A Mom for Matthew. Roz Fox Denny
Читать онлайн книгу.
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