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 the Santa Cristina’s bounty.”
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.
As one, the group turned to stare at the lawyer. Doc was the one to demand, “What? Why?”
Cami grimaced. “Because I’m not sure if the reef counts as land or sea. And until I can find out the answer to that, it’s best if you don’t touch anything.”
“Are you telling us two inches of exposed rock and coral might be all that’s standing between us being able to claim the treasures we’ve been after for months and not being able to claim them?” Doc demanded.
“I know it’s shitty.” There was frustration in Cami’s voice. “I know it is. But I didn’t write the laws. I just interpret them and argue them for my clients. I’m asking you all to give me time. Even if the reef is considered land, in which case the federal government will claim the rights to what’s beneath it, maybe there’s a loophole. But, like I said, I need time to do some digging.”
LT chuckled and lifted his gaze heavenward. “I swear, fate really does laugh at our endeavors.”
“Don’t lose faith yet,” Olivia encouraged, wrapping an arm around his waist.
“Your profession sucks ass.” Doc scowled at Cami.
“So you remind me every chance you get,” Cami countered. “But has anyone ever stopped and told you that a good place to shove your opinions is straight up your own ass? Or, even better, how about you give that whole if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all thing a shot? I bet your life would be rosier and it’d probably wipe the dour expression off your face.”
“Oh!” Doc feigned astonishment. “I didn’t realize you were an expert on my life. Please continue while I take notes. What?” He pointed at Cami’s face. “What’s that look for? Why are you smiling?”
“I’m plotting your death.”
Everyone glanced back and forth between Doc and Cami like they were watching a tennis match. Everyone except Romeo.
He only had eyes for Mia.
And he didn’t take them off her face when he called, “Hey, LT? I take it we have the rest of the day off?”
“Sounds like,” he heard LT mutter unhappily.
Mia stopped watching the Doc and Cami show and lifted her lioness eyes to meet his gaze. She proved herself to be the true mind reader then, because the words hinged on his tongue came out of her pretty mouth.
“We need to talk.”
Chapter 29
12:44 PM...
Is the sun brighter? The sky bluer? The wind sweeter?
Mia sat on the end of the long pier that stretched into the blue lagoon on Wayfarer Island and thought for sure the answer to all the above was...yes. That, or she’d lived under a psychological storm cloud for so long she’d forgotten what it was to truly appreciate the glory of a perfect day.
To make things even better? Spiro “Romeo” Delgado sat beside her, his hand fitting around hers like a glove. And all the reasons she’d had for holding herself back from him were gone.