Blue Moon (3 page)

It was hard to say how much of his behavior was truly chivalrous and how much was the drink she smelled on his breath, but to Jeanne's notion, all the man needed was a patch over one of those devilish eyes to conjure an image of the perfect rake. This was certainly not the potbellied, scuffy-bearded type she'd expected . . . unless his heavy five o'clock shadow counted.

As he straightened, the captain nodded to Remy. “Doctor.”

“We're sorry to interrupt your evening, but—”

Avery cut her off. “No problem. Playing poker with clients is hardly riveting entertainment.”

“Have you a civilized place where we might talk?” Remy glanced about the room with a pronounced lack of hope. “Somewhere less”—he waved his hand across his nose—“polluted with smoke?”

“Wherever the lovely lady wishes to go.” Avery winked, bold as Punch, right in front of Remy.

The captain wasn't at all her type, but whatever it was quickening in her stomach didn't seem to realize that that was the case. “Maybe the picnic table outside,” Jeanne suggested, hoping it was sturdier than it looked. And maybe the fresh air would settle her scrambled senses.

“I'll be fine, but it's a bit chilly out there,” Avery pointed out.

“We won't be long,” Jeanne assured him. “The smoke irritates Remy's sinuses.”

“Suit yourself.” Avery turned to the waitress. “Nina, don't be clearing the table,” he warned. “My beer is half-full. I expect it to be waiting when I return.”

Lord, You've enabled worse than this. Please make this guy the
answer to my prayers.

“I suppose I should be thankful that those other hooligans won't be joining us,” Remy grumbled under his breath. “Why I
ever
let you convince me to go out after dark is beyond me.”

“Fear not, doc,” Gabe announced, swinging one long leg and then the other over the bench opposite Jeanne and Remy at the wood plank table. “S'long as you're with me and Nemo”—he reached down and petted the dog that had caught up with him— “no problem. Although . . .” He leaned forward on folded elbows, with an appreciative leer. “Your old man is right on one account. A
gringa
as lovely as yourself shouldn't be out and about at night alone.”

“Well . . .” Remy took off his jacket and laid it on the bench for Jeanne to sit on. “She does have me.”

Keen blue eyes shifted to the professor, from his face to the silk tie lying against the starched white of his shirt at an undisturbed right angle with his waist. “Right, Jack.”

Remy puffed like a blowfish. “That's
Dr.
Primston.” He patted the jacket, prompting Jeanne to sit.

“Nemo!” Avery shouted as the dog shot over the table, evidently misunderstanding that the gesture was not directed at him.

Jeanne snatched up the garment before Remy's shock at seeing a lunging hulk of grateful “Woof ” thawed.

Avery collared the dog and hauled him off the table, his amusement barely concealed by his reprimand. “Bad boy. Where
are
your manners?”

“That b-beast should be impounded,” Remy stammered.

“Remy, you did pat the seat.” Jeanne smothered her own humor as she handed him his jacket. “And while your offer is sweet, the seat's dry.”

Just to be sure, Jeanne ran her hand over the rough raised grain of the old wood on the sly, lest Nemo misunderstand again, and stepped over the bench to sit down. Better to put her cards on the table before the two males—or the dog, which Avery coerced into lying at his feet—started marking territory.

“The reason we're here, Captain Avery, is to hire your boat for an archeological excavation.”

The mild amusement he'd taken from Remy's bluster faded from Avery's face. “What's the name of the wreck you're looking for?”

“The
Luna Azul
.” Jeanne's pulse tripped at the mention of the ship's name.

Avery scowled. “Never heard of it,” he said after a moment's thought.

“Not many people have,” Jeanne explained. “It was a Spanish merchantman that sank off the Yucatán in 1702.”

“Suffice it to say that
my
”—Remy rubbed the word in Avery's face—“department at Texas A&M Galveston
and
the Institute of Nautical Archeology have confirmed through our Spanish associates in Seville that the
Luna Azul,
under the command of one Captain Alfonso Ortiz, was part of a small treasure fleet bound for Havana.”

At the mention of treasure, Avery bit like a large-mouthed bass. “How much treasure?”

“Twenty million by today's standard,” Jeanne told him. “But we have more information than the archives in Seville has.”

Avery leaned forward, the glint of interest hardening in his countenance.

“My brother found a bundle of letters and a ship's log in a cave in Mexicalli—”

“Where?” Avery asked.

“A village in the mountains near Cuernavaca.”

“That's a far cry from the Yucatán.”

Remy bristled beside Jeanne. “If you can harness your rude penchant for interruption long enough, Avery, perhaps the lady might enlighten you, make our offer, and then we can be away from this backside of Cancún.”

Jeanne shot Remy an exasperated look. If this was a hint of what lay ahead, heaven help her.

CHAPTER TWO

Gabe watched the lady pierce the professor's self-inflated bubble of authority. Good. There was a backbone of steel inside that soft, curvaceous body. Otherwise, the conversation was over as far as Gabe was concerned. He'd not work under Primston's haughty professorial eye.

Many of Gabe's parents' associates fell into that category, not that that was the real reason he shunned academia and opted for a real life on the water. He'd courted them once and, but for a bizarre twist of fate, he might have become one of them. Gabe brandished a smile intended to charm more than apologize.

“Sorry, Dr. Madison. I have a tendency to think aloud. So how did this information come to be in the Sierra Madres?”

He could almost hear her excitement pop as she explained. “Don Diego Ortiz, who built a hacienda over a labyrinth of mine shafts and caves at the turn of the nineteenth century, was descended from the captain of the
Luna Azul
—Captain Alfonso Ortiz . . . ”

Female PhDs didn't look like that when I was in school
, Gabe thought, distracted by the shoulder-length golden brown hair that Jeanne Madison wore pulled from her tanned oval face with some kind of tortoiseshell clasp. This one had a compelling schoolgirl innocence and exuberance, with eyes that sparkled like polished amber. The moment he'd seen them in the lamplight by the
cantina
door, Gabe wondered if they were contacts.

Regardless, Doctor—the word wedged like a square peg in the round hole of Gabe's senses, because
Lady
Jeanne was more suitable for this classy package of brains and beauty. Better yet, Jeanne. They weren't that familiar yet, but they were going to be. It was a shame she came paired with Dr.
Prim
.

“So Ortiz reported the minimum of the facts that led to the loss to the authorities in Spain,” she continued, all business and engagingly oblivious that his interest went beyond professional, “and sealed the rest in a small strongbox. My brother found the box with other Ortiz family heirlooms stored in a mine shaft that led through a hidden entrance into the haunted hacienda he was rebuilding after it burned down.”

Gabe held up his hand. “Hang on—a
haunted
hacienda?”

“Not
really
.”

She grinned, scrunching her nose in such a way as to make something in Gabe's belly scrunch as well.

“There were these guys who tried to scare my brother away so that they could buy the hacienda, because some valuable fossils were discovered in the mines.”

Her hasty dismissal of what seemed to be a great story said more than her words. She had the fever all right, with all its first-time passion and naiveté. Gabe suppressed a smile. “So this box was hidden in the mine connected to the hacienda?”

“Right.” Her hair bobbed with her affirmation.

Gabe leaned forward, shoving Primston to the periphery of his vision in favor of their charming companion. “Where are the letters and log now?”

“At my advice, my brother turned them over to the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City,” Jeanne told him.

Gabe groaned inwardly. Why did she have to be one of those by-the-book types? A chance like this came along once in a blue moon. Having had his treasure pocket picked by Mexican authorities on another gig, he'd have seized a windfall like that and run with it, leaving the historians to pick up the leftovers.

“But,
” she explained, “they allowed us to get the last recorded position from the log and copies of the letters, which really tell more than the log itself.”

“Mighty decent of them, considering the gift you dropped in their lap.”

“You see, Captain Ortiz reported to his Spanish authorities that his ship was lost due to a storm, which was partially true,” she said, undaunted by his cynicism. “But a storm flared up after the
Blue
Moon
. . .
Luna Azul
,” she amended, “had gone off course, outgunned and pursued by pirates. The storm caused the pirates to give up their chase, and the
Luna Azul
crashed onto a reef. Ortiz and his men escaped to a small elbow-shaped island and tried to salvage the wreck when the storm broke. But only a small portion of the treasure was recovered.”

“How much?” Gabe asked. Already his blood had made course toward the island at full speed. Visions of ducats and doubloons danced in his mind. The symptoms were all too familiar.

“Less than an eighth,” Jeanne answered, unconcerned at the possible loss of loot.

And she was in it for the find more than the money. It was a strange strain of the fever, but fine with Gabe. The motivation was strong, and that was what counted most in choosing a partner for this kind of endeavor—as long as shares were made clear from the start.

“Another storm, worse than the first, forced Ortiz and his men to seek shelter, from which they watched as the ship broke apart and washed away.”

An elbow-shaped island. Gabe knew the Yucatán coast well and there was only one that he knew of. “There is an uninhabited barrier island south of Chinchorro Reef called Isla Codo. Too small to develop. Great fishing there, though.”

“Exactly,” Jeanne said, turning to her stuffed shirt companion. “Remy?”

With a grudging look, Remy pulled a map from the inside of his jacket and handed it over. Dr. Madison spread the map on the table, her enthusiasm fading as she shot a doleful look at the cantina lighting.

“No worries,” Gabe said, producing a small penlight attached to his key chain. He'd have conjured a tiki torch to get a look at that map.

“The position given to the authorities was way to the south of Isla Codo,” she told him, moving her hand over the printout to the exact spot he'd pictured in his mind. “But the island has to be the location of the wreck based on Ortiz's letters to his brother and wife. And I don't think it's an accident that it's located off Punta Azul.
Blue Point.
”

For someone so young and obviously green, the lady had done her homework. It wouldn't be the first landmark named after a shipwreck. “So you're going to set up your base in Punta Azul?” He pointed to the nearest village, one of few remaining on the coast, he knew, that hadn't been consumed by tourism from the north.

Jeanne nodded. “The company has rented cottages from an ecolodge that was all but destroyed a year ago by a hurricane.”

Beside her, Remy winced.

“But it's rebuilding,” she added, brightening. “It's just not ready to open to tourists. Las Palapas?”

“Been there, Je . . . er . . . Dr. Madison.” Las Palapas had been built for the native experience, so she obviously wasn't hung up on comfort, which was hard to find on expeditions like these. Or she hadn't been there yet.

“Jeanne,” she said. “Please call me Jeanne . . . and this is Remy.”

“Fine then . . .
Jeanne
.” Gabe was delighted to have that out of the way, although he doubted she spoke for her tight-lipped companion. “But you know you're talking remote when it comes to Punta Azul.”

“Blasted galleons never sink in a convenient place, do they, Avery?”

Jeanne allowed Remy's attempt at humor a short laugh before answering. “It's the closest village to our intended search area, and the lodging was cheap.”

A mix of apology and desperation lit her face. For all Jeanne's savvy, she was not a poker player. And one needed a poker face in the dog-eat-dog treasure-hunting circles, lest a fellow enthusiast pick up on the heat and preempt one's expedition. Gabe had learned that the hard way too.