by Nora Roberts
Pretty enough, too, he mused. Her face might have been all angles, with cheekbones sharp enough to slice a man’s exploring finger, but she had big, delicious green eyes. Eyes, he recalled, that had shot prickly little darts at him in the water, and out.
That only made annoying her more interesting.
Since they were going to be diving in the same pool for a while, he might as well enjoy himself.
He was sitting cross-legged on the forward sundeck when Tate came back out. She gave him a quick glance, having nearly talked herself out of the sulks. His skin was bronzed, and against his chest winked a silver piece of eight hanging from a chain. She wanted to ask him about it, to hear where he’d found it, and how.
But he was smirking at her. Manners, pride and curiosity collided with a wall that kept her unnaturally silent as conversation flowed around her.
Matthew bit into one of Marla’s generous ham sandwiches.
“Terrific, Mrs. Beaumont. A lot better than the swill Buck and I are used to.”
“You have some more of this potato salad.” Flattered, she heaped a mound on his paper plate. “And it’s Marla, dear. Tate, you come on and get yourself some lunch.”
“Tate.” Matthew squinted against the sun as he studied her. “Unusual name.”
“Marla’s maiden name.” Ray slipped an arm over his wife’s shoulders. He sat in wet bathing trunks, enjoying the warmth and company. His silvered hair danced in the light breeze. “Tate here’s been diving since she was pint-sized. Couldn’t ask for a better partner. Marla loves the sea, loves to sail, but she barely swims a stroke.”
With a chuckle, Marla refilled tall glasses of iced tea. “I like looking at the water. Being in it’s something different altogether.” She sat back placidly with her drink. “Once it gets past my knees, I just panic. I always wonder if I drowned in a former life. So for this one, I’m happy tending the boat.”
“And a fine one she is.” Buck had already assessed the Adventure. A tidy thirty-eight footer, teak decking, fancy brightwork. He’d guess she carried two staterooms, a full galley. Without his prescription face mask, he could still make out the massive windows of the pilothouse. He’d liked to have taken his fingers for a walk through the engine and control station.
A look around later was in order, after he had his glasses. Even without them, he calculated that the diamond on Marla’s finger was a good five carats, and the gold circle on her right hand was antique.
He smelled money.
“So, Ray . . .” Casually, he tipped back his glass. “Matthew and me, we’ve been diving around here for the past few weeks. Haven’t seen you.”
“First dive today. We sailed down from North Carolina, started out the day Tate finished her spring semester.”
College girl. Matthew took a hard swallow of cold tea. Jesus. He deliberately turned his gaze away from her legs and concentrated on his lunch. All bets were definitely off, he decided. He was nearly twenty-five and didn’t mess with snotty college kids.
“We’re going to spend the summer here,” Ray went on. “Possibly longer. Last winter, we dived off the coast of Mexico a few weeks. Couple of good wrecks there, but mostly played out. We managed to bring up a thing or two though. Some nice pottery, some clay pipes.”
“And those lovely perfume bottles,” Marla put in.
“Been at it awhile, then,” Buck prompted.
“Ten years.” Ray’s eyes shone. “Fifteen since the first time I went down.” He leaned forward, hunter to hunter. “Friend of mine talked me into scuba lessons. After I’d certified, I went with him to Diamond Shoals. Only took one dive to hook me.”
“Now he spends every free minute diving, planning a dive or talking about the last dive.” Marla let out her lusty laugh. Her eyes, the same rich green as her daughter’s, danced. “So I learned how to handle a boat.”
“Me, I’ve been hunting more than forty years.” Buck scooped up the last of his potato salad. He hadn’t eaten so well in more than a month. “In the blood. My father was the same. We salvaged off the coast of Florida, before the government got so tight-assed. Me, my father and my brother. The Lassiters.”
“Yes, of course.” Ray slapped a hand on his knee. “I’ve read about you. Your father was Big Matt Lassiter. Found the El Diablo off Conch Key in ’sixty-four.”
“ ’Sixty-three,” Buck corrected, with a grin. “Found it, and the fortune she held. The kind of gold a man dreams of, jewels, ingots of silver. I held in my hand a gold chain with a figure of a dragon. A fucking gold dragon,” he said, then stopped, flushed. “Beg pardon, ma’am.”
“No need.” Fascinated with the image, Marla urged another sandwich on him. “What was it like?”
“Like nothing you can imagine.” At ease again, Buck chomped into ham. “There were rubies for its eyes, emeralds in its tail.” Bitterly, he looked down at his hands now and found them empty. “It was worth five fortunes.”
Caught up in the wonder, Ray stared. “Yes. I’ve seen pictures of it. Diablo’s Dragon. You brought it up. Extraordinary.”
“The state closed in,” Buck continued. “Kept us in court for years. Claimed the three-mile limit started at the end of the reef, not at shore. Bastards bled us dry before it was done. In the end they took, and we lost. No better than pirates,” he said and finished off his drink.
“How terrible for you,” Marla murmured. “To have done all that, discovered all that, only to have it taken.”
“Broke the old man’s heart. Never did dive again.” Buck moved his shoulders. “Well, there are other wrecks. Other treasures.” Buck judged his man, and gambled. “Like the Santa Marguerite, the Isabella.”
“Yes, they’re here.” Ray met Buck’s eye steadily. “I’m sure of it.”
“Could be.” Matthew picked up the sword, turned it over in his hands. “Or it could be that both of them were swept out to sea. There’s no record of survivors. Only two ships crashed on the reef.”
Ray lifted a finger. “Ah, but witnesses of the day claim they saw the Isabella and the Santa Marguerite go down. Survivors from the other ships saw the waves rise and scuttle them.”
Matthew lifted his gaze to Ray’s, nodded. “Maybe.”
“Matthew’s a cynic,” Buck commented. “Keeps me level. I’m going to tell you something, Ray.” He leaned forward, pale blue eyes keen. “I’ve been doing research of my own. Five years on and off. Three years ago, the boy and I spent better than six months combing these waters—mostly the two-mile stretch between St. Kitts and Nevis and the peninsula area. We found this, we found that, but we didn’t find those two ships. But I know they’re here.”
“Well, now.” Ray tugged on his bottom lip, a gesture that Tate knew meant he was considering. “I think you were looking in the wrong spot, Buck. Not that I want to say I’d know more about it. The ships took off from Nevis, but from what I’ve been able to piece together, the two lost wrecks made it farther north, just past the tip of Saint Kitts before they broke.”
Buck’s lips curved. “I figure the same. It’s a big sea, Ray.” He flicked a glance toward Matthew and was rewarded with a careless shrug. “I’ve got forty years experience, and the boy’s been diving since he could walk. What I don’t have is financial backing.”
As a man who had worked his way up to CEO of a top brokerage firm before his early retirement, Ray knew a deal when it was placed on the table. “You’re looking for a partnership, Buck. We’d have to talk about that. Discuss terms, percentages.” Rising, Ray flashed a smile. “Why don’t we step into my office?”
“Well, then.” Marla smiled as her husband and Buck stepped into the deckhouse. “I think I’m going to sit in the shade and nap over my book. You children entertain yourselves.” She moved off under a striped awning and settled down with her iced tea and a paperback novel.
“I guess I’ll go over and clean up my booty.” Matthew reached for a large plastic bag. “Mind if I borrow this?” Without waiting for a response, he loaded his gear i
nto it, then hefted his tanks. “Want to give me a hand?”
“No.”
He only lifted a brow. “I figured you might want to see how this cleans up.” He gestured with the sword, waited to see if her curiosity would overpower her irritation. He didn’t wait long.
With a mutter, she snatched the plastic bag and took it down the ladder to the swim step and over the side with her.
The Sea Devil looked worse close up. Tate judged its sway in the current expertly and hauled herself over the rail. She caught a faint whiff of fish.
Gear was carefully stowed and secured. But the deck needed washing as much as it needed painting. The windows on the tiny wheelhouse where a hammock swung were smudged and smeared with salt and smoke. A couple of overturned buckets, and a second hammock, served as seats.
“It’s not the Queen Mary.” Matthew stored his tanks. “But it’s not the Titanic either. She ain’t pretty, but she’s seaworthy.”
He took the bag from her and stored his wet suit in a large plastic garbage can. “Want a drink?”
Tate took another slow look around. “Got anything sterilized?”
He flipped open the lid of an ice chest, fished out a Pepsi. Tate caught it on the fly and sat down on a bucket. “You’re living on board.”
“That’s right.” He went into the wheelhouse. When she heard him rattling around, she reached over to stroke the sword he’d laid across the other bucket.
Had it graced the belt of some Spanish captain with lace at his cuffs and recklessness in his soul? Had he killed buccaneers with it, or worn it for style? Perhaps he had gripped it in a white-knuckled hand as the wind and the waves had battered his ship.
And no one since then had felt its weight.
She looked up, saw Matthew standing at the wheelhouse door watching her. Furiously embarrassed, Tate snatched her hand back, took a casual drink from her Pepsi.
“We have a sword at home,” she said evenly. “Sixteenth century.” She didn’t add that they had only the hilt, and that it was broken.
“Good for you.” He took the sword, settled with it on the deck. He was already regretting the impulsive invitation. It didn’t do much good for him to keep repeating to himself that she was too young. Not with her T-shirt wet and molded against her, and those creamy, just sun-kissed legs looking longer than they had a right to. And that voice—half whiskey, half prim lemonade—didn’t belong to a child, but to a woman. Or it should have.
She frowned, watching him patiently working on the corrosion. She hadn’t expected those scarred, rough-looking hands to be patient.
“Why do you want partners?”
He didn’t look up. “Didn’t say I did.”
“But your uncle—”
“That’s Buck.” Matthew lifted a shoulder. “He handles the business.”
She propped her elbows on her knees, her chin in the heels of her hands. “What do you handle?”
He glanced up then, and his eyes, restless despite the patience of his hands, clashed with hers. “The hunt.”
She understood that, exactly, and smiled at him with an eagerness that ignored the sword between them. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it? Thinking about what could be there, and that you might be the one to find it. Where did you find the coin?” At his baffled look, she grinned and reached out to touch the disk of silver at his chest. “The piece of eight.”
“My first real salvage dive,” he told her, wishing she didn’t look so appealingly fresh and friendly. “California. We lived there for a while. What are you doing diving for treasure instead of driving some college boy nuts?”
Tate tossed her head and tried her hand at sophistication. “Boys are easy,” she drawled, and slid down to sit on the deck across from him. “I like challenges.”
The quick twist in his gut warned him. “Careful, little girl,” he murmured.
“I’m twenty,” she said with all the frigid pride of burgeoning womanhood. Or she would be, she amended, by summer’s end. “Why are you out here diving for treasure instead of working for a living?”
Now he grinned. “Because I’m good. If you’d been better, you’d have this, and I wouldn’t.”
Rather than dignify that with a response, she took another sip of Pepsi. “Why isn’t your father along? Has he given up diving?”
“In a manner of speaking. He’s dead.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Nine years ago,” Matthew continued, and kept cleaning the sword. “We were doing some hunting off of Australia.”
“A diving accident?”
“No. He was too good to have an accident.” He picked up the can she’d set down, took a swallow. “He was murdered.”
It took Tate a moment. Matthew had spoken so matter-of-factly that the word “murder” didn’t register. “My God, how—”
“I don’t know, for sure.” Nor did he know why he had told her. “He went down alive; we brought him up dead. Hand me that rag.”
“But—”
“That was the end of it,” he said and reached for the rag himself. “No use dwelling on the past.”
She had an urge to lay a hand on his scarred one, but judged, correctly, that he’d snap it off at the wrist. “An odd statement from a treasure hunter.”
“Babe, it’s what it brings you now that counts. And this ain’t bad.”
Distracted, she looked back down at the hilt. As Matthew rubbed, she began to see the gleam. “Silver,” she murmured. “It’s silver. A mark of rank. I knew it.”
“It’s a nice piece.”
Forgetting everything but the find, she leaned closer, let her fingertip skim along the gleam. “I think it’s eighteenth-century.”
His eyes smiled. “Do you?”
“I’m majoring in marine archeology.” She gave her bangs an impatient push. “It could have belonged to the captain.”
“Or any other officer,” Matthew said dryly. “But it’ll keep me in beer and shrimp for a while.”
Stunned, she jerked back. “You’re going to sell it? You’re just going to sell it? For money?”
“I’m not going to sell it for clamshells.”
“But don’t you want to know where it came from, who it came from?”
“Not particularly.” He turned the cleaned portion of the hilt toward the sun, watched it glint in the light. “There’s an antique dealer on Saint Bart’s who’ll give me a square deal.”
“That’s horrible. That’s . . .” She searched for the worst insult she could imagine. “Ignorant.” In a flash, she was on her feet. “To just sell it that way. For all you know, it may have belonged to the captain of the Isabella or the Santa Marguerite. That would be a historic find. It could belong in a museum.”
Amateurs, Matthew thought in disgust. “It belongs where I put it.” He rose fluidly. “I found it.”
Her heart stuttered at the thought of it wasting away in some dusty antique shop, or worse, being bought by some careless tourist who would hang it on the wall of his den.
“I’ll give you a hundred dollars for it.”
His grin flashed. “Red, I could get more than that by melting down the hilt.”
She paled at the thought. “You wouldn’t do that. You couldn’t.” When he only cocked his head, she bit her lip. The stereo system she envisioned gracing her college dorm room would have to wait. “Two hundred then. It’s all I have saved.”
“I’ll take my chances on Saint Bart’s.”
Color flooded back into her cheeks. “You’re nothing but an opportunist.”
“You’re right. And you’re an idealist.” He smiled as she stood in front of him, hands fisted, eyes fired. Over her shoulder, he caught movement on the deck of the Adventure. “And for better or worse, Red, it looks like we’re partners.”
“Over my dead body.”
He took her by the shoulders. For one startled minute, she thought he meant to heave her overboard. But he simply turned her until she faced her own boat.
Her hear
t sank as she watched her father and Buck Lassiter shake hands.
CHAPTER 2
A BRILLIANT SUNSET poured gold and pink across the sky and melted into the sea. The glory was followed by the finger-snap twilight so usual in the tropics. Over the calm water came the scratchy sound of a portable radio aboard the Sea Devil that did little justice to the bouncy reggae beat. The air might have been redolent with the scent of sautéing fish, but Tate’s mood was foul.
“I don’t see why we need partners.” Tate propped her elbows on the narrow table in the galley and frowned at her mother’s back.
“Your father took a real shine to Buck.” Marla sprinkled crushed rosemary into the pan. “It’s good for him to have a man near his own age to pal around with.”
“He has us,” Tate grumbled.
“Of course he has.” Marla smiled over her shoulder. “But men need men, honey. They’ve just got to spit and belch now and again.”
Tate snorted at the idea of her impeccably mannered father doing either. “The point is we don’t know anything about them. I mean, they just showed up in our space.” She was still smarting over the sword. “Dad spent months researching these wrecks. Why should we trust the Lassiters?”
“Because they’re Lassiters,” Ray said as he swung into the galley. Bending over, he planted a noisy kiss on the top of Tate’s head. “Our girl’s got a suspicious nature, Marla.” He winked at his wife, then because it was his turn for galley duty, began to set the table. “That’s a good thing, to a point. It’s not smart to believe everything you see, everything you hear. But sometimes you’ve got to go with the gut. Mine tells me the Lassiters are just what we need to round out this little adventure.”
“How?” Tate propped her chin on her fist. “Matthew Lassiter is arrogant and shortsighted and—”
“Young.” Ray finished with a twinkle in his eye. “Marla, that smells wonderful.” He slipped his arms around her waist and nuzzled the back of her neck. She smelled of suntan lotion and Chanel.