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  “No idea,” he said. “But I’m going to find out.” He looked over at Michael, now huddled in the blankets that Cole had wrapped him in.

  Tanner crouched beside him, ignoring the sharp protest from his bad leg. “What happened back there?”

  Behind them, Cole was on the radio to Sam, head of operations. Sam wanted to know if they needed an ambulance waiting on shore. Cole looked to Tanner.

  But Michael shook his head vehemently. “I don’t need medical attention. I need a lobotomy.”

  No argument from Tanner. “Talk to me.”

  “I had a bad dive in Mexico last year,” Michael said. “Gave me claustrophobia. I wanted to get past it.”

  Over his head, Tanner met the cool gaze of Cole. If you didn’t know the guy, you’d never guess he was pissed off. But he was, and Tanner was right with him. Every single client of theirs was required to fill out multiple forms. One of the many questions was: Are you claustrophobic?

  Clearly Michael had lied. Nothing to be done about it now. They were just lucky it’d turned out as well as it had.

  Michael’s bride was smiling and taking pics as they got out of the water. “You weren’t down for long,” she said, clueless to what had gone on below. “You have fun?”

  Michael slid his sheepish, apologetic gaze to Tanner. “Yes,” he said.

  His bride beamed.

  “How do you do it?” Michael asked Tanner quietly. “Always stay so calm?”

  For one thing, scuba diving was as natural to him as breathing. So was swimming. For another, his life hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park. That he was now a one-third owner of a charter company consisting of a warehouse, yard, waterfront, dock, hut, and fifty-foot Wright Sport boat, where he was the resident scuba diving instructor and communications expert, was a piece of cake compared to where he’d been. “It’s my job,” he said.

  “Your job gave you nuts of steel?”

  “Actually,” Cole said helpfully, “his life’s given him nuts of steel.”

  Michael looked like he thought this was really cool. And once upon a time, Tanner might’ve enjoyed being thought of that way. Back in high school, for instance, when he’d lived on adrenaline rushes.

  He no longer thrived on being stupid. In fact, he’d made it a lifelong goal to never be stupid again.

  An hour later he, Cole, and Sam were at the Love Shack, Lucky Harbor’s local bar and grill. They had a stack of hot wings and a pitcher of beer. As always, they all raised their glasses and clinked them together. “To Gil,” Sam said.

  “To Gil,” Cole said.

  “To Gil,” Tanner echoed, and felt the usual tug in his gut at the name.

  Gil had been, and in many ways still was, the fourth musketeer of their tight-knit group. He’d been gone and buried for two years now, but that hadn’t erased the hole he’d left in Tanner’s heart. Losing Gil in the Gulf after a rig fire had changed Tanner’s life. Or maybe that had been because he’d nearly lost his own at the same time. At the reminder, he rubbed his leg, which was aching like a sonofabitch today.

  Sam’s gaze slid to the movement.

  “I’m fine,” Tanner said.

  Sam and Cole exchanged annoying “right” glances.

  “I am,” he said.

  “Uh-huh.” Cole dove into the wings. “Saw Josh last week. He said you were overdue for an appointment.”

  Probably true. But Dr. Josh Scott, an old friend and excellent physician, couldn’t fix his leg. All that could be done had been done. “Subject change.”

  “Fine,” Cole said. “How was dinner with Troy last night?”

  Troy was Tanner’s fifteen-year-old Mini-Me and until two weeks ago, he’d lived in Florida with Tanner’s ex, Elisa. “Good,” he said. “I think I actually got four whole sentences out of him this time.”

  “Progress,” Cole said.

  “He’s a teen,” Sam said. “Four sentences is a miracle.”

  Plus it was a hell of a lot better than Tanner and Troy had managed in the past. He might not be Father of the Year but, unlike his own dad, who’d taken off when Tanner was five, he was trying.

  “And it’s not like you were a joy at fifteen,” Cole reminded him.

  Tanner eyed him over his beer. “What was wrong with me at fifteen?”

  Cole laughed but when Tanner just looked at him, he turned it into a cough instead. “You were a real punk ass. Wild. Uncontrollable. Always looking for trouble.” He turned to Sam. “Right?”

  Sam stuffed a fry into his mouth. Sam pleaded the fifth a lot.

  “Whatever,” Cole said in disgust, and pointed a finger at each of them in turn. “You were both shitheads.”

  “And yet you hung out with us,” Tanner said.

  “Well, someone had to keep you two assholes in line. And you know how teenagers are,” he said to Tanner. “It’s just going to take you time to connect with him. Time and effort.”

  Tanner was more than willing to put in the effort. In fact, he’d never tried harder at anything than he had at being a dad, but in truth there were times when it’d be easier to part the Red Sea. This parenting-a-teenager shit was not for the faint of heart.

  “Heard he got fired from the pier,” Sam said. “Something about having a bad attitude with his boss at the arcade.”

  “Yeah,” Tanner said, and shook his head. When he’d been fifteen, he’d gone to school, then football practice, and then he’d bagged at the grocery store for gas and car insurance money before finally going home to handle the house for his single mom. In comparison, his son’s life was a walk in the park. “That’s not why I’m pissed.”

  “Is it because he was taken to the police station for filling the principal’s car full of packing peanuts?” Cole asked.

  “I bet it was that he posted a pic of his handiwork on Facebook after,” Sam said.

  “He says he didn’t do it, that someone hacked into his account and put up the pic to get him in trouble.” Tanner scrubbed a hand down his face. “But even if he did, Jesus. At least I was always smart enough not to document my own crimes.”

  Sam shook his head. “Not always, you weren’t. Seventh grade, when you had a thing for the mayor’s daughter. You stole the town’s Christmas tree lights and used them to decorate her front yard, and then when everyone freaked out about the theft, you got caught in the act of trying to return the lights.”

  Cole started laughing at the memory and spilled his own beer. Tanner supposed it was wrong of him to hope that he choked on it. “Okay, fine,” he said. “So the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “Maybe it’s karma,” Sam said. “You were wild and stupid and now he’s following in your footsteps.”

  Sam was only kidding but the way Tanner saw it, Troy’s bad ’tude was all on him. He could remember all too well the inner fury of being a kid who’d been dumped by his dad. And no, Tanner hadn’t dumped Troy, but the kid didn’t see it that way.

  Tanner had been a teenager himself when he’d found out he was going to be a father. As a seventeen-year-old with no means to support himself, much less the girl he’d slept with on the beach after a party one night, he’d done the best he could. This had involved marrying Elisa to give her and their baby his name, throwing away a lucrative football scholarship to ship off to the navy, and growing up pretty damn fast.

  Elisa had dumped him shortly after Troy’s birth and moved with the baby to Florida to live with her grandparents, but Tanner had still done what he could, making sure that he’d provided for the both of them along with his mom.

  When he and the guys had first come back to Lucky Harbor from the Gulf of Mexico, he’d asked Elisa for custody, or at least partial. She’d refused, and for the past two years Tanner had done the best he could from three thousand miles away, visiting Troy as often as possible, calling, emailing…

  And then two weeks ago Elisa had changed her tune, showing up in town with Troy in tow, as well as Boyfriend Dan. Suddenly she’d been all about sharing custody of