Faith. Just the thought of her daughter made her smile. Faith was small and bright and precious, and so far away. Just six weeks, Liz thought, and she’d be home from school for the summer.

Sending her to Houston to her grandparents had been for the best, Liz reminded herself whenever the ache of loneliness became acute. Faith’s education was more important than a mother’s needs. Liz had worked, gambled, struggled so that Faith could have everything she was entitled to, everything she would have had if her father…

Determined, Liz set her mind on other things. She’d promised herself a decade before that she would cut Faith’s father from her mind, just as he had cut her from his life. It had been a mistake, one made in naïveté and passion, one that had changed the course of her life forever. But she’d won something precious from it: Faith.

“Below, you see the wreck of a forty-passenger Convair airliner lying upside down.” She slowed the boat so that her passengers could examine the wreck and the divers out for early explorations. Bubbles rose from air tanks like small silver disks. “The wreck’s no tragedy,” she continued. “It was sunk for a scene in a movie and provides divers with easy entertainment.”

Her job was to do the same for her passengers, she reminded herself. It was simple enough when she had a mate on board. Alone, she had to captain the boat, keep up the light, informative banter, deal with snorkel equipment, serve lunch and count heads. It just hadn’t been possible to wait any longer for Jerry.

She muttered to herself a bit as she increased speed. It wasn’t so much that she minded the extra work, but she felt her paying customers were entitled to the best she could offer. She should have known better than to depend on him. She could have easily arranged for someone else to come along. As it was, she had two men on the dive boat and two more in the shop. Because her second dive boat was due to launch at noon, no one could be spared to mate the glass bottom on a day trip. And Jerry had come through before, she reminded herself. With him on board, the women passengers were so charmed that Liz didn’t think they even noticed the watery world the boat passed over.

Who could blame them? she thought with a half smile. If she hadn’t been immune to men in general, Jerry might have had her falling over her own feet. Most women had a difficult time resisting dark, cocky looks, a cleft chin and smoky gray eyes. Add to that a lean, muscular build and a glib tongue, and no female was safe.