Deep Blue (7 page)

She didn’t say more and neither did he. She just turned and tried to concentrate on eating. But her stomach was quivering once more, and she found herself remembering how it had felt when he had kissed her.

Hope had to force herself not to get up and run out of the galley.

Conn stood next to Joe Ramirez at the rail, watching the sea roll past. A bright moon lit the darkness that had settled over the water and a warm breeze ruffled his hair. The smell of the sea enveloped him and he could hear the rush of waves against the hull as the ship cut through the water.

They would reach Port Antonio tonight, dock at the harbor, and start resupplying the boat in the morning, refilling water and fuel tanks, restocking the galley with enough food to feed one woman and seven hungry men.

He amended that. As soon as they had found the cannon, Conn had phoned Ron Keegan and Wally Short, divers he had worked with in Jamaica. The men were on standby, ready to join the dive team in the event the shipwreck was discovered and more men were needed for the search.

While Joe watched over operations at the harbor, Conn intended to offload the cannon onto a truck bed and head for the maritime marine museum in Kingston. He hoped the professor had gotten the message Conn left for him on his cell phone, telling him to meet them in the morning down at the dock.

“You think we’ve found her?” Joe asked, breaking into his thoughts.

“I think we’ve found part of the trail she left. Finding the ship itself will probably be a hell of a lot harder.”

“No kidding. It took Mel Fisher years to find the
Atocha,
and he was practically on top of the wreck the whole time.”

“We’ll do better. We’ve got a lot better equipment than Fisher had.”

“And better information.” Joe grinned, his teeth a flash of white in the moonlight. “He didn’t have Archie Marlin.”

The ship dove into a trough and came up the other side, throwing sea spray into the air. The mist felt cool and damp against Conn’s skin, and he thought how much he loved the ocean, had since he was a kid living in South Miami. He’d spent every waking hour at the beach, a respite from the turmoil at home. Before his mother left, she and his dad were always fighting. His mom sported a black eye at least a couple of times a year and so did he. She had saved herself, run away and left him to suffer the old man’s wrath until he was old enough to leave.

“So what about you and Hope?” Joe asked, grabbing his attention once more.

“There is no ‘me and Hope.’ What gave you the idea there was?”

“Well, for one thing, the two of you spent the night together in Jamaica.” Beneath a fringe of thick black lashes, Joe rolled his nearly black eyes. “I bet that is one hot babe.”

Conn’s jaw tightened. “We didn’t spend the night together, Joe. She stayed in her room and I stayed in mine. She’s here on business. So am I.”

“Okay, take it easy. I kinda thought maybe there was something going on, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well, there isn’t.”

“If that’s the case, I guess you wouldn’t mind if I asked her out. We could have dinner at that little place in the village on Pleasure Island…or, hey, we’ll be in Jamaica for the next couple of days. I could take her somewhere there.” He smiled. “I still think she’s one hot babe. She plays it cool, but I bet I could light a fire in that tight little body of hers. Man, I’d really like to—”

“Shut up, Joe,” Conn said through clenched teeth.

Joe just laughed. “Doesn’t pay to lie to your old buddy, man. I know you too damned well. You might not want to admit it, but you’re hot for the lady and I don’t blame you.”

“She’s trouble, Joe. Trouble’s something I’ve had more than enough of already.” He should have known he couldn’t fool Joe. After six years in the SEALs together, they knew each other like brothers, thought of each other that way.

He didn’t like the idea of Joe spending time with Hope, as his friend had known damned well he wouldn’t. Conn was attracted to Hope Sinclair in a way he hadn’t been to a woman since Kelly.

Exactly the reason he meant to stay away from her.

“Not all women are like your ex,” Joe said softly, clearly reading his mind.

Conn just raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, so Kelly was major bad news. But you gotta live, man. Besides, we’re not talkin’ marriage here. We’re talkin’ sex. Screamin’ hot, no-strings, get-your-rocks-off sex. Hope’s not some twenty-year-old kid. She’s a woman, Conn, and I think she’s as attracted to you as you are to her. As long as you’re both on the same page about that, I don’t see where there’s a problem.”

Joe reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “Think about it, buddy.”

Conn made no reply. He was already thinking about it. He’d been thinking about hot sex with Hope Sinclair almost from the moment he had met her.

But maybe Joe was right. Hope was a grown woman and there was definitely an attraction between them. As long as they both knew where they stood, maybe they could just enjoy each other for as long as the attraction lasted.

“So…are you hearin’ me, man?”

Conn smiled. “I’m hearin’ you. And if I think about sex any more, I won’t be able to walk.”

Conn could hear Joe’s laughter all the way back to his cabin.

It was morning, the sun well up, the crew finished with breakfast and were beginning the tasks they needed to get the boat resupplied. Conn looked over the rail, pleased to see the professor walking toward them. Earlier, he had been to Ace Truck Rentals to hire a flatbed to take the cannon to the maritime museum in Kingston.

The museum was deeply involved in the preservation of Caribbean history and contained the equipment necessary to properly preserve whatever artifacts they might find in their search for the
Nuestra Señora de Rosa.
The professor had already gained their enthusiastic agreement to help in any way they could, and now he was ready to deliver the first artifact that would need to be preserved.

First, however, the piece would undergo the professor’s intense scrutiny, which Conn hoped would provide the verification they needed and point them toward the treasure. He waved at Doc, then straightened at the sound of Hope’s voice as she walked up beside him at the rail.

“Looks like the professor has arrived.”

“He’s come to see the cannon,” Conn told her.

“Joe says the two of you are taking it to the museum. I was hoping I could go with you.”

“More information for your article?”

“Actually, I finished the first in the series last night. I sent it to the magazine over the Internet, along with Tommy’s photographic work. I would have liked to get Dr. Marlin’s comments on the cannon, but yesterday was the last possible day I could make my deadline.”

She smiled. “In a way, it left kind of a good cliffhanger. You know—‘Has the dedicated crew of the
Conquest
really found the lost Spanish galleon,
Nuestra Señora de Rosa?
Will they discover millions of dollars in treasure?’ Readers will be dying to buy the next issue to find out if you did.”

Conn frowned. “Great. Now a bunch of lookie-loos will turn out to watch us diving for Spanish gold—or worse yet, try to find it themselves.”

Hope just shrugged. “Everyone but you and the professor wants this story done.”

“You mean Talbot and Markham want it done.”

“That’s right. And so does
Adventure
magazine.”

Conn sighed. “Well, I suppose you might as well come along. But first let’s see if the professor thinks we’ve found the
Rosa.
”

She fell into step beside him and he tried not to notice how good she looked, her lips glossy with some pretty peach shade of lipstick, her sea-green eyes shining with excitement. Her breasts did this sexy kind of jiggle as she walked, and he started getting hard.

Cursing himself, he let her move a little ahead of him, then cursed again and tried to look at something besides her round little derriere. Damn, he wished Glory hadn’t gone back to Florida. Maybe he wouldn’t be so damned hot for Hope Sinclair.

They left the boat and walked along the dock to where the professor stood waiting, his pale blue eyes twinkling, thin face wreathed in a smile.

“I just got your message this morning. You found the cannon! I can hardly wait to see it.”

“Good morning, Professor,” Hope said, smiling.

“Isn’t it, indeed? Looks like you brought them luck.”

“I hope so.”

“The cannon’s in the holding tank,” Conn said. “You can take a look at it now or we can load it onto the truck and you can wait till we get to the museum.”

“Wait? What are you talking about? I’ve been waiting for this moment for the last twenty years! Come on—let’s go see what you’ve found.”

They made their way back aboard the
Conquest
and the professor walked straight to the holding tank on the bow of the boat. He looked inside the tank and began to frown. “One of the smaller artillery pieces.”

“We weighed her in at twelve hundred pounds. She’s seven-and-a-half feet long.”

“A good-sized cannon will go three thousand, maybe forty-five hundred pounds.” He reached into the tank, measured the size of the bore with his fingers, ran them over the barrel. “Muzzle-loader. About three-inch caliber. Handled iron shot of a little less than three pounds.”

He patted the gun as if he had found an old friend, then turned away from the tank. “The trouble is, she’s a wrought iron cannon.”

The look on the professor’s face made Conn’s stomach tighten. “So is it off the
Rosa?
”

The old man shook his head. “All the cannons aboard the
Rosa
were bronze.”

“All of them? Are you sure? Couldn’t there have been a few—”

“According to the records from the shipyard where the
Rosa
was built, she carried thirty-eight tons of armament. She was the pride of the fleet, outfitted with the most modern munitions. Which meant her cannons were forged of bronze and not iron, as the older ships’ cannons were.”

“Forty-two of them,” Hope said, “in various sizes. At least that’s what I read on the Internet. It never occurred to me there wouldn’t be iron ones as well.”

The professor stared down at the cannon, looking older than he had when he had arrived. “I’m afraid the piece we have here came from a less important ship. Likely a slightly older merchant vessel. In their day, they were often ill-equipped.”

“What other ship could possibly be down there?” Conn asked, his stomach feeling like a ten-pound cannonball sat at the bottom.

“I’ll need to go back and recheck my research. But all along, I’ve been worried this might happen.”

“Worried that
what
might happen?” Surely the old man hadn’t kept something important from them. Then again, he wanted the search. The man just might have.

“If you remember, the
Santa Ynez
also sank during that terrible storm in 1605. It was believed she went down on the Serranilla Banks, just like her two sister ships. While I was tracking the
Rosa,
it occurred to me that perhaps
both
the
Santa Ynez
and the
Rosa
might have missed the banks and been blown toward
Isla Tormenta
.”

For a moment, Conn couldn’t think of anything to say. They had found the wrong ship and the professor wasn’t all that surprised.

“What was she carrying?” he asked, praying the ship was also filled with treasure.

“I’m afraid the
Santa Ynez
was a
nao,
not a galleon. They were short, fat, rather cumbersome, square-sailed merchant ships. Sometimes they carried treasure, but this one was carrying medicines and dyes—things like spices, rare woods, and hides. Her most valuable cargo was tobacco, worth a small fortune in its day, but certainly nothing like gold or silver that can withstand the ravages of time. You might find a few of the passengers’ valuables. There were more than three hundred ill-fated souls aboard.”

The wrong ship! Conn could almost see Brad Talbot’s eyes popping out when he heard the news. Conn wished he didn’t have to ask the next question.

“You said the
Rosa
was the last ship in the line. That means she would have been sailing behind the
Santa Ynez.
If that’s the case, where do you think the
Rosa
went down?”

The professor shook his head. “It’s possible she missed the island altogether and was blown farther east. The next land mass she would have come to would be Haiti.”

“Haiti! You think the
Rosa
might have sunk off Haiti?”

“Calm down, my boy—I didn’t say that. I said it was possible. I need to go back and take another look at my records. I need to find out how far the two ships were sailing apart from each other when they were last sighted. And I need to recheck the currents. Obviously, the wind and seas moved the vessels a little farther south than I first believed.”

Conn silently cursed. “How long do you think it will take before you can give us some kind of answer?”

“Not long. I should know something by tomorrow.” He smiled. “Look on the bright side, Conner. If the
Santa Ynez
didn’t sink on the Serranilla Banks, then we know for certain neither did the
Rosa.
”

Conn sighed. Leave it to the professor to always be optimistic. “I suppose that’s something.”

“In the meantime, we still need to take this artifact to the museum. The
Santa Ynez
has been missing for four hundred years. What you’ve found is a valuable piece of history, even if the ship wasn’t carrying treasure.”

Conn just nodded. He hated to tell his crew that not only had they found the wrong ship, but the one that carried the treasure might have sunk hundreds of miles away.

Hope was going to spend the day with Conn and the professor. She felt safe, knowing the older man was going along, though it was definitely a false sense of security.

She had never met a man who attracted her the way Conn did, not even Richard. It was as if an electrical current ran between them, or perhaps some fierce magnetic field. Every time she looked at him, she wanted to touch him. She wanted to kiss him the way he had kissed her that night in front of her motel room. She wanted to take off his clothes and her own and run her hands all over that magnificent body.