Hell or High Water (Deep Six #1)(10)
Well, whoopty-friggin’-doo! Good for you! Not.
She squared her shoulders and tried again. “You can’t let one kiss throw a wrench into your entire life plan.”
There. Done. She’d said it. And it was sound advice. Unfortunately, she knew it was advice she’d be hard-pressed to heed. Because she was mere hours away from seeing Lieutenant Leo “the Lion” Anderson again…
*
7:34 a.m.…
Everything inside Leo’s skull—gray matter, blood, cerebrospinal fluid, what have you—had congealed into one giant throb of hangover pain. He lay motionless in the hammock strung up between two palms. The shrill cock-a-doodle-doo of the rooster that had stowed away on the catamaran during one of their many supply runs from Key West to Wayfarer, and the fact that Meat was bathing the fingers of the hand he had hanging over the hammock in rancid doggy slobber, made Leo seriously consider the possibility that he might be doing himself and everyone else in the world a giant favor if he tied a load of rocks around his waist and chucked himself into the ocean.
Why? Why had he thought it would be a good idea to polish off the last of the beer with his uncle after Doc, Romeo, and the ladies turned in for the night? He was a reasonable, rational, grown-assed man. So, repeat, why had he done this to himself?
Oh yeah. That’s right. Because without the benefit of his friends’ ribald conversation to distract him—and probably owing much to Doc’s knob-wobbling comment—his mind had shot like an arrow from a speargun straight to Olivia and that god-awful mission. To dull the memories, one still so painful it made it hard for him to breathe and the other so damned hot it made him hornier than a forty-year-old virgin, he’d chosen door number two when his uncle asked him, “So, you want to talk about it, or you want to drink about it?”
Bad idea. Really, really bad idea.
A dull shnick-ing sound told him his uncle had just pressed Play on the bright-yellow boom box circa 1980-something that sat on a small wrought iron table on the front porch. The thing ate D batteries by the half dozen and came equipped with exactly three cassette tapes: Bob Marley, Harry Belafonte, and Jimmy Buffett. Just those three because his uncle’s musical tastes were embarrassingly limited, and because the rest of the guys wouldn’t have the first clue how to contribute to the selection of tunes because, you know…cassette tapes. Enough said.
Leo had a brief moment to wonder which song his uncle had chosen to start off the day when—ah, Christ, I should have known—Bob Marley started crooning in his Jamaican accent to smile wit dee risin’ sun!
“Shit,” Leo groaned as he carefully lifted the hand not being bathed by Meat’s big, wet tongue. He pressed it to his forehead as he slowly, gingerly pushed into a seated position, careful to keep his eyes slammed shut against the merciless rays of dee risin’ sun already hanging hot and heavy above the eastern horizon.
Unsteadily climbing from the hammock, he stood and concentrated on sucking in deep, steadying breaths. The pungent aroma of Uncle John’s favorite chicory coffee tunneled up his nose. “Shit,” he muttered again as he slowly peeled open one eyelid.
Woof! Meat barked happily, licking his ridiculous underbite as his wrinkly back end wobbled in the English bulldog version of a tail wag.
“I should’ve made Mason take you with him to Spain, you flea-bitten mutt,” he grumbled, gingerly taking the warm mug of coffee his uncle held out to him. “Thanks, Uncle John,” he managed. Because even though the smell turned his stomach, he knew if he could just choke down the tart brew, it’d go a long way toward mitigating the effects of the brown bottle flu he’d stupidly allowed himself to contract last night.
“Yep,” his uncle replied monosyllabically, leaning back against the trunk of a palm. He was humming softly and tapping his foot in rhythm to Bob’s jam.
When Leo glanced over, he was disgusted to discover the sea dog seemed none the worse for wear after last’s night overindulgence. “Just looking at that shirt makes my head hurt,” he groused.
“Now, don’t you go blamin’ your skull-pounder on me, son.” Uncle John adjusted the collar of his shirt and smoothed it over his chest. “Besides, you only wish you looked this good.”
Despite himself, Leo grinned. That is until—woof!—Meat barked again. It occurred to him that instead of chucking himself into the ocean, he might be better served by giving Meat the heave-ho.
Woof!
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
“Oh, for the love of Christ,” Leo growled at the damn dog and his damn rooster companion. “I swear, it’s like we’re living in a motherfrickin’ zoo. I thought Romeo said he was takin’ that noisy-assed rooster back to Key West with him on his last run.” The island at the end of the chain of the Florida Keys was swarming with wild chickens, happily referred to by residents as feral fowl or jungle fowl.
“He did,” his uncle told him.
In the bleary, confused way only a jug-bitten man can pull off, Leo glanced down at the rooster pecking in the sand at his feet. The bird’s brilliant plumage was as much of an assault on his eyes as his uncle’s hula shirt. “Huh?”
“Romeo said the winged shithead—Romeo’s words, not mine—refused to stay in Key West. He just kept hoppin’ back on the catamaran.” Uncle John shrugged. “So I suppose that means we’re keepin’ him.”