“So you sure you’re not my dad? If secrets are being revealed, I just wanted a little forewarning.”
Noonan nearly coughed himself to death. “Shit no. Your dad would have killed me if I’d ever laid a hand on that woman.” After Ned didn’t respond, Noonan added, “But knowing your dad as I do, I don’t blame you for asking. I’ll be able to tell the first time I see you if your mama messed around with anybody else. You’d be old Jake’s boy. Like it or not, you’d look just like him. I know you would.”
Ned was sold but didn’t want to let the old captain know. “I’ll think about it.”
“Nope. If you say no, then I’ve got someone else to call. That’s the way we roll here. I’m not here to drag you to the beautiful Florida coast. You gotta feel like coming, like you’re being led on a strange new adventure. Quit the stuff in your head, and just come on over. We’ll sort out the rest of the world another day, hear me?”
“Yessir, I do.”
“So you’ll fly into Tampa, and I’ll pick you up when you text me your flight.”
“Where will I stay?”
“Well, that’s up to you, but you’re welcome to reside on the boat, or you can room in town, Treasure Island. There are a bunch of little vacation rentals available. I can see if I can fix you up. Can you spend like $50 a day on a place?”
“That’s doable.”
“Then no problem.”
“Alright then. I’ll text you when I get it arranged. When do you want me?”
“As soon as you can get here. Doesn’t matter to me, as long as you’re flexible with the accommodations.”
“Sounds good. Gotta check in with the Team and then I’ll let you know when.”
“Glad to have you aboard. Oh, and one last thing, you’ll get paid three hundred dollars a day, but not until we find what we’re looking for. That’s the deal. But I’ll provide all the gear and chow when we’re out. Okay?”
Ned called Kyle next and got the okay to leave for ten days. He checked online for flights out of San Diego and found a direct one to Tampa. He got out his black duffel bag, leaving his heavy equipment tucked inside the safe bolted to the floor of his condo. He began packing trunks and a couple of nicer shirts just in case some nice seafood dinners were in the offing.
He could finish tomorrow. But just in case he forgot, he placed the little book of poetry on top of the clothes already in the bag.
It was his ticket on his new ride, the roadmap to help get him lost, just like his father had done so many years ago.
Chapter 8
Madison’s mom asked her to join her for lunch before she went to work. She found her mother out on the beach, seated in the sand, throwing rocks and pieces of shells into the surf. The day had turned out slightly overcast, so it wasn’t overly hot.
Madison sat right next to her. “I’m guessing you had a fairly nice evening last night. When you guys are getting along, you make the finest looking couple.” She threw her arm around her mother’s shoulder and drew their bodies close then released her.
“Noonan’s an acquired taste. He can be charming, or he can be just downright irritating. I like him both ways, but only when he’s irresistible.”
There was that word again!
“Well, I’m happy for you.”
Her mother continued tossing rocks and shells into the surf. Madison could tell she was trying to figure something out, and once she did, there was going to be a proclamation.
“So what did you want to talk about?”
“Can’t I have lunch with my daughter?”
“Yes, but twice in two days?”
“Just humor me. These are strange times.”
Madison decided she’d take the more direct approach. “Can I ask you who the ‘someone special’ was? The one you and Noonan were talking about?”
“He was special.” She squinted at the horizon. The combination of escaping sun from behind a silver cloud and the gentle breeze off the ocean made her eyes water. Madison didn’t think for a minute she was crying.
“He was one of those men you meet probably once-in-a-lifetime. I think I knew these last few days that he was leaving this world. There was just heaviness in the air. I was feeling tired, like something inside me was dying too. I actually think it’s like that with some special people, don’t you?”
Madison knew that the only person she could ever feel this way about would be when the time came for her mother to pass on. But she didn’t want to utter it, for fear of making it so. She was well aware that the universe was a fragile place.
“You’ve got me there, Mom. I’ve never met anyone like that in my life. So I’m going to have to defer to your experience.”
“I’m going to be spending a lot of time here looking at the ocean. It’s all I can do.”
“Are you okay? I mean, should you be alone?”
“I’m not alone. I’ve got the Crabby Crew—my friends. Heck, even if I did want to be alone, they’d never let me. There’s always time for celebration, song, and good wine with that crew. You’ve met them.”
“Yes, I know them very well. You’re blessed, Mom.” Madison hesitated to say it. “And you’ve got Noonan too. He doesn’t mind hanging around, I’m sure.”
“Noonan!” She threw a larger smoothed rock into the surf after barking his name. “Last night was about sharing grief, healing. Having someone close who is going through the same thing, someone familiar around you to take away the vacantness. He did his job well, God love him.”
Madison thought that was a beautiful way to describe her friendship with the old sea captain. “So not just for the sex,” she whispered.
“Not hardly. We’d have needed more alcohol for that. Maybe some dancing. No, this was communion. Healing each other because we could.”
Madison could see the two of them were on the same wavelength.
“That’s enough!” her mother finished. She stood, leaned over, and gave Madison her hand. “Come on. Let’s go inside and have a bite.”
She’d set a table with fresh Gloriosa Daisies in the middle, the bright yellow sunshine cheering the whole place up. She’d made a salad, chilled, and added fresh crabmeat to the top just before serving. She knew it was Madison’s favorite.
“Do you want some white wine?”
“I’m good.” Madison waited for her mother to sit down and then continued her questions. “So when Noonan said he was gone, that means he passed away?”
Her mother picked at her salad, and nodded, yes.
“How serious was it? Or were you just friends?”
“It was complicated. In all my years meeting and having men friends, it always got confusing once sex became part of the package. Rarely did it enhance. In fact, it usually ended things. I was hesitant to spoil such a perfect friendship. I don’t think I laughed so much in my entire life before or since. But as for the sex, well, it was pretty much consuming. The closer we got, the closer we needed it to be. We both knew it couldn’t last, except in here.”
She placed her palm over her heart and gave Maddie one of those “I-am-Buddha-and-you’re-a-devotee” stares.
“This was before you met my dad, right?”
“It was. Nearly two years.”
“So what happened? Why didn’t it last?”
“Because his heart wasn’t his to give. I felt like a thief. But I couldn’t help myself. I nearly packed up and followed him all the way across the country. And I’m so glad I didn’t.”
“So he was a friend of Noonan’s too?”
“That’s how I met him. They had served together in the Navy, and he came out to help him with a salvage. They were lucky enough to score some pretty incredible things, back before there were so many rules about what you could take and what you had to leave behind or register with the state. He was out for the summer visiting his old friend. Noonan had gotten out nearly six months before.”
“You said across the country, where?”
“California. Moved back to Californi
a. Back to his wife.”
“Mother!”
She shrugged, her large hoop earrings flashing in the afternoon sunlight. “Back in the day, I didn’t worry too much about that. I figured if you threw your net out there and caught a fish, it was fair game. I didn’t think about things so much like I do now. That’s what age and making lots of mistakes will bring you. The trick is trying to stay fresh while you’re getting old.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
“I never did. I expected that one day he’d come walking right back through that door.” She was pointing to the entrance. “And now I know that will never happen.”
“He’s gone on to fight battles elsewhere. Maybe someday you’ll meet.”
“I suppose I will. In time. I hope he was happy. I hope he had a good life. The world’s a little sadder now, knowing that we won’t meet again here at the beach at Treasure Island.”
“So this was your house then? You stayed here together?”
“No, it was always my house. But I let him stay. He could’ve stayed here the rest of his life. He made a good choice.”
“He’d already chosen, Mother.”
“Exactly. And in a strange twist of fate, he honored me by keeping his promise—to someone else. He made the right choice.”
Her mother’s words haunted Madison on her way to the Salty Dog. As soon as she stepped inside the door, the familiar smells of cook Washington Jones’ barbeque and creole sauces, the general noise from the emergencies going on in the kitchen as if they battled demons escaping the gates of Hell, and the gentle country music playing in the background greeted her. It was going to be another big night. The liquor would be flowing and the plates would be flying, while the guests would consume obscene amounts of shellfish and fixings. There would be one or two major crises in the kitchen. Someone would be fired. Someone would quit. Several of the wait staff wouldn’t show up and hoped to keep their jobs by showing up the next night.
It never changed. That was what was so special about this place. Everything happened at random, yet, they were all in the same pattern. Predictable in their unpredictability.
She even found herself whistling before the guitar man snuck up on her and scrambled her brain with a, “Good evening, sweetheart,” whispered so close to her left ear that she could feel his hot breath on her cheek.
There he was again and she was still as breathless as the first time she saw him. Maybe it was her female alarm clock going off, her need growing so huge she didn’t care about the fact that he probably slept his way up and down the Florida coast and wouldn’t remember her name in the morning.
But that didn’t matter. Not right now.
“Garrison Cramer, if you aren’t the original Salty Dog. Just look what the sea breeze blew in tonight.”
“Am I forgiven?”
“Were you bad?”
His eyes twinkled when he smiled. “I was. I was very bad. You would have been proud of me.”
She felt her cheeks flush, even though threesomes had never been anything she’d ever been interested in. But her mind was overloaded with the images, and she felt her panties go wet.
“You must lead a charmed life, Garrison.”
“I am. I am blessed.” He stepped closer. “So am I forgiven?”
“Let’s just wait and see, shall we? What happens when your groupies show up again?”
“Oh, I don’t think that will happen. They’ve probably moved on.”
She found the opportunity to stick it to him good, at last. “Then, Garrison Cramer, you weren’t bad enough. I’m going to guess they’ll want a three-pete.”
“Most the time, I prefer the company of just one good woman.” He winked and left her soaked with sweat and gasping hard to catch her breath. It was hot enough to rival anything cook Jones could stir up.
During one of his breaks, the handsome singer asked her for a dance, and she dutifully accepted. Their foreplay—rocking back and forth to a tune not quite a slow dance, facing each other, then him spooning behind her as their hips swung in tandem—gave a healthy boost to her libido, not to mention respect from every other woman in the bar. He was a smooth dancer, he led well, and, just like Mr. James Bond, she could tell what it would feel like to wake up in his arms in the morning.
If it all went right tonight.
But it didn’t. Just before midnight, a married couple got into a fight. She slapped her husband across the face, and he was preparing to retaliate when several men at the bar jumped him. The guitar man jumped in too.
In the tussle of bodies, Garrison Cramer got a belt to the nose and left with blood streaming down the front of his shirt, racing out the door on his way to the Urgent Care center.
Chapter 9
Ned Silver watched the blue waters beneath him as his plane cruised in to land at Tampa Airport. It was a cloudless day, one of those clear ones he still loved about San Diego and Southern California. But the turquoise waters of the Florida coast were spectacular. He’d already flown over so much white beach his eyes almost hurt from the brightness.
He was excited about the new adventure coming up, the chance to do a pleasure dive and not something ordered by the military. Not that he minded that, either, but this was a different kind of excitement.
It was like how he felt going across the Pacific Ocean on an aircraft carrier once, standing with hundreds of other men looking out to the horizon in search of land. He understood how some of the early sea captains must have felt racing out into the middle of the big blue waters of the world, in search of adventure, whatever was out there. It was an urge as old as mankind itself, something he shared with every other person who felt the power of the ocean in comparison to the relative little power of his own body. The meeting between air and sea satisfied something deep inside him.
He exited the plane, walking through the lobby filled with families greeting their loved ones. The aloha shirts and different languages than he was used to in San Diego, reminded him of some of the Caribbean places he’d been to.
On his way to baggage claim, one crusty character stood out. It had to have been his dad’s former Navy buddy, Noonan LaFontaine. The guy had wiry salt-and-pepper hair that sprouted every which way like dead grey straw, as if the wind was blowing through the airport. He sported a black patch over one eye, and he had a three-day stubble. He could’ve been a character actor in a pirate movie. He had everything but the parrot and the peg leg.
“You got to be Jake’s kid. There’s no doubt about it,” Noonan said as he embraced him in a bear hug. With his hands gripping the tops of his arms, clearly five inches shorter than Ned, the pirate shook him and said, “You’re just like how I pictured. The spitting image of your dad. I think he didn’t die at all. I think you’re just some kind of a trans-portal guy, you know? Like in those science-fiction films?”
Ned wanted him to release his hands but there was something about Noonan that he tolerated over any other man who would try to touch him.
“I’ve been told that a time or two, mostly by my mom.” He stepped back. “You do know most of my dad’s friends are dead?”
“So are mine. That’s why I hang with the younger crowd.” Noonan shrugged.
Ned adjusted his weight, pulling his laptop case over his right shoulder, and left the pirate to walk toward the baggage carousel. Noonan ran after him, laughing up a storm, waving to people he saw and thought he knew, and generally making a small spectacle of himself. Ned held his breath and wasn’t sure this was the kind of vibe he was looking for in a boat captain. Although this was going to be a pleasure dive, there were always risks involved.
Ned’s duffel bag was one of the first to come off the carousel. Noonan tried to grab it, but Ned shoved the computer case in his chest instead. “I’ll take it, Gramps.”
Noonan howled and slapped his knee over that one. It was only barely after one o’clock, but the pirate already smelled of alcohol. It was, as would have been his father’s scent, the unmistakable Eau De Beer
.
On the way out through the revolving doors, Noonan directed him to the short-term parking lot. “I’m so happy you decided to come, Neddie.”
Ned stopped, squared him up, and drilled a look that didn’t require words, but he spoke anyway. “For the record, Gramps or Noonan or whatever you want me to call you, the name is Ned. I haven’t been Neddie since I was six years old. I hated it then, and I hate it worse now. So if you don’t want me to turn around and catch a plane back to California, you better not call me that again. Agreed?”
“I don’t have a problem with that. I was just being…”
“You were being an asshole, like my dad. If you stop being an asshole, we’ll get along just fine. You have to know that my dad and I were never close, so if you’re thinking you’re going to take his spot or be just like him, and that’s gonna make me feel real comfortable or good, you’ve got shit for brains. So let’s just get that straight out and on the table right now okay?”
“You don’t have to say it twice, Son. I know all about your dad.” His blood shot eyes nearly teared up when he finished his thought. “I know your dad better than you do.”
The man turned and made a beeline for the parking lot. Ned’s long legs kept pace with the pirate, but he had to work at it to do so.
They jumped into a light turquoise pickup truck with the Barry Bones logo on the side, depicting a patched pirate face missing several prominent teeth, grinning wide, sporting an earring and wearing a red bandanna. Noonan could’ve posed for the picture except for the teeth.
Ned strapped in after loading his duffel in the back. He held his laptop on his knees. Noonan jumped in and avoided his seatbelt.
Ned watched the blue waters on either side of a large arched bridge leading from the highway system outside of Tampa over to the gulf beaches. He’d never seen so many boats in one place before. Houses along the shore all had docks, and many also had swimming pools, something he didn’t see in San Diego much. The weather was perfect, similar to San Diego but warmer. In the distance, he could see the ocean.
Treasure Island SEAL: Pirate SEAL Rescues his Mermaid (Sunset SEALs Book 3) Page 6