The Reef Read Online Free Page B

instead of driving some college boy nuts?”
    Tate tossed her head and tried her hand at sophistication. “Boys are easy,” she drawled, and slid down to sit on the deck across from him. “I like challenges.”
    The quick twist in his gut warned him. “Careful, little girl,” he murmured.
    â€œI’m twenty,” she said with all the frigid pride of burgeoning womanhood. Or she would be, she amended, by summer’s end. “Why are you out here diving for treasure instead of working for a living?”
    Now he grinned. “Because I’m good. If you’d been better, you’d have this, and I wouldn’t.”
    Rather than dignify that with a response, she took another sip of Pepsi. “Why isn’t your father along? Has he given up diving?”
    â€œIn a manner of speaking. He’s dead.”
    â€œOh. I’m sorry.”
    â€œNine years ago,” Matthew continued, and kept cleaning the sword. “We were doing some hunting off of Australia.”
    â€œA diving accident?”
    â€œNo. He was too good to have an accident.” He pickedup the can she’d set down, took a swallow. “He was murdered.”
    It took Tate a moment. Matthew had spoken so matter-of-factly that the word “murder” didn’t register. “My God, how—”
    â€œI don’t know, for sure.” Nor did he know why he had told her. “He went down alive; we brought him up dead. Hand me that rag.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œThat was the end of it,” he said and reached for the rag himself. “No use dwelling on the past.”
    She had an urge to lay a hand on his scarred one, but judged, correctly, that he’d snap it off at the wrist. “An odd statement from a treasure hunter.”
    â€œBabe, it’s what it brings you now that counts. And this ain’t bad.”
    Distracted, she looked back down at the hilt. As Matthew rubbed, she began to see the gleam. “Silver,” she murmured. “It’s silver. A mark of rank. I knew it.”
    â€œIt’s a nice piece.”
    Forgetting everything but the find, she leaned closer, let her fingertip skim along the gleam. “I think it’s eighteenth-century.”
    His eyes smiled. “Do you?”
    â€œI’m majoring in marine archeology.” She gave her bangs an impatient push. “It could have belonged to the captain.”
    â€œOr any other officer,” Matthew said dryly. “But it’ll keep me in beer and shrimp for a while.”
    Stunned, she jerked back. “You’re going to sell it? You’re just going to sell it? For money?”
    â€œI’m not going to sell it for clamshells.”
    â€œBut don’t you want to know where it came from, who it came from?”
    â€œNot particularly.” He turned the cleaned portion of the hilt toward the sun, watched it glint in the light. “There’s an antique dealer on Saint Bart’s who’ll give me a square deal.”
    â€œThat’s horrible. That’s . . .” She searched for the worst insult she could imagine. “Ignorant.” In a flash, shewas on her feet. “To just sell it that way. For all you know, it may have belonged to the captain of the Isabella or the Santa Marguerite. That would be a historic find. It could belong in a museum.”
    Amateurs, Matthew thought in disgust. “It belongs where I put it.” He rose fluidly. “I found it.”
    Her heart stuttered at the thought of it wasting away in some dusty antique shop, or worse, being bought by some careless tourist who would hang it on the wall of his den.
    â€œI’ll give you a hundred dollars for it.”
    His grin flashed. “Red, I could get more than that by melting down the hilt.”
    She paled at the thought. “You wouldn’t do that. You couldn’t.” When he only cocked his head, she bit her lip. The stereo system