Chapter 9
"What kind of shark was it, son?" Ed Garter smiled happily to the boy beside him in the driver's seat.
"A mako, Dad ... a nine-footer, and-"
"Eight-and-a-half!" Jordanna corrected from the back seat, next to her mother.
"Aw, pipe down, dummy!" Dusty returned good-naturedly. Then to his interested electrician father, "Caught it on forty pound line, too ... Mr. Whipple said I've got the makings of a real shark fisherman!"
"Oh, good Lord," Charlotte commented, horrified, from directly behind him. "Your father and I went to see Jaws while you kids were down in Florida, and it liked to scare the crap out of us!"
"I thought your mother was going to pee her pants right there in the Bijou," Ed commented dryly.
The entire car burst into laughter then, and when it died down, Ed caught his daughter's eyes in the rear view mirror and the smile on his handsome face broadened a little. "How 'bout you, Princess?" he said. "What did you do while ol' Ahab here was adding another chapter to Melville's book?"
Jordanna felt her cheeks crimson hotly under her father's scrutinizing gaze, and she emitted a silent sigh of relief when he returned his attention to the road ahead. "Oh, not much, Daddy," she returned at length. "Went swimming in some of the clearer lagoons when we tied in at some of the islands ... Did a lot of sunbathing with Aunt Sylvia ... You know."
"Yeah, sure, Princess ... Did you enjoy yourself?"
Again, her father's eyes appeared in the mirror, and this time she couldn't resist sticking her tongue out at him playfully. "That's for me to know, and you to find out!" she laughed gaily.
The rest of the drive to the house from the airport continued in much the same lighthearted spirit, with the kids keeping up their teasing reparte, and Dusty's shark growing a few inches with every telling. Dusty tried not to be too conspicuous with his frequent excuses for looking into the back seat, but Charlotte was wearing a very abbreviated halter top, and he couldn't get over how truly white and huge they looked compared to his baby sister's little brown ones. He didn't exactly know just how they'd go about it yet, but he'd already agreed to help the Princess interest their father if she, in turn, would assist him in the seduction of Charlotte. Jeez, just the thought of getting between his mother's smooth white thighs was enough to give him a king-sized rod!