He was too anxious to laugh. And his anxiety only notched up when the noise of a plane engine suddenly sounded above thehissandshushof the surf.
Shielding his eyes from the sun, he watched as Larry lined up the nose of his amphibious aircraft perpendicular to the beach. Romeo’s jaw clenched. Not because Larry was coming into the lagoon too high and too hot. Or notjustbecause of that. But because it was time.
Time to talk to Mia. And I still don’t have a clue what to say.
Despite the bad angle, Larry landed the aircraft without incident and motored the plane onto the beach. Theroarof the engine was replaced by the softclatterof the wind through the palm trees when he cut the power.
Larry hopped out of the pilot-side door, barefoot as usual and dressed in his standard-issue uniform of stained tank top and cutoff jean shorts. He waved to the gathered group, and then quickly opened the door to the cabin. When a pair of smooth legs appeared on the plane’s top step, Romeo did as Doc suggested and took a deep breath.
Of course, it rattled out of him on a windy sigh when the smooth legs turned out to be connected to their lawyer and not Mia.
Beside him, Doc cursed. “What the hell is she doing here? I just got over my last case of hives.”
“You sure those weren’t goose bumps?” Romeo returned Doc’s gesture by clapping a hand on the guy’s shoulder. Doc knocked his hand away and Romeo faked a wince. “Ow. Careful. Injured man here, remember?”
“Please,” Doc scoffed. “You and I both know the only pain you’re in right now is directly in my ass.”
Even though Romeo wouldn’t have thought himself capable of a chuckle two minutes ago, that was enough to have one rumbling out of him. Of course, he sobered right up when another pair of bare legs appeared on the plane’s top step. But the new gams didn’t belong to Mia either.
Alex exited the plane ahead of Mason, and Romeo noted how both of them had the wired, wild-eyed look of people who’d just spent the better part of a day and a night making transfers and eating shitty food on airplanes and in airports.
Saved the best for last,he couldn’t help thinking, his heart pounding when he spotted Mia’s sandals on the top step. Of course, once she emerged from the airplane, once he got his first look at her pretty face and her shiny hair and the way her blouse clung to breasts he knew were warm and responsive and perfect, his pounding heart became the entire drum section of a high school marching band.
Will she look at me with longing and sadness?he wondered a little desperately.Will there be anger in her eyes because she thinks I broke my promise and ruined our friendship by asking for more? Will she avoid my gaze altogether?
Dumbfounded. That’s what he was a second later, because when she started making her way across the beach, there wasn’t sadness or anger in her amber eyes. She didn’t avoid his gaze either. Quite the opposite, she looked straight at him and...smiled.
Not her closed-mouth grin. But her mega-watter. The smile that melted his brains so he stood blinking at her in stupefaction.
“I’m just gonna leave the luggage here for y’all!” Larry called, tossing out overnight bags and suitcases from the cargo hold.
“Thanks for the ride, Larry!” Alex waved.
And then, suddenly, the new arrivals were there, mingling with the gathered group. Cami nodded and said, “Good to see you again” to those she’d met in Key West after their rescue, and she shook the hands of everyone she was meeting for the first time. Alex hugged everyone, and Mason did as usual and simply stood there, mute, his only indication that he’d been gone for two weeks the chin-lift he gave to the crew.
As for Mia? She shuffled through the sand until she was standing right beside Romeo. Then, stupefying him further, she grabbed his hand and laced her fingers through his.
What the fuck is happening?He continued to blink at her.Is this her way of saying she still wants to be friends? Or is it her way of telling me there will always be a place for me in her heart even if I’m not in her life? That our one night together will have to last me a lifetime? Or...has she changed her mind about giving us a chance?
That last idea had the marching band that was his heart screeching to a cacophonous halt. He opened his mouth. But yeah. He still didn’t have the first clue what to say, and so nothing but silence slipped through his lips.
Then, he lost his chance to say anything because Larry cranked over his plane’s engine, and it was too noisy to talk for the sixty seconds it took Larry to reverse the aircraft into the lagoon and then throttle up to take off.
As soon as the plane was far enough away to make conversation possible, LT thwarted Romeo further by demanding of Mason and Alex, “Okay. We’re all here and the suspense has been killin’ us. Is it in the water? Please tell us it’s in the water.”
“It’s in the water.” Alex shoved her glasses higher on the bridge of her freckled nose. Then she made a face and added, “Well, sort of.”
LT pulled his aviator sunglasses down the bridge of his nose, his eyes pinned on Alex. “Elaborate please.”
After fishing a slip of paper out of her shorts, Alex carefully unfolded it and then cleared her throat to read aloud. “At the tip of the island’s barrier reef, beneath the rock and the coral, there you will find theSanta Cristina’sbounty.”
Mia squeezed Romeo’s hand and, not for the first time, he thought about how perfectly her palm seemed to fit inside his own. But when he glanced down at her, he found she’d stopped smiling up at him and was instead looking out to the tip of the reef, where the waves were allowed to roll toward the island unencumbered.
“It’s been under our noses the entire time,” Doc whispered, his toothpick hanging drunkenly from his slack mouth as he shook his head in disbelief.
“We’re burnin’ daylight,” LT declared. “Let’s get suited up and get ourselves out to Wayfarer II.” He hitched his stubbled chin toward the salvage ship anchored beyond the reef. “At the very least, we can start sectionin’ off the search area and puttin’ the underwater metal detectors to good use.”
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you might want to hold off on that,” Cami said.
