Deep Blue (23 page)

For a moment she couldn’t seem to breathe.

“You all right?”

She nodded, managed a smile. “I’m fine. Must be the champagne.”

Conn flicked her a glance that said he knew exactly what was wrong with her, and Hope looked away. She wasn’t sure how much more intimacy she could share with Conn and still maintain any sort of safe distance.

“Let’s go.” Though she hadn’t really agreed, he caught her arm and urged her toward the door, leaving only a mild protest on her tongue.

They were outside in a heartbeat, heading down a winding path overgrown with big, leafy foliage, walking toward the curve of sugary white sand in the private cove below the restaurant. Hope noticed the set of Conn’s jaw and the heat in his eyes, and her heartbeat thundered louder than the roar of the surf. As soon as they reached the beach, they took off their shoes and set them side by side on the sand.

Now that they were there, Conn’s long strides slowed and he seemed to relax. Linking their fingers together, he led her on a leisurely stroll along the edge of the water. The foamy surf rolled up on the shore, over their bare feet as they wandered toward a secluded spot at the far end of the cove. Giant palm trees leaned out over the sand and leafy foliage hid this end of the beach from view.

Conn turned her to face him and her pulse kicked up. “I’ve been wanting to kiss you all evening.” He touched her cheek, then his mouth settled gently over hers. Her mind shouted
be careful,
but need soon silenced the warning.

Hope kissed him back, her tongue tangling with his, her fingers sliding into his hair. Her bare toes curled into the sand beneath her feet and her body swayed toward him of its own accord. She wanted him. God, she wanted him so much.

The surf crashed around them, rolled up on the shore, splashing against their legs, dampening the hem of her sundress and the legs of Conn’s navy blue slacks.

“We’re going to get wet,” he said softly, kissing the side of her neck.

Hope stepped away from him and gave him a sultry smile. “Then why don’t we?”

Sliding the straps of her sundress down over her shoulders, she shoved the dress over her hips and stepped out of it, tossed it farther up on the shore, out of the path of the water. Her tiny white thong underwear followed. Laughing, she raced into the sea.

An instant later, Conn ran up beside her, as gloriously naked as she. He caught her up in his arms and lunged into the next wave, carrying both of them under.

They swam for a while, enjoying the water and the mild ocean breezes, kissing as they stood waist-deep in the waves. Conn was a skillful lover and not a man to rush. He kissed her until she was trembling, kissed and caressed her breasts, then lifted her into his arms and carried her up on the sand at the edge of the surf.

He set her on the sand, then stretched full-length beside her, kissing her mouth, her neck, her shoulders, moving down to the curve of her breasts. Her breath caught as he entered her, sliding deeply inside, and almost at once she started to come. His name came out on a sob that drifted away with the breeze, and he surged into her again, even more deeply.

Incredible sensations rushed through her.

“That’s it, baby. Let it happen.”

A huge wave washed over them as he moved inside her, until he had her moaning. Ocean spray misted the air around them. White, foamy surf washed over their naked bodies. Conn kissed her and Hope arched upward, meeting each of his thrusts, forcing a low growl of pleasure from his throat.

His fingers slid into her slick, wet hair and his iron control seemed to snap. Driving hard and deep, his muscles tightening, he reached his release and it sent her over the edge.

They climaxed together, both of them trembling, the sensations so fierce that afterward they lay entwined, barely able to move.

The surf washed around them and they stirred. Conn came to his feet and hauled her up beside him. Wordlessly he linked their hands and they walked back into the surf to freshen themselves.

Afterward, they returned to the place they had left their clothes and silently pulled them on. Though their wet bodies dampened the fabric, neither of them cared. Walking along the beach, they made their way to the place where they’d left their shoes, picked them up, but didn’t put them on.

“The crew will be back at the boat by now,” he said, his eyes on her face.

“I imagine they will.”

“Eddie gave me a key before we left.”

Her stomach twisted. She knew they would make love again, that each time they did, he would capture a little more of her heart.

Conn must have sensed her hesitation. “I’m not letting you run this time, Hope. There’s too much at stake.” Words she’d thought earlier about the treasure. “We’re going to find out where this is headed. You’re going to sleep in my bed at night and we’re going to explore these feelings the two of us obviously share.”

A sliver of fear went through her. A relationship with a man like Conn—wildly handsome, skillful in bed, smart and sexy and infinitely male. She wasn’t a risk-taker like her sisters—not anymore.

Still, she had never felt the turbulent mix of emotions she felt for Conn. She refused to call it love. After Richard, she was too much of a realist for that. But whatever these feelings were, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to use the time they had left together to explore them.

“All right. We do it your way—for a while. But if things don’t work out, either of us has the right to end it. If that happens, we still stay friends.” She stuck out her hand to seal the bargain before she could change her mind. “Deal?”

Instead of shaking, Conn lifted her fingers to his lips. “Deal.” Still holding onto her hand, he tugged her into his arms and sealed the bargain with a kiss.

Conn woke up naked just before dawn, in a huge king-size bed with a beautiful woman draped over his chest and an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

As he lay there staring up at the canopied four-poster bed, a distant noise reached him, the sound of helicopter blades whirring in the distance, the
whop whop whop
growing louder as the chopper neared the island.

Then the phone started ringing and the uneasy feeling tightened into a cold, hard knot. The phone jangled again before he could grab the receiver.

“Reese.”

“Sorry if I woke you,” said the front desk clerk. “Mr. Markham asked me to call. He said to tell you the press is coming in.”

Conn silently cursed. The last thing he wanted was to deal with the media. “I need to get back to the boat. Can you make the arrangements?”

“I’ll be happy to, sir. I’ll call Chalko right away. He’ll pick you up and take you back out to the
Conquest.
”

Conn hung up the phone, wishing his gut had been wrong just this once.
Christ.
The locusts were already descending.

Hope shifted on the mattress beside him. “What is it?”

“Hear that chopper?”

She looked up. “I hear it. Sounds like the damned thing’s landing on the roof.” Sitting up in bed, she shoved back her dark red hair. “What’s going on?”

“The media’s here. Apparently Talbot and Markham wasted no time calling them. Christ, I figured we’d have at least a couple of days before they got here.”

Both of them climbed out of bed, hurriedly showered, and dressed in the same clothes they had worn the night before.

“You ready?” Conn asked as Hope walked into the living room.

She dug her sunglasses out of her purse and shoved them up on her nose. “Whenever you are.”

The moment Conn opened the door, an array of lights went on and cameras began to roll. Half a dozen reporters started throwing questions at him.

“You’re Conner Reese, right? You’re the guy who found the
Nuestra Señora de Rosa?
”

Conn kept walking. “I’m one of them.”

A woman reporter stepped into his path. “They say you found the mother lode—that’s the real treasure, isn’t it? When did it happen?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“How much treasure is there?” a blond reporter asked. “As much as Fisher found on the
Atocha?
” He shoved his microphone toward Conn.

“Could be even more.” Conn turned to face the eager group. “Listen, I think you would all get a much better story if you spoke to Mr. Markham. He’s the owner of Pleasure Island and one of the partners in Treasure Limited. He’s in charge of media communications.”
At least he’s going to be from now on,
Conn thought darkly. “I think you’ll find him over at the office. That’s in the main building, down the hall from the lobby.”

“We’d rather talk to you, Mr. Reese,” said the female reporter. “We want to hear the details of how you found the
Rosa.
”

“Like I said, speak to Markham.” In the driveway out front, Chalko waved and Conn urged Hope in that direction. Both of them breathed a sigh of relief as they climbed into the Jeep and the tall, lean black man fired up the engine. He roared off toward the dock before anyone could possibly catch up with them.

It was early, the sun barely up, yet when they arrived at the
Conquest
and he and Hope climbed aboard, everyone was already hard at work. Today was an important day. There was a lot to do and apparently no one had forgotten.

Preparing to dive took Conn’s mind off the problems he could be facing with so much media coverage. According to Captain Bob, who had been monitoring CNN on the Internet, the story had broken late last night. By afternoon, the station was showing film footage of the
Conquest
and Pleasure Island, as well as interviews with Eddie Markham and Brad Talbot and a quick shot of Conn and Hope escaping the bungalow where they had spent the night.

The professor, and his extensive background on the subject of the Spanish treasure fleets, was a feature story, and Conn was touted as the man who had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow known as the
Nuestra Señora de Rosa.
So far, they hadn’t figured out the name of his companion.

Though helicopters flew overhead and boats circled the search area they had cordoned off with buoys and line, so far none of the media had tried to come aboard. As Conn had planned, the hookah was rigged and the serious job of recovery begun.

With the added buoyancy of the water, most of the ballast stones were able to be lifted, but carrying them any distance one at a time just wasn’t feasible. The crane was put to use, the stones loaded into the metal basket which could be swung the fifteen feet from the middle of the ballast pile to the edge, exposing whatever lay beneath.

The rotting remnants of what had once been wooden chests were revealed, containing stacks of silver bars. A silver box held a cache of gold cobs ranging from two to eight
escudos;
what had once been a series of larger chests contained thousands of silver coins. But the eighty-by-thirty-foot search area covered twenty-four-hundred square feet of ocean floor, and salvaging the area was going to take time.

With so many boats in the vicinity, Conn also worried about protecting the spot where the decks had separated from the hull. Among the beds of waving sea grasses, stacks of decaying timber, and columns of leafy algae, they were sure to find more of the valuable personal artifacts that sank when the ship was torn apart. Conn and Joe planned to go back and work the deeper site as soon as they got the chance. The finds might be fewer but there could be something even more valuable than the gold and silver in the hold.

They worked the site another day, but supplies were becoming a problem. Today was the last day they could manage to stay before returning to Jamaica. Conn didn’t like to think how much money the items in the safe and the hold were worth—the eight-
escudo
gold cobs alone could go for as high as seven thousand dollars apiece. With the growing fleet of boats hovering just outside the search area, he would be glad to turn the items over to the Scotia Bank in Jamaica.

Needing a break and something to eat, he and Joe had just come up from a dive when he spotted Hope and Michael carrying their dive gear along the deck.

Hope smiled. “This is Michael’s last day. The water’s really shallow. We were hoping you might take us down after lunch.”

Since their night on Pleasure Island, Conn had been sleeping in Hope’s cabin, coming in late and leaving early, trying to keep their relationship discreet, though he had a feeling most of the guys knew the two of them were spending their nights together. Remembering how good it felt waking up beside her made him smile. It also made it nearly impossible to deny her anything she wanted.

“All right. If it’s okay with King, we’ll take you down after we eat. But Joe goes with Michael and I go with you.”

The boy’s narrow, dark face lit up. “My father says it is all right to go. He says a small thing like nearly drowning should not stop you from doing what you love.”

Joe laughed. “Your dad’s right. But if I’m taking you down, I want you to stay close this time.”

“I will, I promise.”

Joe nodded. “First, I gotta have something to eat.”

Not a lot, since they would be diving again, but after working all morning, both of them could use an energy boost. Ron and Wally were still working below. They’d be coming up for their break when Conn and Joe went back down.

“We won’t be long,” Conn said to Hope, thinking how good she looked in her conservative two-piece swimsuit, trying
not
to think she looked even better in her tiny yellow flowered bikini—or better still, nothing at all.

Hope waited next to Michael on the diving platform when Joe and Conn came back up on deck. Since the men had promised to show them the site, they would be wearing air tanks instead of using the hookah, since the breathing lines attached to the boat were more confining.

As the four of them made the shallow descent, Hope stayed close to Conn, and Joe made sure Michael didn’t stray. The water was clear, a crystalline aqua-blue populated with hundreds of exotic fish. Hope had been reading up on them: a small black grouper, a beautiful blue parrotfish, a yellow-tailed damselfish. The array of colors and odd-sounding names went on and on.

As they neared the bottom, Conn pointed to a small reef shark circling above the ballast pile, which stretched out in front of them like a lumpy carpet on the ocean floor. Hope wasn’t afraid of sharks. At dive school, she had learned that they mostly just wanted to be left alone. The shark swam off into the tall sea grasses bordering the stones and disappeared.

Hope turned to survey the ballast pile, which was amazing—eighty feet of round, sand and algae-covered rock that had been lying on the bottom of the sea for hundreds of years. She could almost see the huge galleon whose hold it had come from, the ship’s appearance boxy, its flat stern marked by rows of small, square windows, the top decks enclosed by ornate wooden rails.

There wasn’t much coral in the area. She had read that coral, being a living creature, avoided shipwreck sites because of the contamination from the wreckage. But the stones sheltered an exotic array of sea life—ribbon-like neon gobys, jaw-fish, frogfish, and blenny. They lived among the rocks and scuttled out of sight as the group swam past. At the edge of her vision, a big barracuda darted through a hole in the boulders, disappearing in the darkness beneath.

Conn spotted something among the stones and left them a moment, finning away from the pile, over to the edge of the sand to retrieve the hand-held blower. A number of water-logged ship’s timbers had managed to survive the years, Hope saw as he blew away a sheet of sand. They lay in haphazard, crisscross mounds on top of the ballast. Most had passed into eternity, along with the crew and passengers aboard the ship.

Closing in on the spot Conn searched, they all pitched in to lift away some of the ballast stones, which, with the buoyancy of the water, weren’t as heavy as they looked. They filled the basket suspended by the crane, allowing them to see what lay beneath, giving them access to an amazing cache of oxidized silver coins that appeared to have once been contained in a barrel of some kind. All that remained were the barrel staves and the decayed container’s valuable contents.

Through a combination of tugs on a floating buoy and hand signals to the video camera, the men had developed a communication system that allowed the divers to talk to the crew on the boat.

The crane swung the basket of stones out of the way, dumped the basket, which was then refilled with the heavy clumps of silver coins and hauled aboard the boat. Hope and Conn moved along the ballast pile, stopping here and there to examine something that might prove interesting. At the edge of the pile, tall sea grasses and algae waved like long green tongues in the pull-and-tug of the tide.

Glancing down as she swam along, Hope spotted the glitter of what looked like gold, motioned to Conn, and swam excitedly toward it. Reaching down, she plucked up a shiny gold cob, then another. Conn swam over and gave her the thumbs-up sign, then began lifting and moving stones so they could see deeper into the ballast pile.

They were so busy hunting for treasure they didn’t realize how far the two of them had swum from Michael and Joe, who searched the stones closer to the ship.

They didn’t realize that they were not alone.

Hope spotted the intruders first—two divers, each wearing wetsuits and double tanks, down at the far end of the ballast pile. She nudged Conn and pointed, saw him tense. He was too far away to signal Joe, so he motioned for Hope to stay where she was, then turned and started swimming toward the men. Both of the divers took off, swimming rapidly into the sea grass and tall strands of leafy algae, disappearing around a mound of sand that had slid off the main shoal, down into the ocean.

Conn followed. Knowing she shouldn’t but worried that he might get in trouble, she started making her way toward the place where he had disappeared.

As she rounded the protrusion of sand, the next few seconds seemed to happen in slow motion. She spotted Conn and one of the divers, but the other man had hidden behind a wall of waving sea plants and she could tell Conn didn’t see him. Then she noticed the spear gun he lifted from his side and her heart seemed to simply stop beating.

There was no way to signal a warning. Hope swam madly as the diver lifted the weapon, aimed at Conn, and fired. Eyes wide in horror, she watched the spear slice through the water, saw Conn turn toward the danger an instant too late, and a scream lodged in her throat. Conn gripped his side and doubled over as the spear tore through his wetsuit and into his flesh, then streaked out the opposite side. The cloudy substance pouring into the water was blood, and a fresh shot of terror slammed through her.

By the time her gaze returned to the diver, the man was a dark speck moving off beside his friend through the water. Hope kept swimming toward Conn. He had turned around and started back in her direction, spotted her, and signaled for her to swim for the boat as fast as she could.

He was bleeding badly. Dear God, she wanted to stop and find some way to help him, but the urgency of his movements warned her there wasn’t time. From the corner of her eye, she saw a dark shape cutting through the water and realized why. The reef shark they had seen before was returning, joined by another, larger shark angling in from a different direction.

The wild beating of her heart increased and her mouth went dry. The mouthpiece felt thick and uncomfortable, the air going in and out of her lungs seemed to burn. She was breathing too fast, she knew. She forced herself to take a slow breath of air and calm down. By now the two of them were swimming side by side, both of them finning through the water with all of their strength. Joe must have seen them racing toward him and realized something was wrong. He motioned for Michael to surface and this time the boy obeyed without question.