by Nora Roberts
Reverently, Ray took the bowl from Tate. By the time she and Matthew had gotten aboard, Marla was sitting on deck, surrounded by debris, the flowered bowl in her lap, her video camera beside her.
“Pretty piece,” Buck commented. However casual the words, his voice betrayed his excitement.
“Tate liked it.” Matthew glanced toward her. She was standing in her wet suit, the tears that had threatened forty feet below flowing freely.
“There are so many things,” she managed. “Dad, you can’t imagine. Under the sand. All these years under the sand. Then you find them. Something like this.” After rubbing the heels of her hands over her face, she crouched by her mother, dared to skim a gentle fingertip over the rim of the bowl. “Not a chip. It survived a hurricane and more than two hundred and fifty years, and it’s perfect.”
She rose. Her fingers felt numb as she tugged at the zipper of her wet suit. “There was a platter, pewter. It’s caught between two iron spikes like a sculpture. You only had to close your eyes to see it heaped with food and set on a table. Nothing I’ve been studying comes close to doing it, to seeing it.”
“I figure we hit the galley area,” Matthew put in. “Plenty of wooden utensils, wine jugs, broken dishes.” Grateful, he accepted the cold juice Ray offered him. “I dug a lot of test holes, about a thirty-foot area. The two of you might want to move a few degrees north of that.”
“Let’s get started.” Buck was already suiting up. Casually, Matthew walked over to pour more juice.
“Saw a shark cruising,” he said in an undertone. It was well known among the partners that Marla paled and panicked at the thought of sharks. “Wasn’t interested in us, but it wouldn’t hurt to take a couple of bangsticks down.”
Ray glanced toward his wife, who was reverently documenting the latest treasures on video. “Better safe than sorry,” he agreed. “Tate,” he called out. “Want to reload the camera for me?”
Twenty minutes later, the compressor was pumping again. Tate worked at the big drop-leaf table in the deckhouse with her mother, cataloguing every item they’d brought up from the wreck.
“It’s the Santa Marguerite.” Tate fingered a spoon before setting it in the proper pile. “We found the ordinance mark on one of the cannons. We found our Spanish galleon, Mom.”
“Your father’s dream.”
“And yours?”
“And mine,” Marla agreed with a slow smile. “Used to be I just went along for the ride. It was such a nice, interesting hobby, I thought. It gave us such adventurous vacations, and was certainly a change from our mundane jobs.”
Tate looked up, a pucker of a frown between her brows. “I never knew you thought your job was mundane.”
“Oh, being a legal secretary is fine except when you start asking yourself why you didn’t have the gumption to be the lawyer.” She moved her shoulders. “The way I was raised, Tate, honey, a woman didn’t move in a man’s world except to quietly pick up behind him. Your grandma was a very old-fashioned woman. I was expected to work in an acceptable job until I found a suitable husband.” She laughed and set aside a pewter cup with a missing handle. “I just got lucky on the husband part. Very lucky.”
This, too, was a new discovery. “Did you want to be a lawyer?”
“Never occurred to me,” Marla admitted. “Until I was heading on toward forty. A dangerous time for a woman. I can’t say I looked back when your father decided to retire. I did the same, and I thought I was more than content to drift with him, playing at treasure-hunting. Now seeing these things.” She picked up a silver coin. “Makes me realize we’re doing something important. Valuable in its way. I never thought to make a mark again.”
“Again.”
Marla looked up with a smile. “I made my mark when I had you. This is wonderful, and it’s exciting. But you’ll always be treasure enough for your father and me.”
“You’ve always made me feel like I can do anything. Be anything.”
“You can.” Marla glanced over. “Matthew, come join us.”
“I don’t want to interrupt.” He felt out of his depth, and clumsy, stepping into the family unit.
“Don’t be silly.” Marla was already on her feet. “I bet you’d like some coffee. I’ve got fresh in the galley. Tate and I are organizing our treasure trove.”
Matthew scanned the scatter of artifacts over the table. “I think we’re going to need more room.”
Marla laughed as she stepped back in with the coffee. “Oh, I like an optimistic man.”
“Realistic,” Tate corrected and patted the seat on the settee in invitation. “My diving partner is far from optimistic.”
Not certain if he was amused or insulted, Matthew sat beside her and sampled his coffee. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“I would.” Tate dived into the bowl of pretzels her mother set out. “Buck’s the dreamer. You like the life—sun, sea, sand.” Nibbling, she leaned back. “No real responsibilities, no real ties. You don’t expect to find some crusted chest filled with gold doubloons, but you know how to make do with the occasional trinket. Enough to keep you in shrimp and beer.”
“Tate.” Marla shook her head, muffled a laugh. “Don’t be rude.”
“No, she’s hitting it.” Matthew bit into a pretzel. “Let her finish.”
“You’re not afraid of hard work because there’s always plenty of time for lying in a hammock, snoozing. There’s the excitement of the dive, of the discovery, and always the turnover value rather than the intrinsic value of some small booty.” She handed him a silver spoon. “You’re a realist, Matthew. So when you say we’ll need more room, I believe you.”
“Fine.” He realized no matter how he weighed it, he was insulted. He tossed the spoon with a clatter back onto the pile. “I figure we can use the Sea Devil for storage.” When she angled her chin, peered down her nose, he sneered at her. “Buck and I can bunk here, on deck. We can use the Adventure for our workstation. We dive from here, we clean the conglomerate and artifacts here, then transport them to the Sea Devil.”
“That seems very sensible,” Marla agreed. “After all, we have two boats, we might as well make full use of both of them.”
“All right. If Dad and Buck agree, so will I. In the meantime, Matthew, why don’t you help me bring in another load from on deck?”
“Fine. Thanks for the coffee, Marla.”
“Oh, you’re welcome, sweetie.”
“I’m going to have to run to Saint Kitts later,” Tate began as they started out. “To have the film developed. Want to come with me?”
“Maybe.”
She caught the edge to his voice and smothered a smile. “Matthew.” To stop his progress, she touched a hand to his arm. “Do you know why I think we work so well together down there?”
“No.” He turned. Her skin was still an impossible alabaster even after weeks at sea. He could smell the cream she used to protect it, and the perfume that was salt and sea air that clung to her hair. “But you’re going to tell me.”
“I think it’s because you’re realistic, and I’m idealistic. You’re reckless, I’m cautious. Contradicting traits inside ourselves and against each other. Somehow we make a balance.”
“You really like to analyze things, don’t you, Red?”
“I guess I do.” Hoping he was unaware of how much courage it took, she shifted closer. “I’ve been analyzing why you were so angry after you kissed me.”
“I wasn’t angry,” he corrected evenly. “And you kissed me.”
“I started it.” Determined to finish it, she kept her eyes on his. “You changed it, then you got mad because it surprised you. What you felt surprised you. It surprised me, too.” Lifting her hands, she spread them on his chest. “I wonder if we’d be surprised now.”
He wanted, more than anything he could remember, he wanted to swoop down and plunder that fresh and eager mouth. The hunger to taste it came in swift, sharp waves, and made his hands rough as they snagged her wrists.
“You’re moving into dark water, Tate.”
“Not alone.” She wasn’t afraid any longer, she realized. Why, she wasn’t even nervous. “I know what I’m doing.”
“No, you don’t.” He shoved her back, arm’s length, hardly realizing his hands were still cuffed around her wrists. “You figure there aren’t any consequences, but there are. If you don’t watch your step, you’ll pay them.”
A shiver worked up her spine, deliciously. “I’m not afraid to be with you. I want to be with you.”
The muscles in his stomach twisted. “Easy to say, with your mother in the galley. Then again, maybe you’re more clever than you look.” Furious, he tossed her hands down and strode away.
The implication brought a bright bloom to her cheeks. She had been teasing him, she realized. Taunting him. To see if she could, needing to know if he felt even half of this draw toward her that she felt toward him. Ashamed, contrite, she hurried after him.
“Matthew, I’m sorry. Really I—”
But he was over the side with a splash and swimming toward the Sea Devil. Tate let out a huff of breath. Damn it, the least he could do was listen when she apologized. She dived in after him.
When she dragged herself onto the deck, he was popping the top on a beer.
“Go home, little girl, before I toss you overboard.”
“I said I was sorry.” She dragged wet hair out of her eyes. “That was unfair and stupid, and I apologize.”
“Fine.” The quick swim and cold beer weren’t doing much to scratch the itch. Hoping to ignore her, he swung into his hammock. “Go home.”
“I don’t want you to be mad.” Determined to make amends, she marched to the hammock. “I was only trying to . . . I was just testing.”
He set the open beer on the deck. “Testing,” he repeated, then lunged before she could draw in the breath to gasp. He hauled her onto the hammock atop him. It swung wildly as she clawed at the sides to keep from upending. Her eyes popped wide with shock when his hands clamped intimately over her bottom.
“Matthew!”
He gave her a quick, not altogether loving tap, then shoved her off. She landed in a heap on the butt he’d just explored.
“I’d say we’re even now,” he stated, and reached for his beer.
Her first impulse was to spring to attack. Only the absolute certainty that the result would be either humiliating or disastrous prevented her. Mixed with that was the lowering thought that she’d deserved just what she’d gotten.
“All right.” With calm and dignity, she rose. “We’re even.”
He’d expected her to lash at him. At the very least to blubber. The fact that she stood beside him, cool, composed, touched off a glint of admiration in his eyes. “You’re okay, Red.”
“Friends again?” she asked and offered a hand.
“Partners, anyway.”
Crisis avoided, she thought. At least temporarily. “So, do you want to take a break? Maybe do some snorkeling?”
“Maybe. Couple of masks and snorkels in the wheelhouse.”
“I’ll get them.” But she came back with a sketchbook. “What’s this?”
“A silk tie. What does it look like?”
Overlooking the sarcasm, she sat on the edge of the hammock. “Did you do this sketch of the Santa Marguerite?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s pretty good.”
“I’m a regular Picasso.”
“I said ‘pretty good.’ It would have been great to see her like this. Are these figures measurements?”
He sighed again, thinking of amateurs. “If you want to try to figure out how much area the wreck covers, you’ve got to do some calculations. We hit the galley today.” He swung his legs over until he was sitting beside her. “Officers’ cabins, passengers’ cabins.” He laid a fingertip on the sketch at varying points. “Cargo hold. Best way is to imagine a gull’s eye view.” To demonstrate, he flipped a page and began to sketch out a rough grid. “This is the seafloor. Here’s where we found the ballast.”
“So the cannon is over here.”
“Right.” In quick deft moves, he penciled them in. “Now we dug test holes from here to here. We want to move more midship for the mother lode.”
Her shoulder bumped his as she studied the sketch. “But we want to excavate the whole thing, right?”
He glanced up briefly, then continued to draw. “That could take months, years.”
“Well, yes, but the ship itself is as important as what it holds. We have to excavate and preserve all of it.”
From his viewpoint, the ship itself was wood and worthless. But he could humor her. “We’ll be in hurricane season before too much longer. We could be lucky, but we concentrate on finding the mother lode. Then you can afford to take as much time as you want on the rest.”
For himself, he’d take his share and split. With gold jingling in his pocket, he could afford the time to build that boat, to finish his father’s research on the Isabella.
To find Angelique’s Curse and VanDyke.
“I guess that makes sense.” She glanced up, startled by the hard, distant gleam in his eye. “What are you thinking about?” It was foolish, of course, but she thought it looked like murder.
He shook himself back. Here and now, he thought, was what mattered most. “Nothing. Sure it makes sense,” he continued. “Before long, word’s going to get out that we’ve found a new wreck. We’ll have company.”
“Reporters?”
He snorted. “They’re the least of it. Poachers.”
“But we have a legal claim,” Tate began, and broke off when he laughed at her.
“Legal don’t mean jack, Red, especially when you’ve got the Lassiter luck to deal with. We’ll have to start sleeping as well as working in shifts,” he went on. “If we start to bring up gold, Red, hunters will smell it from Australia to the Red Sea. Believe me.”
“I do.” And because she did, she hopped down to fetch the snorkeling equipment. “Let’s check on Dad and Buck. Then I want to get that film developed.”
By the time Tate was ready to go ashore, she had a list of errands in addition to the film. “I should have known Mom would give me a grocery list.”
Matthew hopped into the Adventure’s little tender with her, cranked the engine. “No big deal.”
Tate merely adjusted her sunglasses. “You didn’t see the list. Look!” She gestured west where a school of dolphin leapt before the lowering sun. “I swam with one once. We were in the Coral Sea and a school of them followed the boat. I was twelve.” She smiled and watched them flash toward the horizon. “It was incredible. They have such kind eyes.”
Tate rose as Matthew cut speed. She timed the distance to the pier, braced her legs and secured the line.
Once the boat was secure, they started across the strip of beach. “Matthew, if we hit the mother lode, and you were rich, what would you do?”
“Spend it. Enjoy it.”
“On what? How?”
“Stuff.” He moved his shoulders, but he knew by now generalities wouldn’t satisfy her. “A boat. I’m going to build my own as soon as I have the time and means. Maybe I’d buy a place on an island like this.”
They moved by guests of the nearby hotel as they baked lazily in the lowering sun. Staff with flowered shirts and white shorts strolled across the sand with trays of tropical drinks.
“I’ve never been rich,” he said half to himself. “It couldn’t be too hard to get used to it, to live like this. Fancy hotels, fancy clothes, being able to pay to do nothing.”
“But you’d still dive?”
“Sure.”
“So would I.” Unconsciously she took his hand as they walked through the hotel’s fragrant gardens. “The Red Sea, the Great Barrier Reef, the North Atlantic, the Sea of Japan. There’re so many places to see. Once I finish college, I’m going to see them all.”
“Marine archeology, right?”
“That’s right.”
He skimmed a glance over her. Her bright cap of hair was tousled by the salt and wind. She wore baggy cotton slacks, a skimpy T-shirt and square, black-framed sunglasses.
“You don’t look much like a scientist.”
“Science takes brains and imagination, not looks or fashion sense.”
“Good thing about the fashion sense.”
Unoffended, she shrugged. In spite of her mother’s occasional despair, Tate never gave clothes or style a thought. “What’s the difference, as long as you’ve got a good wet suit? I don’t need a wardrobe to excavate and that’s what I’m going to spend my life doing. Imagine getting paid to go on treasure hunts, to examine and study artifacts.” She shook her head at the wonder of it. “There’s so much to learn.”
“I never thought a whole lot of school myself.” Of course, they had moved around so much, he’d never had a choice. “I’m more a fan of on-the-job training.”
“I’m certainly getting that.”
They took a cab into town where Tate could drop off her film. To her pleasure, Matthew didn’t seem to mind when she wanted to poke around the shops, dallying over trinkets. She sighed for a while over a small gold locket with a single pearl dripping from its base. Clothes were for keeping out the weather, but baubles were a nice, harmless weakness.
“I didn’t think you went in for stuff like that,” he commented, leaning on the counter beside her. “You don’t really wear any bangles.”
“I had this little ruby ring Mom and Dad gave me for Christmas when I was sixteen. I lost it on a dive. It really broke my heart, so I stopped wearing jewelry in the water.” She tore her eyes away from the delicate locket and tugged on his silver piece. “Maybe I’ll take that coin Buck gave me and wear it as a charm.”
“Works for me. You want to get a drink or something?”
She touched her tongue to her top lip. “Ice cream.”
“Ice cream.” He thought it over. “Let’s go.”
Sharing cones, they strolled along the sidewalk, explored narrow streets. He charmed her by plucking a creamy white hibiscus from a bush, tucking it carelessly behind her ear. While they shopped for Marla’s essentials, he had her gurgling with laughter over the story of Buck and Blackbeard’s ghost.