They’re coming!” Lisa leaned so far over the bow of the Maggy Dee, Mick Coyle feared she’d fall over. He’d have hauled her back over the rail, if he hadn’t been so thoroughly enjoying the view of her cute little ass, complete with a cute little tattoo….
“A rope!” Lisa yelled, turning toward him. “We need to throw them a rope or a life ring or something.”
“Christ,” Coyle muttered. It had been more than an hour since he’d left the little twerp off on the sandbar that surrounded Rattlesnake Key. He’d tried to explain to the chick that the Maggy Dee’s hull was too deep to make it over the bar, but she wasn’t exactly a rocket scientist when it came to such things.
By then, they could all see the glow of firelight coming from the key’s south end, and Lisa had been insistent that her sister and Moody were on the key. She’d been ready to dive overboard and swim to the key herself, until Coyle had inquired about her swimming skills.
“Oh.” She’d hesitated.
“You can’t swim worth a damn, can you?” Coyle asked.
“I’m more like a dog-paddler than a swimmer,” Lisa admitted.
“I’ll go,” Zeke had volunteered. “I rowed crew five years in prep school.”
In the end, Coyle inflated the Maggy Dee’s never-used navy-surplus life raft, fitted Zeke with a neon orange life vest, and instructed him on how to use a signal flare once he’d reached Rattlesnake Key to let them know he was safe.
Despite Coyle’s deepest doubts, Zeke had apparently not only reached the island unharmed, he’d also managed to ferry the two marooned sailors, plus a dog, back out to the Maggy Dee.
Coyle flipped the trawler’s rope ladder over the side of the boat and barked orders to Zeke, and against all odds, not to mention the tide and the wind, which kept driving the life raft away from the Maggy, soon the three sailors were hauling themselves over the trawler’s bow rail.
Tate Moody carried the dog under his arm. He set him down on the deck, and the dog immediately shook about twenty gallons of water on the rest of them.
“Gina!” Lisa cried, throwing her arms around her sister. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe it. You’re safe! You didn’t drown.”
“I’m fine,” Gina insisted. “We were never in any danger of drowning.”
“Zeke!” Lisa cooed, turning toward the kid in black. “You saved them.” She draped herself on him, even though he was soaking wet, and covered him in kisses, which he didn’t seem to mind at all.
Coyle watched the reunion with an amused air of detachment. Ever since he’d heard the details of the couple’s disappearance, he’d wondered just exactly what Tate Moody was up to.
The guy was no dummy. He’d been in and around these waters a lot. If he’d gotten himself marooned on an island, he clearly had something in mind for the little lady who’d accompanied him.
The big sister was kind of a surprise. Coyle had been expecting some really hot television babe—after all, Tate Moody could have any woman he wanted. Coyle’s own wife had frequently commented that she’d happily hop in the sack with the Tatester, given the opportunity.
It wasn’t that Gina Foxton wasn’t attractive. Even soaking wet and sunburned, she was more than pretty, although clearly not in the same foxy category as Lisa, Coyle thought.
As soon as he laid eyes on her, and on Tate Moody, he knew the two of them had done the deed. They tried to be discreet, but Mick Coyle was a man of the world. He knew what was up.
Once the Maggy Dee got under way again, Gina allowed herself to be hustled into the pilothouse and wrapped in a blanket from his bunk, although she wisely refused a cup of Coyle’s two-day-old reheated coffee. The two sisters huddled together in the pilothouse, carrying on a heated, whispered discussion.
Tate Moody and the kid, Zeke, wrapped themselves in some old jackets Coyle had dug out of a gear locker and dried the dog off with a towel. The men stayed out on deck, well away from the women. Moody and the girl stayed as far away from each other as possible on a forty-four-foot shrimp boat. But they couldn’t fool Mick Coyle. Oh, yeah, the Tatester had definitely hooked himself a piece of tail on Rattlesnake Key.
The filthy blanket the shrimper had fetched her stank of dead fish and rancid grease, but Gina welcomed its warmth. What she didn’t welcome was her sister’s sudden and astonishing transformation into the world’s most annoying mother hen.
“Oh, my God,” Lisa repeated, for about the tenth time. “Do you have any idea of what you’ve put us all through? I was going crazy! When you didn’t show up this afternoon, I was sure something awful had happened. I even called Mama, just on the off chance she’d heard from you. She went apeshit when I told her you were missing.”
“You called Mama? Are you insane? Lisa, why in God’s name would you do something like that? I’ll never hear the end of this now.”
“Why in God’s name would you go off in some leaky piece of crap—in the middle of a storm, yet—without telling anybody?” Lisa retorted. “And with Tate Moody, of all people?”
“It wasn’t storming when we got into the creek,” Gina said. “The water was perfectly calm—unlike you.”
“Easy for you to say. You weren’t the one searching every inch of Eutaw Island, expecting to find your sister’s broken and bleeding body at any minute.”
“I’m fine!” Gina repeated. “Nothing bad happened, except that we missed the deadline. I’m sorry everybody got themselves all worked up about me, but the bottom line is, I’m not dead.” She sighed. “Not dead. Just deeply, deeply humiliated.”
Lisa stared at her. “Something happened on that island. Between you and Tate.”
“Nothing happened, believe me.”
“You lie like a rug,” Lisa said. “You think I’m blind? After all the crap you put me through today, you owe me, big-time. So spill it, Sis. Was he better than Scott? What am I saying? Hello—we’re talking about the Tatester, so it had to be like, ten times better. Was he totally amazing? I want all the dirty, smutty details.”
“Lisa, look at me,” Gina said, grabbing her sister by the chin and swiveling her head until their faces were only inches apart. “Read my lips. Absolutely nothing happened between me and Tate. Okay? He was a perfect gentleman. And I was a perfect…fool. End of story.”
“Whatever.” Lisa gave her a knowing wink.
Gina leaned back against the pilothouse wall and closed her eyes. The Maggy Dee’s diesel engines churned, and the boat rose and fell over the waves. She would not allow herself to think about the day’s events. She wanted sleep. And a long, hot bath. And a one-way ticket off this shrimp boat.