Living aboard ship with a group of thirty people, Alix often felt as though they were living in each others' pockets, but she hadn't realized that Troll was married. It was hard to imagine a wife for Troll. Alix pictured her as someone small and round and jolly, like Troll himself.
"When is the baby due?" she asked with interest.
"In two months. It's our first." He whipped his wallet out of his pocket and opened it to a picture of a petite, attractive redhead wearing a swimsuit.
"This is Mary," he said with a trace of pride.
"She's very pretty," said Alix. "Doesn't she mind your going off on a treasure hunt right now?"
"I left with her blessings. I'd really like to be there when the baby is born, though." For a moment Troll looked slightly worried.
"We've been searching for over two weeks now," said Alix. "I hoped that by this time we'd be anchored and staking out the wreck of El Primero. Once that's the case, at least we could manage without a navigator, and you could count on shore leave for the birth."
"Shore leave? Are you dreaming?" It was Ponce; he grinned down at them before he sat down.
"Don't worry, Ponce," said Troll. "I'm not ready to jump ship yet. But I wish we'd find El Primero."
"So do I, Troll," said Ponce fervently. "So do I."
In the following days, there were no rough seas. The tranquility of the ocean day after day became stiflingly monotonous. There was nothing, except for an occasional ship, to distinguish one part of the sea from another.
They adopted various hobbies to while away slowly passing hours. Alix taught Stan and Vince macramé, a method of passing time aboard ship ever since sailors accustomed to mending rigging found themselves with nothing but time on their hands and an assortment of rope. Daniel took up journal writing, spending hours writing in a little notebook. He always covered the pages with his hand whenever anyone passed near. To Alix's relief he paid little attention to her. She ignored him.
Ponce disdained all idle pastimes. Much of the time he stood at the bow, distancing himself from her and the crew. In fact, the space between the two of them seemed to be growing wider, thought Alix, wondering what to do about it.
Ponce's mood seesawed between tense and restless, and his unpredictability was hard on the crew. All his efforts were directed toward finding El Primero as quickly as possible. When he assumed his stance at the bow, he always leaned hard on the railing almost as though he were urging the ship forward by sheer physical force.
Their allotted four weeks were fast running out. By the third week, they seemed no closer to finding the shipwreck than they'd been at the beginning.
"Do you think there could be some mistake in the charts that Troll is using for navigation?" Alix asked, approaching Ponce one afternoon when he stood staring broodingly at the line where the water was seamed to the sky. The endless blue sea shone with an almost blinding light in the glare of the relentless summer sun, and most of the crew had gone below to avoid the heat.
Ponce appeared to pull himself back to the present time and place.
"There could be a mistake in the charts, a mistake in navigation, a mistake in my judgment," he said impatiently.
He needed encouragement, but Alix was so discouraged that she was unable to offer it. They stood silently for a while, each lost in private thoughts.
"I don't think the search for El Primero is a mistake, Ponce," she said finally.
"Of course you don't. It was your idea in the first place." His tone held an unexpected note of accusation.
Ponce's words stung. "You were as enthusiastic as I was to begin the search."
His eyes fell upon her face, roamed to her dimple. He held his lips in a tight line. "It's the first time anyone ever persuaded me to give up a sure thing—Santa Catalina—to take on the search for a ship for which we have only limited proof of its very existence. But then none of my other would-be persuaders happened to be a beautiful woman." His eyes pierced her momentarily before he resumed staring out to sea, his face an impassive mask, so different from the Ponce she had grown to love.
His rejection hurt more than his rebuke; his cold gray eyes affected her like twin steel blades twisting into her heart. This aloof and brooding stranger bore no resemblance to the man whose warm tenderness had melted the ice around her heart. Thoughts of their passionate moments together stilled her tongue, and a lump in her throat made it difficult to breathe.
Instinct urged her to rest her hand gently on Ponce's arm, so brown from the sun. But he seemed irritated by her presence. He stared unhappily out at the sea, a sea which stubbornly refused to reveal its secrets. When she turned and walked quietly away, holding all her hurt inside, he didn't seem to notice.
Lacking Ponce to turn to she went to Troll for a sympathetic ear. She needed to reach out to someone and to be reassured that the search for El Primero wasn't a wild goose chase.
She found Troll in the room behind the bridge where he monitored the ship's electronic equipment. Even he, usually lively, quirky and optimistic, seemed quiet and thoughtful today. But he looked up from his sonar apparatus and didn't seem to mind the distraction of her presence.
She perched on a stool nearby and brushed her hair from her eyes. She struggled with her emotions, wondering how to begin the conversation.
"Something's bothering you, isn't it?" said Troll.
"Yes," she said in a small voice, wishing she were having this conversation with Ponce.
"I suspect that Ponce has something to do with it," urged Troll gently.
She flashed him a quick, grateful look. "How did you know?"
Troll shrugged. "He gets this way aboard ship. He's a perfectionist and won't accept anything but the best from himself and the crew. Waiting is frustrating to him, especially when there's no promise of reward."
"He's changed completely," she said in a rush, glad to find that Troll understood. "I've never seen him like this." She bent her head silently, aching over the change in Ponce.
Troll regarded her thoughtfully. "No, I suppose you haven't. I can assure you, though, that he's still the same Ponce. Those of us who work with him on a personal basis learn to understand him eventually."
"I'll have to make allowances," she said almost to herself, trying desperately to understand what Ponce needed from her. Treasure salvage was a difficult business. She as much as anyone knew that.
"Ponce is a thoughtful, generous man—but when the pressure is on, he can be moody and unbearable."
"He said hurtful things. I—I wasn't prepared for it."
"He'll feel better once we find El Primero. Oh, he won't let up on us or on himself—but at least the uncertainty of finding it will be over."
"Are we going to find it, Troll?" Alix wanted nothing so much as to be reassured.
"If it's out here we'll find it."
It wasn't as though she didn't understand what was worrying Ponce. She was worried, too.
"I don't know why we're having such a problem," she said. "We should be finding some trace of her."
"Don't worry. Time hasn't run out yet." Troll went back to his sonar.
She turned her attention to Troll. "Now that you've encouraged me, how about you? It's not like you to look so glum," she said.
"It's nothing that an orange slushie wouldn't cure. Or maybe dinner at home with my wife."
"What? You're tired of Vince's fish stew? And whatever George made out of that squid he caught?" she asked, hoping to cheer him up.
"Mary wasn't feeling well last time I talked to her on the radiotelephone, and now the damn thing isn't working. I've tried to repair it, but I've had no luck. It's gone dead. So I can't be in touch with Mary at all."
"Oh, no," she said in dismay. Today it seemed as though everything was going wrong. It was hard on all the crew to be without cell phones, which didn't work out here. But it must be especially hard on Troll.
Troll gestured toward the radio equipment. "I'll take another look at it tonight."
"It seems
as though everything is falling in on me all at once. I think I'll go take a nap." She turned to leave, shooting what she hoped was a heartening smile at Troll.
"Thanks, Troll," she said over her shoulder. "I do feel better." Troll smiled at her with a hint of his old jauntiness as she left.
Afterward, lying on her bed, she couldn't shake the feeling that by making concessions to Ponce's unfathomable moods she was betraying herself. With Daniel she had begun making herself over in exactly the same way, by molding herself to his personality. But this was Ponce, she told herself firmly, not Daniel. The circumstances were different, and so was she. There was no danger of falling into the same pattern this time.
It was later that day that Alix noticed grumbling among the crew. She had gone to the storeroom behind the forward hold to get a container of coffee, and three crew members were working in the hold, noisily shifting boxes from place to place so that they didn't hear her footsteps.
"I think Ponce Cabrera has lost his mind," said one. Alix recognized the voice of Joe Mendez, one of the divers.
Chuck Trugood, another diver, spoke up. "This sure ain't Santa Catalina we're looking for out here."
"So what are you going to do about it?" This was Daniel speaking in an abrasive tone calculated to egg the others on.
"I don't know about everyone else, but I think we should quit. Either go back to St. Augustine and spend the summer in port scraping rust off the ship or head to the Keys where we belong. There's nothing out here." Joe sounded disgusted.
"I'll go along with that," agreed Chuck.
"Let's talk to the others and see what they think," suggested Daniel. "We can all get together and confront Cabrera. Make him tell us what we're looking for."
"Yeah," said Chuck.
Alix fled. A few more seconds and she'd have burst in on them to defend Ponce and his decision to search for El Primero. That would have given their secret away, a secret that needed to be kept if indeed they were going to find King Philip's jewels. If? Of course the treasure was down there, of course they would find it. But how long would it take?
The days continued to trail along in their wake, one after another. Troll managed to repair the radiotelephone, but its performance was erratic. With a sense of helplessness she watched Ponce become more mercurial. She intercepted meaningful looks from the crew toward Ponce and members of the board; she heard the crew swearing at one another when there should have been camaraderie.
She overheard Daniel who was again talking rebellion. "I don't know why you guys don't just demand to know what the story is," he said one day as part of the crew sat dispiritedly around the deck before dinner.
Alix sauntered over, planning to provide a distraction. However, as it turned out, she didn't get the chance. At that moment, they heard the drone of approaching airplane engines, and in the distance a twin-engine Cessna circled toward them at low altitude.
"Who can that be?" mused Chuck as the aircraft flew closer and seemed headed straight for Minorcan. As the Cessna buzzed the ship, wind from its passing ruffled the hair of people standing on deck. The plane dipped so low that they could discern the color of the pilot's mustache.
"Did you see who it was?" John asked Alix.
"I didn't recognize him," she said. The pilot had sharp features and a ginger-colored mustache, and she was sure she'd never seen him before.
Ponce watched the plane, fists clenched at his sides. The plane banked and turned, approaching again at a low altitude.
"I know who it is," Ponce muttered under his breath. "And I have a good idea who sent him."
Directly in Alix's line of vision on the other side of Ponce was Daniel, who seemed less interested in the plane than in Ponce's reaction to it. Daniel had placed himself to the side of the group on deck so that he wasn't drawn into their excited chatter. Knowing Daniel as only she knew him, Alix instantly suspected that he knew more about this strange incident than he was saying, but she tucked her suspicions away in the back of her mind.
She hadn't liked the sly expression on Daniel's face. She hadn't liked it at all.
Chapter 8
That night she rebelled at turning in early like the others and made up her mind to see Ponce. She found him in his quarters.
"Lovely night for a stroll," she said, peeping around the door. "Want to come out on deck for a while?" She kept her tone light.
"Well—"
"Come on, it'll do you good." She smiled at him, hoping that she was communicating her love and her concern.
For once he smiled back at her, easing the furrow between his eyes. "All right," he said. "We haven't seen much of each other lately, have we?"
That was an understatement, but Alix bit her tongue.
It was a starry night, moonless, and Minorcan rose and fell on gentle swells. Ponce held her hand and guided her around the coils of rope and diving equipment that covered the deck. They reached the bow and looked out at the dark sea glimmering with phosphorescence in the starlight.
"I don't understand," Ponce said after a while. "The anchors and cannon and ballast stones of such a wreck make a sizable heap. We've covered every likely inch of ocean, but we haven't picked up a thing."
"We've simply missed it. I don't know how."
Ponce sat on a coil of rope. Alix folded herself gracefully onto the deck at his feet, and Ponce stroked her hair, lost in thought.
"The crew doesn't—can't—understand what we're doing when I don't tell them why we're hanging around this part of the ocean."
"Maybe it's time to tell them that we're searching for El Primero," said Alix.
"Think so?"
"The crew resents the apparent waste of time. They need to know that we have a definite shipwreck in mind, and we should tell them that we're looking for King Philip's jewels."
"That could give them a sense of purpose," said Ponce. "No doubt about it, I'm getting bad vibrations from the crew."
Alix considered Daniel and his part in provoking the crew's discontent. She felt a rush of anger toward him. She wanted to protect Ponce with the strong fervor of a woman in love.
"I wish there were something I could do," she said, meaning it from the depths of her heart.
Ponce lifted her chin with a fingertip. He looked bemused and gentle in the starlight, more like the Ponce she had known back in St. Augustine. His expression turned pensive, and the corners of his mouth, so mobile and expressive, turned upward in a fond smile.
"You're helping by listening," he said softly, and he pulled her head against his knee, resuming his steady stroking of her hair. "Your suggestion about telling the men about El Primero is a good one. I'll kick the idea around with the board members and see what they say."
They sat like that for a long time. Alix felt a deep, strong, and abiding tie to him, glad that she could return his friendship by simply being there for Ponce when he needed her.
When at last it had grown too late to stay up any longer and the wind had shifted and was blowing salty spray onto the deck, he took her hand and helped her up. Arms around each other, they walked to their cabins. A feeling of closeness bound them, and when she and Ponce stood before the door to her stateroom, she held him tightly, wishing that she did not have to give him up for the night.
"Do you think, Ponce, that just this once—?"
He spoke firmly but gently. "You know how I feel about bringing our romance aboard ship. With morale a serious problem, it wouldn't do for us to break our rule, even once." He studied her features as though he were drawing her into himself, absorbing her, joining with her mentally if not physically. She closed her eyes against the intensity of his expression, resting her forehead for a moment on his chin.
She knew that he was right about not bringing their romance aboard Minorcan, and it was some small comfort that their abstention wasn't any easier for him than it was for her. In a moment, without words, she disengaged herself from him and went into her stateroom, where she leaned against the closed door and stood listening
until Ponce's footsteps no longer echoed along the corridor.
The night was warm and sticky. She undressed and slipped between the sheets of her bunk without putting on her nightgown. Sleep eluded her, and soon she turned on the light. She went to her locker to find a book to read.
She caught sight of herself in the narrow full-length mirror. Her body was slender, with white strips left by her swimsuit; high, round breasts, sculptured waist, firm thighs tapering to shapely ankles. The sight of her own very sensuous nude body reminded her of making love with Ponce and how natural and right it always seemed.
She never did get the book. Instead she lay in her bed, feeling lonely and tense, wondering if their self-imposed separation affected Ponce the same way.
* * *
"There's something down there!"
This cry from Troll the next morning was enough to galvanize the crew into action.
"It looks like metal on the ocean floor," Ponce explained to the crew after a few minutes' conference with Troll. "We're going to check it out." A cheer went up.
A crew of three divers—George, Mike, and Chuck—pulled on wet suits in preparation for a dive. Kip, the film producer, and his assistant, his son, Alan, filmed the divers as they readied themselves for this underwater exploration.
"Do you want me to suit up?" Alix asked Ponce.
"I won't send you down unless the guys tell me there's something they want photographed." Ponce seemed jubilant.
The divers went overboard, looking like weird insects in their royal blue wet suits with yellow stripes along the arms and legs, blue flippers, and yellow tanks and helmets. The crew hung around joking and laughing, which marked the return of an esprit de corps missing from Minorcan for much too long.
Alix watched bubbles rising to the surface of the ocean where the divers had submerged, wishing more than anything that she were diving with them.
"What do you think it is?" asked Daniel, edging close to her.
"I haven't the slightest idea. Maybe the hoard of the Tooth Fairy, for all I know."
The Beach Bachelors Boxset (Three Complete Contemporary Romance Novels in One) (The Beach Bachelors Series) Page 9