Could he be any more obnoxious?
“Isn’t she a beauty? And smart, too,” Frank continued without missing a beat.
Veronica couldn’t believe her ears. My grandfather just said nice words about me. Holy cow! I’d better be careful. Either his nose is going to grow or the sky is going to fall.
Flossie set a tray on the table and passed out frosty, mismatched jelly glasses of iced tea. What happened to the Fostoria crystal they used for everyday? Amazingly, Flossie had not only made the beverage in that short time, but she’d also taken out her metal rollers and managed to tease and spray her hair into a poufy, Dolly Parton-style do.
Her grandfather proceeded to add sugar to his iced tea. One teaspoon. Two teaspoons. Three teaspoons. Four teaspoons. Five. No one else noticed, or else they were being polite.
Veronica’s mouth dropped lower and lower with each addition.
Even more amazing, he took a long swig of the drink and said, “That’s better.”
So, Frank still had a sweet tooth. She’d forgotten how much he liked sweet things, especially ice cream. As a little girl, it had been a marvel to open his freezer and see a dozen different flavors of ice cream . . . right next to all the kielbasas.
Rosa put her hands on the arms of the two men on each side of her. “And these are my two sons, Anthony and Stefano. They are smart and beautiful, too, are they not?”
If one likes steroids.
Everyone nodded. Veronica could swear there was a matchmaking glint in Rosa’s eyes. That was confirmed when she asked Veronica if she was married. When Veronica said no, Rosa smiled and said, “Neither are my sons. They have been waiting for the right woman.” She stared directly at Veronica as she spoke.
The two olive-complexioned men sort of smiled at her. Some women might consider them attractive, in a barracuda sort of way. They gave her a lengthy, head-to-toe survey, as if she were a choice piece of meat being offered to them. A kielbasa, maybe. One of them even winked at her.
Oh, no. No, no, no, no! I am not getting involved with some Mafia guys. Jake was bad enough. But Mafia? No way! And what is my grandfather doing with these people?
Her grandfather then spoiled the effect of his earlier nice words about her by adding, “Like I told you before, Rosa, my granddaughter is going to take over Jinx, Inc., for me. She’ll be heading the Pink Project diving operation, under my supervision, of course.”
Veronica gaped at the old fool.
Rosa lifted her eyebrows with concern. “I know we discussed this before, Franco, but are you sure she can help us find the pink diamonds?”
The two of them talked as if she wasn’t even here.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! I am not taking over Jinx, Inc. I am not supervising any diving project. Did she say “us”? Oh, Jeesh! Did the Mafia commission Frank to do some project involving pink diamonds? What pink diamonds? Are they stolen? Damn, he must have taken this on because of his money problems.
Hard to believe that her biggest concern this time last week was boredom with her job. Can my life get any worse?
Turned out it could.
In walked Jake, cool as a Jersey shore breeze, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and athletic shoes with no socks. He tipped his head at everyone, kissed Flossie and Rosa on the cheek, patted her grandfather on the shoulder, and shook hands with Anthony and Stefano, saying “Tony. Steve.” Apparently, he knew the Mafia gang. Why am I surprised? That’s what comes from hanging around casinos. He plopped down in the seat next to Veronica, took a sip of her iced tea, then turned his baby blues on her. “Hey, honey bun! Your nose is getting sunburned.”
Veronica had been crushed by Jake’s fiancée announcement last night, and she still felt like a raw open wound when she thought about Jake marrying someone else. For just a second, she considered castrating him with her iced-tea spoon.
He put a hand on her arm and whispered, “Hi!”
She slapped his hand away and sputtered for something to say, but all she could come up with was, “Where’s Barbie?”
He flashed her his dimples. “Trish’s at school.”
She must be younger than she looked. “School? Oh, you are such a sleaze. Fooling around with a schoolgirl.”
“Premed,” he said, chucking her under the chin. “She works part-time in the casino between semesters. And, for your information, she’s twenty-five.”
Well, that makes me feel lots better. Not!
“Jake is Ronnie’s husband,” her grandfather announced out of the blue.
She wasn’t sure if her grandfather had forgotten the divorces or if he was just being obnoxious.
“Scusi, but I thought you said . . .” Rosa’s forehead furrowed.
“Ex-husband,” Veronica pointed out.
“Oh,” Rosa said, relieved.
Rosa’s relief sent little alarm bells off in Veronica’s already-pounding head.
“Four times ex-husband,” Jake the Snake pointed out, smiling.
She elbowed him in the arm, and he pretended to be hurt, like an immature idiot.
“Huh?” Rosa and her two sons asked.
“Ronnie and I can’t live with each other, and we hot damn can’t live without each other.” Jake regarded her with amusement. “Isn’t that right, cupcake?”
Why is he doing this? What’s his game this time? “Jake is engaged to someone else,” she informed everyone.
The Mafia group appeared pleased, but Frank and Flossie stared at Jake as if he’d committed some heinous crime.
“Actually, I might not be engaged anymore.”
Veronica turned slowly to look at him. “What? That’s not what you said last night.”
Jake winked at her.
“What in blazes does that mean?” Frank wanted to know. “Are you engaged or not?”
“Ronnie and Jake, you were together last night?” Flossie homed in on the least relevant thing Jake had said. “How romantic!”
You wouldn’t have thought it was romantic if you had been there. Nope. Definitely. Not. Romantic. “What do you mean, you might not be engaged anymore?” she asked Jake, even though she knew she shouldn’t encourage him in any way.
“Trish seems to think I still have you under my skin.” His eyes held hers for several moments.
Under his skin? Me? Veronica was not pleased . . . much. “Why would Doctor Bimbo think that?” she asked. “Until last night, we hadn’t seen each other for two years.”
“Maybe because she practically had to wrestle me to the floor to keep me from going after you.” He shrugged. “Anyhow, Trish gave the ring back and told me not to darken her door till I get you out of my system.” He smiled at her as if he’d just told her she’d won the lottery.
“And I’m supposed to be flattered by that? Like I’m going to welcome you back till you get tired of me? Like I’m the other woman or something?”
“Yep.”
She snorted. “That would be a first.”
“Hey, I never cheated on you. Ever. And don’t arch your eyebrows at me, babe. It’s the truth.”
“Give me a break. Never let it be said that Jake Jensen would allow a little rust to grow on his zipper. You’ve had more women than . . . than Hugh Hefner.”
“But not while we were married.”
“Yeah, but you were bed-hopping before the ink was dry on our divorce papers. All four times.”
“Doesn’t count. Everyone knows testosterone is a natural IQ suppressant, but I never cheated while I was with you.”
“Go right ahead, blame it on testosterone.”
Frank cleared his throat a couple of times, trying to get their attention. “Do you two mind saving your lovers’ squabbles for later?”
“We are not lovers,” Veronica protested, but no one seemed to be listening.
She glanced around the table and suddenly realized that she and Jake were making spectacles of themselves. Jake, on the other hand, looked pleased that he’d managed to rile her. The lout! But, no, he had his hands in his pocket
, rubbing the worry beads. That meant he was nervous. Hmmm.
“What brings you here?” Frank asked Jake with a cat-who-got-the-cream smirk.
“Yeah, why aren’t you playing poker?” Veronica snapped.
“Tournament’s over and I’m dropping out of the circuit for a while. Luckily, I’m free for the next month or so.”
Lucky for whom?
“Good. Then you can help Ronnie with the new project,” her grandfather suggested, a crafty gleam in his eyes.
Whaaaat? she screamed inwardly. Am I being set up here? “No, no, no! Not that I’m getting involved, but no, definitely not. No Jake. No treasure hunting.”
“We’ll see.” Frank smiled at Jake, who smiled back.
Worms “R” Us!
“You know, that reminds me. Life is like a poker game,” Jake began.
Veronica groaned. That was her usual reaction to his hokey poker platitudes. She’d heard that he used them as headers on each chapter of his poker how-to book.
He ignored her groan. “Life is like a poker game—you gotta ante up if you’re gonna win the prize.”
Everyone at the table was silent for a moment as they tried to figure how what Jake said related to the treasure-hunting project.
“Is that sorta like, your ship can’t come in if you don’t send out any boats?” Frank asked.
“Precisely,” Jake replied.
“Yo, Jake! How’d you do in the tournament?” Anthony spoke up.
“Second place,” Jake replied. “Just can’t manage to win the championship.”
“Hey, second place ain’t bad. Half a mil, wasn’t it?” This time it was Stefano speaking. The two goons had tongues after all.
Then Stefano’s words sank in.
“Half a mil?” she squeaked out. “Dollars?”
Jake nodded, suddenly serious, a defensive cast to his eyes. He was reminding her of all the times she’d doubted his ability to make a living from poker. “To answer your question, Frank”—Jake tipped his chair back against the deck rail—“I’m here to show Trish and the world that I can resist Ronnie.”
Veronica choked on the iced tea she’d just swallowed.
Jake clapped her on the back. Too hard. “You should be more careful, honey.”
“You’ve got some nerve. Coming here so you can prove I’m no longer a temptation. So you can then go marry the boardwalk bimbo?”
Jake laughed, unrepentant. “Yeah. So don’t go hitting on me or anything.”
Veronica sputtered with disbelief. Well, she shouldn’t be surprised. Jake had once told her that laughter was good medicine, like jogging for the soul.
He waggled his eyebrows at her, ignoring her outrage. “Ronnie and I go way back,” he said to no one in particular, though everyone was staring at him—at the two of them, actually. “Why, the stories I could tell you about the things we’ve done. Whoo-boy! Makes my toes curl just to think about it. Like the time she handcuffed me to—”
Veronica stood suddenly and pointed at Jake. “You! Come with me. Now!”
He grinned.
She growled, started to stomp toward the beach, took a deep breath, dug in her pocket for a Pepto, popped it into her mouth and proceeded to chomp vigorously, then pivoted and walked back into the house. He followed after her.
“You always did have the greatest ass,” he murmured.
She stopped and turned. “What did you say?”
He just waggled his eyebrows at her again.
Veronica entered the library before him and stopped in the middle of the room. That’s when she heard an ominous clicking sound.
Jake had just locked the door.
Uh-oh!
They both noticed the leather chaise lounge at the same time.
The plot thickens . . .
“Honey.” Flossie put a hand on Frank’s shoulder, calling him back to the present. “Rosa just asked you a question.”
Frank shook his head briskly to clear the cobwebs. “Sorry, Rosa. I was thinking about my granddaughter and that rascal husband of hers. I can hardly remember being that young . . . or so full of piss and vinegar.”
“Tell me about it,” Rosa said, rolling her eyes.
Flossie ran a caressing hand over his forearm. “You’ve still got plenty of piss and vinegar, old man.”
She was reminding him of last night. What a girl!
Without speaking, Rosa’s two sons stood and walked to the edge of the deck. Because of the unseasonably warm temperature for late May, a scattering of people could be seen near the shoreline. An elderly couple wearing matching sweatshirts, holding hands as they strolled along the water’s foamy edge. Several children digging for sand crabs. A college-age jogger, bare-chested, wearing only nylon shorts and running shoes.
Frank loved the ocean. He couldn’t imagine ever living or working away from it for long. Not all his treasure hunts were aquatic, but he always came back. That’s why he couldn’t understand Ronnie’s aversion to it.
Anthony and Stefano surveyed the area as if they expected some mob bosses to pop up out of the dunes. Which wasn’t totally out of the question, even though their father was long buried. Family vendettas had a way of sticking like glue. And the Jersey Pine Barrens were presumably loaded with the casualties of those feuds.
Flossie went into the house, probably to check on her stock portfolio. Most people didn’t know she was quite the investment guru. While Frank had made his fortune in treasure hunting, Flossie had amassed an equal fortune playing the market.
Rosa pulled out a cigarette and put it into one of those silly cigarette holders that were supposed to filter out nicotine. “I don’t like to smoke in front of the boys,” she confessed.
Hmpfh! Those “boys” have seen lots worse than their mother smoking.
Sheepishly, she lit up, inhaled, and blew out an impressive series of rings. Then, sighing with pleasure, she turned her attention to him. “So, Frankie, give me an update on the project.”
He pulled out some maps from a tube at his feet, along with spreadsheets listing costs, items yet to be purchased for the dive, and briefing notes for the six-man crew. The Pink Project would involve deep-sea diving about forty miles off the Jersey coast. It would not be a salvaging operation, because there would be little historical value in raising the wooden-hulled Italian boat, the Sea Witch, which had gone down in a storm about sixty years ago. Therefore, no archaeologist would be on board, nor any representative of the U.S. Park Service, which usually had jurisdiction over shipwrecks. The value was in the iron chest supposedly located in its hold and that contained, in today’s market, roughly twenty million dollars in diamonds.
Rosa knew the details because her Sicilian family had sent the diamonds as a dowry for her mother in this country. In addition, Frank had done extensive historical research and made two trips to Italy, one of which included Flossie, Rosa, and a contingent of Rosa’s stateside family. The map of the site had been drawn and redrawn over and over, and still was a guesstimate . . . but a sound one. In many ways, treasure hunting was like doing a puzzle. In this case, all but a few pieces were in place.
The diamonds had not been stolen, which would have been a definite no-no for Frank. But they had been smuggled across international waters, presumably to avoid customs. He’d bet his left nut there was a story there. In addition, there was no existing cargo registry anywhere, just family letters and the word of one survivor, now long dead.
While the legalities of it all were iffy, the ethics were not. Frank had friends in high places who’d approved the six-month permit to dive within a one-mile radius of the wreck site. He had friends in low places, too, but that was beside the point.
Rosa wanted the handful of pink diamonds, which she considered family heirlooms. Pink diamonds, once available only to royalty, were the most rare of all diamonds, known to fetch up to one million dollars each. Frank and his crew would get the nonpink diamonds, as much as a hundred of the buggers. Dollar-wise, the split should approximately amou
nt to fifty-fifty.
The wreck was a virgin site. No one had made an effort to recover the diamonds in many years, and only a few people knew about the treasure—all members of Rosa’s family. It wasn’t until recent years that technology had enabled them to pinpoint the area where the boat had gone down. Plus, Rosa had waited till her husband died before investing a hundred thousand of his dollars in the venture. Sam had always refused to risk money for what he’d referred to as a “bag of rocks.”
Despite his friendship with Rosa, Frank was cautious. There might be more to this sunken boat than Rosa let on. In addition, he did not entirely trust her two sons to hand over the remaining diamonds. Partnering with the mob was dangerous under any circumstances. And when money was involved, people of any ilk reverted to their baser selves; at least that had been Frank’s experience.
He spread all the documents on the table. After a half hour of back-and-forth questions on issues they had gone over many times before, Rosa smiled at him. “This is so exciting, Franco. When do we start?”
“Two weeks, if I can get my granddaughter to agree to work with us.”
She frowned and took a deep drag on her cigarette, blowing the smoke out slowly in a thin stream. “I don’t know, Franco. She has no expertise.” This wasn’t the first time Rosa had raised these concerns.
“Ronnie is a deal breaker for me,” he said adamantly. Then he softened his tone. “I have my reasons. Not to worry, sweetheart. I’ll be there supervising everything.”
She tapped her ridiculously long, red nails on the table; they were just like Flossie’s. “Why is it so important that your granddaughter be involved?”
Rosa was the one who originated the search, and she was ponying up a hundred thousand. He had to be careful not to offend her. So, while he would like to tell her to mind her own business, what he did was shrug and reply tersely, “Family.”
“Ahhhh,” she said. “We Italians know better than anyone—family is everything.”