They all laughed.
Since they were talking so candidly, Shannon risked a couple more questions. “Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why do you work so hard?”
He was silent as they rowed a few times.
Shannon glanced over her shoulder to see if he had heard her.
Victor was concentrating on the oar in his hands, his lips in a straight line.
“Never mind, you don’t have to answer that.”
“No, no . . . I’m trying to think of a quick answer.”
She turned back to the sea in front of her. “We’re going to be out here for a while. A long answer is fine.”
It was still a few breaths before he started to talk. “It’s my company. When I started it, I was only twenty. Granted, it was only me back then, but now I have employees and plants, and teams. I’m responsible for keeping this company going and the jobs it provides. People depend on Vic Corp to put food on their tables.”
His answer was unexpected. Not to mention completely selfless. The image of the self-centered all about me man she’d met on the plane dissipated with his explanation.
“That sounds like a lot of stress on one man’s shoulders,” she told him.
“Most days it is.”
Once again, she looked over her shoulder. Their eyes caught and he smiled.
“But not today,” she said.
“No. Today would be the opposite of stressful.”
“The word is relaxing,” she teased.
He pushed his oar deeper into the sea, let his muscles ripple as he put his back into the job of pushing them forward. “I have a feeling this relaxing might need a good massage once we’re done.”
Leo ended their conversation by stopping them by a buoy to tie up their kayaks. They left their life vests aside and donned their snorkeling gear. In the water, Shannon watched Victor working his way into his mask. “You’ve done this before, right?”
“In Hawaii.”
Good. She didn’t need Victor strutting to gain her attention only to drown in the Yucatán.
When he was twelve . . .
He’d snorkeled in Hawaii when he was twelve. How hard was that to say?
Apparently impossible, since the words never left Victor’s lips, and he followed Shannon’s example and put on his mask.
How hard could it be? Keep the water out of your eyes by tightening the mask, keep the pipe clear of the water, and breathe out of your mouth.
He sputtered the first time he stuck his face in the water. Lucky for him, Shannon had already kicked her fins up and was skimming the surface with her white bikini ass leading him into the deep.
The memory of mermaids and his thoughts of the night before surfaced as he attempted to rid his mask of water and put it on tight.
He kicked his feet and caught up with Leo and Shannon, who were several yards ahead of him, looking at the reef below. Once he was close, he placed the mouthpiece again and attempted to view the ocean floor.
Shannon’s long legs kicked out beside him, her arms helping her tread water.
Leo waved his hand and pointed to something moving below.
A stingray hid in the sand, their presence obviously disturbing its peace as it swam away. Victor didn’t mind seeing it go. He tried to remember the name of the wildlife expert that had recently died from a stingray, and he didn’t want to become part of that club.
Victor worked to keep his breathing normal and found it hard to concentrate on the beauty around him. All he really wanted to do was make it through their snorkeling part of the day without drowning.
He sputtered again and came to the surface to clear his mouth.
“You okay?” Shannon asked from a few yards away.
“I’m fine,” he lied. He put the mouthpiece in again.
You can do this, Vic. Thousands of people do this every day.
Once facedown, he didn’t even try to see the fish, the color of the reef, or the sea turtles below. All he did was follow Shannon and concentrate on breathing.
She either caught on to his plight and took pity or wanted to be by his side. Either way, she was there, catching his attention by tapping his shoulder and pointing at something below. Purple coral . . . fluorescent blue fish. Some of the rocks looked like someone had carved the image of brains into them.
Yeah, the ocean was a perfect disguise for the world below. So much life surrounded them, welcomed them as guests.
Shannon reached out and held on to his arm right as a school of fish, thousands of them, swam around them.
Victor held on to her arm, felt several fish brush past his legs.
He followed her lead and popped his head out of the water once they were gone.
“Holy cow, that was awesome,” Shannon said. “Have you ever seen something like that?”
“Only in the movies.”
She played with her mask, chasing the fog away, smiled, and ducked back into the water.
Yeah, Victor would take on more water just to have her smile at him like that again.
The first of the two cenotes Leo took them to was what the locals called the garden. He explained the underground rivers of fresh water and how important they were to the ecosystem. Shannon knew instantly that Victor was much more comfortable swimming without a facemask than he had been in the ocean. She’d recognized his discomfort early on in their snorkeling and made a point to stay by his side. If he knew she caught on to his lack of snorkeling skills, he didn’t say.
The tiny fish in the fresh water were much more his speed. Even when those fish started to volunteer a pedicure for them as they sat on the steps leading into the water. “People pay good money for this back home,” Shannon told him as the fish tickled their toes.
“We’re paying good money for this here, too,” he replied.
They ended their tour in a cave. This time they wore life vests as Leo swam them deep inside, where flashlights were needed in order to see where they were going. It was filled with stalagmites and stalactites, everything Mother Nature created where most people would never see. The deeper they went, the cooler the water became. Still, the view was worth every second of the trip.
“What feels like sand below your feet is actually calcium from the sides of the cave,” Leo told them.
Shannon reached down and brought it to the surface, rubbed her hands in the gritty substance.
“Exfoliating?” Victor teased.
“Hey, for all we know the cure for cancer is down here somewhere.”
They ended their tour with a lunch cooked by the locals. Fresh fish tacos on homemade tortillas, rice, and fresh fruit. They each drank a beer with lime, which seemed appropriate for where they were.
Back in the car, she sat on a towel and covered her shoulders with her cover-up.
Victor poked her arm with one finger. “Looks like you got too much sun.”
She was a little pink.
She poked him back. “You did, too.”
The ride back to the hotel was a lot more relaxed than it had been driving away.
With soggy hair, fried skin, and a few more mosquito bites to add to the equation, Shannon felt her shoulders relax.
They somehow fell into a conversation about their siblings. She told him about her sister.
“Your sister is in the Peace Corps?”
“That’s what I said. You wouldn’t think joining would make her the black sheep of the family, but for my parents, it did.”
“How’s that possible?”
“They didn’t approve. They wanted us to marry up and add our family name to more guest lists.”
Victor considered her from the seat across from hers. “Is that why you married a governor?”
Should she deny it? “He wasn’t a governor when we married.”
“I’ll pretend you didn’t avoid answering that question.”
There was no way she would directly. Let him guess all he wanted. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t want my marriage to end. But things happen and we split.”
There was a brief pause in the conversation. “Can I say something and risk it sounding like a pickup line?” Victor asked.
“Go for it.”
Victor looked her in the eye. “He’s an idiot.”
She should have expected his words.
She didn’t.
Unexpected moisture gathered in her eyes. “No accounting for taste.” She blinked away her emotions.
“I mean it.” Victor looked away, giving her the ability to hide her instant response to words so many had said before. “I know you and I didn’t start out on the best footing . . .”
“To say the least. I fell in your lap.”
“. . . and blamed me.”
She rolled her eyes, feeling laughter instead of pain. “Whatever.”
“But today was good,” Victor said.
“Don’t forget the salsa dancing. If we can call it that.”
“I’m ignoring the bruise on my instep.”
“You do not have a bruise.”
Victor lifted his foot to prove her wrong.
Shannon saw sand, but nothing else. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s on the inside.”
They laughed together.
Thirty minutes into the ride back to the hotel, Victor put his head back and closed his eyes. “For the first time in a long time, I feel like I escaped the rat wheel of my life. I owe that to you,” he told Shannon.
“Even rats need to recharge once in a while.”
“Yeah.” He turned and watched the landscape outside the window. “I’ve been thinking about your question earlier. About working too hard.”
“Your explanation told me a lot about you.”
He shook his head. “It made me sound like a saint. I’m not. I like the perks, the money . . . the path to decent tables at restaurants and first-class seats on airplanes. My ego gets a charge quite a bit with this company.”
“There is nothing wrong with enjoying the benefits of your labor,” Shannon told him.
He shrugged. “Until it’s not enough. I need more of this. Days where I don’t have a phone to my ear and my biggest worry is if the big fish looks at me as if I’m lunch.” Just saying the words made him envision their snorkeling adventure taking a turn for the worst. “I need balance.”