Page 90 of Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness

Kevin winced at the woman’s words and shrugged an apology, then whispered, “Sorry.”

“That’s okay, Kev,” she said with a grin, about to turn away. Before he closed the door, though, she had to ask, “Do you know where Merrill is? He never came back to the motel after showering yesterday.”

Kevin shook his head. “I did hear that his mother is in a hospital in Hatteras. Maybe he went there and couldn’t get back in time for the last ferry. Sometimes they stop the ferry services when the water gets choppy.”

“Ah, that’s probably where he is.”

Delilah felt better after that, knowing there was an excuse for Merrill’s absence. In fact, she couldn’t help herself. She called the hospital at Hatteras and asked if they had a patient named Mrs. Good.

“Yes,” the hospital operator confirmed. “But Dr. Good is still in the intensive care unit. So, no flowers, or visitors, other than family.”

Delilah released a sigh of relief.

But her satisfaction didn’t last long. That didn’t explain why Merrill hadn’t called.

But she would give him the benefit of the doubt that some emergency, maybe even involving his mother, had come up.

By midmorning the rain had tapered off and the weather forecast was revised. The storm had veered north and good weather would return to the Outer Banks by this evening. She left her grandmother and Maggie with orders to clean up the place while she went over to Bell Forge with Kevin and Gus to help Harry work on some of the gold coins to be on display at tomorrow’s press conference.

Kevin’s and Gus’s dates—who really were models, Victoria’s Secret models, no less—stayed behind. Delilah asked her grandmother to go over to those two units and change the sheets and towels around noon when the ladies would presumably be gone or at least out to lunch.

By now, the ferries must have started up again, because there was a longer than usual line of cars and trucks heading toward town. Even though this was high tourist season on the Outer Banks, Bell Cove rarely got the heavy traffic the more commercial areas did. Not so today. And there was an alarming number of vehicles representing news organizations, even the national TV networks. And was that a People magazine logo on that one car?

“Oh, fuck!” Kevin said, sinking down in the seat.

That about summed up the situation.

Before they even left the parking lot of the diner/motel there was someone taking a photo of the twenty-foot Elvis. What that had to do with the shipwreck discovery, she had no idea. She did not need this kind of publicity. She was the one now who muttered, “Oh, fuck!”

The first thing—or person—they encountered when they got to Bell Forge and went around to the back wharf side was Charlie, a Charlie like they’d never seen before, coming over the gangway from the boat, barefoot. Her brown hair was loose and hanging in waves about her shoulders—shoulders which were bare in a figure-hugging, midriff-baring tank top. The short Daisy Dukes were also figure-revealing.

And, boy oh boy, did she have a figure! Delilah had always tried to minimize or hide her own almost-voluptuous physique, but Charlie had been hiding a whole lot more.

Kevin and Gus, beside her, were grinning like baboons.

Not to be missed was the hunk, also barefoot, wearing nothing but a pair of low-riding jeans, who followed Charlie, apparently trying to talk her into something. All they could hear from her was, “No. No. Absolutely not!”

Every time he tried to touch her—a hand on the shoulder, a tug on the arm, a swift kiss to the cheek—she shrugged him off. But it looked as if she hadn’t been doing a whole lot of resisting during the night. There were whisker burns on her face and neck and even her midriff. Her lips looked moist and kiss-swollen.

Kevin summed it up succinctly. “That gal’s been rode hard and put up wet.”

“I don’t know,” Gus said. “That cowboy’s got the look of someone whose spurs have been trimmed a time or five.”

Both of the guys seemed to suddenly realize that Delilah was with them and turned to apologize as one, “Sorry.”

Charlie came up to them and said, “I was just comin’ in to tell Harry that we need more security out on the site. All this publicity is firin’ the engines on every salvager within a hundred miles. They’ll be rushin’ out to have a look-see, and more. There’s already chatter on the Coast Guard radio that pirates are on the way. Talk about!”

“We can take my boat,” offered the guy—Jefferson Lee Landry, Delilah presumed.

“We . . . I am not going anywhere on your yacht, J. L.”

“Fine with me,” the McConaughey/Hemsworth clone said, smiling at her and trying to put an arm around her shoulders, which she slapped away. “We’ll take your boat.”

“Sweet Bells is not my boat,” she told him.

“Well, holy crawfish, chère, that’s no problem. I’ll buy it for you.”

“You are not buying me a boat,” she snapped, marching off to Harry’s office.