Hell or High Water (Deep Six #1)(4)
Enter Dalton “Doc” Simmons and his nearly six and a half feet of homespun, Midwestern charm. He’d been quick to insert himself between Leo and Sophie/Sophia. And now her gaze lingered on Doc’s face when he said in that low, scratchy Kiefer Sutherland voice of his, “Unlike gold, which retains its luster after years on the bottom of the ocean, silver coins are affected by the seawater. They get fused together by corrosion or other maritime accretions. When that happens, it’s called a conglomerate. They have to be electronically cleaned to remove the surface debris and come out looking like this.” Grabbing the silver chain around his neck, Doc pulled a piece of eight from inside his T-shirt. It was identical to the one Leo wore.
“And like this,” Romeo parroted, twirling the coin on the chain around his neck like a Two-Buck Chuck stripper whirling a boa.
Their first day on the island, Leo had gifted each of his men—damnit!…his friends—with one of the coins, telling them their matching tattoos were symbols of their shared past and their matching pieces of eight were symbols of their shared future.
Leo tipped the neck of his beer toward Doc. “Maritime accretions, huh? You sound like an honest-to-God salvor, my friend.”
Doc smirked, which was as close to a smile as the dude ever really got. If Leo hadn’t seen Doc rip into a steak on occasion, he wouldn’t have been all that convinced the guy had teeth.
“But even a conglomerate of coins wouldn’t be enough to guarantee the ship’s location,” Leo added, turning back to the blond. “My father also found a handful of bronze deck cannons. All of which were on the Santa Cristina’s manifest. So she’s down there…somewhere.” He just had to find her. All his friends were counting on that windfall for various reasons, and if he didn’t—
“But, like you said, your dad tried to find this Christy boat for”—Leo winced. Okay, so the woman seemed sweet. But the only thing worse than mangling the name of the legendary vessel was referring to it as a boat—“like twenty-some-odd years, right?”
“And Mel Fisher searched for the Atocha for sixteen years before finally findin’ her.” He referred to the most famous treasure hunter and treasure galleon of all time. Well, most famous of all time until he and the guys made the history books, right? Right. “In shallow water, like that around the Florida Keys, the shiftin’ sands are moved by wind and tide. They change the seabed daily, not to mention after nearly four centuries. But with a little hard work and perseverance, you better believe the impossible becomes possible. We’re hot on her trail.” Her convoluted, invisible, nonexistent trail. Shit.
Doc slow-winked at the woman by way of agreement, twirling the toothpick that perpetually stuck out of his mouth in a circle with his tongue. It must have dazzled poor Sophie/Sophia, because she sucked in a breath before batting her pretty lashes and sidling her lawn chair closer to him. Throwing an arm around her shoulders, Doc turned to wiggle his eyebrows at Leo. Just like the others, Doc was never one to pass up an opportunity to feed Leo a heaping helping of shit. Par for the course considering Leo was…f*ck a duck…used to be their commanding officer, a prime target for all their ass-hattery.
Yeah, yeah, Leo thought, quietly chuckling. So, I pulled the Roger Murtaugh, I’m-gettin’-too-old-for-this-shit bit. And you think I screwed up royally when I turned down what she was offerin’? So, go ahead. Rub it in, you big corn-fed douche-canoe.
“Why do you need to find that old treasure anyway?” the blond asked. “You have a private island.” She motioned with her beer toward the rippling waters of the lagoon, tipsily splashing suds into the fire and making it hiss. “Aren’t you r—” She hiccuped, then covered her mouth with her fingers, giggling. “Rich?” she finished.
“Ha! Hardly.” Leo rested his sweating beer bottle against the fabric of his swim trunks. Here in the Keys, shorts and swim trunks were interchangeable—unlike his possible bed partners, apparently.
Come on, now! Why can’t you get Olivia Mortier out of your head?
And that was the question of the hour, wasn’t it? Or more like the question of the last frickin’ eighteen months. Ever since that assignment in Syria…
“But if you’re not rich,” the blond insisted, “then how can you”—hiccup—“afford to own this place?”
No joke, Romeo had better double-time her up to the house and into his bed. One or two more brewskies and she’d be too many sheets to the wind for what the self-styled lothario had in mind for her. Romeo may be a horndog extraordinaire, with more notches on his bedpost than Leo had sorties on his SEAL résumé, but like all the guys, Romeo was nothing if not honorable. If Tracy/Stacy/Lacy was too incapacitated, Romeo would do no more than tuck her under the covers with a chaste kiss on the forehead. And as their SEAL Team motto stated: Where’s the fun in that?
On cue, Romeo turned to Leo, snapping his fingers, a worried frown pulling his black eyebrows into a V. Leo hid a smile as he reopened the cooler and dug around inside until he found a bottle of water. He tossed it over the fire, and Romeo caught it one-handed. Then Mr. Slam-dunk-ovich made quick work of exchanging the blond’s beer with the H2O. “Try this, m’ija,” he crooned, really laying his accent on thick before leaning over to whisper something no doubt highly suggestive into her ear.