The boat creaked a little, and the rocking motion soothed her.

The sounds are different from the ones at home, or even in the cabin, Kerry thought. She felt her eyes closing and let the wave of sleepiness in, already looking forward to the morning. Stifling a yawn, she drew in a breath of warm, Dar scented air, and dropped off to sleep.



Chapter

Four

IT WAS MID-AFTERNOON already, and they’d been making good time. After an early morning romp in the sea, Dar fired up the boat’s engines and headed southeast, crossing the ruffled blue-green Caribbean as the sun tracked steadily overhead.

Dar pored over the chart clipped to the console in front of her, marking out a route on the plastic sheet with a big purple marker.

She checked the GPS against the chart and grunted, satisfied with their progress and with her navigating skills. She nudged the throttles forward a little and rested her elbows on either side of them, gazing out at the horizon with a slight grin.

Hands-on had always been something she’d enjoyed, right from the very start of her career. It was one thing to sit in some boardroom with a pad of paper and argue about how to do things, but a very different thing to be able to put your hands on the technology and actually do it yourself. It’s what had set her apart from the rest of the management at ILS. Dar had worked very hard to keep her skills current, and she was very, very proud of the fact that she could go into their state-of-the-art ops center and run every piece of technology inside it. It wasn’t always easy. Her position kept her very busy and the tech changed every day, it seemed. But Dar had decided she never wanted to be in a place where her staff knew more about what they were doing than she did, so she put in the long nights, bought the new manuals, and occasionally even took things home so she could take them apart and play with them.

Being able to captain her ship across the sea had been just another challenge, and again she’d put in the time to brush up on her charting and diesel skills. Her peripheral vision caught a change in the depth meter and she studied it, then altered their course just a little, steering the Dixieland Yankee into a deeper channel.

With no other immediate piloting needs to see to, Dar picked up the pencil next to the notepad and started idly sketching. At first she doodled in the horizon and the boat’s bow, but that got boring, so she started looking around for something else to draw. She 32 Melissa Good leaned back and looked down, then grinned. Ah. Her pencil moved against the paper as she focused on her new inspiration.

KERRY PUT HER pen down for the nth time and let her head rest against the chair. She was ostensibly working on poetry, but the sun, the mild drone of the engines, and the sweet sea air were combining to subvert her creative intentions in favor of some lazy daydreaming.

She wiggled her bare toes contentedly. Dar had promised a twilight dive when they neared the Virgin Islands, then dinner at a small place she’d last visited just before they’d met. “Fresh conch chowder.” Kerry licked her lips thoughtfully. “Sounds great, just so long as you don’t think too much about what a conch actually looks like.”

“You say something?” Dar called down from the bridge.

“No, sweetie,” Kerry replied. “Just mumbling to myself.” She worried a grape off its stem from the bowl next to her and popped it into her mouth. “Whatcha doing?”

“Driving the boat.”

“That all?” Kerry asked, tipping her head back and looking up, one hand shading her eyes.

“Doodling.”

“Yeah? What this time?”

“Nothing you’d wanna see,” Dar remarked with an easy grin.

“How’s the writing coming?”

Intrigued, Kerry tucked her book into the side pocket of the deck chair and put down her fruit bowl. “It’s not,” she admitted, getting up and walking to the ladder, stretching out her body as she did. “Sad to say, I’m too lazy to even write today.” She climbed up onto the bridge and put her arms around Dar, gazing down at the pad in front of her. Then she blinked. “Yikes.”

Dar snickered. “Toldja.”

“That’s me.”

“Sort of, yeah,” Dar agreed.

Kerry eyed the sketch, which showed a reasonable rendering of the boat’s stern, with her sprawled in the chair. “You’re getting pretty good at this, you know that?”

“Depends on what I’m drawing,” Dar said with a shrug.

Kerry gave her a kiss on the top of her head. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” she told Dar, as a memory floated into her mind’s eye.

Another day, another meeting. Kerry carried her notes into the big conference room and paused; most of the table was already full up. That left the end seat, which was always Dar’s, and an empty one on either side Terrors of the High Seas 33

of it. Hm . Kerry walked around to the left hand side and sat down in the chair beside Dar’s. I should come late more often . Then she had an excuse to sit next to her boss and not have anyone think it was strange.

Dar entered, and as she circled the table, she raised her eyebrow just a trifle at Kerry’s choice of seats, but her lips quirked into a tiny grin at the same time, making Kerry’s insides warm as their eyes met.

Kerry felt herself blush and she studied her notes, trying not to show the unsteady confusion pulsing through her body, reacting to Dar’s very near presence as the woman sat down and their forearms brushed.

Dar leaned back in her chair and balanced her pad on her denim clad knee as she asked for the weekly report.

They were in casual wear, and Kerry found herself wanting to reach over and touch the soft cotton Dar was wearing. She folded her hands together and sternly told her body to behave, hardly believing how out of control she felt around her new lover. Especially since the more experienced Dar was seemingly quite unaffected by it all, breezing through their workday as though nothing at all had changed between them.

Kerry, on the other hand, felt like she had “I’m with her” tattooed on her forehead. She sighed and picked up her water glass, taking a long sip as the operations staff started their recitations. The water didn’t help much. She was almost hyper sensitively aware of Dar’s every motion, every sound— from the faint shifts of her clothing on the leather chair when she moved, to the light scrape of the pencil lead with which she was doodling.

Lucky Dar . Kerry snuck a look at her boss, who looked relaxed as she glanced up from her doodling as each staff member spoke. Dar seemed almost bored, or a least borderline inattentive, giving the speakers a brief nod as she accepted their reports.

“Next.” Dar kept her eyes on her pad. “Did you get those servers?”

Mark had to report in the negative. “Not yet, boss. Two more days.”

Kerry looked at him, seeing the wince as he waited for Dar’s reaction, along with the rest of the staff.

“Okay.” Dar nodded. “What else?”

Everyone around the table looked at one another in surprise.

“Um.” Mark wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“We’ve…uh...got some problems in Canada two big pipes down and they’re complaining.”

“And?” Dar continued her sketching, cocking her head to one side.

“Can we fix them?”

“Not without digging up some fiber.”

“Guess they’ll have to wait then,” Dar replied. “Tell our fiber contractor up there to call me with an estimate when he gets a chance.”

Another round of puzzled looks circled the table.

“Uh…okay,” Mark said. “That’s all for me.”

“Anyone else?” Dar’s gaze sharpened and she scoured the group with 34 Melissa Good ice blue eyes. “No? Good.” She stood up, casually ripped off the top sheet of her pad, and tossed it over to Kerry before she picked up her coffee cup and headed for the door. “Budgets are due next week. Don’t be late.”

The door closed behind her, and everyone relaxed. “Whoo.” Mark wiped his brow in exaggerated relief. “Got off lucky this week!”

“Yeah. I thought she was going to roast your butt. How’d you do that, Mark?”

“Right time, right place. Caught her in a good mood.”

“The one time this year. Go figure.” Charlene rolled her eyes. “What caused that, I wonder? She get to fire someone this week?”

Kerry didn’t hear any of it. Her eyes were on the casually tossed sheet in her hands as she stared at the neatly shaded sketch in the center of it. Her own image looked back at her, a very creditable rendering outlined in a roughly shaped heart, with Dar’s initials on the bottom.

“Maybe it was because she got to cancel that planning contract.

She’s always hated that guy’s guts. ”

“Nah. I bet she denied that Sales request again.”

Kerry very carefully opened her folder and put the loose sheet inside.

“Hey, Kerry.”

Kerry looked up. “Yes?”

“What’s the deal? You know what’s got big D in such a mellow mood?”

“Yes. Matter of fact, I do.” Kerry exhaled, biting off a grin as she stood up and pushed in her chair. “See you guys tomorrow.” She walked out with a jaunty step, closing the door behind her.

Kerry ruffled Dar’s hair. “All this pretty scenery, and you have to draw me?”

“All those pretty fish, and you have to take my picture?” Dar countered drolly, wrapping one arm around Kerry’s leg. “We’ll be at the dive site in an hour. You up for that, or do you want to give it a miss and just go to dinner?”

Kerry leaned against the captain’s chair and let her head rest on Dar’s shoulder. “Does my utter laziness show that badly?” she complained. “I fell asleep twice down there in the chair. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“We’re on vacation. You’re supposed to be lazy,” Dar stated, her eyes scanning the horizon again. “We can go straight in.”

Kerry chewed her lower lip, then shook her head. “No. I’m going to go make some coffee. I really want to see that old wreck, Dar. You made it sound really cool.” She straightened up and put her hands on Dar’s shoulders, massaging them lightly. “Let’s go for it.”

Dar relaxed, enjoying the strong kneading. “You sure?”

“Positive.” Kerry gave her a kiss on the back of the neck. “Take me to the galleon, Cap’n Dar.”


Terrors of the High Seas 35

“Aye, aye, matey,” Dar replied promptly. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll find us some pieces of eight.”

Kerry chuckled, resuming her position draped over Dar’s shoulders. “With our luck, all we’ll find is jellyfish or a cranky moray eel.”

“Or a pile of tin cans.”

They both laughed, a sound muffled by the spray of the boat’s wake to either side of them.

KERRY ADJUSTED HER mask, holding her hand over it and her regulator as she stepped to the back of the boat and paused, then took a big step off and plunged into the water.

It was always a bit of a shock—going from the light and breezy air into the dense, blue water. She sucked in her first breath off her tank, feeling her body adjust as the familiar above-water weight of herself and her equipment moderated in the water’s buoyancy.

While she waited for Dar, Kerry held on to the anchor rope with one hand and tightened the straps on her BC with the other.

Her ears popped, and she gently pinched her nose closed and blew out a little, equalizing the pressure in her middle ears. Just then, the water was disrupted by Dar’s entrance, her tall figure in a whirl of bubbles that cleared as she made her way over to where Kerry was waiting.

Dar’s eyes flicked over her, Kerry noticed, checking her gear out of endearing habit. She endured the scrutiny, and in return she snugged Dar’s tank a little tighter and pulled her hair out from under her BC. Dar winked at her and pointed down, and Kerry nodded.

They started down the anchor rope, descending slowly through the water toward the ocean floor sixty feet below. Diving deep was different than reef diving, Kerry had discovered. You encountered a lot of sensations you didn’t get in the shallows, like thermoclines—