by Sandra Hill
“I love you,” Jake said against her hair.
She groaned and said nothing, which said everything. With the greatest of discipline, she tried to pull away.
He held on tight. “Shhh. Don’t, baby. We don’t have to think about tomorrow or forever . . . just now. One step at a time. No harm in that.”
No harm in that? Hah! One step is all it ever takes for us. However, idiot that she was, Veronica listened to Jake and relaxed. She was so tired of fighting her love for him. While the band segued into Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” another Jake request, guaranteed, she asked, “Do you remember the Aerosmith concert we went to?”
“Which one? The one during the Sappy Marriage? Or the Tequila Marriage?”
She laughed against his neck and luxuriated in the feel of her lips against his skin. She also relished the shiver that ran through him. “The first one. Definitely Sappy. It was outdoors. And we brought a blanket and wine and French bread and cheese.”
“And we stayed long after the crowds left.”
She nodded. Both of them were remembering what happened. Sweet memories. After a second, she chuckled. “We were covered with mosquito bites in some unmentionable places.”
“Yeah, but the fun we had slathering calamine lotion on those places! One of my top ten favorite memories!”
Leave it to Jake to mention that!
They danced in silence for a moment, but Jake interrupted the silence with a change of mood. No more teasing. “I’ve made so many mistakes, but marrying you, even four times, was not a mistake. I can’t think of it that way. I . . . I just wanted you to know that.”
“I know.” And I feel the same way, no matter what I say to everyone, no matter what I say to you.
The second song ended and another started—“Summer Nights,” a little faster this time, but they continued to slow dance, oblivious to the beat. They were setting their own delicious rhythm.
When he drew his head back finally, she knew that he was going to kiss her. She saw it in the slumberous haze in his eyes and the droop of his lower lip. She saw it and could do nothing to stop the inevitable.
At the first press of his lips against hers, pleasure passed through her in waves so intense that her knees buckled. He caught her with both hands at her waist. It was a fleeting kiss, no tongue, no deep hungry pressing, but it was potent just the same. So potent that they both knew a line had been crossed.
Wrapped in the cocoon of that kiss, they didn’t realize till after the fact that people throughout the tavern were staring at them and smiling. Her grandfather most of all. You’d think he had just found King Tut’s tomb.
But she couldn’t think about that right now. Jake had his arm around her shoulders and her tucked at his side.
“I want to make love to you so bad my teeth hurt,” he said, pressing a soft kiss to the top of her head.
Okay, this is the moment. I can walk away, or . . . or I can stay. No question what I should do, but what do I want to do? Hah! She tried to make light of her momentous decision. “Poor baby! I wouldn’t want you to get a toothache.”
He tilted his head in question. Sometimes men were so dense. When understanding seeped into his thick skull, he asked in a husky voice, trying for light, “Do you have any idea how good your chances are with me?”
She raised her eyebrows with amusement. “Uh, yeah. I felt it against my belly when we were dancing.”
He laughed. “Hey, don’t rub the bottle if you don’t want the genie to come out.” It was an old joke between them.
“So? Are you expecting me to make the first move?”
He squeezed her tighter against his side with a smile. And Jake had a killer smile.
“Knock yourself out, big boy.”
And did he ever!
And neither of them listened to the laughter in their heads, accompanied by the words, “Here we go again.”
I forgot to remember to forget you. . . .
They were back in his hotel room, and Jake was as nervous as a boy about to get laid for the first time.
Plopping down into an upholstered chair, he tented and untented his hands several times. Ronnie looked so damn hot with no bra in a red sequined tank top she must have borrowed from Flossie, over glove-tight black jeans. This was so not her style. To him, Ronnie would be sexy in a burlap sack.
How did he know she was braless?
Because he knew Ronnie’s body better than his own.
Jake kept inhaling and exhaling to settle down, but his nerves had him jittery as a kitten in a room full of pit bulls. It was so important that he not screw things up. As a result, he felt as if he was walking on eggshells. He, who prided himself on his emotional control, was fragile as glass inside.
Ronnie wasn’t too calm, either, as she fiddled with her purse, trying to find a hairbrush.
“You know, honey, life is like a poker game . . . ,” he began.
She groaned. She’d never been a big fan of his poker metaphors, but at the least they could usually get her to crack a grin. Yep, her mouth was twitching in her effort to suppress her amusement.
“No, listen. Life is like a poker game for us. We’ve just forgotten the first rule of holes, a rule all gamblers know. When in a hole, stop digging.”
“Your point?”
“We’ve been in this damn hole way too long, and we keep trying to solve our problems by digging and digging. Maybe we need to crawl out into the light and look for other solutions.”
“Jake,” she said then, walking over to him and lifting one denim-clad leg over his thighs so that she straddled him.
Huh? His eyes practically went cross-eyed as she adjusted her ass on his lap, thus aligning his cock right where it wanted to be. “Works for me,” he choked out.
He put one arm around her waist and cupped her nape with the other hand, pulling her head down for a kiss . . . the first of many, he hoped. “I promise—” he whispered against her open mouth.
She put her fingertips over his lips and shook her head. “No promises,” she murmured, and lay her lips on his. She didn’t have to say she loved him; her kiss told him. “And absolutely no talk about marriage.”
I can live with that. “You’re calling the shots, baby.”
“Hah! That’ll be a first.” She studied his face for a minute, then told him, “Do you know what Caleb said to me?”
Now? Now she wants to discuss some other man? “Do I want to know?”
“He told me to make a list of all the things I’d like him to do to me.”
The temperature of Jake’s already-heated blood inched up to a boil.
“After that, Caleb said we would work on his list.”
His blood was boiling now. “I’ll kill him. With my bare hands. Slowly.”
She shook her head. “Don’t you want to know what I put on that wish list, for him to do?”
Hell, no!
“Nothing.”
It took a torturous moment for understanding to seep into his thick skull. When it did, he smiled. “Just so you know, I can do lists, too.”
She smiled back at him. “I know.”
He wanted to stand with her then and carry her to the bed and make love to her till every erotic fantasy on her list was checked off. Restraint, boy. Restraint.
Quiet now, she used her forefinger to trace the line of his jaw and then his lips. Then she repeated the path with small nibbling kisses.
He waited . . . with restraint.
The wonder in her eyes as she gazed at him was precious beyond belief to him. “Can I tell you that I love you?”
“As often as you want.” She kissed him again, this time with a devouring hunger and a tongue so hot he thought he would explode from spontaneous combustion.
Her eyes misted.
“We don’t need any friggin’ lists, sweetheart. Just tell me what you want, and it’s yours,” he told her, once she came up for a breath. He meant that in all ways, but it was enough if she thought he meant just now.
She swiped the tears from her eyes with both fists, then lifted her chin belligerently. “Fuck me.”
Whoa! Talk about blunt. But I am not about to argue. And, hey, I know exactly where she’s coming from. If she uses the word fuck instead of make love, our hooking up again won’t seem so significant, just a fly-by fuck. Boy, is she kidding herself! It’s significant, all right. And I’m not flying off this time. “Anytime, anywhere, babe.” With that, he stood with his hands on her ass, holding her up, and walked to the king-sized bed, tossing her to the middle. He immediately followed after her, crawling over her till he lay flat on top of her with their linked hands raised above her head.
“You think you’ve won, don’t you?” she asked.
She didn’t appear peeved as she asked that question, so he replied, “I feel as if I’ve won the World Series of Poker, the brass ring on the carousel, the Masters, the Triple Crown, and the Wheel of Fortune, all together.”
“That good, huh?”
Suddenly somber, he closed his eyes and nestled his face in the curve of her neck and shoulder. Inhaling the scent of her skin and a light floral/spicy scent, he recognized her favorite perfume, Chanel No. 5.
“Are you smelling me?” she asked with a laugh.
“Yep, and you smell good enough to eat.”
“Promises, promises.” She arched her groin up against his groin and wiggled from side to side.
He was the one who laughed then. “Baby, you are tossing out a lot of raw sex talk—raw for you.”
“I feel raw,” she said, trying to pull her hands from his grasp, probably so she could take over this love play, which he was not going to allow—not this time.
“I can do raw.” I can do hard-core, soft-core, upside down, inside out, any type of sex you want with the adrenaline pumping through my body right now. Not to mention a ton of testosterone.
It took a half hour for him to get naked and to remove her blouse and sandals and unzip her jeans. It took so long because they’d both had to stop at so many familiar places on each other’s bodies to touch and kiss. By the time she was down to just her jeans, they were both worked into a sexual frenzy.
“Can you shimmy out of those jeans?” he gasped.
She laughed. “Honey, we’re going to need a crowbar to get me out of these jeans.”
“Hah! Never underestimate the determination of a man with a mission,” he said, beginning to tug down the low waistband of the tight jeans.
“More like a man with a hard-on,” she countered, peering down at him.
“That, too,” he agreed. And, man oh man, look at me! It was one of those rare, hard-as-a-rock blue steelers that men knew were as special as, well, a royal flush.
Soon he had her naked, and he was embedded in her as far as he could go.
“I love you,” she said, and skimmed her palms up and down over his lower back at the curve just above his buttocks, his unique erotic zone.
His cock lurched. “I love you, too,” he whispered, nipping at her ear.
“How much?” she rasped out as she tilted her head so he had better access to the whorls of her ultrasensitive ears.
“Oh, sweetheart, I thought you’d never ask.”
With those words, he showed her just how much he loved her. And then he showed her again. And again.
Yeah, but how long would it last . . . ?
At the wreck site on Monday afternoon, everyone waited, in their own way, for the safe to be hoisted up.
Steve and Tony, the good fairies of the Mafia, had shown up in Barnegat yesterday with a crane that fit on top of Sweet Jinx. When Frank had asked how much he owed them for the equipment—probably worried how he was going to afford the expenditure in his dire straits—the two men declined to answer. Since no one questioned them further, deciding it was better not to know, Veronica assumed it was another object that “fell off the truck.”
Adam had splashed down a half hour ago with chains that he would attach to the safe for the hoisting, and Caleb splashed ten minutes ago, timing it so that he could complete the job once Adam’s twenty minutes on the ocean floor were maxed out. It would be more than an hour before they were back on board. John was geared up, too, minus the flippers, fitted hood, and gloves, so that he could finish the job, if necessary; or if the salvage was complete, he would go down and attempt to put the site in order so authorities wouldn’t know something had been retrieved.
Adam had taken the Nazi cross with him. He was going to return it to the soldier to whom it belonged, not out of any respect for a Nazi commander, but to maintain the historical integrity of the site.
Tony was in the other boat, weapon at the ready, in case some pirate treasure hunters, or the Coast Guard, showed up. Not that he was going to shoot at the Coast Guard. She hoped.
Brenda, after greasing and testing the crane apparatus, went down to the galley with Tante Lulu to make what they hoped would be a celebratory feast for dinner. Tante Lulu had soon shooed Brenda away, stating, “Go fix a motor or sumpin’. I kin make a meal faster without you interferin’.” Flossie and Rosa were down there, too, playing pinochle; by their hushed voices, she suspected they were planning some mischief.
As for her and Jake, well, they were in the wheelhouse with Frank, working on the two computers and a series of maps laid out there. They’d decided to keep their new relationship secret; well, as secret as anything could be with this gang. No sleeping together or fooling around on the boat. Everything was too tentative and, yes, shaky between them to risk outside interference, like from her grandfather or Tante Lulu.
“Come look at this, honey,” Jake said, motioning her away from her laptop, where she’d been recording data that Frank fed her, much of it material that existed only in his head.
Frank’s head shot up at Jake’s use of the word honey and her failure to call him on the endearment.
Veronica ignored Frank’s questioning stare and sat down next to Jake. He wore a baseball cap, flip-flops, a gray Boston U T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, and black bathing trunks. And he smelled delicious, like shaving cream and minty soap. She probably smelled minty, too, since they’d showered together this morning and used the same shampoo and deodorant. She’d also shaved her legs with his razor, and he didn’t even complain like he usually did. In fact, he helped her.
Without thinking, Jake put an arm around her shoulders and tugged her closer, kissing the top of her head. Then he pointed to the screen of his laptop, which was super techy compared to what she’d been working on.
Veronica was about to shrug out of Jake’s “embrace” but decided, What’s the use? Besides, she missed him. Hard to believe when they must have made love a dozen times since they’d hooked up Friday night.
Out of her side vision, she noticed her grandfather’s gaze latched onto Jake’s arm. Then he grinned and sat down to read the data that Veronica had been inputting.
Once again, she thought, What’s the use? She would have to set her grandfather straight later.
Jake showed her a montage of frames he was making of the treasure hunt, like a slide show of people and their activities, but interspersed were map grids of the shipwreck site, techy charts showing the software program he’d used to pinpoint the exact location. All this he’d put together in a matter of hours. Perhaps it was his talent with computers that frustrated her so. In her opinion, his genius was wasted on poker. But that was something she refused to think about now.
Veronica had been compiling the text that would accompany his work, making for a good narrative account. At this point, no one was thinking about a TV documentary, or even press coverage, because of the legal implications. But the history might be important in the future.
“Hey, Frank, I want you to see this, too.”
Frank stood and ambled over, then leaned on Jake’s shoulder. Today Frank wore faded jeans so worn they threatened to shred in the least wind, spiffy yellow suspenders, and a flashy Hawaiian shirt about fifty years old by the looks of it, or at least twenty
-five years old since she recalled seeing him in it when she was a child. His usual cigar hung from his mouth, unlit, thank God! And polka music played in the background.
Jake exited the program he was in and showed Frank a series of folders, which he said might be useful if he ever did any other deep-sea hunts. “This one marked ‘Dive Profiles’ is a calculation of dive times and depths, cross-referenced. This one marked ‘Tremix’ gives your divers accurate proportions for the combinations for mixing the gases.” Tremix—an oxygen-helium-nitrogen cocktail—was the modern replacement for compressed air in some divers’ tanks. For deep diving, it was safer and longer-lasting than pure oxygen.
Veronica got up and let Frank take her seat. While Jake explained all the work he’d done so far, located in various other folders, her grandfather asked questions and made approving sounds. She stood behind Jake for a second, then decided to go out on deck and see what was happening.
Sensing her movement, Jake reached up over his shoulder. Without turning, he took her hand, tugged it forward, and kissed her wrist. It was a whispery promise kiss, as in “See you later.” That kind of kiss had always been their signal, when in public, that they would pick up later where they’d left off . . . as lovers.
With no more words but in a dreamy state, she went out on deck to watch all the activity. Brenda was with John and Steve, working on the hoist that had been rigged to the boat deck on the starboard side. It made a loud, grinding noise as the three worked to lift up the safe, which must have already been secured by Adam and Caleb.
Brenda glanced up, while still straining to help pull up the heavy safe, and grinned. “Looks like someone got some.”
Veronica couldn’t help but grin back at Brenda’s bluntness.
But Caleb’s head shot up. While his muscles were really straining—and really impressive—he tilted his head in question at her. She didn’t need to respond. She could see that he got the message. “Crap! Are you a glutton for punishment?”
“Guess so.”
Steve just shook his head . . . at her hopelessness, she supposed.
“Hey, do we all get to attend wedding number, what, Five?” John asked. “I know this great Cajun band; my brother René plays in it. The Swamp Rats.”
