Her Sworn Enemy (Men of the Zodiac) by Theresa Meyers

this was so damned easy, why was his gut twisted with unfamiliar emotions and his brain filled with all things Belladonna?
    “So how was dessert last night?” Barclay asked as they prepped the transponders to go down in the equipment baskets.
    “You didn’t bring us any dessert.” Tucker half snarled in reply as he checked the wires for breakage and the long, cylindrical cases for cracks.
    “You know what I mean.” Barclay nudged him with his elbow and waggled his eyebrows. Tuck had the insane urge to lift him up by his swim shorts and chuck him over the side into the water.
    “You and the doc hooking up, Cap?” Toneau chimed in with a broad smile. “She’s pretty hot for a smart person.”
    “We are not hooking up. She’s here to work, like the rest of you should be.” He glared at the members of his crew surrounding him. “So how about we cut gossiping like a bunch of girls and get to it.”
    “Am I interrupting?”
    A long, low wolf whistle, raked over his last nerve, and he threw Williams a death glare. “Not another sound, Williams, or I’ll have you scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush.” The man nodded.
    Tucker turned to face her. The early morning light brought out the red highlights in her auburn hair and exposed the smoothness of her skin. Even without makeup, Bella was a natural beauty. With the addition of a pair of sunglasses, bikini top, and shorts, she was a knockout worthy of a swimsuit calendar. The light shadowed the valley between her breasts, and those long, tan legs were like a sucker punch in the gut. The sweet little bow of her lips, combined with her dark hair pulled up into a messy bun, showing off her shoulders and neck gave him an almost instant case of blue balls. Somehow he managed not to groan and shook off the fog filling his brain, making him stupid. Yeah. No. Not a goddamned thing had improved this morning. Same old, same old. He had the hots. He shouldn’t have the hots. She wasn’t interested. End of story.
    “Morning, Doc.”
    “Did I miss something?” she asked, pulling down her sunglasses to look at him.
    “Nothing important.” He threw a menacing glance at the rest of the crew, and they immediately turned back to their work. No doubt listening to every word. Damn. They were worse than a bunch of horny teenagers. “You ready to get to work?”
    She pushed her sunglasses back into place with her index finger and put her hand on her hip. “Sure. What can I do?”
    How about stand there and let me look at you. No. Focus, he thought then tried to picture images of Venus flytraps.
    “We need to load all the acoustic transponders into the baskets for the ROV to transport to the site.” He pointed out the yellow and black cylinders with a coated wire cage on one end that were about the size and weight of a big Mag-Lite flashlight. He figured it would be easy enough for her to pack them up without help from him or any of the others. It would also keep her occupied while they calibrated the equipment they needed to triangulate the positions of the transponders signals once they were positioned on the sea floor.
    He tried to concentrate on the questions and comments firing off between his crew, but it was difficult. His ears kept filtering out the deeper male voices to fixate on the higher female tones as Bella hummed while she worked. He hadn’t heard a woman hum songs like that since his mother, and it both unnerved and intrigued him. It was one of the endearing things he remembered about her. And look where being hooked up to a McCormack had gotten her.
    Bella was different than any woman he’d ever been attracted to. She didn’t just stand out because she was smart or beautiful, even though she was both. It was more like she radiated an energy that was infectious. Her drive, her sense of purpose and certainty, had already begun to rub off on the crew. They were eager to bring up the treasure in a way that was making them reckless.
    Twice he had to remind his crew