He pitched himself overboard. And she was left with nothing to do but watch him sink beneath the surface of the waves and contemplate the fact he’dwillinglytouched her for the very first time, and that their conversation had been the longest and most cordial of their acquaintance. Both struck her as unaccountably sad. Why did it take fully automatic weapons fire and a true life-and-death situation to make them stop taking digs at each other?
It was a question that filled her with a million conflicting emotions. On the one hand, Mason McCarthy was sullen and cantankerous and prone to growling at her like a lion with a thorn stuck in his paw. On the other hand, she couldn’t ignore the appeal of his handsome face.
Oh, not handsome in the traditional sense. His forehead was too heavy, not to mention perpetually furrowed. His nose was too wide and listed slightly to the left—evidence of a break he had never bothered to fix. And his jaw? Well, his jaw was a mile wide. And if it were any harder or more angular, it’d need to be carved from granite.
But then there are his eyes.They were crystal blue. Like the water around Wayfarer Island on a sunny, windless day.And his hair.She sighed just thinking about it. It was thick and shiny and inky black.
And that’s before you get to his body.Whoa, momma,whata body. He was so roped with muscle he could’ve been a contender for the WWE. She could easily imagine him throwing an opponent against the ropes or choking out an adversary with his beefy forearm. In short, Mason McCarthy cut a hard, forbidding figure. It was like he’d been built for destruction.
Or something far more pleasurable.
See? Conflicting. That one word precisely described their relationship.
Or in more expansive terms, her girl parts were super interested in his boy parts. But every time he opened his mouth—which, let’s face it, wasn’t very often; a rock communicated more than he ever did—her brain became very annoyed with him.
“Come on, Mason,” she grumbled, lifting the binoculars he’d pressed into her hand.Field glasseshe’d called them. Through the magnified lenses, she could just make out the back of the fort—Mason had instructed her to sail the boat nearly two miles out to sea. Now she scanned the redbrick expanse for movement. But there was nothing. Not a damn thing.
“Comeon, Mason,” she said again, grimacing at the hitch in her voice. When she felt something hot and wet slip down her cheek, she hastily brushed it away. Unfortunately, another drop replaced the first, and that’s when she realized she was crying.
That’salsowhen she realized just how much she’d come to care for the guys of Deep Six Salvage in the short time she’d been living and working with them. Not only were they men of rare courage and honor, but they were also incredibly…good.
That was the best way she knew to describe them. They were allgoodmen—Mason’s obvious aversion to her personality aside.
The truth was, they’d shown her more respect and consideration than she’d ever received from anyone. In grade school, she’d been teased unmercifully because she never played Red Rover on the playground, preferring instead to sit quietly under a tree and devour the stories in her history book.And my Carrot Top hair, Casper the Ghost complexion, and Coke-bottle glasses didn’t help, I’m sure.
In high school, she was the butt of jokes because she was the latest of late bloomers. She didn’t sprout breasts until she was nearly eighteen.And it’s not like they’re anything to write home about even now.
She thought she would find her tribe in college. But there weren’t many girls—orany, really—who wanted to learn to read centuries’ old scripts. And since she’d never gotten why keg stands were fun, she’d once again found herself the odd man…er…oddwomanout.
Graduate school had proved to be a bit more accepting, filled with academic types who didn’t begrudge her interests in antiquated documents and historical minutiae. But even so, her professors thought she was nuts to waste her time and the integrity of her doctoral dissertation trying to help a bunch of hairy, tattooed guys find a four-hundred-year-old fortune that had eluded treasure hunters for centuries. Her advisor had gone so far as to say, “If you were twice as smart, you’d still be an idiot for throwing in your lot with these men.”
That hadn’t stopped her from hopping on the first plane headed south. And she’d been surprised by how easy it’d been to convince the guys of Deep Six Salvage not only to let her stay, but to take her word for it when she said she thought they—and everyone who’d come before them—had been looking in the wrong place for theSanta Cristina. They hadn’t called her crazy. They hadn’t batted an eyelash at her youth or inexperience. Instead they’d sat down, listened to her arguments, and trusted her judgment.
And earlier, when they’d matched the hilt LT and Olivia found with Captain Bartolome Vargas’s cutlass? Well, she’d crowed with victory not because she’d been provedright, but because she’d been beyond relieved that she hadn’t steered these good men wrong. Even now, even scared out of her wits, a smile tilted her lips at the memory of LT swinging her around in a circle while Meat barked happily and L’il Bastardcock-a-doodle-doo-ed from his favorite spot on the porch railing outside the kitchen window.
It was strange, she realized, but at twenty-seven years old, and with a group of grizzled guys on a remote island, she finally,finallyfelt like she belonged. And it waskillingher that she was twiddling her thumbs while two of those grizzled guys were risking their necks.
Grrr.Sitting tight, sittingstillhad never been something she excelled at.
Maybe I could just sail a little closer. If I don’t use the engines, no one will hear me.Or…the Gulf Stream current blew by this side of the little island, right? And if she remembered correctly from the current map she’d taken a peek at two weeks ago, it should push her closer to Garden Key without her having to do more than pull anchor. By her recollection, the average speed of the current was four miles per hour. She was two miles away. So, in thirty minutes she could be setting foot on the island.
The idea was beyond tempting. But then what? It’s not like she could help them do…whatever they were doing.
And speaking of…
“Whatareyou guys doing?” she whispered, her fear morphing into impatience as the seconds ticked by. She liked the second emotion far better than the first. “And where the frick is that flare, Mason?”
Mason…
His name carried on the breeze. Hearing it filled her mind with a dozen familiar and conflicting emotions…
Chapter 6
7:25 p.m.…
“Don’t you keep a first aid kit?” Maddy demanded, rummaging through the drawers in the cramped little kitchenette with its green Formica countertops, opening whitewashed cupboards, and coming away empty-handed.
“Under the bed,” Rick said.
