The Reef

alongside. She wanted a run. When their bows were even, she shot forward again, sprinting to fifteen knots.
    Again he crept steadily even with her, and again, Tate pumped her speed until his bow trailed her stern. In lieu of thumbing her nose, Tate rocked the wheel so that her boat danced. She was chuckling to herself, feeling smug until the Mermaid shot by like a bullet.
    By the time she’d closed her mouth, he was fifty feet ahead. She bore down, took her engines to full. Her mother’s wild, appreciative laughter swam up from the bow. Infectious, it had Tate giggling as she gained ground. But try as she might, she couldn’t match the Mermaid.
    “That’s some boat,” she said to herself. “Hell of a boat.”
    And though she knew she should be insulted when Matthew maneuvered a wide circle and came up alongside again, she wasn’t.
    Damn him, he made her smile.
     
    On the evening of their third day, they moored at Freeport, just ahead of a storm that swept in thundering rain and choppy seas. A group dinner was planned aboard the Mermaid with LaRue’s shrimp jambalaya as the centerpiece.
    By the time second helpings were being dispensed, LaRue and Marla were deep into cooking theories while Buck and Ray fell back into their old habit of arguing baseball. Since neither topic fell into Tate’s area of expertise, she found herself uncomfortably paired with Matthew.
    Because silence seemed cowardly, Tate turned to ingrained Southern manners. “I’d forgotten you were interested in boatbuilding,” she began. “Buck said you designed the Mermaid yourself.”
    “Yeah. I toyed with a few designs over the years. This one worked for me.” He scooped up more stew. “I guess I always figured I’d go back.”
    “Did you? Why?”
    His eyes shot up to hers, held. “Because I never finished what I started. You must have thought about it now and again.”
    “Not really.” Manners aside, lies were safer. “I’ve been busy with other things.”
    “Looks like college suited you.” She’d taken to wearing her hair in one fat braid that trailed down her back, he noted. That, too, suited her. “I hear we’ll be calling you ‘Doctor’ Beaumont before long.”
    “I have some work to do yet.”
    “You earned a pretty good rep on that Smithsonian thing a couple years ago.” Her surprised look made him shrug. “Ray and Marla passed things along.” There wasn’t any point in mentioning that he’d gotten a copy of the magazine and read the five-page article twice. “They were jazzed about the idea of you identifying artifacts from some ancient Greek ship.”
    “I was hardly in charge. I was part of a team. Hayden Deel headed the archeological end. He was a professor of mine,” she added. “He’s brilliant. I was with him on the Nomad, my last assignment.”
    “I heard about that, too.” It grated that she’d been a part of a VanDyke operation. “A sidewheeler.”
    “That’s right. The depths were too great for diving. We used computers and robotics.” Comfortable with shop talk, she rested her chin on her fist. “We have incredible film of plant and animal colonization.”
    “Sounds like a barrel of fun.”
    “It was a scientific expedition,” she said coolly. “Fun wasn’t a prerequisite. The equipment that was devised to search for and excavate the Justine was stunningly successful. We had a team of top scientists and technicians. And,” she added with a bite, “beyond the scientific value and knowledge, we mined gold. That, I’m sure, you’d understand. A fortune in gold coins and bars.”
    “So, VanDyke gets richer.”
    He knew, she realized, and felt her face go cold, stiff. “That’s beside the point. The scientific and historic benefit outweighs—”
    “Bullshit. Nothing VanDyke does is beside the point.” It infuriated him that she should have changed so much to believe it. “Don’t you care who writes your paycheck?”
    “SeaSearch—”
    “VanDyke owns Trident, which owns Poseidon, which owns SeaSearch.” Sneering, he lifted his glass of red wine, toasted. “I’m sure VanDyke’s happy with your work.”
    For a moment, she could only stare. It felt as though a fist had plunged into her stomach. That he would think so little of her, of her character, and of her heart, hurt more than she had believed it could. She could see herself standing dripping and defiant, facing VanDyke on his own yacht. And she remembered the fury, the fear, and the terrible sense of