Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

embarrassed?”
     
    Regina ground her teeth together. “I am not embarrassed. I’m busy.”
     
    Dylan looked around the empty restaurant; raised one eyebrow. “I can wait.”
     
    “You’ll wait a long time.” She ruffled her son’s hair, ignoring a pang when he ducked from her touch. “Come on, Nick.”
     
    “I’ll come back, then,” Dylan said.
     
    Their eyes clashed. His were very dark. She felt a catch in her chest like a hiccup while her mind blanked with lust. That was bad. She needed to breathe, she needed to think, and she couldn’t do either while he watched her with those dark, unsmiling eyes.
     
    “Whatever,” she said, dismissing him. “It’s been real.”
     
    Too real, she thought as she escaped upstairs to lecture Nick about house rules and responsibility.
     
    She’d liked Dylan better when he was a fantasy.
     
    *
     
    Like a fantasy, Dylan continued to haunt her, popping up at inconvenient moments, distracting her from her work.
     
    51
     
    He dropped by the restaurant every day for a whole damn week, wanting things: a cup of coffee, a few words with Margred, a sandwich.
    Never at the same time, so Regina could brace herself against the little fizzle she felt each time she saw him, so she could find something else to do in the back.
     
    Besides, she refused to be chased around her own damn restaurant.
    Her mother’s restaurant.
     
    She could take care of herself. She was eighteen when she ran away to Boston, fresh meat to the wait staff who were always hungover, horny, or high. She’d learned to ignore the busboys’ liquid looks and comments in Spanish, to use her elbows and once a boning knife when she’d been crowded against the stove or cornered in the walk-in refrigerator.
     
    Dylan didn’t touch her. He barely spoke to her. Regina wondered if he came to see her at all or if he was really sniffing around his sister-in-law. That thought didn’t sit well with Regina for a variety of reasons.
     
    But it wasn’t Margred he watched.
     
    Regina would be doing her job, writing specials on the board, say, or bringing plates to the pass-through, and she’d look up to find him staring at her with dark-eyed intensity, like the brooding hero of some romance novel. Regina shivered. It was perversely arousing. Annoying. People were beginning to talk.
     
    “Don’t you have anything better to do?” she demanded, keeping her voice low.
     
    By the door, a middle-aged couple hung with cameras and water bottles perused the menu. Nick was under one of the tables, playing with the cat.
     
    Dylan studied her a moment. A corner of his mouth quirked. “No.”
     
    “Someplace to go? A job?”
     
    “I have a job to do here.”
     
    “You’re not a lobsterman.” The lobster fishermen, the good ones, were all on the water by five o’clock. It was after ten now.
     
    52
     
    “No,” he acknowledged.
     
    She set her hands on her hips and waited.
     
    “Salvage,” he offered finally.
     
    Her brows drew together. “You mean, shipwrecks? Like, Titanic stuff?”
     
    “What lies in the sea belongs to the sea.”
     
    “I heard it belongs to the government.”
     
    He shrugged. “Most exploration is done by private divers.”
     
    “Grave robbers.”
     
    The edge of his teeth showed in a smile. “Treasure seekers.”
     
    Nick poked his head from under the table. “Did you ever find treasure?”
     
    He was stuck indoors, grounded, until Regina’s shift ended at three.
    Antonia told Regina she was overreacting, but she didn’t care. She had enough problems without worrying about Nick’s whereabouts ten times a day.
     
    Dylan reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin. Regina caught the gleam as he flipped it to her son.
     
    “Wow.” Nick’s eyes widened as he turned the coin over in his hand.
    “Is it real?”
     
    Dylan nodded. “Morgan Liberty Head silver dollar.”
     
    “Cool.”
     
    “Keep it.”
     
    “No,” Regina said.
     
    “It’s only a dollar,” Nick said.
     
    53
     
    “And not in mint condition,” Dylan added.
     
    “I don’t care what kind of condition it’s in. He doesn’t take gifts from strangers.”
     
    Nick thrust out his lower lip. “But—”
     
    She pinned him with her I-mean-it-Nicky-now look. She didn’t want her son romanticizing this guy. Even if Dylan did look a little like a pirate, with that long dark hair and sexy stubble . . .
     
    She pulled herself up. She wasn’t going to romanticizehim either. He was