Chapter 18

"No Petty Officer, she's not my wife," I tried to explain but he wasn't having it.

"Miss," he gestured to Hineahuone, "Could we step out of hearing? I'm Petty Officer Patterson."

"Hineahuone Te Wherowhero."

"That's a mouthful," he said, "Is there something else I can call you?"

"Princess, your Highness," Hineahuone said. "Either one of those works."

"OK, princess it is." You could tell he was playing along, though. The United States doesn't have royalty. "Are you here of your own free will?"

"You bet, I live with David and his wife Grace, I'm from New Zealand going to school in Holland."

"Did he force you in anyway to perform unnatural acts?"

"Unnatural?" she asked. "What's unnatural about sex?"

"Any unseemly practices?" He started turning bright red, "Mouth to genital contact?"

"I'm here of my own free will and I think you have an interesting take on sex. Are you, by any chance, Baptist?"

"Why, yes. I am."

"We had a lot of trouble with Baptist missionaries on the South Island." She was going to say more but thought better of it. "Let me just say this: I'm here with the advice and consent of Mrs. Anderson.

"David hasn't forced or coerced me in any manner. It was probably the other way around, She ... his wife ... insisted he swallow his scruples and take care of my feminine needs before we reached Pentwater or she was never going to speak to him again. I assume that also meant he wasn't going to get his ashes hauled until he hauled mine.

"I can get considerably more explicit if you insist but I can see you are extremely uncomfortable," she giggled. "Talking about sucking and fucking is not your forte."

Hineahuone is so cute when she goes all native on a guy ... and the more she talked the redder he got.

"Just so..." he mostly forgot what he was going to say because Hineahuone reached up under her skirt and stripped out of her sopping wet panties. She sniffed it and stuck it under his nose.

"Does that smell like I'm being coerced?"

"I evidently embarrassed him half to death," she told me as we motored down the channel. "You saw how fast he left."

I docked the K5 at the first full service Marina that had inside storage. Coogan's had just one spot big enough for the boat left.

"Lost your rig?" Mr. Coogan asked.

"We know where it is."

"You do?"

"My wife has it," I said.

"Gawd, your judge must have one hell of a sense of humor."

"Huh?"

"I never heard of the mast and rigging as her half."

"What?"

"The settlement ... you got the boat and she got the mast."

"Settlement? Oh! I get it ... as in divorce settlement. I'm not divorced." I laughed, "I was supposed to take the boat up to The Mill Marina but the Coasties stopped me." I looked at Coogan. Coogan was looking at Hineahuone ... and at me ... and at the dusky Polynesian beauty and back at me and I knew ... as if I were a mind reader ... exactly what he was thinking; Cheater!

Coogan said, "I'd just as soon send you up to Pentwater, but the weather is terrible."

"It's pretty here."

"This is Michigan ... I know you've seen it rain on one side of the street and not the other."

"Very true."

"The north side of Little Sable Point ... it's all white fog."

White fog is a condition of the Great Lakes in November, December and January. The wind is blowing so hard that the tops of the waves are blown off. The windblown water instantly turns to tiny ice crystals. The crystals act like fog.

North of the Point the wind was blowing straight out of the west at hurricane strength ... From the deck of the K5 I could 10 miles. White Lake is 14 miles from the Point and the winds were calm.

Our little sexual innuendo had drawn someones eye and that unknown someone called the Coast Guard and saved our lives. Since that someone was a prudish spoilsport and had no ... he or most likely she ... intention of saving our sinful hides, I won't hunt them down and reward their busybody ass. But thanks.