A Mom for Matthew

The offer had come at the lowest point in Zeke’s life. Mere weeks after Trixie Lee had abandoned motherhood and him. She’d hightailed it in the middle of the night, leaving him with a sick baby and working a dead-end mechanic job for her brother in a backwater burg. Which was why Zeke felt doubly lucky that Kemper, who ran his corporation from a Dallas high-rise, exhibited a willingness to be flexible with Zeke’s schedule. That allowed him time off whenever Matt took sick.

Of course, he was even more fortunate that his mom, Celia Rossetti, had without a qualm quit her nurse’s aide job to keep his house and tend his son. His mom had once been in his shoes, as a single parent. And since Trixie left him to muddle through parenting alone, Zeke had a new appreciation for everything Celia had faced, especially considering the wild kid he’d been. Zeke didn’t fool himself; his mom was the best thing standing between him and Ms. Burnham. He found it difficult to think about child welfare without wondering where they’d been in the early months, when he and Trixie Lee had struggled to deal with a profoundly deaf baby. Or maybe he’d expected too much….

Cutting short those unsettling memories, Zeke stiff-armed his way through Kemper’s revolving glass door.

Three men, clad in blue jeans and coordinated cotton shirts bearing the oil company’s logo, glanced up as Zeke brought in a June breeze and the ocean smell.

“Hey, hey, boss!” Gavin Davis, five years older than Zeke’s thirty, collected a hard hat from one of the desks and left his co-workers. “About time you got your skinny ass back in the saddle. But you don’t look like a guy who’s been lazing on the beach for three days. Did someone drag you through a doggie door sideways?” Pausing near Zeke, Davis studied the network of lines fanning out from his younger friend’s dark, deep-set eyes.

“Anybody ever tell you you’re too funny for words?” Zeke feigned a punch at Gavin’s shoulder, but Davis adroitly parried and avoided contact.

Sobering, Zeke shifted his thermos to his other hand. “So, how much did you guys accomplish in those same three days? How far did your crew get laying groundwork for Number Four?”

Gavin scraped a thumbnail across a shadowy blond beard. Gavin Davis was as fair as Zeke Rossetti was dark. The two had a relaxed rapport on the job. But unlike Davis, Zeke kept his private life private.

“Geological sound waves came in the first day you stayed home. Seismic recordings are up to snuff.” Davis fell into step with him. “Jud Watson tossed a stack of scientific data sheets on your desk yesterday. He said your hunch was right on, except he had to go about five hundred feet deeper than your original estimate.”

Zeke adjusted his stride to match Gavin’s longer legs. The two men entered a partitioned-off space that served as Zeke’s office. “Five hundred feet short? That changes the drilling angle. Means we’ve gotta add rebar to our estimates,” Zeke mused as he looked through a stack of messages he’d ripped off a spindle in the center of his desk. “Have the perimeter marker buoys been dropped?”

“Yep. Want a look-see?” Gavin lifted a squat pair of binoculars from a hook screwed into the plywood wall and passed them to Zeke. “We set the buoys, all right, but you got yourself a little problem, boss. Or I guess you could say a potentially big problem.” He clapped the field glasses into Zeke’s hand.

“How so?” Zeke absently juggled the binoculars with the message slips. Frowning, he finally tore his gaze from a note he’d been reading.

Gavin spun Zeke around, facing him toward a thirty-foot bank of windows. Then he pointed a finger at a partially obstructed section of sun-dappled water.

Zeke raised the glasses and fiddled with the dial until he’d adjusted the focus. “What the hell? Why’s an old fishing tub anchored smack in the middle of our cordoned-off drill site?”

“That’s your potential problem, Zeke. Yesterday afternoon, maybe five minutes before we finished anchoring the last buoy, a little ol’ gal sashays up in that leaky boat. Fast as you please, she put on scuba gear and commenced diving.”

“For what?” Zeke wet his lips and spun the view focus again.

“Says she’s hunting for an airplane that crashed here at the end of World War Two.”

“A damned treasure hunter?” Zeke sputtered. “Why didn’t you tell her to get lost?”

“Norm tried to. She tuned him out.”

“She’d better listen. We can’t have someone churning up the ocean floor right there—it’s where we’re building our next platform. And that’s not even taking into account the pure danger she’ll be in once we start hauling in equipment.”

“Then you’d better send her packing. She said we didn’t have any right to evict her from the bay.”

“The hell we don’t! I do. Well, Kemper does. He’s got general exploration access, thanks to a federal energy bill. I filed site requests three weeks ago and filled out the paperwork for drilling permits. Dammit, I don’t see our license in this stack of mail. Well, it’ll be here by Friday. It’s just late.”

“Don’t bite my head off, Zeke. Norm tried reasoning.” The straps on Gavin’s hard hat swung back and forth as he shook his head from side to side. “Didn’t faze her.”

“Is the runabout docked? Damn, I hate wasting part of a morning when I’m three days behind schedule as it is. But I’ll go set your treasure hunter straight.”

With a broad sweep of his hand, Gavin muttered, “She’s not mine, thank God! You’re welcome to have a go at her.”

Rolling his eyes, Zeke tossed the binoculars down on an already teetering pile of unopened mail—one of many stacks on his desk. He saw that they included contracts to subcontractors, awaiting his signature and a ream of data sheets outlining the next well Kemper would bring in.

Taking a deep breath, Zeke lost no time stalking outside again. He expected Gavin to follow. It wasn’t until Zeke reached the company runabout and knelt to unlash it from the cleats, that he realized his crew chief had remained behind. Zeke yanked repeatedly on the rope starter and managed to burn off part of his irritation at Gavin and the unknown troublemaker sitting in the bay. Idiot woman probably had no clue that oil-drillers spent months securing drilling right of ways.

Norm Steel, whom everyone on the team called Gramps, was too nice. He was also a man of few words. Zeke figured Norm hadn’t made their position clear.

Once he succeeded in getting the motor humming, he carefully guided the runabout between the creosote-covered pilings that separated the office finger pier from the Number Three driller. Not until he hit open water did his thoughts turn toward employing some tact and diplomacy in dealing with the unnamed troublemaker. Why hit her like gangbusters when a little friendliness might go further?

“Ship ahoy!” Cutting his engine, Zeke let his craft drift to the starboard side of the aging fishing vessel.

A wizened face, ancient enough to match the peeling paint on the old shrimp boat, peered at Zeke through a broken railing. “You callin’ me, you?” the man asked in the manner customary to the many Cajun shrimpers in the Gulf region.

Zeke offered up a toothy grin he didn’t feel. “Name’s Rossetti. Zeke Rossetti. I’m general manager for the outfit that owns the string of oil pumpers back there.” His wave encompassed three oil rigs already making rhythmic thuds in the background.

But since the leathery face above him continued to stare as if the man didn’t comprehend, Zeke elaborated. “I’m speaking for Kemper Oil Research and Development.”

The old fellow grimaced. “I rent my boat, me. To Miss Stafford.”

“Well, explain to her you’ll have to weigh anchor and go elsewhere. She already heard this news yesterday from one of my crew. I understand she questioned his authority. I have the right to move Miss Stafford along. That is, Kemper does. Our latest exploratory permit encompasses the portion of the bay that lies between our twelve marker buoys, plus a five-hundred-yard perimeter in all directions. We need a lot of space.” He made a circular motion with both arms to show the general vicinity surrounding the buoys bobbing in bright orange array above aqua-colored waves. The rolling waves rocked Zeke’s boat, causing him to adjust his already wide-legged stance.

Suddenly, a swimmer in scuba gear broke the water’s surface a few feet away, rising like a mermaid between his unanchored runabout and the larger boat. This mermaid, Zeke noted, sported a peeling, badly sunburned nose, and hair skinned back in a dripping ponytail. She shoved an eye mask up into her hair, then paddled awkwardly toward a frayed rope ladder dropped over the side of the listing shrimp boat.

Zeke now saw the tub had impossibly worn rigging and a badly scratched hull. He wasn’t sure the damned thing wouldn’t sink when the woman kicked off her oversize swim fins and swung herself onto the sagging rope ladder.

He found himself holding his breath until she landed on deck and shimmied out of twin air tanks. Dispassionately, Zeke studied the boyish body encased in an ugly green, one-piece bathing suit that brought to mind an undernourished frog.

Flesh not covered by the ghastly suit gleamed oyster-shell pale—except for crimson shoulders that more or less matched her freckled nose. Had no one warned her that the Galveston sun wasn’t even at its zenith yet? It was still early in June. But if she persisted in her folly for many more days, she’d turn into a crispy critter. Of course Zeke was here to ensure she didn’t continue diving—at least not in this spot.

“Ma’am,” he said politely, shading his eyes. “I’m explaining to your partner why you can’t go on doing whatever it is you’re doing in this part of Galveston Bay. Within the week, I’ll have a dozen tugs hauling in underwater drill equipment on flatbed barges. Believe me, you don’t want to get caught in that mess.”

Grace Stafford accepted a towel handed her by Jorge Boudreaux, who pronounced his name Horhay Boodrow. She realized the gentle old soul whose boat she’d rented was practically quaking in his sisal flip-flops. That immediately raised her hackles. She didn’t know who this tall, slightly shaggy, melt-your-socks-rugged guy thought he was, but she couldn’t afford to let anyone intimidate the only person in Galveston whose boat she could afford to rent by the hour. She’d barely begun her quest. She couldn’t give up now. Especially not to please the kind of snake-charmer Grace had, for the past twenty-nine years, done her level best to avoid. For good reason. She imagined the father she’d never known as just such a smiling, fast-talking stinker. To say nothing of the fact that she’d recently had personal experience of a jerk just like this.

“I appreciate your concern for my safety, but…this is exactly where I need to be,” she said, pausing to prop her air tanks against an open sea chest before she joined Boudreaux at the break in the railing.

The handsome stranger kept shaking his head.

Grace explained again, deciding that a more formal approach might be the way to go. “After seven months of online sea chart study, combined with detailed analysis exchanged with naval and Coast Guard underwater explorers, I’ve got reason to believe my grandfather’s Grumman Duck, J2F-6, was blown off course here in a hurricane. That he went down near this very spot. The plane is an historic relic, Mr.—sorry, I didn’t catch your name. Not that exchanging names matters. In the interests of being neighborly, though, let me introduce myself. I’m Grace Stafford. From San Antonio,” she added, wringing out her wet ponytail. “Back at my hotel, I have documents issued by the naval department, giving me exclusive rights to excavate the ocean floor within a half-mile radius in any direction from where Jorge is currently anchored. In other words, my search is government sanctioned. I’m prepared to raise the plane as soon as I locate her. But I have no idea when that will be. Could be a week, a month or with luck—tomorrow,” she said, smiling sweetly down at the face now scowling up at her.

Zeke mulled over not only the woman’s too-smooth explanation, but the content of her statement. He hated the words historic and environmentally unsound almost as much as he hated women who camouflaged hidden agendas with sweet-as-pie smiles. Either could cause a man massive headaches. Zeke had learned both of these things the hard way during his wildcatting days in West Texas. And back then, few things rattled Zeke Rossetti. Those were his footloose, fancy-free years, when he followed his slightest whim—something he definitely couldn’t do these days. Now he had obligations. To his son, his mom and to Pace Kemper, who had faith that he’d excavate a string of productive wells.

“Look, Ms. Stafford,” Zeke began again, attempting equanimity. “I’m sure this salvage is important to you. However, my company stands to lose up to a quarter mil per day in various fees if you persist in your little venture.” Zeke figured he wouldn’t get anywhere being totally unreasonable. He’d especially hate to be accused of badgering a fragile, bean-pole, city gal, who obviously had no idea how drilling operations worked.

He thought if he appealed to her sense of fair play, they’d get somewhere—if women grasped a concept such as fair play. Zeke knew that to some women the term was foreign— Trixie Lee, his ex-wife, being a prime example. He forced himself not to think about how Trixie had suckered him into marriage and continued to sucker him with her sporadic custody threats.

He made an effort to appear relaxed and friendly toward the dripping woman on the rickety tub.

Grace considered her response as she smoothed back flyaway strands of red-gold hair that had come loose from her ponytail. Those same strands were beginning to dry, curling in the corkscrews she detested, curls she’d never been able to tame. Her hair gave the wrong impression; men tended to see her as young and flighty. And the teacher in Grace wanted everything orderly. “Be that as it may, uh…sir. I have clearance from the U.S. Navy to proceed. I’ve got letters from two departments at the Pentagon, if you’d care to have me fax you copies from my hotel—provided my historic hotel has a fax. Plus I have a personal interest in raising the plane. So I must insist you let me get on with it.” She ended abruptly, wishing she hadn’t mentioned the personal part. Men took advantage of women when things became the least bit emotional.

If ever Zeke had seen determination oozing from anyone, Miss—or more likely, Ms.—Stafford’s sea-colored eyes hardened with just such resolve. Clearly, he needed to go back to his office and make a few calls to find out how solid her claim was. And now he was starting to worry about why his permit wasn’t in the mail stacked on his desk.