Cock-a-doodle-doo!L’il Bastard, the rooster that had stowed away on their sailboat on a return trip from Key West, happily answered from his perch outside on the wraparound porch railing. His crowing carried inside on the sweet, salty breeze blowing through the open windows.
And that was how it’d been from the beginning. Meat barked and L’il Bastard answered with a raucous crow. Or vice versa. Which made for some really early, incrediblynoisymornings on the island.
“Mmmph.” Alex parroted Mason’s grunt. “You use that so often I wonder if I shouldn’t petition Webster to add it to the dictionary.”
After filling Meat’s bowl, Mason leaned back against the sink. By way of an answer, he crossed his arms.
Alex rolled her eyes and shook her head as if she’d never met a more exasperating man. When Bran said they’d grown to love Alex like a kid sister, he’d forgotten to mentionwith the exception of Mason. Alex and the big guy seemed to have taken an instant dislike of each other. And the only thing Bran could figure was that it was because Mason rarely spoke and Alex rarely shut up. A case of verbal oil meeting nonverbal water.
“So?” Alex asked, turning back to Bran.
“So what?” He scowled at her, picturing all the ways he could strangle her where she sat. Twelve…maybe thirteen. After that, his imagination failed him.
“Are. You. Going. To.See.Her?”
“No.” He hoped the one word, spoken with finality, would put a period on the end of the conversation.
He should have known better.
“But youlikeher, don’t you?” There was a line between Alex’s eyebrows. “I mean, there was that time one of her emails came in while I was using the laptop. I thought you were going to tear my arms off if I didn’t hand over the machine.”
“That’s not exactly how I remember it happening,” he muttered. Then, because he knew she would continue to press him, he added, “And Idolike her. But that doesn’t mean I wanna drag my ass all the way to the Dry Tortugas to entertain a trio of teenagers.”
Alex narrowed her eyes. And there wasanotherlook he didn’t like. He firmed his jaw and prepared himself to patiently withstand whatever bit of irritation was about to come out of her mouth. He didn’t have long to wait.
“I call bullshit,” she said. “My woman’s intuition tells me there’s more holding you back.”
Of course there is. It was the same thing that had held him back since…well…forever. But talk of the asshole who’d supplied Bran’s Y chromosome and left him with a terrible legacy was strictly off-limits.
Bran glanced at Mason. The look they exchanged spoke a thousand words. And since Alex was nothing if not observant, she pursed her lips. “Why do I get the feeling I’m missing something here?”
“Can we change the subject?” Bran asked, but really it was more of a demand. “I think I might be breaking out in a rash.”
The look Alex leveled at him said she suspected he had the emotional maturity of a kumquat. “What is it with you men that you can’t talk about your feelings if—” The slam of the screen door stopped Alex mid-sentence.
Good.Bran wasn’t kidding about that rash. Talk of Maddy—or more precisely, talk of hisfeelingsfor Maddy and why he could never allow them to blossom and grow—made his skin crawl.
“Where the hell is everyone?” LT’s deep voice blasted from the front of the house.
Since LT’s craggy old seaman of an uncle, John, and the other three members of Deep Six Salvage had sailed their new salvage ship to Key Largo so a renowned mechanic could retrofit some specialty items onto the vessel, Bran assumed byeveryoneLT meant the three of them.
“In here!” he called.
Alex shot him ato be continuedlook.
He answered her with a false smile that said,Not on your life, then sobered when LT and LT’s fiancée, former CIA agent Olivia Mortier, traipsed into the kitchen. They were both in swimsuits, hair drenched, bare feet leaving puddles on the worn wood floorboards. Their expressions fell into a category one might call Quintessential Kid in the Candy Store.
“Would you two stop being so damned happy all the time?” Bran harrumphed, exaggerating a headshake. “It’s sickening.”
Even though Mason muttered an agreement, neither of them meant it. Bran, Mason, and the rest of their teammates were overjoyed that their former CO had met his match and fallen head over heels in L.O.V.E. If any of them deserved happiness, it was LT.
“So we were out spearfishing off the reef,” Olivia said, ignoring them. Bran cocked his head at her twinkling eyes and rosy cheeks. His sixth sense told him something was up.
“When I saw somethin’ that at first just looked like another piece of coral,” LT added, his Louisiana drawl peeking through even though he’d spent most of his formative years in the Keys.
“But it wasn’t coral,” Olivia said, nearly vibrating. Bran imagined he could actuallyseethose wavy cartoon lines rippling through the air around her body.
“No sir.” LT shook his head. “It surely wasn’t.”
