Chapter 2
Madison Montgomery eyed the group of silver-haired bikers who had blasted their way into the Salty Dog. Iris picked up her order tray and rounded the bar until Madison grabbed her by the arm.
“Hold it there. These guys might mean trouble. I’m going to take them. Sorry.”
Iris pouted. “I can handle them.”
Madison towered over the part-time college kid by four inches. From a wealthy Northeastern family, Iris embodied an ingenue having her fling in Florida’s gulf coast. Madison dropped the rag she’d been using to wipe the wooden plank bar and brushed her waist-length blonde hair, including one errant curl over her forehead, back behind her then looked down at the young woman in a death stare.
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. You get the next one, but watch the bar for me.”
It didn’t matter what Iris was going to say. Madison was three feet away already.
She had a habit of not looking too closely at the rough crowd and never making eye contact until she’d spoken. She didn’t care what they were thinking coming in as long as they were on her side by the time she finished her speech.
They were a collection of misfits, covered in tats and torn jeans, revealing oversized hairy legs. One was wearing the bottom half of a green leisure suit with a yellow stripe down the side. That’s when she knew they weren’t badasses at all but posers. They could wear all the bandanas, leather jackets and earrings they wanted, but she wasn’t fooled and knew she could mess with them. They were probably accountants trying to play like the Sons of Anarchy. The one with the black eyepatch spoke to her first.
“Madison, dearie. How’s it going, sweetheart?”
She recognized him immediately. He was the owner of the Barry Bones dive boat and sometimes treasure scavenger, except his name was Noonan. He was an occasional friend but mostly a past boyfriend of her mother’s. Growing up, Madison even wondered if he was her father, until she was introduced to him years later. She knew it needled him that she’d thought that way about him so decided to pour it on a bit more than usual.
“Hey, Dad, you’re looking pretty poor.” She pointed to his lower thigh, indicating the whiteness she witnessed. “You need a little more beach time and less time on the gulf.”
“Ahhh, don’t ruin my reputation. If I’d have knocked up someone so fine as your mother, I would have tied her up and kidnapped her until she’d put a ring on it. Never happened. You know that. Not that I didn’t try.”
The statement was meant for his buddies, not really for Madison’s ears.
That got a rousing series of shouts from the table and demands for three pitchers of beer, the cheapest way to go. Older, divorced men like this were, for the most part, penniless, and sharing apartments or sleeping on the beach. It was easier to forget to leave a tip if they ordered this way, always with the chance that someone else would pay the bill.
Iris was giving her the cold shoulder—even colder than usual. It was amazing how younger women were brought up these days, especially the ones who had been pampered by parents who were basically buying them off with expensive toys and vacations so they could get away from their own kids. Of course, many of the younger crowd had never had to fully provide for themselves. They didn’t depend on being nice, so they weren’t. It was a shame.
Madison placed the plastic pitchers under three of the taps, turning them on to load side by side. Iris interrupted one to fill three glasses and then returned the pitcher but left the tap off. She wasn’t going to give the younger woman the satisfaction of seeing a ripple in her calm ocean demeanor.
The pitchers were delivered along with five glasses. “I’m going to see if the cook has some extras he can throw in. Be right back,” she said and turned before the crew could respond. She headed to scrounge some freebies from the kitchen. Even that wouldn’t generate a tip.
The Salty Dog’s huge Louisiana Cajun cook was ordering young Latino boys around the kitchen like the place was on fire. It smelled like it, too, and there was more smoke than usual.
“You got anything I can give to some penniless seniors, Washington?”
“Oh, I gots oysters. Up until five minutes ago, they was barbecued perfect. But now they’s smoked real good. They still look pretty, though,” he said, pointing a large stainless steel spatula at a plated dozen oysters covered in red sauce, sitting under a heat lamp.
“I’m taking them, Mr. Jones.”
“You do that missy. You do that,” he said to her back. As she slipped through the doorway, she grabbed a bag of dinner rolls.
Madison could tell her ass was being checked out like she had eyes sewn into her rear jeans pockets. It came with the territory. If she’d wanted a “safe” job, she could have worked in a Real Estate office. But then, she’d have to contend with the possibility she’d die of boredom or fall asleep driving on the way home from the office. This worked fine and paid well, and her boss never came. It was just a temporary duty until the next underwater film or salvage dive job.
“Here you go, boys. Bread’s on its way,” she said as she downloaded the oysters onto her group’s table without sliding them into their laps. The scramble to grab an oyster or two was messy and a little ugly. She added the rolls to a red plastic basket and dropped it off too. “That’s to mop up the butter.”
As the evening wore on the crowd got younger until all the “normal” people—the ones with jobs or ones who cared about their jobs—went home. In between was a smattering of older retirees. If they had money, they were in pairs. If not, they were men drinking by themselves, fantasizing on being able to bag a younger woman who might be drunk enough and wouldn’t look too closely at his teeth, the grey he was covering up, or the gut he’d lovingly grown over the years.
She rarely saw a real silver fox, but those were the kind of experienced men who could satisfy her and turn her bones to butter. Men her own age were practically in diapers. She preferred the imperfect older men with tats, stories of ups and downs without regrets, and sexual experience. She liked making them feel loved. She was good at that.
Noonan himself had tried to fix her up with some of his friends, but she turned them all down before a coffee date. She was picky. She wanted a date to know exactly what to do and to be a real man, not some pretend postage stamp on a love letter. Settling down would be as difficult as bottling the ocean. It was unnatural, and except for various economic reasons, there was little reason to go there.
Being free was where it was at. At just under thirty, Madison didn’t care about aging. She cared about losing her freedom.
She checked the time and discovered it was nearly midnight. Her mother would be stopping by to make her nightly visit.
Noonan LaFontaine’s eyes were bloodshot as he approached the bar, barely able to walk without tilting. His buddies had been long gone.
“Hold on there, Skipper. Tell your brain you’re on land,” she said to him and laughed at his delayed expression. Leaning into the countertop, she added, “Hope you’ll let me call you a cab.”
He nodded, but before she got out her cell, he grabbed her wrist. “I was lookin’ for your mama, little one.”
“Haven’t seen her. Should be any time now.”
Noonan craned his neck, checking out the outdoor restaurant, then scanned up and down the u-shaped bar and the clusters of tables along the walls. He shrugged. “The heart’s willing but the body, it just won’t cooperate.”
She was touched Noonan wanted to see her mother. She’d been turning him down for the last twenty years, as Madison could recall. But their chemistry was something special and her mother looked younger and happier whenever the old salty captain was around.
Every woman wants to be some man’s fantasy.
“I can give her a message, if you like,” Madison said, placing her cell to her ear.
He waited until the cab was ordered before he answered her. “Tell her someone special has passed into the locker. I think she’ll know who that is.”
“Cryptic!” she said, wrinkling her brow.
“Secret!” His eyes got wide and he was a man of thirty again. Madison had asked about their relationship so many times just the mere mention of his name gave her the stop motion with the palm of her mother’s hand before she could utter another syllable.
“Noonan, I’m sorry that I bug you about being my dad.”
“It’s okay. I guess I’m a little flattered. I still dream about what it would be like if she could ever get that heartache out of her system.”
“My dad?”
“Not him. She never loved him. It was someone else.”
Madison frowned, even though she knew it was true. Her mother had been fairly honest about the things she did tell her. It was all the things she didn’t tell her that gave her worry.
“So this—”
Noonan cut her off by putting his forefinger to his mouth and whispering, “Shh.”
She saw the soft underside of a very lonely man.
“You got any gigs I can join? Anything at all coming up?”
“We got a little contract to do a salvage, but they’re looking for something specific, not looking to raze the ship. When I’m sober, I’ll tell you about it. Maybe I could hire you for two, three days. We aren’t quite sure the coordinates yet. Depending on the water depth, I might say no.”
“How about an underwater porn film about a mermaid and a handsome seaman?”
“You okay with exposing yourself to millions of eyes?”
“Mermaids don’t have anything down below that isn’t naturally covered up, you know. And as for showing my tits, well, I practically do that every day wearing these tee-shirts.” She held back the shoulders of her white Salty Dog shirt and showed how it stretched.
“Always a ham. You just like the attention, Madison. Always did. You’re just like your mama. Just as pretty too. She broke men’s hearts everywhere she went. Everywhere…”—he started, spreading his arms out wide to the sides—“everywhere she went, there was always lots of blood and bleeding. Near suicides. Your mother was an addiction, someone impossible to get out of anyone’s system.” He leaned closer to her. “Don’t you do that with your life. Bestow your womanly wiles on some nice young man and make him the king of your kingdom and you’ll live that fantasy your mother never found.”
Madison straightened up. She was almost going to cry and that never happened.
Noonan put his finger to his lips. “Don’t you tell her. Just tell her someone special is passed on and I wanted her to know about it.”
Noonan made his way outside, got in the cab, and left safely. Madison spent the rest of the evening looking for her mother as every new face came through the entrance.
But her mother never showed.
Chapter 3
Ned offered to help his mother sort and pack some of his father’s things. Since he was their only child, his parents stayed near the base in a small house at Imperial Beach, California. The house was barely a thousand square feet, with just room enough for his mother’s roses and the brightly-colored flowers she liked to grow year-round.
This year had taken a toll on her garden. She’d spent so much time at the Pirate’s side in the hospital. The numerous close calls had gotten more frequent over the past two months before his passing, when she’d dropped everything and rushed to try to be there in time to send him off with a kiss.
Margaret Silver always said she had the greatest marriage in the whole world, although that same world knew it to be a complete fantasy.
“You know, Ned,” she said as she began boxing books to take to the library sale, “in all the years we’ve been married, we never had a cross word. Not one.”
Ned wasn’t quite sure he’d heard her correctly. She had taken on some of Flo’s air and penchant for coloring the truth to suit the moment. It was her way of spreading her brand of harmony over everything, just like those delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwiches she used to put in his Captain America lunch pail.
“You just never disagreed with him, Mom. You went along with anything he said.”
“I was born to be married to Jake Silver. My job was to keep him operating within the lines he never wanted to look at,” she said, fondly smiling at something out towards the distant ocean.
Ned had grown up riding the school bus that drove right past the obstacle course on Coronado, watching the men climb up those ropes like monkeys and wondering what it would feel like to ride in a little rubber raft while working with eight other souls to make sure it didn’t capsize. He’d never considered doing anything else but join the Navy, like his dad.
But unlike his dad, Ned had become a SEAL. Old Jake had tried out twice and quit both times. When Ned got his Trident, his father didn’t come to the ceremony and stayed drunk for a week.
Served the old bastard right.
He hadn’t wanted to be there when his dad passed, so when he came back from his last deployment, he was disappointed his stubborn dad was still alive. Checking his conscience, he didn’t feel bad about one bit of it, either.
But his mother told him later Jake Silver had wanted to be sure he got home safe. He passed away the next day. That one did get to him. He had still been sore from the twenty hour transport plane ride and had planned to sleep for a week. Instead, he’d had to get out a suit he never wore, that still fit him after ten years. Duty and honor. That was it.
He had never brought friends over to the house for fear they’d find his dad in some undressed drunken state. Ned kept the secret, just like his mother did. Coach Silver was the most popular parent-coach on the Little League schedule. All the dads loved him, since short travel games were sources of some of the great parties the parents had, made better by the fact that his dad didn’t have to pay for any of it. He was the coach. Number One.
The boys his own age idolized the former Navy man who had stories about slashing through jungles in Southeast Asia. Forbidden to read dirty magazines, the boys especially appreciated the tattoos of naked buxom ladies up and down his “Popeye” arms. His dad gave names for all of them and hinted he’d slept with each one. He was built like a bulldog and just staring down someone could stop a fight before it began.
Maybe it made him stronger. Ned didn’t resent him. He just didn’t want to be that kind of an imposition on anyone else. He loved working with his Team. And, as with many of the other guys he came to consider brothers on SEAL Team 3, being a SEAL was way more fulfilling than anything else he’d ever done. It gave him an outlet for his anger, being in such intense physical shape all the time, preparing for battle. Knowing he was responsible for each man on his right and his left, and that he would die to protect them gave him purpose. A strong, cohesive, unbreakable unit—he was part of something greater than he ever could be alone. They were a force for good. He could right some of the wrongs in the world and get paid and trained to do it too.
It was the perfect life. The bigger he got, the more muscle mass he put on, the faster and stronger he got, the less he resembled his father in anything they could be compared to. He was the exact opposite, determined to contribute more than his dad had ever done. It wasn’t that he hated the man, he just left a big fucking hole. Old Jake left his mom damaged, but it was what she chose, and he’d agree with that, too. Yet that flaw was so great he couldn’t even feel proud of his son.
So Ned’s way of seeking his dad’s approval was the opposite of his mother’s. The more his dad didn’t pay attention, the bigger and stronger he wanted to be.
Margaret Silver brushed the hair from her forehead and placed her hands at her hips. “Whew! That was a job. We did that in less than a quarter of the time I’d calculated.”
“It helped that they were just old books neither of us wanted. Nothing to sort or ponder over, Mom.”
“I don’t even know why he had so many. I mean, this house is so tiny, and I never saw him read one of them. Did you?”
“I think he was going for the osmosis type of learning. Hav
ing them around him made him feel smarter. Maybe he learned without reading.”
If ever a man could do that, his dad would be able to.
“I guess. It was always something I wanted to ask him, and I just forgot. Why he would want to hang on to books he never read will always be a mystery, then.”
Ned stacked the last box near the front door. “Mom, should I load these up in the truck? I can drop them off at the library downtown tomorrow, if you like.”
“Thank you, Ned.” Then she noticed another small stack of books on the coffee table she’d set aside. “You know I thought perhaps you’d like these. The one on the top is a book of poetry about the sea. Maybe you should have it.”
She held it out to him. He didn’t want to take it but also couldn’t turn it away.
“Okay, just this one. But all the rest of these are going to the library, no offense. I have less room in my condo than you do here.”
“Fair enough.” She smiled as he shoved the book into his back pocket. “I hope the library can take them. Lord knows I don’t know what to do if they don’t,” she said as she opened the front door.
“They sell them, Mom. They make money for the library. So either way, it helps.”
“That would be nice. See if you can get a slip of paper with the book count for our—my taxes this year.”
“Will do,” he said as he lifted the first box and headed toward his four-door pickup.
After they finished loading, he gently proposed they get started on his father’s clothes. She hadn’t touched a thing in their bedroom since the day he went to the hospital. His pills and water glass, still with water in it, sat beside the vanity sink in the bathroom. His slippers were tucked under the bed on his father’s side. The bed on the other side was obviously slept in. His father’s side had a fresh, ironed and unused pillowcase with eyelet trim, matching his mother’s wrinkled one.
When Ned walked into the closet, he could smell the alcohol and the beer and cigars his dad liked to consume. Margaret sat on her side of the bed and watched him.
Treasure Island SEAL: Pirate SEAL Rescues his Mermaid (Sunset SEALs Book 3) Page 2