Page 36 of Teach Me Your Ways

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CECE

Icould have sworn I’d had this exact fantasy before, with Grady asking me to go find treasure with him. Except it had happened on a sunlit beach and he was wearing an eye patch. A sword at his hip. Definitely less clothing.

Someone pinch me. This has to be a dream.

“It goes down about seventy feet,” he said in that rich voice. “So it’s just shallow enough to avoid major decompression stops, but deep enough to need serious awareness of your air. It’s not a casual dive.”

My heart hammered against my ribs. Shipwrecks were my specialty—literally the focus of my dissertation research. When Dean Carver had reassigned me to Professor Stone’s class, I’d assumed I’d be stuck cataloguing pottery shards and memorizing Mayan facts for the next two years. It wasn’t that all of that stuff didn’t excite me, it did. I loved all aspects of archeology, but underwater excavation was what made me feel truly alive. The weightless silence, the mystery of what lay buried beneath centuries of sand and coral growth was like stepping into another world. Anyone could dig and find stuff. Only a select group were brave enough to go into the ocean to do it.

“You’re serious?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager and failing miserably. “An actual shipwreck dive?”

He nodded, and I caught something that looked almost like relief flickering across his face. “We’ve got permits to do some preliminary survey work. We’re trying to document it so we can got the university to devote some resources to it.”

I couldn’t stop smiling. He was looking at me with what I thought was admiration. Usually, when he looked at me, I saw heat. Arousal. But that was not what I was looking at. I let myself imagine me and him diving together. We shared a love for the same things. Maybe that was why I felt so passionate about him. We connected over something we were both intense about.

“What kind of ship?” I asked, leaning forward slightly. “How old?”

“What are you two talking about?” Lina asked.

Buzz kill. Fucking Lina. She was worse than a yellow jacket interrupting a picnic. Just always buzzing around and ruining things.

“We’re going on a dive trip,” I said before Grady could answer. “A real one. With a wreck.”

Lina’s eyes lit up like she’d just learned there was a sale at Prada. “Oh, the shipwreck off Myrtle Beach? Right. I got certified for that.”

Of course she did.

Grady nodded. “Yeah. We’ll prep in the training pool before we go, just to make sure we’re all up to speed before we go out there.”

“And why wasn’t this ship discovered earlier?” I asked, leaning against the desk. My voice came out lower than I intended. Suggestive. I knew it. So did he. I couldn’t help it.

“It was only recently discovered,” Grady said, his eyes still locked on mine. “Early seventeen hundreds, we think.”

“Why didn’t anyone look for it before?” I asked, genuinely curious now. Pirates were big business in South Carolina. Half the tourist traps in Charleston were built around Blackbeard legends.

Grady’s mouth twitched into that almost-smile I was becoming addicted to. “I think it’s because this pirate had a shitty name. You’ve got Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Captain Kidd, and then there’s this guy. Gordon Smith.”

I snorted. “Gordon Smith? That’s the most boring pirate name in history. He sounds like an accountant.”

“Right? Who’s going to make a movie about the fearsome Gordon Smith?” Grady was grinning now, and the sight of it made my stomach flip. “No wonder he got lost to history.”

“Maybe we should rebrand him,” I suggested, warming to the topic. “Give him a better pirate name.

“Arma-Gordon?”

“Gore Smith,” Lina said playfully.

Not exactly creative, but she tried.

“Gordon the Gorgon,” he added.

We were cracking up. It was dumb and delightful, and it felt natural—like we were in sync in a way that made Lina shift her weight awkwardly, watching us like she wasn’t in on the joke. Because she wasn’t. Not really. I was surprised she was picking up on the unspoken jokes that always hummed between us. And then he gave me a look. The same look that always made heat pool between my legs.

Grady looked away and cleared his throat. “Anyway. Pool training tomorrow morning. You two need to show me you know your stuff before I take you out into open water.”

“Sounds good, Professor,” I said.