Blue Moon (28 page)

“There's just more to a lasting love than a little chemistry,” she answered, turning to lean against the counter. “And when I fall, I want it to be last—”

“Omigosh!”

Jeanne spun round in time to see the coffeemaker spreading water like a garden sprinkler over the counter and down the cabinet fronts.

“You have to put the grounds holder in first.”

“
Now
you tell me.” Jeanne grabbed for the roll of paper towels and yanked off a handful, pulling the entire roll off the springy holder and onto the flooding area.

The more levelheaded Mara unplugged the pot and moved it into the sink, but the cord knocked the open coffee canister over and onto the floor, spilling what seemed like more coffee than Juan Valdez had picked in a lifetime.

“I don't understand it,” Jeanne huffed, mopping for all she was worth. “My coffeemaker at home holds the water until I turn it on. Is it broken or what?” The knees to her jogging pants were soaked from where she'd dropped to mop up the water. “Although I think we've discovered a new law of physics.”

Meanwhile, Mara looked like a teen from one of those old horror films, the kind that stood there frozen while a living blob inched its way toward her. “Huh?”

Jeanne stopped long enough to toss her the wet roll of paper towels. “When something is removed from its original container, it promptly becomes three times bigger than its original size.”

“Yeah, kind of like dirty clothes. They fit in the case when you pack it, but—”

“Won't go back when it's time to go home.”

Jeanne pulled herself up on the cabinet, bemused by the latest fickle hand that fate had dealt her. “What are we going to do with all this coffee?”

“How about if I scoop what grounds haven't gotten wet or touched the floor back into the container and finish making the coffee?”

Jeanne nodded, although her yen for coffee no longer existed. “Deal. And I'll clean up the
mud
.”

After all, it was her mess. Although if she hadn't been so distracted talking about Gabe, it wouldn't have happened. And if Gabe had bought a normal size coffee container instead of one large enough to give all of Punta Azul a caffeine high. . . . A smile formed on her lips. That's it. It was
Gabe's
fault.

When the galley was once more spotless, Jeanne and Mara loaded a tray of the fresh coffee for the men working topside and took it up to them.

“How's it going?” Jeanne asked as she descended from the bridge.

Ann, still in her wetsuit, shrugged. “I couldn't get any decent footage. The water kept muddying up with this gritty stuff.” She held up the rag with which she cleaned her camera. “Looks like coffee grounds.”

Jeanne checked her step. The trash can had been full and with no place to dump the wet coffee, she'd flushed it down the head . . . a logical choice at the time. “Ohhh.”

“What?” Ann looked at her, blank at first. But as she spied the coffee on the tray in Jeanne's hand, her lips began to twitch. “You flushed
coffee
down the toilet?”

At the stern, Tex whooped and slapped his side. “Well now, that explains a whole lotta things. I didn't want to seem indelicate, but I was wondering what in tarnation was goin' on down there. Every time the water'd clear up,
whomp-whomp, whomp-whomp
, and it'd cloud all over.”

“
Why
would you flush coffee down the toilet?” Clearly Ann had a problem with the concept.

“Because I spilled all the coffee in the world all over the galley and I didn't know what else to do with it.” Embarrassment spread like wildfire from Jeanne's head to her toes.

“Mara, take that tray before someone wears the brew too,” Ann commanded.

“It
is
organic” Jeanne pointed out. Not that those poor men changing the wheel knew what was coming out of the boat.

Rico giggled. Tex guffawed until she thought she'd have to do CPR. Jeanne wished she could sink to the bottom of the Mariana Trench and never come up again.

But this was too good for her buddy Ann to let go. “Don't anyone ever let her loose in a kitchen. We had a rule in college. If it's not safe for toddlers, it's not safe for Jeanne.”

“I can make chocolate chip cookies,” Jeanne said in her own defense.

“Okay,” her friend conceded. “I'll give her that much. Jeanne makes a mean chocolate chip cookie—as good as her mama.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Jeanne turned to see Gabe emerging from the water—Adonis in a wet suit.

“I'm a sucker for chocolate chip cookies and pretty women who make them,” he added, as Nemo, who'd kept a lazy eye on work topside, got up to meet him. Once on deck, he ruffled the dog's ears. “What do you say, boy?” Gabe grinned over the dog's head at its answering bark.

And Jeanne was a sucker for that grin. The problem was, she was a sucker for almost everything about Gabe.

“Just don't expect coffee with them,” Ann quipped, suddenly engaged in cleaning her camera, innocent as a lamb.

But that was all anyone else needed. The laughter started once again, even louder than before, at Gabe's befuddled expression.

“Gabe, I am
so
sorry,” Jeanne said when the amusement reached a level where she could make herself heard. “I spilled that big can of coffee and I . . . I just wasn't thinking.” About coffee anyway. “I didn't know what to do with it, so I flushed it down the head.”

One brow arched up at her. “I see.”

Jeanne wasn't certain that he did. Unlike the others, he didn't laugh. But he wasn't angry either. Impassive, he unbuckled his tanks, shrugged them off, and put them on the deck next to his fins, all the while avoiding her gaze. It wasn't until he peeled off the top of his dive suit that his mischievous eyes sought her out. And they were twinkling above an expressionless face.

“Well then, that solves one mystery,” he announced, his Bermudian accent chipper. “I'd say that, given the circumstances under there, that's good news indeed.” Still dripping, he sidled up to Jeanne and put an arm around her. “And at the moment, I could use a cup of whatever is left.”

“I'll get it,” Mara volunteered.

“In the meantime, sweet”—he pulled her even closer, close enough that the cold water soaking into her clothes could have turned to steam—“we need to chat. We
all
do.”

Over lunch, it was decided that from this point on, the site should not be left unattended. Pablo reported that the lines holding the markers had been cut and the buoys relocated to intentionally guide the
Angel
onto a rocky underwater bar covered in coral. Since someone wanted to play dirty with the project, Jeanne gave everyone on the team a chance to quit. No one took her up on it. Stuart and Nick even went into a rousing version of “Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest,” beating their chests in a show of machismo. More reserved, but just as committed, Pablo insisted that he call the Mexican authorities to alert them to the mischief and ask that a coast guard patrol boat periodically check the island and their claim.

“That'll be a first,” Gabe remarked after the call had been made, shooting a meaningful glance at Tex. “This time the government's on our side.”

While the others prepared to start work—the
Margarita
on the first site the Genesis team had magged and the
Angel
on the one they'd had to leave before the storm, Jeanne was left with KP duty—tossing the paper plates, drink containers, and napkins in a bag. She had to admit that with all the excitement of the morning, she was a little tired, so she decided to catnap on the bridge. She'd no sooner lain down than she was fast asleep—until she heard the first of the buckets of coral hit the deck.

Near the day's end, the deck was littered with coral debris from which she, Remy, and Mara had retrieved a myriad of buckles, buttons, knife hilts, a pair of glasses frames, and assorted ceramics. Nothing to get the blood pumping, which was just as well, given the dull headache that had returned. She'd gone below to take something for it when she heard the
Margarita
approach and cut her engines.

At the gentle thud of the boat against the bumpers protecting the
Angel's
side, she could hear an excited mix of Spanish and English. But it was Remy's ecstatic “Oh glorious day!” that brought her topside at a run.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Remy jumped from the
Angel
into the
Margarita
without making his usual cautious examination of the randomly widening and then narrowing gap between the two rocking boats. Dropping to his knees, he ran his fingers over a coral-encrusted barrel, many pieces of the wood disintegrated or eaten by worms. But its contents were still preserved in the same shape in which they'd been stored. The cargo of Chinese porcelain cost a pretty penny in its day, but today Jeanne couldn't imagine what it would be worth . . . especially if all the pieces had escaped damage.

“It appears the entire barrel is intact,” Remy exclaimed, using a penknife to gently prod through the fishing net that Tex's crew had used to bring the barrel up gently, to avoid damage to it or its contents. “Jeanne, get pictures with my camera, will you?” He glanced at Pablo, who'd gone along with the
Margarita
to represent and preserve the academic interest.

“Yes, doctor,” Pablo assured him, “I not only took pictures before it was disturbed, but recorded the coordinates.”

“Of course you did,” Remy acknowledged. “I'm so thrilled, I— I hardly know what I'm doing.”

“It stands to reason that when the
Luna Azul
struck the reef, tearing out her bottom, that the contents stored in the deepest part of the ship dumped there,” Pablo observed. “We found it in a field of ballast, near one of the cannons the captain jettisoned from the deck to lighten the load.”

It made sense. Jeanne snapped pictures of Remy and Pablo examining the find. Porcelain, or anything that couldn't be dam- aged by water, was stored first in the hull of the ship. But Captain Ortiz had written that he'd kept the gold locked in his quarters where the crew could not be tempted to help themselves.

The hum of the winch on the swing arm at the opposite side of the
Angel
drew her attention to where Manolo brought up the basket from the area being worked by Gabe, Nick, and Stuart. As it surfaced in the clear water, bringing the divers up with it, she made out the shape of a large amphora, the kind of clay jar used for storing water or supplies. One side of it was missing.

“I think we found the Duke's urn,” Gabe said, spitting out his regulator. “At least I think that's a femur.” He pointed to what appeared to be a human bone . . . or what was left of one. “We've
got
to be close now. Those letters said that the Duke's friends booked passage for the urn containing his body in one of the stern cabins.”

Jeanne's pulse leapt into high gear, leaving her uncertain if it was Gabe's news or the wink that catapulted it.

Gold fever ran rampant through the crew as she and the others reluctantly shoved off for Punta Azul on the
Margarita
an hour later. But hard as it was to leave, she could imagine that staying was even harder. Gabe sat right over the top of the treasure and, because he'd spent his maximum of hours in the water, it wasn't safe to go back and take advantage of the last of the daylight. Nor would he do it without Stuart and Nick, who'd worked shoulder to shoulder with him, fighting the strong current.

“I'll be waiting with bells on for you two,” he promised as the
Margarita
chugged away, leaving Gabe and Manolo to guard the site.

“And I'm going down tomorrow, like it or not,” Jeanne called out to him.

Instead of answering, Gabe gave her a military salute.

Even as the shape of the
Angel
merged with that of Isla Codo, Jeanne could still see him standing on the deck, arms folded over his chest, legs braced against the rocking of the deck, long wet black hair secured at his neck, and blue eyes dancing with the fever that infected them all.

He looked more like a twenty-first-century pirate than a fallen angel. And his plunder, she feared, was her heart.

Alone in the sunset-streaked waters, Gabe and Manolo finished the day's work, just as they would have in port. After checking all the gear and filling the tanks for the morning, they washed down the deck with buckets of salt water and made a meal of canned corned beef and biscuits from a tin. Manolo was unusually quiet, unresponsive even to Nemo, when the dog brought him the knife stored under the captain's bench for a game of throw and fetch.

When Gabe came topside after a shower, he found the deckhand sitting on the foredeck, staring up at the night sky. Stricken by his conscience for having blown up at the man earlier, Gabe went forward to join him.

“
Buenas noches, amigo
,” Gabe said, taking a seat next to him on a storage locker. “Just think, all those stars up there could be reflecting the gold we're going to find tomorrow.”