Hot Mercy (Affairs of State Book 2) (16 page)

She nodded her head, letting her gaze caress the ship. “I want a boat for the family business.” She gave a casual shrug and removed her Pradas to get a better look at Bellamy. Could this friendly Aussie be the masterminded behind a multi-million dollar opal heist? “I live in Washington, own an art gallery in Georgetown. We get a lot of clients who are interested but not ready to buy without a little encouragement. Having a yacht like this docked on the Potomac River, where I could entertain perspective clients, might be ideal.”

Kristen, now halfway up the gangplank to the deck, turned to face Mercy. Her annoyance had been replaced by a dreamy expression. “Washington, DC? I bet you know a lot of important people. You ever met the President? I think he’s just the cutest thing.” She sighed.

“I’ve been to dinner at the White House, if that counts for anything.”

“Oh, gosh, really?” Kristen squealed.

Setting one foot on the gangplank Mercy stretched out a hand. “I’m Mercy O’Brien. My dad used to be a U.S. Senator. I’d be delighted if you’d be my guest if you’re ever in the city.”

Kristen nearly dropped her ice cream in an effort to switch hands and shake. “Amos, did you hear that? I’ve heard of Senator O’Brien. And his wife—your mother, right? She’s the one who’s always taking pictures that show up on You Tube and Pinterest and places like that.” She didn’t mention Talia’s going missing, but maybe traveling on a ship, and being from another country, the news hadn’t reached them. “And you’re sorta famous too. Didn’t
Conde Nast
, or maybe it was
Town & Country
, do an article about you?” Kristen screwed up her face in concentration.

“Hell, does it matter? We got us a celebrity babe here!” Amos crowed.

Mercy laughed and waved off what he must have thought was a compliment while Kristen scowled at her husband.

“Don’t be a jerk, Amos!” She returned her gaze to Mercy with something like awe. “This here’s a society lady. Don’t go treating her like one of your bimbos.”

Amos stiffened. “I was just havin’ a little fun,” he growled.

Such a loving couple, Mercy thought.

The two crew members had moved away to the other side of the ship. The captain hadn’t budged from his position at the top of the gangplank.

Kristen shoved her bags at the scowling senior officer. “Make sure those go straight to the galley, Jobson.” She turned back to Mercy, grabbed her by the arm and hauled her the rest of the way up the ramp. “Come aboard, sweetie. I don’t blame you a bit for comparison shopping. I do that all the time. Mostly online these days. I just adore Ebay, don’t you?”

“Yeah, for goddamn shoes,” Amos grumbled. “She’s looking for a yacht.”

His wife ignored him. “You want to have a look around, hon? I’ll show you myself. Maybe sometime I’m in the States, I’ll drop by, even if Doofus don’t want to. You can give me an art lesson or something. Hey, aren’t there a bunch of posh shops in that Georgetown?”

Mercy laughed, deciding she liked the young woman, despite her kookiness. “A bunch, yes.”

“Come this way. Do you know it’s impossible to get anything but plain vanilla ice cream at marinas while you’re cruising?” She sighed. “I thought I’d die. Not one bite of Cookie Dough or even plain chocolate all the way across the Pacific. I could have killed Amos. And he refused to put into a single big port after going through the canal.”

Mercy smiled in polite commiseration. “That’s a shame.”

                                          16

Mercy glanced behind her to see if Amos Bellamy, the grim Captain Jobson or any of his crew were following them. They weren’t.

She trailed Kristen into the formal salon she’d glimpsed from the dock. Long settees of buttery soft leather cushions ranged beneath the windows. A table—varnished within an inch of its life and long enough to seat a dozen or more guests—centered the room. Plush white carpet contrasted tastefully with dark cherry paneling and gleaming brass nautical-style lighting fixtures.

“Are you sure your captain won’t mind my being here?” Mercy didn’t give a hoot what the man thought but hoped for more information about him. After all, he might have been involved in the mine attack.

Kristen rolled her eyes. “I told Amos when we left Adelaide he should fire the creep. Jobby’s got an attitude.” She shivered. “He has that dangerous look about him. You know, like a Darth Vader of the sea.”

“Maybe he’s trying to do his job. Keep intruders off your boat.” Mercy made her tone light. “What did Amos say about firing him?” She tried out one of the dining chairs.

Kristen plucked a cigarette from a gold box on the table, lit up and puffed absently. “Not much. Our regular captain got sick the day before we were due to leave home. Amos claimed that Jobson was the only licensed captain available in the city.” She drew hard on her cigarette then spewed an ashy cloud. “I think Amos likes the jerk because Jobson snuck a woman onboard for him.”

Mercy stared up at Kristen, unsure what to say. “Ummm, sorry.”

Kristen shrugged after a moment’s uneasy silence and leaned her hips against the table’s edge. “Here I am opening up to you like you’re my sister or something. Geez. Am I embarrassing you?”

“Not at all.”

“It’s hard, ya know.” Kristen flicked ashes into a crystal dish. “I mean, I really do love the guy. And he’s a sweetie most of the time.”

“Where did you two meet?” Mercy asked, aiming for safer, happier ground.

“On a big cruise ship to Hawaii.” Kristen giggled, her pretty eyes sparkling. “That was before Amos got so rich he could buy his own boat. I was a dancer in the Sail-Away Revue. You know, one of those S&S numbers—sequins and skin. Just enough bare body to get the old guys excited but not enough to offend their old ladies.”

Mercy laughed. She really was beginning to enjoy this woman.

“Anyway, instead of going for one of the passenger babes—and there were plenty of single ladies on that ship, let me tell you—Amos comes up to me.” She lowered her voice an octave. “He says, ‘I never seen a redhead with such long legs.’ I mean, talk about dumb pickup lines.”

Mercy smiled. It was dumb. But cute, the way Kristen told it.

“Anyway, at the end of the cruise, even though it was against crew regulations to fool around with a passenger, there we were―in love!” She sighed dreamily. “I didn’t know nothing about him. I just liked him.”

“Love at first sight?” Mercy suggested.

Kristen gave a dancer’s wiggle and laughed as she reached down to pull Mercy up and out of her seat. “Yeah. And it just got better. I found out he had his own business. Import-export. He started with one old ship and worked his way up to a little fleet. Soon after we got married, he told me he was a freaking millionaire.” She gave a little shriek of joy.

“Have you seen his commercial ships?” Mercy asked.

“Oh, yeah. He took me on one. It was like major huge. He calls it a freight ship, or something like that. Lord, what a stink!” She wrinkled her nose. “Grunge, diesel fuel, salt water sloshing all over in the empty cargo holds. Cabins like sardine cans.”

But lots of room for opals,
Mercy mused, feeling suddenly excited.

Still running her mouth a mile a minute, Kristen led Mercy down corridors lined with luxuriously appointed cabins. Mercy tried to take in all she could as they moved at a jogger’s pace. “Come on.” Kristen pointed up to the deck above them, and they climbed stairs to a navigation station complete with radar screens, sonar, and equipment indicating the water’s depth. A radio was broadcasting ocean wave height and wind velocity. Mercy recognized the robotic voice of NOAA, the National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration.

As they toured the ship, Mercy noted what seemed unlimited space for hiding things beneath bunks, inside water tanks, beneath floorboards, in lockers. She decided it would take her days to eliminate all of the possibilities. She’d have to wangle more time onboard, and somehow complete her search without Amos or any of the crew getting suspicious.

“Well, that’s it,” Kristen said with a “Ta-da!” wave of her hand. They’d toured three levels, and ended up back where they’d started, in the salon. But Mercy knew there had to be even more boat below the water line.

“What’s underneath the crew’s cabins?” she asked.

“Nothing much. Engine room, heat plant, generators. That’s Jobson’s territory. He doubles as chief engineer—least that’s what I think Amos calls him. I never go down there.” Kristen took a breath and blew it out thoughtfully. “He’s not bad looking, is he? Jobson, I mean. In an aboriginal kind of way.” She flashed her eyes mischievously at Mercy and whispered, “I hear they have enormous dicks.”

Mercy laughed, eyes wide, which seemed to delight Kristen all the more. Despite Jobson’s boorish behavior, Mercy suspected he might be pretty damn impressive out of his marine whites. Molasses skin, muscled forearms, hammers for fists, and a face like carved mahogany—definitely impressive.

The two women succumbed to hysterical giggles then helpless laughter. Kristen staggered into the table’s edge, dropped her cigarette, and laughed all the harder. Tears streaming down her face, Mercy plucked the glowing butt off the carpet before it burned the fibers and tossed it into an ashtray.

Finally, Kristen caught her breath. “Can you…can you stay for ice cream?” She wiped tears from her eyes. “Then we could go to the beach.”

Mercy made a show of checking her watch. “Oh, gee, can’t today. Sorry.” Better to arrange another visit when there was a chance Amos might not be around, and Jobson was too busy to notice if she wandered. “But I’d love to take a rain check. How long are you in port?”

“I warned Amos, ‘You gotta let me have at least one whole week to lie out in the sun on land before heading north, or I’ll make your life miserable.’”

“Great,” Mercy said, “we can hang together.”

“I’d like that.” Kristen smiled. “Stop over around noon tomorrow, if you can. A bunch of Amos’s boring business buddies are coming for lunch. I could use a girlfriend to counteract all that testosterone.”

“I’ll leave you to your ice cream,” Mercy said. “I can show myself off the boat.”

Mercy started down the steps to the boarding deck, her mind still mulling over possible hiding places in the yacht. Opal ore had to be heavy; after all, it was rock. And the amount stolen would take up considerable space, but it could have been split up and secreted all over the ship.

As she turned toward the gangway, a hand shot out, wrapped around her arm and yanked her back into an alcove beneath the stairs. Before she could scream, another hand clamped over her mouth.

She thought—
Jobson!

Instinctively, Mercy reached for a vulnerable thumb, as her self-defense instructor had suggested, but couldn’t get a grip. Thinking she might be able to introduce her knee to her attacker’s groin, she twisted in the man’s grip and looked up…into Amos Bellamy’s flushed features.

Mercy remembered who she was supposed to be—a socialite, not a self-defense expert. She aborted her kick.

Amos wrapped his arms around her, pressing his sweaty, bare chest and far too small Speedo against her. He released his hand from over her mouth.

“Been waiting for you, little Sheila.” He beamed at her, as if fully expecting she’d share his enthusiasm.

“I see that.” She squirmed to put a little distance between her body and his embarrassingly inflated arousal.

This was going to be tricky. Somehow she had to reject the man’s amorous intentions without seriously offending him. She couldn’t risk his refusing to let her back onboard.

“I thought Kris would never let you leave.” He nuzzled her neck. “One thing I gotta say for her, she’s quite the little hostess.”

Mercy wedged her arms between her damply crushed silk blouse and Amos’s tummy paunch. “She is that.”

“Just wish she’d gone off to the beach an hour ago, heh?” So he’d been spying on them and overheard his wife’s plans. “Keep me company after she’s gone?”

Mercy produced a facsimile of a smile. “As tempting as that sounds, Amos, I think not.”

He studied her, as if trying to figure out why she was neither struggling nor inviting him. He moved in for a kiss.

“I wouldn’t do that, Amos.” Her tone carried a gentle threat.

He hugged her tighter. She thought:
You destroy my Sacred Fish, I’ll gut you, buddy.

Amos tipped back his head and squinted at her when it became clear that she wasn’t going to let him kiss her. “I ain’t your type? Not many sheilas turn down a man with my kind of money, let me tell you.”

Oh, please.
But she said, “I imagine you’re irresistible to many women.” If she’d learned nothing else, having been married to a career diplomat, it was diplomacy. Otherwise known as lying. “But I’d hate to hurt Kristen’s feelings.”

“Aw, she knows I play around. Don’t mean nothin’.”

“It might mean more than you realize, to her.”

He shrugged.

“As appealing as a fling with you might be, Amos, I’m unofficially engaged to a very important, some might say dangerous, man. I can’t afford a scandal.”