“Of course I’m worried,” Zeke snapped. “That has nothing to do with arranging a sitter for Matt. Why didn’t you tell me about your health problems when I phoned nearly four years ago asking for your help?”
“Because, tough guy, in all of your twenty-six years, you’d never asked me for anything. I wanted to help you, Zeke. I wanted to feel needed. Dammit, I still do.”
That rocked Zeke. Again he wrestled with the weight of what had surely been selfishness throughout the years of his hell-raising youth. He didn’t know how to put any of what he was feeling into words. He barely managed to muster a croak as his mom headed for the kitchen, saying she was going to make a pot of coffee. “I more than need you, Ma,” he called. “Having Matthew changed my life. I want to know what Doc Collins finds. Until this is settled, I’ll hire a high-school girl part-time to watch Matt. Give you a break a few hours every day.”
Celia turned at the door. “You’re ignoring almost everything I’ve said. Hire someone for a few evenings so you can date a nice young woman once in a while.”
“There you have me, Ma.” Zeke spread his hands. “I don’t know any nice young women.” He stressed the nice, which Celia flatly ignored by covering her ears.
Bouncing his son on his hip, a child who’d clearly grown anxious again, Zeke strode down the opposite hall. Matthew used to be frightened to death of baths. Now that he was older, he loved them. Zeke discovered that the time he spent performing the routine task allowed him to mull over problems that cropped up at work or elsewhere. Tonight he was faced with so many, Matt would shrivel like a raisin if he left the kid in the tub long enough to figure out answers. Tomorrow morning, not only would Zeke have a host of workmen and upset contractors to deal with, he was also expected to hasten Grace Stafford’s departure. Last, but far from least, there was his mother’s health. What if her cyst was malignant?
Not until he’d wound up Matt’s toy boat and sent rows of ripples spewing from underneath a plastic bridge, did Zeke decide to deal with the obstacles one at a time. First, he’d talk to the men. The contractors next. Maybe by then Pace would have good news from his D.C. connections. If not, Zeke might ask if his boss would allow hazard pay for helping Grace. Or there was Gavin, who could be persuaded to do almost any job for a few extra bucks a week.
As far as Celia’s checkup went, Zeke refused to buy trouble by thinking the worst.
THE NEXT DAY, Zeke arrived at work with his plans made. Again, Gavin met him at the door. “What happened to you yesterday, Zeke? I expected you to come back after your trip to the courthouse. Instead, you left me here to field calls from all our contractors, who want to know what the hell’s going on. Thanks heaps.”
“Sorry, Gav. I phoned Pace to tell him what I learned about Ms. Stafford’s permits. He asked me to try and negotiate her out of our hair.”
“It must not have gone well. She’s back in the same spot this morning.” Davis jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
Zeke shook his head. “She’s on a mission. Save me from women on a mission.” He shifted his lunch and thermos to the other hand and walked into his office. He set everything on his desk and grabbed the binoculars. Moving to the window, he brought the creaky old boat into focus. It swayed gently on the incoming tide, but he saw no signs of life. Zeke supposed that meant Grace had dived and Jorge was doing whatever the hell he did when she was down.
“So we’re twiddling our thumbs until she finds that relic?” Gavin crowded in behind Zeke and cupped his hands around his eyes to squint into the sun.
Zeke spun and looped the binoculars back on their hook. “Pace wants us to hurry her along.”
Gavin frowned. “You mean…like purposely jab a few extra holes in that leaky old tub?”
“Jeez, no.” Zeke threw himself into his swivel chair. He pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket. “Kemper thinks two divers will cut her search time in half. Here’s a list of scuba gear. Run down to the dive shop and have this put on the company account. I’ll stay here and try to buy time with the crew and subcontractors. Once you get the gear, take the runabout and offer to assist Ms. Stafford. Tell her your help is courtesy of Pace Kemper.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding!” Gavin’s jaw dropped and he turned five shades of red. “I can’t do that, Zeke.”
“Why not?” Zeke glanced up from rummaging in his desk drawer, hunting for a stack of contractors’ business cards.
Gavin sidled over and closed the door to Zeke’s makeshift office. Then he lowered his voice and said, “I wouldn’t want this to get out, but I can’t swim.”
Zeke’s eyes widened. “Now who’s kidding?”
“I’m not. I swear.” Gavin held up his hand, palm out in pledge fashion. “I’ve tried to learn a hundred times. I freeze up and sink like a stone.”
“Then how in hell can you work on offshore rigs? Or set marker buoys? What if you got swamped by a wave and fell in, Gav?”
“Unless somebody fished me out, I guess I’d drown. I try not to think about it. That’s why I don’t want anyone I work with to know. It’d be just like some smart-ass to toss me in to see if I’m telling the truth.”
“Holy catfish!” Zeke closed his eyes and rubbed at the lines forming between his brows. “Didn’t it occur to you that something like that could negate our broad policy insurance?”
“I’m careful out there.”
“Accidents happen.” Zeke leaned forward in his chair. Damn, he didn’t need this on top of everything else.
Gavin bellied up to the desk. “You thinking about firing me, Zeke? I don’t know any other kind of work. I’ve been doing this since I was sixteen. First down in Louisiana, then California, now here.”
“I’m not going to fire you. I came here only knowing land wells, for God’s sake. You taught me almost everything I know about offshore drilling.”
“So, you won’t tell Pace? ’Cause he’d have a fit over the insurance thing. I reckon he’d ax me, Zeke.”
“I won’t tell him. But I will insist that during this slow period you find a swim instructor in town and take private lessons. I refuse to believe you can’t learn. I want your promise that you’ll keep at it until you can swim twice the length of a pool.”
The crew chief didn’t look overjoyed, but he agreed.
Zeke didn’t like where that left him. Back at square one when it came to diving with Grace Stafford. “Go on,” he growled, “buy the stuff on that list. I’ll start making those calls.”
Gavin looked decidedly happier. So happy and relieved that Zeke didn’t have the heart to tell him it’d been his own assignment all along.
After Davis departed, Zeke rose and snatched up the binoculars again. He spent the next ten minutes panning the point where sky met bay until at last he saw Grace’s red-gold head surface. “Fool woman shouldn’t dive alone.”
Disgusted, and more irritated by the fact that he’d been grinding his back teeth because she’d stayed submerged for so long, he muttered a totally uncivilized remark and swung aside. This time he dumped the field glasses on his messy desk, poured a cup of strong black coffee and bent to his tasks.
The calls to his subcontractors made his head pound. David Decker, owner of the flatbed barges they needed to transport everything out to the site, was especially nasty. As was the steamfitters’ union rep. Both threatened Zeke with loss of body parts. In the old days of oil exploration in Texas, those would have been very real possibilities. Nowadays, it was saber rattling. Pace’s lawyer would probably be dragged into court to settle breach-of-contract issues, and Kemper would pay delay fines if Zeke didn’t fix the problem.
He ran some calculations,