C. L.R. Dougherty - Love for Sail

C onnie clenched her jaw so hard she thought her teeth would crack. She was intent on the heavy straps, imagining what would happen as they were pulled tight. From the corner of her eye, she could see the man with his hand on the control lever. The other man, the one standing in front of her, nodded his head. The machine groaned and creaked as it pulled the slack from the straps. She flinched and bit back a scream of anguish as the man in front of her waved his arms frantically .

"Stop!" he yelled, over the noise of the machine .

The other man pushed the lever back, easing the pressure, and Connie started breathing again. "What's wrong?" he asked as the noise abated .

"We're gonna break her back if you don't watch it. Forward sling's gonna slide right off her bottom. We gotta tie 'em together, or she'll slip right out 'n' bust like a watermelon ."

Connie watched like a mother lion as the workers repositioned the straps under Diamantista and prepared to lift the 49,000-pound boat and move her to the launching area. She knew that the crew launched as many as ten boats per day during the busy season and that they never dropped one or even scratched the paint, but none of those other boats was hers .

She was surprised at how attached she had become to Diamantista in the short time she had owned her. She'd never been one to care about possessions; she was more into collecting experiences than things. She knew that was ironic, given her impoverished childhood. Most people who struck it rich after growing up in desperate poverty were acquisitive, but she was a 'take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints' kind of gal .

Initially, she hadn't been looking for a boat of such modern design; she had been enamored of traditional vessels like Vengeance, the Herreshoff 59 that belonged to her friends, Dani Berger and Liz Chirac. She had learned to sail on Vengeance down in the Caribbean, so it was her standard of comparison .

As she had started shopping for boats, she'd been forced to compromise. She needed a private stateroom for her charter guests. The Herreshoff had two double staterooms; there were no other sleeping spaces and she couldn't manage with only two double accommodations. Liz and Dani shared the forward double when they had guests aboard, but she wasn't about to share her sleeping quarters with Paul Russo. She liked him well enough, but she was still off men since her last bad experience .

Paul was her friend, and he was a great cook. She was thrilled that he was going to help her get started with the charter business, but she wasn't ready for romance, and he didn't seem to be, either .

* * *

P aul was sitting on the patio at the Miami Yacht Club, sipping a beer and wondering what he had gotten himself into. Connie Barrera was drop-dead gorgeous, not to mention being a pleasant person, but he was still dumbfounded that he had agreed to spend a few months as the first mate and cook on her new charter yacht. Of course, at the time she had asked him, the whole thing had seemed like a pipe-dream. She hadn't even bought Diamantista when they were talking about it. They had been in Martinique on Vengeance, sailing along without a care in the world after he had helped bring Sam Alfano to justice. The fact that Connie was planning to buy a yacht with the money from diamonds she had found on a beach in the Bahamas had seemed no more real than the notion that she had just ripped off Alfano and his partner for over ten million dollars worth of those same loose diamonds .

The morality of her 'finders, keepers' attitude didn't bother him; he had been part of her support group as she rationalized keeping the diamonds for herself. Alfano didn't deserve the stones; they were fruit of a tainted tree. If Connie hadn't contrived to end up with them, they would have enriched some undeserving government agency or further corrupted a few bureaucrats somewhere. He liked Connie and wished her well, but he was first and foremost a cop, albeit a retired one. Connie wasn't exactly crooked, but her ideas of right and wrong were much less structured than his .

He'd been granted a little extra time to figure out what to do about the situation because he'd been called back from his early retirement to help prepare a case that he'd been working for almost two years. It was about to come to trial, and the prosecution team asked for Paul's assistance as a consultant because the other members of the task force of which he'd been a part were occupied with ongoing investigations. That had left Connie in a bit of a bind, as she'd planned on Pauls helping her deliver Diamantista from Annapolis to the islands in the next week or two. She was up in Annapolis getting the boat ready and looking for temporary crew .

And then there was the question of where this whole thing with Connie would end up. They were attracted to each other; they had discussed that at length on several occasions, but neither was ready for a romantic relationship. Connie still hadn't gotten over her last bad experience, and Paul clung tenaciously to his hard-won second term as a bachelor. He'd been single since his train-wreck of a marriage had ended in an acrimonious divorce five years ago .

Even with that understood between them, Paul was dubious about the notion of the two of them living on a small boat in such a romantic environment. Despite their agreement, temptation could make a mockery of their intent. He didn't want to see either of them get hurt, and given their fragile emotional states, that seemed to be a strong possibility .

* * *

J immy Dorlan and Kirsten Jones studied the index cards pinned in random fashion to the cork board outside the Annapolis Harbormaster's office. Kirsten grasped a card in her fingers, the bitten nails of her other hand plucking out the thumbtack that held the card to the board .

"I like the looks of this one," she said, handing it to Jimmy .

He stared at it, squinting, as she read aloud over his shoulder .

"Fifty-six-foot sailing yacht bound for the Virgin Islands in early November seeks two experienced crew members. Expenses and return airfare paid. Apply in person to Connie Barrera aboard Diamantista, at anchor in Back Creek, any day after 5 p.m ."

"How we gonna find that ?"

"Water taxi. Wonder if Connie's got a man aboard?" Kirsten asked .

"Why? You lookin' for a little action on the side ?"

"No, stupid. If she's a single woman, it would be even better ."

"Connie's a man's name sometimes ."

"No, it's not ."

"Is, too. I had a roommate named Connie, an' he sure as shit wasn't a woman ."

"We'll need to convince her we know what we're doing, Jimmy ."