the adrenaline
coursing through her system and her nipples were making
rigid exclamation points against the wet Lycra. She shook
her long auburn hair forward, hoping it would provide some
sort of curtain of modesty.
"Give it to me," she panted, holding out her hand — which,
she could not help but notice, was about half the size of
his.
His deep blue eyes were mocking. "They say, "Finders,
keepers"."
"The police don't say that," she snapped. "You have ten
seconds to give it to me!"
Eyes dancing, he slowly opened his brown fingers. Isobel
gasped. Gleaming in the broad palm of his hand was a heavy
gold coin. It was ancient beyond a doubt. She could see —
appropriately — the bearded head of a god gleaming on the
heavy yellow disc.
She snatched at it but he was far too quick. His fingers
closed around it and his smile mocked her. She grabbed his
fist in both of her hands and tried to prise his fingers
open.
"You have no right to this," she panted. "Why not? I found
it." 'This is an archaeological site. Stealing from an
excavation is a very serious offence."
He shook his head like a wet lion, spraying her with water
from his hair and beard. "How serious?"
Her efforts to pry his fingers off the coin were in vain.
Furious, she was about to bite those stubborn knuckles
until it occurred to her she might catch something
unsavoury from this villain.
"Very serious. Besides which, it's robbing the world of an
incalculable piece of history."
"Incalculable?" he echoed. "So it's valuable?" She glared
into those taunting blue eyes. "You might get the price of
a bottle of wine for it. Is that worth destroying an
important part of the historical record for ever?"
"A bottle of wine," he mused. "Against the, what was it
again, the "historical record"? Hmm. I have never been too
impressed by clichés, bella signorina. I think I'll take
the bottle of wine."
"Damn you," she said angrily, frantic to see the coin
again. She wasn't the expert on numismatics on the team,
but it was clearly the finest coin that had yet appeared
on the site. "Give it to me!"
"No." 'You thief!" This time she threw caution to the
winds. She pulled his unyielding fist to her mouth and
sank her sharp white teeth into his knuckles.
Maddeningly, he just kept laughing at her. "Are you going
to eat me alive? To preserve the historical record?"
She thought she could taste blood on her tongue. She spat.
His pectoral plates were hard and strong, with dark
nipples that were as rigid as hers, and crisp black hair
making a triangle at the base of his thick throat. His
arms were heavy with muscle. She was never going to get
the coin away from him by force. He was much too
strong. "I'll buy it from you," she said desperately.
One dark eyebrow quirked in amusement. "I don't think you
could fit even the price of a bottle of wine in your lime-
green bikini, siren lady. What do you intend to pay with?"
"Give me the coin and I'll bring back cash," she
temporised.
"The only thing you'll bring back is a squad of
carabinieri." He grinned. "Handcuffs don't suit me. Think
of something else."
"You'll have to trust me," she said, glaring at her tor-
mentor with furious jade-coloured eyes.
"Sicilians say, never trust a woman with red hair and
green eyes," he replied, as though imparting some
important life lesson.
Having her hair called red was adding insult to
injury. "Don't you understand, you savage?" she
snapped. "That coin doesn't belong to you or to me! It's
part of the national heritage. The world's heritage.
You're not just stealing a lump of gold — you're stealing
a piece of our knowledge, our understanding of our past!"
"Brava," he purred. "Is the lecture over?" He was unim-
pressed by her passionate words, a primitive brute — a
beautiful primitive brute — who was enjoying the situation
to the full.
"All right," she spat at him, her temper snapping, "take
it, if that's what you want. But at least let me see the
markings on the coin — so I can make a note in the site
log."
"I can tell you what's on the coin," he replied. "Some old
goat with a beard on one side, and a fork on the other."
"A fork?"
He made a jabbing motion with one arm, his biceps swelling
as he did so. Her eye was caught by the octopus tattoo
again, swirling tentacles etched against the tanned
skin. "A spike with three points, like we use for spearing
fish."
"A trident?" 'Exactly, a trident."
Poseidon, god of the sea, with his insignia. A gold
Poseidon from Syracuse. Isobel bit her lip with even,
pearly teeth. Not just a precious and beautiful coin, but
important evidence. Vital evidence. "Listen to me," she
said, trying to control her anger and dislike of this big
ruffian who sat there mocking her every word. She spoke
reasonably and slowly, as though to a child. "I'm going to
try and explain this to you."
"Thank you, lady," he said gravely. "There's a wreck down
there. A very old wreck. An ancient Greek ship, called a
galley. From a place called Corinth. We think it went down
in a storm somewhere around three hundred BC. That's over
two thousand three hundred years ago," she added
helpfully. He nodded, blue eyes filled with amusement. She
pressed on. "That coin may be the key to the whole
excavation. For one thing, it will give us a date. The
coin can be dated to within a few years. And we'll know
that the wreck couldn't have taken place before that date.
You see?"
"I see." 'For another thing, it shows us that the ship had
already been to Sicily — and was on its way back. These
galleys traded between Greece and the islands," she
explained, her eyes searching his face for some sign of
comprehension. "The presence of a gold coin from Syracuse
on board means we can say that they had already visited
Sicily and sold their cargo. So now we know that the cargo
down there is Sicilian, not Greek — it was going back to
Corinth to be sold there. You understand?"
"I understand."