For All of Her Life (24 page)

“Dad wouldn’t have missed Alex’s birthday,” he reminded her.

“Of course not,” Kathy said. A knife twisted within her. How would she really know? The girls had led split lives. Most of their time had been spent with her. But they had always had a home with their father as well, and mostly due to Kathy’s insistence, their time with him had been kept entirely separate.

“Want a muffin or something, Mom?” Alex suggested.

“A muffin?” Sally said indignantly. “You may all diet later. Peggy whipped up omelettes and her delicious potatoes and all sorts of wonderful things. Eat breakfast! That’s exactly what I intend on doing.” She started for the buffet table. The others followed her.

“Peggy cooks with low-fat everything,” Jordan said, looking at his ex-wife. “You haven’t given up eating, have you?” As if in challenge, he handed her a plate.

She shook her head. “An omelette sounds wonderful.”

It was while she was at the buffet that she felt an arm slip around her. She nearly jumped. Luckily, she didn’t. It was Jeremy.

“’Morning,” he said huskily.

“’Morning,” she returned, smiling. Bless him. He was just right. He had that devilishly wicked smile in place. He didn’t do anything overt, he just touched her with an affection that truly might have been that of a lover quite comfortable in this relationship. Jordan was scooping up potatoes at her side. She thought his face tensed.

“Want some coffee?” Jeremy asked.

“Love some.”

Kathy ate breakfast seated between him and Jordan while Tara was to Jordan’s right.

Tara had changed into a swimsuit. It was one piece, simple and black.

Black had never looked so good.

As she engaged in light conversation, Kathy noted that there seemed to be just a slight tension between Jordan and Tara. She wondered what they were discussing. They were careful not to raise their voices.

Thirty minutes later
Sand Shark
was already out of the channel and heading south for the Keys. She was large, a beautiful vessel of fifty feet, with old wood and chrome incorporated in her design. Though she had three sails, she was running on the motor today since Jordan was anxious to get down to the reefs. He was at the wheel most of the way, while Tara sat up front on the sleek bow, bathed in lotion. She kept checking her watch.

Bren told Kathy that she did so because she wanted to get a golden color, but was careful to avoid injury from the sun.

“The sun ages you terribly, you know,” Bren said, waving a hand dramatically in the air.

“She’s right about that. You and your sister had better watch out for it,” Kathy said sweetly.

“I won’t be a hot-house flower for anyone,” Bren said with a sniff.

“Honey, in this she’s quite intelligent. If you’re not careful you can get skin cancer. Especially when you spend so much time in this sun.”

“Sure, Mom, whatever you say.”

Bren left Kathy where she’d been sitting across from Jeremy, just a few feet from the helm where Jordan kept them on course.

Kathy leaned back and felt the sun on her face. It was good. Tara was right. The sun was an ager. But it felt so damned nice.

A second later, a golden skinned Tara, now wearing a white cotton cover-up, came up from the galley with a cold Bud in her hand. She slipped into the chair beside the helm, offering the Bud to Jordan.

He shook his head. Tara seemed unhappy, but popped the metal flip-top herself, took a long swallow of the beer. Jordan cast her a glance. “Thanks, but after!” he called to her over the roar of the motor. “I never drink and dive.”

“Right!” Tara called. She set a hand upon his neck. Kathy leaned her head back down again, then looked across at Jeremy.

She might be suffering, but Jeremy was truly in seventh heaven. Slicked down with sun spray, he leaned back and smiled up at the blue sky. As if he sensed that Kathy was watching him he lowered his head, then moved across to join her.

“Everything okay so far?”

She squeezed his hand. “Great. You’ve been a lifesaver.”

“You look great, you know,” he told her.

She smiled. “Thanks. You don’t mind being out here, right? We won’t stay down that long. Maybe thirty, forty-five minutes at a couple of sites.”

“Kathy, there’s a pitcher of piña colada down in the galley. The sky is blue, the sea is blue-green, I’m on holiday, and you want to know if I’m all right?”

She stroked his cheek affectionately. “Thanks,” she said with a smile.

She was startled to realize that Jordan was suddenly standing over her. “Want to start suiting up? We’re nearly at Molasses Reef.”

Kathy looked from Jordan to the helm. Joe Garcia, muscled and brown in his swim trunks and dockers, had taken over at the helm. The girls were near him over on the starboard side, slipping into their skins with Angel’s help. Their regulators and buoyancy control vests were already attached to the air cylinders. As they’d all been taught in the classes they’d taken years before, they checked the air pressure in each other’s cylinders. Jordan was a stickler about diving. It was a sport, and they went about it by the rules. No one on his boat ever dove without a buddy, and no one ever went down without proper equipment.

She gazed back to Jordan. He was wearing sunglasses; she couldn’t begin to read the expression in his eyes.

“Don’t mind if I borrow her for a diving buddy, do you, old boy?” he asked Jeremy.

“Be my guest, sir,” Jeremy responded with a smile.

“Kathy?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. She rose, following him over to the equipment. He found her a skin, a nice thin one since the day was so hot, and she crawled into it. They checked one another’s regulators. It was as natural as breathing. They had done this hundreds of times.

The anchor was thrown. Kathy and Jordan were suited, masks in hand. The girls had on their skins.

“Shall we go?” Jordan asked Kathy.

She nodded, grinning. They looked like alien space creatures in their skins, vests, regulators, boots, flippers, gloves, and cylinders, their masks on backward.

“Do you really need all that stuff?” Tara inquired suddenly. “It looks so uncomfortable.”

“It isn’t really. You should take a class,” Kathy suggested.

Tara wrinkled her nose. “I just don’t have the time,” she said. “Of course, it doesn’t look like it can be that hard.”

“It’s not just a matter of knowing what to do,” Jordan said. “It can be the most beautiful experience in the world, really quite simple—yet deadly if approached stupidly. Kath, let’s go, shall we?”

“Have a good time, buddies!” Tara called. Too cheerfully.

“We’ll be up soon,” Jordan said. “Kids, you coming?”

“Yep!” Angel called to him.

“Who is whose buddy there?” Tara asked sweetly.

“When the number of divers isn’t even,” Alex explained gravely, “one group goes as a threesome.”

Jordan was on his way to the drop-off at the stern. Kathy followed him. He stepped into the water, sank a few feet, surfaced, waited for her. She slipped her mask on, held it in place, and took her step in.

The water felt deliciously cool after the beating down sun, and since the reef wasn’t a deep one, the temperature wouldn’t fall much more. It would have been delightful without the skin, but once on one of their earlier dives with the girls, they had eschewed skins and Alex had been caught by the tentacles of a jellyfish. Kathy enjoyed the protection of the skin.

Jordan let air out of his vest, sinking down toward the reef, and she followed suit.

It had been a long time since she dove. She had forgotten how much she loved it. Elegant sea fans in startling colors waved as she drifted by them, and Jordan tapped her arm, pointing out a huge grouper. When a ray swam up from the sand, she pointed the graceful creature out to him.

Time stood still; the world was eerily quiet, seductively beautiful. Kathy could hear the rhythmic sound of her own regulator and nothing more. The coolness of the sea was magical. She could have stayed beneath the surface forever.

Yet forever would not be long, not that day. Within minutes something splashed about heavily in the water, close enough to draw their attention. Frowning, Jordan motioned to Kathy. She followed at first, not understanding what had happened.

Tara was in the water. Clad in a bathing suit, buoyancy control vest and regulator, and flippers, she was thrashing about madly, trying to surface, trying to rid herself of the paraphernalia.

Jordan thrust swiftly through the water, Kathy at his side. When he tried to reach Tara, she kicked him, the blow sending him from her. Kathy realized that Tara couldn’t breathe out of her regulator. She thrust her own safe-second into Tara’s mouth even as Jordan regained control and shot back toward them again, grasping Tara and rising with her while she desperately sucked on air from Kathy’s safe-second.

By then, the girls and Angel were aboard, though it had all happened so fast—and in shallow enough water to keep them from rising as quickly as possible. They got Tara to the surface, got the equipment off her, and handed her over to Joe and Jeremy who were anxiously waiting at the stern to hoist her up.

“You monsters!” Tara shrieked.

Kathy, pulling off her fins and hurrying up the ladder, came dripping up on deck in plenty of time to see that Tara was fine—but raging mad and shouting at Bren and Alex. “Vicious little
monsters!
” she shouted.

“Wait!” Kathy called out, stepping forward.

But Jordan was at her side, pushing past her with Joe right behind him, helping him off with his equipment. “I want to know what the hell happened here!” Jordan snapped.

Tara burst into tears, covering her face. “I’m so sorry, but I was terrified! I thought I’d drown.”

Jordan, down to his skin and boots, knelt beside her, and she threw her arms around him, sobbing. “I shouldn’t have done it, I wanted you to be proud of me. I know how much you love diving.”

Kathy felt Joe at her back, helping her doff her equipment.

She stared at Angel, Bren, and Alex, soaked as well, helping one another with their equipment, their faces white.

“What happened?” she inquired softly.

“Tara asked us all sorts of questions,” Alex said with a shrug.

“We answered them,” Bren added innocently.

“Miss Hughes just decided to go diving on her own,” Angel offered. “We didn’t realize it until she dove into the water.”

“You knew what I meant to do!” Tara suddenly accused.

“I swear,” Alex told her, “I thought you were far too intelligent to attempt such a thing!”

“Whatever the hell happened,” Jordan said angrily, staring from his daughter to Tara, “it was stupid and dangerous, and nothing like it had better ever happen again.”

“She never asked how to turn the air on,” Bren told her mother.

Jordan stood up, disentangling himself from Tara’s arms.

“Jordan...” she said tearfully. “I—”

“We’ll head back, Tara. I don’t think anyone feels like diving anymore today.”

He firmly placed her hands in her lap, then glanced at Joe. Joe nodded and he and Angel quickly set about securing the cylinders while Jordan returned to the helm.

It seemed a very long, very tense ride back to the house on Star Island.

When they docked, Tara made her way from the boat to the patio, sinking into one of the chairs there, and Jordan began to talk to her.

Kathy followed her daughters into the kitchen.

“What happened?” she demanded.

Alex said, “Mom, honest to God—”

“Listen to me, darlings, because I mean this. You can’t do evil little things to Tara Hughes. If you encouraged her to go into the water—”

“We didn’t! We’d never hurt her,” Alex said. “Mom, I swear, we didn’t do anything to her. We told her it was extremely dangerous to think she could dive when she couldn’t.”

“But you left her by the equipment!”

“Mom, she asked questions, we answered them, and that was it. Ask Angel. We wouldn’t want to kill her!” Bren said.

“I know that. But you shouldn’t have told her or shown her anything. She could have died.”

“We weren’t in more than thirty feet of water,” Alex said with a sigh.

“People have drowned in just inches,” Kathy reminded her.

“Honest, Mom, we had no part in this. She asked us questions, we answered them. We didn’t know she meant to be a showoff and flop into the water until we heard her dive in.”

“All right, I believe you. But in the future, remember, don’t do anything at all to make a fool out of her.”

“We didn’t and we wouldn’t. We don’t need to. She doesn’t need any help in that department,” Bren said complacently.

Kathy frowned at her.

“Mom, please! I swear to God, we didn’t think she’d do anything so foolish.”

“All right. Just remember, you two can’t fix things, no matter how much you’d like your father and me to be together again. Do you understand?”

Even as Kathy spoke, her mother came breezing into the kitchen. She went straight for the refrigerator to get a soda, and into the freezer for ice, humming as they all went silent.

She suddenly stopped humming and looked at the girls. Her eyes were twinkling. “Girls! Your own instructors would be appalled! You should never have encouraged Tara to attempt diving!”

“But we didn’t...” Bren began. She seemed to give up and just sighed. “Right, Gram,” she murmured.

“It was a horrible and dangerous thing to do to her.”

“We didn’t intend for her to dive in,” Alex said.

“Ummm,” Sally murmured. “Well, whatever. No more tricks. Your mother is just going to have to compete on her own.”

“Against a thirty-year-old beauty queen,” Alex said dolefully.

“Thanks.” Kathy smiled.

“Have some faith, girls, Kathy really can compete on her own. She has a higher I.Q.—”

“But what about bust size?” Bren asked.

“Bren!”

“Your mother’s chest is quite nice,” Sally said. She grinned at Kathy and added with a mischievous innocence, “and it’s still almost exactly where it’s supposed to be!”

“Mother!” Kathy gasped.

“Excuse me,” Sally said, “the poor little dear needs some ice and a nice cool drink.” She obtained a glass from a cabinet and put ice and soda in it, humming once more. Then, without looking at them again, she left the kitchen. Kathy stared after her, then spun around as she heard her daughters discussing her once more.