The sixth book in the Rinucci Brothers series, 2007

‘SLIGHTLY to your left…bit more…bit more…reach out now…can you feel it?’

‘Yes,’ Celia called in delight.

Her fingers made their way through the water until they touched the rock, eased around it, up, down, exploring in all directions, while the man’s voice on the radio spoke in her ear.

‘Try a little farther along. Feel the shape of it.’

‘I’ve got it,’ she said into her own radio. ‘Now I want to go down farther.’

Ken, controlling her lightly from on land, asked into the microphone, ‘Sure you haven’t had enough for the day?’

‘I’ve barely started. I want to do lots more yet.’

From the radio in her ear she heard Ken’s chuckle as he recognised her familiar cry of ‘lots more yet.’ It was the mantra by which she lived, her shout of defiance in the face of her blindness. She’d learned it from her blind parents whose motto had been, ‘Who needs eyes?’

‘I want to go down much deeper,’ she said.

He groaned. ‘Your boyfriend will murder me.’

‘Don’t call him my boyfriend as though we were a couple of kids.’

‘What, then?’

Good question. What should she call Francesco Rinucci? Her fiancé? No, for they’d never talked about marriage. Her live-in companion? Yes, but that didn’t begin to explain it. Her lover? That was true, she thought, shivering pleasurably with the thought. Yes, definitely her lover. But also so much more.

‘Don’t worry about Francesco,’ she said. ‘I didn’t tell him I was coming here. If he finds out, he’ll be too busy murdering me to bother with you. C’mon, let me down. You know I’ll be all right.’