LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      MIA FIORE COLLAPSED on the deck of the Poseidon. Hands tugged, rolling her over. Faces blurred above her. The ringing in her ears dulled the shouts snapping into the wind. Her arm burned from wrist to elbow. Her toes and legs tingled as if pricked by a thousand sea urchins. Every breath hurt as if her skintight wet suit crushed her ribs together. An oxygen mask covered her mouth. And when she considered drifting into the beckoning oblivion, one of her crew yelled for her to keep awake.

      Each smack of the dive boat against the choppy surf of San Francisco Bay pounded through her body, short-circuiting her thoughts as if rearranging time itself. Her brain skipped through images like a slide show on fast-forward: the predive equipment check, the pair of leopard sharks posed for a picture, her dive knife drifting to the ocean floor, fishing line—so much fishing line—wrapped around her, no air to ascend. Dinner with her film crew in the city. Her father’s laughter. A different dinner with the crew. In a different time. Different place.

      Another jolt of her body against the unrelenting bay waters. Another command from her dive partner, Eddy, for Mia to stay with them.

      More hands lifted her from the boat onto something soft. The straps across her legs drove those tingles deep into her bones. A woman with calm blue eyes and a paramedic uniform replaced Eddy beside Mia. She rattled off numbers and ordered Mia to stay with her before the sirens drowned out every thought.

      The effort to remain conscious exhausted Mia. If she could only rest. Close her eyes. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Recharging moments, her father would call it.

      Nausea rolled like a powerful riptide through Mia, jarring her awake. Mia gasped at the loss of clean air.

      “Easy.” A hand pressed her back. Another mask covered her mouth.

      Fluorescent lights had replaced the sky above her head, and a “code blue” announcement replaced the sound of sirens. Even more hands prodded, shifted and poked at her. Still the pain bored through her, the tingles pricked.

      Mia rolled her head when she heard Eddy’s voice beside her. Eddy, his wet suit gone, held her cold hand, but he never looked at her. “Dr. Reid? Wyatt?”

      Another voice rumbled on Mia’s other side. She’d once known a doctor named Wyatt Reid. But that was a lifetime ago. In Africa when Eddy had needed immediate medical attention and her father had still been alive. That was all in the past, wasn’t it?

      “Answered prayers, Mia.” Eddy squeezed her hand. “Dr. Reid has you now.”

      But Wyatt Reid had never had her. She’d never had him. Not then. Not now. Mia strained, pulled by the warm touch on her forehead. She knew those ash-gray eyes. Knew that face. Knew that inflexible, gritty voice.

      He repeated, “Mia, stay with me.”

      But Wyatt had to know that he asked the impossible. Her eyes refused to focus and she finally gave in, succumbing to her body’s insistent need for a recharging moment. As she drifted away, she wondered if Wyatt Reid realized that her heart had never left him.

      * * *

      WYATT WOULD’VE SWORN Mia mumbled something about her heart always belonging to him. But the Mia Fiore he’d known would never put her heart up for the bargaining. He added delirium to her list of symptoms from severe decompression sickness.

      Wyatt issued several more orders to the nurses and paused to look at Eddy Fuller, one of Mia’s longtime film crew guys and most likely to be listed as Mia’s emergency contact. “Stick around, Fuller. We’ll need the details about the dive.”

      “It was only supposed to be an exploratory dive. To get the layout, make lighting adjustments before we filmed later this week.” Eddy thrust his fingers into his hair, the mass of thick curls cushioning his scalp from his tense grip. “Fishing line snagged her and her equipment.”

      Mia was an experienced, well-trained diver, as was her entire crew. She’d never have attempted the dive without Eddy beside her. “Where were you?”

      “She’d

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