Shock Wave(56)

She wore a short-skirted red cocktail dress that fit her figure as if it were sewn on after she was in it.

Pitt thought at first it was loaned to her by one of the women scientists on board who wore a smaller size, and then he recalled seeing her return with Deirdre from Polar Queen on Ice Hunter's shore boat with their luggage stacked in the bow. She wore yellow coral earrings that matched the necklace around her bare neck. She glanced in his direction and their eyes met, but only for an instant. She was in the midst of describing her pet dingo in Australia, and she quickly looked back at her audience as if she hadn't recognized him.

Deirdre, on the other hand, exuded sensuality and sophistication, traits sensed by every man in the room. Pitt could easily picture her stretched out on a bed covered with silk sheets, beckoning. The only drawback was her imperious manner. She had seemed retiring and vulnerable when he'd found her on Polar Queen. But she too had transformed, into a cool and aloof creature. There was also a flinty hardness Pitt had not recognized before.

She sat in her chair straight-backed and regal in a brown sheath dress that stopped discreetly above her silk-stockinged knees. She wore a scarf around her neck that accented her fawn eyes and copper hair, which was drawn severely back in a huge knot. As if sensing that Pitt was studying her, she slowly turned and stared back at him without expression, and then the eyes became cool and calculating.

Pitt found himself engaged in a game of wills. She was not about to blink even as she carried on a conversation with Dempsey. Her eyes seemed to look through him and, finding nothing of interest, continued on to a picture hanging on the wall behind. The brown eyes that were locked on opaline green never wavered. She obviously was a lady who held her own against men, Pitt reasoned. Slowly, very slowly, he began to cross his eyes. The comical ploy broke the spell and Deirdre's concentration.

Thrusting her chin up in a haughty gesture, she dismissed Pitt as a clown and turned her attention back to the conversation at her end of the table.

Though Pitt felt a sensual desire for Deirdre, he felt himself drawn to Maeve. Perhaps it was her engaging smile with the slight gap between the teeth, or the beautiful mass of incredibly blond hair that fell in a cascade behind and in front of her shoulders. He wondered about her shift of manner since he first found her in the blizzard on Seymour Island. The ready smile and the easy laugh were no longer there.

Pitt sensed that Maeve was subtly under Deirdre's control. It was also obvious, to him if to no one else, there was no love lost between them.

Pitt mused about the age-old choice faced by the sexes. Women were often torn between mister nice guy, who generally ended up as father of her kids, and the hellraising jerk who represented offbeat romance and adventure. Men, for all their faults, were occasionally forced to choose between miss wholesome girl-next-door, who generally ended up as mother to his children, and the wild sexpot who couldn't keep her body off him.

For Pitt there could be no agonized decision. Late tomorrow evening, the ship would dock at the Chilean port of Punta Arenas in Tierra del Fuego, where Maeve and Deirdre would take a commuter flight to Santiago. From there they could book a direct flight to Australia. A waste of time, he thought, to allow his imagination to run amok. He did not dare to hope that he would ever lay eyes on either one of them again.

He slipped a hand below the table and touched the folded fax in his pants pocket. Overcome by curiosity, he had communicated with St. Julien Perlmutter, a close family friend who had accumulated the world's foremost library of shipwreck information. A well-known partygiver and gourmand, Perlmutter was well connected in Washington circles and knew where most of the skeletons were buried. Pitt had put in a call and asked his friend to check on the ladies' family background. Perlmutter faxed him a brief report in less than an hour with a promise of a more in-depth account within two days.

These were no ordinary women from common circumstances. If the unmarried men, and maybe even a few of the married, knew that Maeve and Deirdre's father, Arthur Dorsett, was head of a diamond empire second only to De Beers and the sixth richest man in the world, they might have pulled out all stops in begging the ladies' hand in marriage.

The section of the report that struck him as odd was a drawing of the Dorsett corporate hallmark that Perlmutter included. Instead of the obvious, a diamond on some sort of background, the Dorsett logotype was a serpent undulating through the water.

The ship's officer on duty came up alongside Pitt and spoke softly. "Admiral Sandecker is on the satellite phone and would like to talk to you."

"Thank you, I'll take the call in my cabin."

Unobtrusively, Pitt pushed back his chair, rose and left the dining room, unnoticed by all except Giordino.