Searching for Love (The Bradens & Montgomerys (Pleasant Hill - Oak Falls) Book 6)

by Melissa Foster

  “He was right,” Zev said. “I should have stuck around so we could have tried to work through things together, but I was too immature to realize it. Nothing has ever felt right without you, Carls. Something was always missing. Like I said, I knew in Mexico that I’d made a mistake by leaving, but what I didn’t understand until I saw you at the wedding, was that nothing would ever feel right because you were the something that was missing. I’ve been lonely for us. For all the little things we had, for our friendship as much as our love. I missed the way we used to look at each other and know what the other was thinking, our inside jokes, our stories, the way we could lie beneath the stars without saying a word and be happy. When I was busting my ass to make ends meet, I knew if you were there, we’d be having fun even in the most awful, exhausting times.” He exhaled a long breath, feeling like he’d held that in forever, despite their talk last night. “I missed that spark that makes your blue eyes even bluer the first time you see something. And yes, I had moments of greatness in the discoveries I made, but I was always pushing through, trying to forget what I’d done to you. Only I never could, because you were—you are—a part of me. Hurting you means hurting myself.”

  She lifted her chin almost defiantly and said, “I agonized over the idea of you not missing me. So, as awful as it sounds, I’m glad to hear that you were tortured by it, too. You thought I’d hate you if you stayed. I have to believe you knew what you were doing, and I think hating you would have been worse than being left behind. Hate eats away at you. Hurt makes you stronger.” She leaned back on her elbows and closed her eyes, tipping her face up toward the sun. “At least that’s the way I’m looking at it. But I don’t want to dwell on the past, so tell me something I don’t know. I want to hear about all the good stuff.”

  Needing to be closer to her, he moved from his towel to hers and lay beside her, propped up on one elbow.

  Turning smiling eyes to him, she said, “What are you doing?”

  “Proving I’m not that stupid kid anymore.”

  “By squishing onto my towel?”

  He put his arm around her waist, tugging her closer, and said, “By not letting you get away.”

  “Okay, Casanova. Woo me with your stories.”

  He told her about how he and Luis had gone over Luis’s calculations, worked through maps and historical data, and Zev had found an error in Luis’s calculations, which had put him too far east to find the wreckage. Over the next year and a half, they searched a five-mile area around the new coordinates. “In addition to the treasures the Black Widow was known to have on board, it had eight cannons. We used a proton magnetometer to detect metal beneath the seafloor. The magnetometer can’t detect gold and silver, but it’ll pick up the ships’ anchors, magnetite ballast stones, cannons…When it picked up an enormous mass, we were pretty sure we’d found the site. But we had to dig farther beneath the ocean’s floor—”

  “Without harming any buried artifacts,” she said excitedly.

  “Exactly. Luis had heard about a guy who had built an apparatus that would fit over his ship’s twin diesel propellers to direct the prop wash down to blast the sand away without harming potential artifacts. I called my father to ask his advice on the best way to build it. He ended up helping fund the project and hooked us up with an engineering buddy of his who was able to connect us with a team to build the equipment faster than I ever thought possible.” He told her about living on Luis’s boat and years of unearthing treasures, describing the process from start to finish, and she was as mesmerized as she used to get when they’d watch archaeological documentaries. “We spent every second we could at that site for just over five years, until it became clear that anything more to be found would be few and far between. There was a bunch of legal hoopla to go through, and we’d ended up getting only a portion of what the treasures were worth, which was still more than either of us could ever spend. But I’d have done it for free. The thrill of discovery was fucking amazing.”

  “A moment of greatness.” She lifted up on her elbow with stars in her eyes. “Tell me more.”

  “Luis is semiretired now. He no longer dives, but he oversees a team of divers who still dive a few months out of the year. He said he’d found his treasure and it was high time he tried to find a good woman to keep him warm at night. Guess he was tired of the likes of me.”

  “I guess so,” she teased. “If you were lonely, then I’m sure he was, too. Did he have women friends, or anyone special to keep him company?”

  “We didn’t bring women on the boat, if that’s what you’re asking. He’d hook up with women when we were inland, but our lives weren’t focused on finding long-term relationships. He just scratched the occasional itch. But treasure hunting is not an easy life, and by then he was nearing sixty. He’d had enough, and he had more money than he could ever spend. He wanted to settle down, enjoy creature comforts, fall in love…”

  Their eyes connected, and he saw that she was struggling with the desire brimming in hers. He couldn’t resist coaxing her along and reached over, gently touching her side. When she didn’t swat him away, he ran his fingers lightly along the dip at her waist and over the swell of her hip, drawing out the moment before sharing news of his latest discovery of what he hoped were artifacts from their ship.

  Goose bumps chased his fingers, and she rocked forward with a giggle. “You’re tickling me.”

  He’d like to tickle that bathing suit right off her. Instead, he moved his hand to the space between them.

  “I’m waiting,” she said melodically. “What have you been doing since Luis retired?”

  “Remember the Pride?”

  “How could I ever forget? We did our senior career-day presentation on it and aced it. Two Treasure Hunters, One Ship. Modern-Day Goonies Hunt for the Pride. God, we really believed in ourselves, didn’t we?”

  “We sure did. I never stopped researching it, but I didn’t have the capital, or the know-how, to really go after it until I’d worked with Luis and we made our discovery. I’ve spent the last several summers searching off the coast of Silver Island for the wreckage.”

  She sat up, eyes wide. “You have? That’s awesome! Have you found anything? Were our calculations close?”

  “We were close.” He pushed himself up beside her. “We thought it was—”

  “Eleven miles offshore,” they said at the same time, and they laughed.

  “But I believe the site is only about six miles offshore and spans about four or five miles from the island’s westernmost coast. But I have no doubt that if you and I had gone out there together, we wouldn’t have given up until we found it.” He paused before telling her his news, wanting to capture her moment of elation. “Two days before the wedding, I found concretions from what’s got to be our ship.”

  “You did not! Oh my God! Zevy! Tell me. Tell me everything! How did you find them? What was it like when you first realized what they were? How did it feel? What’s the site like? How big are the concretions? How many did you find? Did you have them X-rayed? Is anyone working on them yet?”

  And there it was, even more magnificent than he’d remembered. Man, he missed sharing his life with her. He told her about the years he’d spent narrowing down the location of the wreckage, the exploratory dives and digs, the multitude of findings that were false alarms rather than valuable artifacts. He described using the magnetometer, and the test holes they’d dug, and the ones they’d blasted using an apparatus like the one he and Luis had commissioned, and how that had led to the discovery of the concretions. As he spoke, he decided to surprise her with the concretions that he’d shipped there rather than telling her about them.

  “I wish you could have been there to experience it. I got this feeling in the pit of my stomach when I found the first concretion. That was our moment of greatness, babe. When I realized what I’d found, my first thought was This one’s for you, Carls.”

  “It was not,” she said disbelievingly.

  “Not only w
as it my first thought, but when I got back up to the boat, I actually hollered it up at the sky. I guess I thought you might get one of those chills down your back or something and think of me. Clearly I was delirious.”

  “Oh my gosh, Zevy!” Her wide, beautiful eyes danced with joy. “I can’t believe you found the Pride.”

  “I don’t have solid proof yet, but I’d bet my life on it. We dug down about ten feet below the ocean floor to reach the concretions, but I found them so late in the day I didn’t have a chance to sweep the crater with the magnetometer again and see if it picked up on more metal buried even deeper. I had to give the largest one to my attorney so he could work on arresting the vessel.” His attorney, Jeremy Ryder, was one of the best admiralty and maritime lawyers in Boston.

  “There’s got to be more down there.”

  “I know there is. I can feel it my bones, Carls. I was really close to backing out of attending the wedding so I could go diving, but I couldn’t do that to Beau. I’m so damn glad I didn’t back out.” That earned him a slightly shy smile, which tugged at something deep inside him.

  “Me too,” she said softly. “But you must be dying to get back.”

  “I’ll be out on the water first thing Monday morning with the mag, and with any luck, it’ll light up like the Fourth of July. But we researched the process as kids—you know how it goes. My attorney needs to get the vessel arrested and the substitute custodian paperwork formalized; the artifacts need to be extracted from the concretions and proven to be from the Pride, if possible. Even then there are other pieces that have to fall into place after the vessel is arrested.”

  The US Marshal Service served as custodian of all arrested vessels, though they don’t have the manpower to take on the responsibilities and often a substitute custodian stood in its place. It was the custodian’s job to look after the wreck, make sure it wasn’t damaged and was properly documented by underwater archaeologists, and ensure the treasures and artifacts were brought back to shore, preserved, and accounted for. Hopefully that would go fairly smoothly, but an announcement about the discovery would be placed in a local newspaper, and from there, who knew how many people would come out of the woodwork claiming they’d already discovered the wreckage. If that happened, Zev could face insurance issues and legal battles. It was all stressful, but he wasn’t going to let that get the better of him. He was focusing on the here and now.

  On Carly.

  “I’m on pins and needles and it’s not even my discovery,” she said excitedly. “I know there’s a process, and it’ll take time, but still. I can’t believe you’re doing it, Zevy. How long can you dive there? What will you do over the winter?”

  “I’ll dive until it’s too cold or the water’s too treacherous to continue. Usually when the weather gets too cold, I take off. I’ve been all over the world, hiking, surfing, diving, cliff diving. You name it, I’ve done it. Before I had any money, I’d sleep in hostels, camp, you know the drill. I’ve been to Thailand, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Australia, Spain, and a hundred other places. If any of my relatives are traveling and I can make it work, I try to connect with them. I met up with Graham, Morgyn, and Knox in Belize.”

  “You’ve gone to so many of our one day places,” she said with admiration.

  “Yes. But like I said, it wasn’t all that we’d hoped, because you weren’t there. It sounds far more glamorous than it was.”

  “Well, I’m here now. Feel this.” She grabbed his hand and pressed it over her racing heart. “I’ve been living in my safe little mecca for so long, I’d forgotten what excitement felt like.”

  He held her gaze, tracing the dip of her cleavage with his fingertip, loving the darkening of her eyes and the way she breathed a little harder as he said, “Feels pretty damn amazing to me.”

  ALL OF CARLY’S lady parts were chanting Kiss him! Kiss him! She’d been fighting the urge all day. But Zev made her want more than she had in what felt like forever, and she could handle only one dangerous leap at a time. If she was going to find the part of herself she’d locked down tight, she needed her legs to function, and kissing Zev would pretty much guarantee that they wouldn’t.

  She popped up to her feet, pulling Zev up with her, and said, “Come on. I want to do it.”

  “Here? In front of all these people?” he said, drawing her into his strong arms.

  His skin was hot, his eyes hungry, and when he dipped his head and kissed her neck, dragging his tongue along her heated flesh, lust pooled deep in her belly.

  “I don’t think that’s the smartest move,” he said huskily. “But I spotted a cave we can swim to.”

  The thought of having Zev buried deep inside her made her lady parts do much more than chant. She was this close to giving in to her desires and letting Zev explore her cave. But while getting down and dirty in a cave with Zev would be the ultimate adventure, she already knew that sexually attracted part of her was still alive and kicking. She needed to know if the adventurous thrill-seeking girl she’d once been still existed, or if it was just wishful thinking. She forced herself to step out of his arms.

  He snagged her hand, giving her a wanting, knee-weakening look.

  Buck up, knees! You have a job to do.

  “Dream on, Captain Jack,” she said. “I want to climb the rocks and take that leap with you.”

  “Make no mistake, babe, my dreams turned to dark-and-dirty fantasies about you a long time ago.”

  The air rushed from her lungs at his lustful, inviting tone.

  He palmed her ass, sending more thrills darting through her, and said, “Are we jumping or what?”

  Between the Kiss him! Kiss him!, the fantasies comment, and the feel of his hot hand on her ass, all she could manage was “Uh-huh.”

  He drew her close again, and she felt his arousal pressing into her belly. He squeezed her bottom and said, “Let’s go, babe, before it gets too hard for me to walk.”

  With those words in her ear, Carly had no idea how she made it up the hill and over the boulders to the top of the cliff, but with Zev anything was possible. God, she’d missed that feeling. She looked down, and her heart beat so fast she thought she might pass out. She tightened her grip on Zev’s hand.

  “What do you need, Carls?”

  With her hand in his and the warm summer sun kissing her skin, there was only one thing she needed. “A little more courage.”

  “I’ve got enough for both of us. But do you want to start lower?”

  “Yes!” she exclaimed, holding on to his hand like a lifeline. “But there’s no way I’m going back down.” She inched out to the edge of the cliff and curled her toes around it. “If I’m going to do this, I’m jumping in with both feet.” Did he know she was talking about much more than the jump? “At least if I die, it’ll be with you.”

  “‘Goonies never say die,’” he said, squeezing her hand. “Do you want to count us down?”

  She nodded, a rush of nervous energy bubbling up inside her. “One!” Zev gripped her hand tighter. “Two!” She looked at him and knew she could do this. “Three!”

  As they leapt off the rocks, she could feel the chains that had bound her to years of hurt breaking free. She flew through the air toward the freedom and happiness she’d forgotten existed. Zev never let go as they plunged into the cold, deep water and swam up to the surface. They both whooped. Throwing her arms around his neck and pressing her lips to his was as natural as holding her breath as they sank below the surface again, their mouths still connected. Just like they used to.

  He held her tight as they resurfaced, laughing and kissing.

  Kissing Zev was better than sugary cereal, better than sunshine and sandy beaches. Kissing Zev, being with him, and breaking the tethers to her past brought back the Carly she knew. The Carly she’d lost—and only now realized she’d missed like a severed limb.

  “Again!” she yelled, and he kissed her. She’d been talking about jumping, but the kiss was just as nice.

  They swam to the
shore, and then they jumped, flipped, dove, laughed, and kissed so many times it felt like the whole world had gone still and they were the only things moving. Carly had good, close friends that she loved. But in all the time she’d known them, she’d never felt this invigorated and alive. Zev’s voice whispered through her mind. That’s the power of us, Carls. You’ve always been the treasure, and without you I’m just an empty chest, hoping for a shot at more. He was wrong. She’d been the empty chest, and he’d been her treasure.

  She splashed him and swam away underwater. She watched him turning, looking for her. She surfaced behind him and threw her arms around his neck, clinging to his back like a monkey to a tree. “Take me for a ride!”

  His hearty laughter rang out seconds before he dove under the water like he used to, carrying her on his back as he swam this way and that, breaking the surface for breaths, then diving back under, drenching her in happy memories she’d spent years repressing.

  When they broke the surface, she felt his heart racing through his back. She rested her head on his shoulder, soaking in the feel of him. How could she have thought she could control her feelings for him over the next several days? And why had she wanted to? The only thing she needed to control in order to protect her heart were her expectations. This time together was a gift, and she intended to enjoy every blessed minute as if it were the last they’d ever get.

  She had her doubts about being able to keep her expectations in line, but she was no longer a young girl pinning her hopes on the man of her dreams. She knew the realities of their lives, and believed the happiness consuming her would be worth every ounce of heartache if their time together didn’t lead to more.

  “Climb up top, sugarbum.” He reached behind him, grabbing her ass.

  She squealed, sounding so much like Birdie it gave her a second’s pause, but it didn’t last long because she used to be that carefree girl and it felt great to feel that way again. She pushed Zev’s hair out of the way to climb onto his shoulders—and went stock-still at the sight of a Lucky Charms tattoo down the center of the back of his neck. Emotions clogged her throat as she took in the shapes, all black with the exception of the last: A star, the power to fly beyond jumping off cliffs or skydiving. A rainbow, the power to travel. A heart, the power of life. We called it the power of love. A four-leaf clover, the power of luck. Her heart felt like it might burst when she reached the last shape—a treasure chest full of coins, tattooed in gold, the power of us.