by Helen Brenna
The sound of steps pounding down the ladder snapped him back. Something was wrong. He headed into the hall and found Simon on his way down. “What’s going on?”
“Transmission’s overheating.” Simon took off for the engine room at the stern.
“What do you think it is?” Jake followed Simon with Annie close behind. Though he noticed she’d zipped her sweatshirt, she hadn’t covered those long, bare legs. Why couldn’t she stay in her cabin for the duration of this excursion? That would solve at least one of his problems.
“Could be a ruptured cooling line.” Simon messed with the engine.
Jake looked around the other man’s shoulder. “Can you fix that?”
“Don’t have the parts.”
He turned, took a deep breath and calmed himself. “I wanted to be diving this afternoon. We could have covered a big chunk of the dive site.”
No comment from Simon.
“Now what happens?” Annie asked.
“If we have to shut one engine down, we move at a snail’s pace. Won’t be able to go faster than twenty, maybe thirty knots.”
Given that Simon was meticulous with maintenance and Jake couldn’t remember when they’d last had engine trouble, this seemed an awfully untimely coincidence, especially with the Concha in their sights. He moved closer to Simon and whispered, “While you’re in there, look for signs of tampering on that line.”
Simon silently glanced at him and nodded.
“You think someone did this on purpose?” Annie’s eyes widened.
“Just covering all our bases.” Considering the situation, Jake waited impatiently while Simon examined the engine. After a few minutes, Claire, D.W. and Ronny appeared outside the engine room. D.W. sidled right alongside Annie and said, “Hey there, sweet lips. Come here often?”
Ronny grinned, about to claim her other side.
“Knock it off.” The words slipped out of Jake’s mouth before he could stop them. Normally, he didn’t mess with employee relations. Letting his crew find their own level of interaction generally worked best.
“What’s with the engines?” Claire asked.
Jake recited the quick version on the transmission trouble.
“We could turn around, go back to Miami,” she offered. “Get another boat.”
Jake shook his head. “They headed south to finish the surveys.”
“Where are we off to anyway?” D.W. asked.
“Yeah,” Ronny added. “How much farther we have to go will affect what we do about the engine.”
Jake hesitated. One good look at the Global Positioning System and any one of his crew could discern exactly where they were heading. “We’re going to Andros Island, and since we’re more than halfway there it doesn’t make sense to head back.”
“What’s at Andros?” D.W. asked.
“When you need to know, I’ll tell you.”
Ronny raised his bushy gray eyebrows. “Must be bigger than the Concha for you to break from those surveys.”
Simon moved away from the engine, wiping the grime from his hands, and Jake turned abruptly to avoid Ronny and D.W.’s inquiries. “Well?” he prompted.
“Ruptured cooling line.” Simon began putting the engine back together.
The only thing worse than a stalled treasure hunt was no treasure hunt at all. “I’ll have Harold send someone out with a new cooling line. In the meantime, we’ll putt along with one engine. We should be there sometime in the middle of the night. I want everybody except Annie ready to dive bright and early in the morning.”
“You got it, Jake,” Claire said. “Why don’t you all get some lunch?”
“About time. I’m starving,” said D.W. “Come on, Annie. I’ll escort you to the galley.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “I’ll join you guys in a minute.”
Annie, D.W. and Ronny filed out of the room. Jake held Simon back. “What do you think?” he whispered.
With his head down, Simon swiped at the grease on his hands. “The line broke, Jake.”
“Did someone help it along?”
“Maybe,” he mumbled. “Maybe not. Too hard to tell with a break near the compression fitting. That’s where they usually happen.”
Simon shuffled out the door, leaving Claire and Jake alone in the small room. “You’re thinking sabotage?” she asked.
“It’s possible. I’ve heard rumors about Westburne getting in deep with a loan shark. And he was on the dock when I came back from meeting with Harold.”
“That could explain the Anémona,” she said.
“Keep your eyes and ears open, okay?”
“Always.” She nodded. But one look at the thoughtful furrow creasing her brow and Jake knew there was something else on her mind. Most likely, it didn’t have anything to do with business. If he didn’t move fast he’d be getting an earful of—
“There’s something else I need to talk about,” she said.
Damn. Too slow.
“When’re you going to accept Harold as part of this family?”
“Claire, I don’t have time for this.”
“Make time.” She planted herself in front of the door. Though she’d married Sam, Claire had never felt like an in-law to the Rawlings family. She’d been the daughter Jake’s mother had never had, more sister to Jake than sister-in-law, mothering, and sometimes bullying, him all the same. “You’ve disapproved of Harold since Milly’s first date. Are you jealous of him, having a hard time with someone replacing your dad, or what?”
“I’m not thirteen. Give me more credit than that.”
“Is it Harold?”
Jake thought about it. “Now that you mention it, she could do better.”
“You don’t get to choose for her. It’s your mom’s life. Vic’s dead, remember?”
He remembered, all right. “Eight months,” he stated the fact with all the grief and anger of every hour of each and every day piled up inside. “You’d think she could have waited a little longer before running off and marrying someone else.”
“So that’s what’s bugging you? That she didn’t wait long enough?”
“Part of it.” This whole issue unsettled him more than he cared to admit to Claire, Harold or his mother. A man worked hard his whole life, built something from nothing. You’d think his death would have some kind of impact on the world. Instead he was just gone.
Jake looked away and took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts. The pungent smell of oil and fuel permeating the air in the small engine room brought forth a flood of childhood memories, memories of his dad smelling like this room if he’d come home after tinkering with an engine. If he’d been on the water, the scent of fresh, salty air had hung on his clothes and in his hair. Sometimes his breath had smelled like coffee, other times whiskey, but to Jake, his dad had always smelled like life, the big, burly, fit-everything-in kind. The kind that would go on forever.
“How long do you think Milly should have waited before getting married?” Claire asked.
Sometimes, Jake wanted to shake her senseless for digging into other people’s business when she should be concentrating on her own. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “You tell me. If anyone should be moving on, it’s you. Sam died almost a year and a half ago, and you still haven’t had a date.”
“Jake, everyone’s different. Sam and I were…I don’t know…two parts of the same soul. Neither one of us remembered a time without the other and he died suddenly—”
“A massive coronary’s about as sudden as you can get. Forty years of marriage, and Dad was gone within days. Is waiting a year too much to ask?” The one good engine rolled over, and the Mañana moved ahead. Jake closed the engine cover to douse the sound.
“I don’t think you have the right to ask anything from her. She gave you, Sam and your dad everything she had. Now it’s time to let her do what she wants. Anyone can see that your mother’s the light of Harold’s life. He’d drop anything to be with her.” Claire set her hands on her hips. “A
fter all those years with Vic, doesn’t she deserve that kind of attention?”
His neck prickled defensively. “Dad loved her.”
“In his own way.”
“You may have practically lived at our house, but you didn’t see everything.”
As a next-door neighbor and somewhere in the middle of a family of eight, Claire had claimed the Rawlings family as her own quite early on. She used to say she got more attention in one day at the Rawlings house, than a week at her own. She’d do her homework at their house, claiming it was quieter. Watch TV in their living room, saying she and Sam enjoyed the same shows. She’d even spent weeks with them out on the boats in the summertime.
“Sometimes an outsider can see things best.” She paused, her mouth pinched with worry. “If your dad ever had the choice of time with Milly or heading off for a new wreck site,” Claire said, “which one did he always go for?”
“What’s your point?”
“The fact that you don’t get it.” Her frown deepened. “Jake, wake up. Your mom spent half her married life without the husband she loved. How happy do you think she was?”
While he’d been growing up, his mom had seemed cheerful and competent, despite raising two boys virtually on her own. The fact that she may not have been happy during that time confused and angered him, put a crack in his foundation. The type of crack he didn’t want to look at, let alone fix. He eyed the door, needing out of this conversation.
“She gave your dad the best years of her life,” Claire continued. “Let her move on.”
Wasn’t his surrogate sister a good one to talk? “Maybe it’s time you quit meddling in everyone else’s life, Claire.” And take a good look at your own, he added to himself.
Her surprised expression turned guarded.
He pushed past her and yanked open the engine room door. “What Mom does is her own business. She doesn’t need your endorsement. Or mine.” Jake reached his cabin and secured the door behind him. Mom unhappy. Was that possible?
He forced the useless musings out of his mind. This was no time for family or personal bullshit. He had more important things to think about, like figuring out if his engine had been sabotaged and, if so, who was behind it. He walked straight to the safe, analyzing the possibilities.
Time to take some precautions.
CLAIRE STOOD ALONE in the engine room, staring at the equipment and sundry tools clamped along the wall, trying to slough off the sting of Jake’s accusation. Milly wouldn’t think she was meddling in everyone’s business. Jake was a jerk, always had been. OEI’s entire staff would attest to that.
She took a deep breath and the truth bubbled to the surface. No, that wasn’t true. As brother-in-laws go, Jake was irreproachable, treating Claire like an integral part of his family. Steadfast and protective, Jake would bend over forward, backward and any which way he could for the people he cared about. Lately though, he hadn’t been himself, a man in need not used to needing. Maybe Ronny was right and she should cut him some slack.
She reached for the door, the boat rolled on a wave and a heavy pipe wrench swung from the wall. Claire, baby. Hand me that wrench. The memory of Sam’s deep, raspy voice filled her head. His image swam before her and loneliness engulfed her, the kind of loneliness that made her chest ache, made her want to curl in her bunk and sleep for a thousand years.
I don’t know how to be without you, Sam. I miss you. Your voice. Your laugh. The way you leaned your forehead against mine and looked into my eyes. The way your neck felt under my lips, my tongue. The sweet way you’d kiss my tummy every time we made love in case we’d made a baby. I wish we’d had a child. I’d have a piece of you. To hold.
Her hand flew to the gold chain around her neck, Sam’s chain, the one she’d given him for his eighteenth birthday.
I miss you. So does Jake. Sometimes I think he’s going to blow from locking up all that pain. And D.W., too, though he won’t talk about it. At all.
Oh, Sam, how D.W. misses you. Something funny’ll happen and we both laugh and turn to tell you about it. Instead, we’re looking at each other. Lost. His smile fades, and I can see it written all over his face.
Like it was yesterday, she could see them, standing next to each other. D.W., fair-haired and rangy, towering above Sam’s dark head and stocky frame. They’d been inseparable, at least for the summers when D.W. had lived in Florida with his dad. During the school years when D.W. went back to Texas to live with his mom, she and Sam had always felt as if something was off-kilter. Their three-legged stool had lost a leg. Like now. Only their other leg was never coming back.
D.W. Oh, Lord.
It just wasn’t fair! She was barely over thirty, in her sexual prime. She had needs and wants, natural and right. But D.W.? Could life get any crueler?
Closing her eyes, Claire hugged herself and her stomach grumbled loudly. She’d forgotten breakfast. Again. One flippered foot in front of the other, she repeated in her mind—it had become her mantra. There’d be company in the galley. Annie would be having lunch. If Claire could get her alone, it’d be a good time to dig out her story.
Jake’s admonishment about her meddling ways niggled at her conscience. “Oh, for crying out loud. Annie needs a friend on this ship. That’s all.”
CHAPTER FIVE
IN THE GALLEY, Annie helped D.W. and Ronny pile an assortment of meats, cheeses, fresh fruits, condiments and chips onto the table for lunch. They’d nearly finished with the task when Simon joined them, leaned over the sink and silently scrubbed engine grease from his hands.
Annie sat down at the table across from D.W. and followed his lead by throwing together a sandwich. After all the fresh air, she was starving. Ronny was about to take his first bite of his own concoction when Claire came in and asked, “Whose turn for a shift at the helm?”
“That’d be me.” Ronny jumped up and headed to the control room with his full plate of food.
Claire dropped down next to Annie. She grabbed an empty plate, but stared at the luncheon fare as if making her own meal required too much effort.
“Claire, honey, you got to eat something,” D.W. said.
“I know.” She didn’t move a muscle. D.W. took two slices of wheat bread, smoothed on a thin layer of mustard, slapped on several slices of turkey and finished it off with a few leaves of crisp, green lettuce. “Enjoy this fresh stuff while you can, Annie,” he said, breaking the awkward silence. “When it’s gone, it’ll be back to canned tuna, boxed mac-and-cheese and that god-awful powdered milk. I don’t think anybody ever drinks that swill. Don’t know why we stock it.”
Claire sniffed. “When you buy your own boat, D.W., you can stock the galley any way you please.”
“Can’t be soon enough,” D.W. mumbled before setting the sandwich he’d made in front of Claire. “Just the way you like it, so eat.” He went to work on his own lunch.
“D.W.?” she asked. “Do I butt into other people’s business?”
A chip caught in D.W.’s throat, and he coughed. “God, no, honey. Who told you that?”
“Never mind.” Claire picked up the sandwich and took a bite.
Annie hid her smile behind a glass of fresh, cold milk and took a swallow. Simon finally finished cleaning up, sat next to D.W. and hastily put together his own lunch. By the time Claire got around to her second bite, Simon had already wolfed down most of his food. He stood, dropped his garbage in the bin and left.
“He doesn’t talk much, hmmm?” Annie peeled a banana.
Claire poured herself some milk. “When I was a kid, Simon was the best uncle any kid could hope for. We played cards together, hide and seek, hangman. I turned thirteen, developed breasts and poof. He’s hardly looked at me since.”
“And he’s missing one fine sight, if you ask me.” D.W. smiled at Claire.
“No one did ask you,” Claire said, scowling back at him.
“As a matter of fact,” D.W. said, barely missing a beat with a wink at Annie, “I believe Simon’s missing t
wo fine sights.”
Claire’s scowl deepened before she glanced past Annie and nodded toward the stern. “There he goes. Like clockwork.”
Annie spun around to find Jake, minus a shirt and the ever-present baseball cap, striding across the deck. In one swift and obviously practiced movement, he hopped over the rail and dove off the boat. She gasped and jumped up.
“It’s okay.” Claire laughed, grabbing her wrist to settle her back down.
“What’s he doing?”
“He gets antsy and needs to let off a little steam,” Claire explained. “Whoever’s at the helm reduces speed, and he swims alongside the boat until he burns out. Believe me, we’ll all be a lot happier for it.” She popped another bite of sandwich in her mouth.
D.W. tilted his head in Jake’s direction. “That man’s wound tighter than a Texas twister.”
Claire chuckled. “Sam used to say Jake had shark’s blood running through his veins—cold, focused and deadly serious.”
“Sam?” This question was out before Annie could hold herself back.
“My husband. Jake’s younger brother. He died in a diving accident a while back. Same accident that messed up Jake’s leg.”
As Claire spoke, Annie sensed D.W. stiffen beside her.
“Sam got caught in a winch rope, and Jake tried freeing him,” Claire went on. “The tension on the rope almost twisted Jake’s foot clear off the end of his leg. Sam drowned before we could get him to the surface.”
“I’m sorry.” Annie fiddled with the corner of her napkin.
“Me, too. We all miss him. Jake more than most.” Claire took another gulp of milk. “Sam had a way of leveling him out. He used to tease Jake that if he didn’t lighten up he’d actually turn into a shark one of these days. ‘Before you know it,’ Sam would say, ‘Jake’ll start growing jagged teeth and sprouting fins, and we’ll never see him again.’”
Annie felt the heat of Claire’s intense gaze.