LITMIR.BIZ

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toward her niece. She’d always tried to teach her that sex should be special; that it was the most intimate act between two people and shouldn’t even be contemplated without sincere emotion, the deepest respect, and a sense of responsibility and consequences.

      Well, emotionally, she was involved, like it or not. Had she been in the least responsible? No. And as to thoughts of future consequences...

      It terrified her to realize just how much she wished there could be one. That he would reappear somewhere in her world, that he would be a responsible member of the human community and not just a diver. Or...a common criminal. Or worse.

      A murderer.

      No. She knew instinctively that wasn’t true. Or else she just wanted to believe it.

      Keith didn’t have any problem being entirely natural and casual. He chatted easily. Beth wasn’t even sure what was being said half the time.

      Then they heard the motor of the yacht’s dinghy, returning with Matt and Lee and the supplies. Ben said it was time to go, and thanked Keith, then Matt and Lee. They all talked about what a pleasure it had been to meet, said they would undoubtedly run into one another somewhere along the line sometime.

      “Beth, you can come back with the girls and me,” Ben said. “Save Keith the bother.”

      “Of course.”

      “I can take you back—” Keith began.

      “The girls and I have already packed up. We don’t need to head back to the island, just straight to the boat,” Ben said.

      “Perfect,” Beth murmured.

      It wasn’t perfect. Perfect would be if they all disappeared, if there didn’t have to be any words, if she could just go back where she had been and pretend. Pretend Keith Henson was someone she would see again, someone she had known forever and ever...

      Someone she trusted.

      She had to trust him. She’d just gone to bed with him.

      She felt more awkward than ever. She was at ease saying goodbye to Matt and Lee, but she couldn’t meet Keith’s eyes, and she only shook his hand, while she’d kissed the others goodbye on the cheek. So much for appearing completely casual.

      She couldn’t escape quite that easily. He stopped her and took her hands. His eyes met hers. Amused but affectionate, she thought. Affectionate? She wanted so much more.

      She still felt so ridiculously awkward.

      “We’ll talk soon,” he said.

      She nodded, hoping she looked casual, carefree.

      “I will find you,” he said softly.

      “Finding me won’t be very difficult,” she murmured.

      “Strange timing, huh?”

      She didn’t know exactly what he meant. And she couldn’t ask him. She couldn’t stand being so close to him any longer, with so very much unsaid.

      She had to escape, and she did, reaching her brother’s dinghy before the others.

      As Ben revved his little motor to life, he laughed with the girls as they raved about the Sea Serpent. She was grateful she didn’t have to speak. She kept a smile plastered to her face as she lifted a hand in farewell to the men standing on deck.

      Soon Ben had set their course for home. She reflected that she hadn’t even said goodbye to the others—any of the Masons, or Brad and Sandy. The Masons she would see again, and as for Brad and Sandy...

      Thinking of the pair still gave her an uneasy feeling.

      She looked away from the yacht at last and turned her gaze westward, toward the Florida coast. It would all come into perspective, she told herself.

      She would get home. She would believe she had been silly, that she couldn’t have seen a skull. That nothing had been going on during their stay on the island. No one had lurked around with evil intent.

      And as for Keith...

      She would stop thinking about him eventually. In her mind, he would lose the charismatic appeal that had all but obsessed her. She would remember him as a man. As someone special she had once met. Handsome, virile, exciting...but too laid-back, too ready to enjoy good times with his friends, too lacking in ambition.

      It would all come into perspective....

      But things always came back around to one fact.

      She was certain she had seen a skull.

      Just as she was certain there was something about Keith. No matter how appealing the man might be, he simply wasn’t what he seemed.

      There had been an honesty in the way he’d touched her, but only lies had fallen from his lips.

       7

      “I admit to still being confused,” redheaded Ashley Dilessio said, easing back in her chair at Nick’s, her uncle’s restaurant on the bay.

      Nick’s was everything good about the area, Beth thought. Boats came in to dock, houseboats were moored nearby, and anyone was welcome. The tables were rough wood, an overhang sheltered the outside seating from the sun, and it felt like a continuation of island living in the midst of a hectic, overpopulated, multicultural community.

      Not to take anything away from the yacht club, she decided a little defensively. The two establishments were just different. And of course part of Nick’s appeal was that she’d known Ashley most of her life.

      Now Ashley was with the police force, in the forensics department, and her husband, Jake, was a homicide detective.

      “Okay, you got to the island. You walked with the kids. You thought you saw a skull. A man showed up—you hid it. You went back with Ben, and there was no skull,” Ashley said, her green eyes studying Beth with a slight frown wrinkling her forehead.

      “That’s the gist of it, yes. Ben thinks I saw a conch shell,” Beth said, her tone a little sheepish. “It might be nothing, it might be something. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Ted and Molly Monoco.”

      “I remember the story, but... I thought they were sailing around the world,” Ashley said. “No wonder no one’s seen them.”

      “But what if it was a skull?”

      “You said that whatever you saw was gone when you went back.”

      “Maybe I just couldn’t find it,” Beth persisted.

      Ashley stirred her straw around in the large glass of iced tea in front of her. “This isn’t my jurisdiction, or even Jake’s, you know.”

      “But you have contacts,” Beth reminded her.

      Ashley nodded thoughtfully.

      Beth let out a deep sigh. “Shouldn’t someone check it out?”

      “Yes,” Ashley agreed. “We can get the Coast Guard out there to take a look, if nothing else. But...why would the skull—if it was a skull—have disappeared? Did any of the other boaters seem suspicious?”

      Beth groaned. “All of them.”

      Ashley smiled. “Okay, tell me.”

      Beth began describing the other campers on the island: the Masons, who Ashley knew casually, Brad and Sandy, and the three men in the exquisite yacht.

      “Three hunks, huh?” Ashley teased.

      “Um. They looked the part.”

      “What part?”

      “Oh, you know, the type who would be out fishing, diving...boating.”

      “You mean they had beer bellies and could open the bottles with their teeth?”

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