Due to ongoing story theft on FF, I have left up only a preview of this book, but removed the rest. Look for the complete version of Nemesis on Amazon from September 2015.

Chapter 1: Nemesis

One quick look at the gleaming Nemesis and Elizabeth Bennet knew she was in love. Sleek lines, raw power, beautiful technical specifications. For Elizabeth, some dreams were so out of reach that you knew your mind only allowed you to have them just to remind you what fantasy really was. This was her out of reach fantasy, but it was really happening. She wanted to pinch herself she was so excited. As she stared at her, she could almost imagine owning this boat and taking her out.

She decided her first trip would be straight to Hawaii, well, maybe she would stop in Catalina and do some diving before Hawaii, but only with a small crew of a few friends. With a group, she knew they could handle this boat with ease. She pictured herself sitting on the aft deck, watching the whales and enjoying the sunset after a day on the water. 92 feet of wonderful would be under her bare feet. She guessed the yacht had 5 full decks, probably 4 nice staterooms and a dreamy full ocean worthy kitchen.

After allowing herself another minute to dream, she wondered why even in her fantasies, she always imagined herself alone? Perhaps this was a sure sign she was destined to end up like an old cat lady on the boardwalk. She hoped not, but given her current non existent love life and dating career, it was certainly starting to feel that way.

Why was she still standing on the dock looking like an idiot? She had work to do and the chief engineer of FD Enterprises to impress. She gave one last look at the yacht and then made a silent plea to her maker to please let him be impressed with her engine designs and give her this contract. She knew this project would cement her entire future if she could just convince him to believe in her ideas.

3 months later

It still felt like yesterday that she had seen the Nemesis for the first time. But now, her work on this magnificent yacht was about to come to close. According to the galley gossip, the wealthy owners of the yacht wanted to slip her permanently in Marina Del Ray as they would be coming to LA soon, so while it was a bittersweet end, she was happy she would get to see "her" (boat) all the time. Even if she wasn't aboard and working on the engine every day like she had been since she landed the contract of her dreams for the engine retrofit, she could still imagine all of the secret favorite places she had found herself over the last few months of frantic work.

As Elizabeth squatted in a small engine space and put the last fixes on a new pump configuration she was testing it, she found herself again wondering about the actual owner of the yacht and the CEO of FD Enterprises.

Elizabeth knew only too well that absolutely EVERYTHING in LA is designed and planned around "putting on the show".

Still, she secretly hoped they weren't typical "plastic" LA people.

Based on the amount of money they had spent making this yacht "green", allowing her to use her new design, she thought they probably weren't typical LA folks, but as her invoices were paid by FD Enterprises and her friend Chase who was the Captain of the boat had told her almost nothing about the mystery owners who requested anonymity, she couldn't be sure.

Sitting on the fore-deck for what was probably the last time, she was decked out in ripped cut offs, her trademark purple Crocs and an old UCLA sailing t-shirt, her mop of impossible, long honey brown curls was in a tight bun hidden under her favorite fishing hat.

Her startling green eyes were covered by a pair of vintage Rayban sunglasses that 20 years ago had probably belonged to her father.

She wore the goofy fishing hat when she was on the water so the crew would treat her like one of the guys, because when she was younger and crewing with her Dad, no one had ever taken the green eyed sea monster very seriously. She didn't want to be Ariel, or stand out for being a girl, so she tried to fit in like one of the guys.

In the past 10 years, it became her signature look. They had also started calling her "Beni" –well down here on the docks anyway, so she called herself and her business that too. Beni, short for Bennet. It allowed potential customers to think she was a guy, she didn't care why or how, she was using it to her professional advantage now. If this was life in her man's world of top and yachts and marine engines -so be it.

Maybe at 27 it was finally OK to be a woman doing her job, but calling her Elizabeth had seemed too formal and stiff for a bunch of sweaty guys who smelled like fish and working the million dollar yachts of Marina Del Ray. It was certainly the case when she was in high school and then in college and now it seemed too late to change. So Beni of Ben Engineering, was really Elizabeth Bennet, but it was hard to tell under the fishing hat and Raybans unless you got a look at her figure under the baggy work clothes or checked out her sparkly purple Crocs.

As Beni was now just treated like one of the guys, she doubted anyone she worked with would ever ask her on date, or even remember that she had long hair, female anatomy and shaved her legs.

Then again, would she even want to date one of them anyway?

Probably not!

She had worked hard to earn her engineering degree and dealt with 4 years of taunts, jeers and jests centered around her being one of the only girls in her year in the Engineering school at UCLA. She could now claim to drink, play darts and write code as well as any of the guys –but that wasn't what had earned their total respect. Her completion of the Navy Seal entry tests near San Diego with flying colors (beating most of the guys in her test class) turned her into just one of the gang.

She was intellectual and athletic-while most of her classmates rarely saw the outside of the design lab, and she made a point of keeping herself at the top of her athletic and academic game. After successfully teaching a few of them to surf and paddleboard, they stopped treating her like a strange UFO (unidentified female object) and more like a peer.

Everyone she cared about already knew that she could be found most mornings listening to music stand up paddling on her board through the Marina Del Ray intercoastal. It was how she saw the best new boats up close and from the waterline, was able to check out engine props and get ideas.

More important to Beni though was hanging out with the harbor seals and checking on the health of the struggling Marina Del Ray ecosystem. Now, the only difference between her and the guys from school were that most of them had sold out and gone to work in Silicon Valley building ever smaller cell phones and wireless routers (BORING!).

Beni had spent her time since graduation a little differently. She was working on a new type of marine diesel motor. With a dual engineering and marine science degree, she was determined to make these big yachts easier on the ocean. Reduce fuel and leakages, travel farther on less pollutants and destroy less of the beautiful marine life around her. Working on the Nemesis was her big chance. To prove to herself and the guys that her dream was just as big and just as important as theirs. That she could do it on her own and that a women could change the world of boating and responsible marine ecosystem management for the better, just as easily as any man could.

CRAP! She was running late again. How did she allow herself to get lost daydreaming every single time she was on this boat?

Duh! Elizabeth thought to herself, look around you!

This entire boat is one big daydream. What woman in her right mind wouldn't dream about the life she could have if she owned this boat.

She allowed herself to think about the owners for just a moment. She had no idea who they were, as her invoices were made out to a company that so far thankfully paid them on time, but didn't even have a website. She thought for a moment and decided that as long as it wasn't drug money fueling her future, she hoped they would at least appreciate the changes and modifications she had made and enjoy their time on the boat as much as she had.

She was planning one more engine run for testing and fixing and then would ask the crew to run the intercoastal with her after her class to double check before leaving, one last time. The owners she had been told were expected tomorrow.

She finished her cold lemon water, collected her thoughts and the tablet with her testing checklist, jammed her walkie talkie into her back pocket and then got ready to go back down to the engine room. Back into the engine room, she carefully maneuvered herself into all of the tight spots she couldn't imagine a normal sized guy could even fit into. She checked pressure gauges, took readings and ran the engines again.

The crew above was talking to her through her walkie talkie and running the engines at her command, pumps, bilge, engines, -everything was checking out. Awesome! She could feel her future getting brighter every second the engine purred perfectly as designed. Just a few more minutes and they would be ready to pull the lines and run the intercoastal. She couldn't imagine the faces of the people on the jetty as they saw this boat running for the first time. It really was that beautiful.

Suddenly, she heard a short curse escape from Chase and she wondered what in the world had happened a few decks above her. He normally never cursed. All of a sudden, his first mate told her in a very formal voice via her walkie talkie that they were shutting the engines down.

Um, had she missed something big? Was something wrong? Absolutely everything looked OK to her from below so she was totally unsure what the problem was. She quickly asked the guys in her most aggressive voice via the walkie talkie system what was happening –

Suddenly her walkie talkie surged to life and she heard "Beni, silence on this frequency!"

Bellowed from a distinctive voice she knew belonged to Chase. Chase had been her friend since the 3rd grade and as Beni really did not appreciate being told to be quiet like a 6 year old in front of the whole crew, she decided she would clamber out of the engine room and have this out face to face.

Before she got up to the main deck , she heard angry voices above her. She knew every crewman on this boat, had worked with most of them for more than 10 years. She also knew without a doubt that the voice she was hearing now did belong to any member of the Nemesis crew.

At first, she was scared, well, intimidated maybe. Coast Guard she wondered? Oh, this so better not be a drug money boat Elizabeth thought to herself! Then she decided to listen more closely to the conversation before doing anything else.

"Err, Mr. Darcy" –she heard Chase stammer

" I am so sorry about the mess up with the days. We understood from Jessica that you were all coming tomorrow afternoon and we definitely had no idea you had planned to have a meeting on the boat today."

Oh NO, Elizabeth mused to herself...this Darcy guy must be FD Enterprises ...or at least work for them. Just totally Fabulous! Apparently, the boss was here, the man she hoped to impress, and now he was clearly pissed, and she was mainly to blame. Her new engines hadn't been thoroughly tested and no one wanted to run the risk of the pumps failing out in open water during an initial run.

In that single moment, Beni knew she was totally screwed...