The Reef

you.”
    “Wouldn’t he?” Tate mumbled.
    “Oh, honey.” Marla gathered her close for a quick, hard hug. “You’re a grown woman. I know that. And I know that you’re sensible and careful and responsible. All the things you should be. But are you happy?”
    “I don’t know.” Wishing she did, Tate hitched on her tanks, tugged the strap snug. “I haven’t figured that out.” She glanced up at LaRue’s hail. “Matthew isn’t an easy man to understand.” Sighing, she hooked on her weight belt. “But I can handle it. And I can handle him.” She pulled on her flippers and frowned. “Dad’s not going to do anything crazy about this, is he?”
    With a light laugh, Marla offered Tate her face mask. “ I can handle him. ” She lifted her gaze, looked across the water to where Matthew stood on deck. “Matthew Lassiter is an attractive and intriguing man, Tate. There are pockets in him the right woman could plumb.”
    “I’m not interested in plumbing Lassiter’s pockets.” Tate adjusted her mask, then grinned. “But I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on him again.”
     
    He didn’t give her much of an opportunity. The instantthey were down at the wreck, he had the airlift sweeping. He worked fast and hard. At times the sand, shells and debris machine-gunned over her back and shoulders. She had to scramble to keep up with his progress, shifting through the fallout, filling buckets, tugging on the line that would signal Buck to haul them up. He gave her little time to delight in the finds.
    A chunk of conglomerate struck her shoulder hard enough to bruise. Rather than wincing over the sting, she soothed herself by cursing him as she reached for the calcified form. The blackened silver coins fused together in an insane sculpture changed her mood. Swimming through the murk, she rapped sharply on Matthew’s tank.
    He turned, easing back when she stuck the conglomerate in his face in triumph. He barely glanced at it. With a watery shrug, he went back to work.
    What the devil was the matter with him? she wondered, and dropped the monied find in a bucket. He should have grinned, tugged her hair, touched her face. Something. Instead, he was working like a maniac without any of the pleasure that always flowed through their partnership.
    She thought he was only interested in money; meanwhile, Matthew fumed and played the airlift over the sand. Did she really believe a hunk of silver would make him rear up and dance? She could keep every fucking coin as far as he was concerned. Turn every last one of them over to her precious dream museum or her precious Hayden Deel.
    He’d wanted her, damn it. But he hadn’t known sex without her love, and goddamn it, her respect, would be hollow. Would leave him hollow.
    Well, now he knew. That left him with only one goal. Angelique’s Curse. He’d search every inch of sand, every crevice, every foot of coral. And when he had it, he’d take his revenge on his father’s killer.
    Revenge, Matthew decided, was a more satisfying goal than the love of a woman. God knew, it couldn’t hurt as much to fail.
    He worked until his arms sang with fatigue, and his mind went numb with the monotony of it. Then the pipewhisked away sand, and he saw that first stunning flash of gold.
    He drew the pipe back, glanced toward Tate. He could see she was scrambling through the cloudy water, her eyes sharp behind her mask, even though Matthew could sense the dragging fatigue in her movements.
    He’d worked her too hard, and he knew it. Yet not once had she asked him to stop, or slow down. Has pride always been our problem? he wondered, then looked back at the shining coins, tossed like a god’s careless pocket change on the seafloor.
    Smiling, he turned the pipe so that it would suck the coins. They flew back, clinking against Tate’s tanks, bulleting against her back. He saw the moment the first glint caught her eye, watched her hand dart. She scooped up doubloons like a child scoops up candy from a shattered piñata.
    And she turned to him. It soothed his edgy heart that she would seek his face with her hands full of old gold.
    He grinned as she swam toward him, tugged the neck of his suit open just enough to slip coins down his suit. Her eyes brimmed with laughter as he turned the pipe aside. Curious fish watched them wrestle, spin, then clumsily embrace.
    Matthew jerked a thumb toward the surface, but she shook her head, pointed toward the airlift. With a nod, he shouldered it