“I’m serious, though.” Tracy or Stacy or Lacy, or whatever her name was—Leo had sort of tuned out on the introductions—wrinkled her sunburned nose. “How do you even know where to look?”
“Because of this.” Leo lifted the silver piece of eight, a seventeenth-century Spanish dollar, from where it hung around his neck on a long, platinum chain. “My father discovered it ten years ago off the coast of the Marquesas Keys.”
Tracy/Stacy/Lacy’s furrowed brow telegraphed her skepticism. “One coin? I thought the Gulf and the Caribbean were littered with old doubloons.”
“It wasn’t just one piece of eight my father found.” Leo winked. “It was a big, black conglomerate of ten pieces of eight, as well as—”
“Conglomerate?” asked the brunette with the Cupid’s-bow lips. Tracy/Stacy/Lacy’s friend had given Leo all the right signals the minute Romeo pulled the catamaran up to Wayfarer Island’s creaky old dock and unloaded their guests. It’d been instant sloe-eyed looks and shy, encouraging smiles.
Okay, and confession time. Because for a fleeting moment when she—Sophie or Sophia? Holy Christ, Leo was seriously sucking with names tonight—sidled up next to him, he’d been tempted to take her up on all the things her nonverbal communications offered. Then an image of black hair, sapphire eyes, and a subtly crooked front tooth blazed through his brain. And just like that, the brunette lost her appeal.
Which is a good thing, he reminded himself. You’re gettin’ too old to bang the Betties Romeo drags home from the bar.
Enter Dalton “Doc” Simmons and his nearly six and a half feet of homespun, Midwestern charm. He’d been quick to insert himself between Leo and Sophie/Sophia. And now her gaze lingered on Doc’s face when he said in that low, scratchy Kiefer Sutherland voice of his, “Unlike gold, which retains its luster after years on the bottom of the ocean, silver coins are affected by the seawater. They get fused together by corrosion or other maritime accretions. When that happens, it’s called a conglomerate. They have to be electronically cleaned to remove the surface debris and come out looking like this.” Grabbing the silver chain around his neck, Doc pulled a piece of eight from inside his T-shirt. It was identical to the one Leo wore.
“And like this,” Romeo parroted, twirling the coin on the chain around his neck like a Two-Buck Chuck stripper whirling a boa.
Their first day on the island, Leo had gifted each of his men—damnit!…his friends—with one of the coins, telling them their matching tattoos were symbols of their shared past and their matching pieces of eight were symbols of their shared future.
Leo tipped the neck of his beer toward Doc. “Maritime accretions, huh? You sound like an honest-to-God salvor, my friend.”
Doc smirked, which was as close to a smile as the dude ever really got. If Leo hadn’t seen Doc rip into a steak on occasion, he wouldn’t have been all that convinced the guy had teeth.
“But even a conglomerate of coins wouldn’t be enough to guarantee the ship’s location,” Leo added, turning back to the blond. “My father also found a handful of bronze deck cannons. All of which were on the Santa Cristina’s manifest. So she’s down there…somewhere.” He just had to find her. All his friends were counting on that windfall for various reasons, and if he didn’t—
“But, like you said, your dad tried to find this Christy boat for”—Leo winced. Okay, so the woman seemed sweet. But the only thing worse than mangling the name of the legendary vessel was referring to it as a boat—“like twenty-some-odd years, right?”
“And Mel Fisher searched for the Atocha for sixteen years before finally findin’ her.” He referred to the most famous treasure hunter and treasure galleon of all time. Well, most famous of all time until he and the guys made the history books, right? Right. “In shallow water, like that around the Florida Keys, the shiftin’ sands are moved by wind and tide. They change the seabed daily, not to mention after nearly four centuries. But with a little hard work and perseverance, you better believe the impossible becomes possible. We’re hot on her trail.” Her convoluted, invisible, nonexistent trail. Shit.
Doc slow-winked at the woman by way of agreement, twirling the toothpick that perpetually stuck out of his mouth in a circle with his tongue. It must have dazzled poor Sophie/Sophia, because she sucked in a breath before batting her pretty lashes and sidling her lawn chair closer to him. Throwing an arm around her shoulders, Doc turned to wiggle his eyebrows at Leo. Just like the others, Doc was never one to pass up an opportunity to feed Leo a heaping helping of shit. Par for the course considering Leo was…fuck a duck…used to be their commanding officer, a prime target for all their ass-hattery.