Chapter 1

Amanda Masters was excited. Finally, school was out and she could make some money again. At sixteen, there were a lot of things she'd like to buy and they were the kinds of things her mother wouldn't buy for her. Well, couldn't, really. Jill Masters would have liked to be able to buy her daughter pretty much anything she wanted, but being a single mother, she just couldn't. Both Jill and Mandy knew that wouldn't be good for her anyway, so neither got too broken up over the fact that they didn't have a lot of money. Both were wise enough to accept it was just the way things were, for the present.

Mandy picked up the phone and dialed a number she'd never forget in her whole life. Even if the person who picked up got a new number, she'd remember the old one forever. It was like the combination to the padlock she used on her locker at school ... ingrained into her brain like a brand.

"What?" yelled a gruff voice into her ear. There was a lot of background noise, rumbling and wind and other voices in the background.

"This is your favorite niece!" she yelled into the phone. "Do I still have a job?"

"Of course you have a job," came back that growly voice she loved so much. "I'm going broke without you. What the hell do you want an education for anyway?" he yelled.

"I need an education so I can get a real job and make some real money instead of the pittance you pay me," she yelled back gleefully.

"I'm ten minutes out from the dock" he yelled. "Get your pretty little ass down to the slip and get ready to help me unload a whole passel of drunk passengers. I don't want any of them falling in the drink at the end of the trip. I might get a tip out of this bunch."

Mandy hung up and yelled to her mother that she was going to the docks.

"Wear sunscreen!" came the faint yell from the other end of the house. "Kiss your uncle for me!"

That would be no problem. Mandy had been kissing her uncle for years. To Mandy, they were just kisses, the same kind her mother gave him every time she saw him. That they were right on his soft, warm lips didn't seem odd to her. He was her uncle ... he was special!

From Mandy's viewpoint, Bob might as well have been her father - her mother had never married, and all she'd say about Mandy's real father was "When you're twenty-one I'll tell you about him." Uncle Bob lived right next door to the two of them so she saw him every day he wasn't out on his charter boat. Sometimes those trips could last a week or more, so it was possible to see him only a few times a month. On the other hand, when he wasn't out on his yacht with customers, he spent most of his time at their house, coming and going as if he lived there. It didn't seem odd to Mandy that he often spent the night there, saying something like: "My poor old bones are so tired that I just can't force them to carry me all the way over there."

Mandy laughed when he said things like that. To her mind he was the perfect image of some movie star, not old at all, quite handsome in a plain, strong way, with permanent creases left by smiles on a face that was tanned and windblown. But she didn't mind at all that he stayed the night. That usually meant she got to stay up late playing board games with him, or watching a movie. In the winter time, which meant it was only seventy degrees outside, instead of ninety, sometimes he'd roast marshmallows on the grill and make smores out of them while Mandy danced impatiently, waiting to get her fingers all sticky with the sweet dripping of melted marshmallow and chocolate.

And, he invariably came to their house to clean up after a cruise, instead of his own. So it wasn't at all strange for Mandy to see him coming out of the bathroom, clad only in a pair of faded boxer shorts, his dark hair wild and still damp from having a towel roughed over his head. His broad shoulders and muscles still firm from a younger life as a wrestler in school were something Mandy was used to seeing.

It was then, with him smelling clean and slightly perfumed from the soap, his skin still damp, that his sister and niece would welcome him back from the sea with hugs and kisses as he lifted them off the floor, often twirling them around in a circle while his lips were planted firmly against theirs. Those kisses, and the easy comfortable friendship she shared with him during those relaxed times would have been listed among Mandy's favorite memories, had someone asked her to make a list of them.

Then, after eating, usually still clad only in boxers, Bob would search for the list he knew would be on the counter somewhere, the list of things that needed fixing, or needed muscle to get done ... what her mother called "the honey-do list". When he found it, Mandy would pretend to ignore him, knowing that he'd eventually ask her to help him with most of those chores, and that, during the process she'd learn something, and get to use power tools. She loved all of that, but pretended to be horrified at the idea of "having" to work with her uncle.

"Okay, pumpkin!" he'd announce. "Time to get your hands dirty."

"But Uncle Bob," she'd moan, trying to sound tragic. "I was going to paint my nails!" She'd put on her best pout and add something else to it, like "And my legs ... I haven't shaved them in just years and they're all horrible and hairy. I can't possibly spend time helping you."

Bob would snort - Mandy never painted her nails and she had shaved her legs in the shower two or three times a week ever since she was twelve. She had stolen one of her uncle's razors, cutting her legs to ribbons that first time. Then he'd stalk her all over the house as she ran from him, giggling and laughing, until he clamped a hand on her calf and pronounced it soft as a baby's butt. He quite often swatted her butt afterward and told her to behave. Then they'd fix the blinds, or retrieve the lost earring from the trap in the sink, or fix the toilet that ran all the time, or whatever had happened while he was gone that his sister wanted him to take care of when he got back.

So it wasn't unusual for both her mother and Mandy to be extra happy to see him if he'd been gone quite a while. For those reasons ... and others Mandy wasn't yet aware of.

Thus Mandy looked forward to giving him the "welcome home" kisses that her mother had alluded to by yelling "Kiss your uncle for me."

To an outside observer those kisses might have raised an eyebrow, though.

They were on the lips, and they weren't little pecks with no meaning. The Masters clan believed in real hugs and real kisses. Mandy didn't know whether she liked kissing her uncle more when he needed a shave, or after he'd taken a shower, shaved and was clean and smooth. She liked, for some reason, the sharp pokes of his whiskers on her cheeks, or when he teased her by digging his chin gently, but firmly, into her neck. She fought him each time, but they both knew her heart wasn't really in it. She squealed and wiggled, but it was more out of some kind of excitement that made her warm all over than it was to fight him off. Her mother seemed to like to kiss him a lot too.

But, it had always been that way. Uncle Bob had always given both her and her mother long, strong hugs. Both of them sat on his lap sometimes while they watched movies. Both of them got kisses that, even when she was only eleven had made her feel like she was melting.

And, whenever Uncle Bob stayed over, Mandy's mother always went through the same vocal litany of complaints. First she'd complain that the couch was too old and lumpy, and that he'd hurt his back if he slept there, and then she'd probably have to nurse him back to health. Then, since he couldn't sleep on the couch, as she dragged him toward her bedroom, where the big king sized bed was, she moaned that she wouldn't get any sleep that night because of all the wild pigs that would suddenly be snorting around in her bedroom.

Uncle Bob had always winked at Mandy and smiled, never saying a word as he was led away by his complaining sister. Mandy had always giggled. She could hear her uncle snoring sometimes through the walls, but her mother seemed to make lots more noise than Uncle Bob ever did.

When she was quite young, Mandy had heard moans coming through the wall, and her mother saying things. She had imagined her mother tossing and turning, trying to get to sleep while Uncle Bob snored. The bed springs made it clear that somebody was tossing and turning in there. Later she noticed that the bed springs only did that when Uncle Bob was staying over, but she then ascribed that to HIM tossing and turning, and her mother's unintelligible words as her harping at him to stop. But in the morning Jill Masters was always "bright eyed and bushy tailed", as Uncle Bob said it. She always looked particularly happy, and Mandy came to realize that all that moaning didn't seem to mean anything bad. She had ignored it after that.

Habit can make our mental eyes glaze over sometimes. As she grew into a young woman, all those things had happened for as long as she could remember, and they all seemed just as normal to Mandy as opening your eyes in the morning. With her mental eyes glazed over ... she never re-evaluated those bedroom noises.

Habit also made her a little less observant than she might have been otherwise. She had never noticed, for instance, that when her mother kissed Uncle Bob, there was always at least a little tongue involved. He patted her mother on the butt a lot, but then he patted Mandy on the butt too. It was just the way things were, and the way they had always been.

This was going to be a great summer. Mandy was sure of that. She had turned sixteen, and could drive. That seemed to be sure to open all kinds of doors to freedom, even if she couldn't think of anywhere in particular she wanted to go.

And now that she sixteen she could work for Uncle Bob legally and officially. He made a very good living taking rich people out to party or fish, and he made sure that those people had a very good time on his boat. His first mate (only mate, really, ) was an old Mexican man named Manuel, who could cook up the most amazing meals, and who knew how to care for the big Detroit diesel engines in the yacht almost as well as Bob did himself. And Mandy, always eager to learn something and be on the boat, had shadowed Manuel, learning a lot more of what he knew than people might have expected. Manuel, knowing she would be sixteen the next year, had announced that it was high time he go home to Mexico in the summer to visit his daughters and grandchildren for a few months, and suggested that Mandy could handle things while he was gone. Bob had rolled his eyes, while Mandy had danced happily. Oddly enough, she only did her best cooking on the yacht. She almost never cooked gourmet meals at home, unless it was her mother's birthday, or some other special day.

Since he was inbound, Mandy didn't put on her bikini under her clothes. She knew her only tasks would be the cleanup variety, and that she wouldn't have any chance to work on her tan. She didn't mind, though. Hard work didn't scare her at all.

She was waiting at the dock when the Chris Craft hove into view. She knew that, in fancy lettering on the stern were the words "First Wife," which Bob had named the yacht because he said it took all his money and didn't provide any sex. It was forty-seven feet long, with a fifteen foot beam and only took up four feet of draft. The twin Detroit engines only produced 570 horsepower, but that was plenty, even for ocean going. With three staterooms, two heads, a shower stall that could provide either fresh or sea water and a full galley, it was almost like living at home. Bob had gotten a new generator that was smaller and which allowed him to put an extra hundred gallons of fresh water on board, which meant water didn't have to be rationed unless the boat was going to be out for more than a week. The yacht even had an ice maker and washer/dryer stack. Up on the bridge there were all the bells and whistles that hadn't been there originally, in 1967, when the boat was first launched. With GPS and all the other electronic wizardry that had been invented, Bob could go pretty much anywhere anybody wanted at the drop of a hat.