The Reef by Nora Roberts

his hands clamped intimately over her bottom.
    â€œMatthew!”
    He gave her a quick, not altogether loving tap, then shoved her off. She landed in a heap on the butt he’d just explored.
    â€œI’d say we’re even now,” he stated, and reached for his beer.
    Her first impulse was to spring to attack. Only the absolute certainty that the result would be either humiliating or disastrous prevented her. Mixed with that was the lowering thought that she’d deserved just what she’d gotten.
    â€œAll right.” With calm and dignity, she rose. “We’re even.”
    He’d expected her to lash at him. At the very least to blubber. The fact that she stood beside him, cool, composed, touched off a glint of admiration in his eyes. “You’re okay, Red.”
    â€œFriends again?” she asked and offered a hand.
    â€œPartners, anyway.”
    Crisis avoided, she thought. At least temporarily. “So, do you want to take a break? Maybe do some snorkeling?”
    â€œMaybe. Couple of masks and snorkels in the wheelhouse.”
    â€œI’ll get them.” But she came back with a sketchbook. “What’s this?”
    â€œA silk tie. What does it look like?”
    Overlooking the sarcasm, she sat on the edge of the hammock. “Did you do this sketch of the Santa Marguerite? ”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œIt’s pretty good.”
    â€œI’m a regular Picasso.”
    â€œI said ‘pretty good.’ It would have been great to see her like this. Are these figures measurements?”
    He sighed again, thinking of amateurs. “If you want to try to figure out how much area the wreck covers, you’ve got to do some calculations. We hit the galley today.” He swung his legs over until he was sitting beside her. “Officers’ cabins, passengers’ cabins.” He laid a fingertip on the sketch at varying points. “Cargo hold. Best way is to imagine a gull’s eye view.” To demonstrate, he flipped a page and began to sketch out a rough grid. “This is the seafloor. Here’s where we found the ballast.”
    â€œSo the cannon is over here.”
    â€œRight.” In quick deft moves, he penciled them in. “Now we dug test holes from here to here. We want to move more midship for the mother lode.”
    Her shoulder bumped his as she studied the sketch. “But we want to excavate the whole thing, right?”
    He glanced up briefly, then continued to draw. “That could take months, years.”
    â€œWell, yes, but the ship itself is as important as what it holds. We have to excavate and preserve all of it.”
    From his viewpoint, the ship itself was wood and worthless. But he could humor her. “We’ll be in hurricane season before too much longer. We could be lucky, but we concentrate on finding the mother lode. Then you can afford to take as much time as you want on the rest.”
    For himself, he’d take his share and split. With gold jingling in his pocket, he could afford the time to build that boat, to finish his father’s research on the Isabella.
    To find Angelique’s Curse and VanDyke.
    â€œI guess that makes sense.” She glanced up, startled by the hard, distant gleam in his eye. “What are you thinking about?” It was foolish, of course, but she thought it looked like murder.
    He shook himself back. Here and now, he thought, was what mattered most. “Nothing. Sure it makes sense,” hecontinued. “Before long, word’s going to get out that we’ve found a new wreck. We’ll have company.”
    â€œReporters?”
    He snorted. “They’re the least of it. Poachers.”
    â€œBut we have a legal claim,” Tate began, and broke off when he laughed at her.
    â€œLegal don’t mean jack, Red, especially when you’ve got the Lassiter luck to deal with. We’ll have to start sleeping as well as working in