His Timeless Treasure (Treasure Harbor Book 5)

by Kristen Ethridge

  The old man took back the coin, reuniting it with the others in his hand. “Columbus. From his 1493 trip to Hispanola.”

  Bree’s brow furrowed slightly and her gaze remained focused on the coin. “But how did it get here? To Lookout Point?”

  “I like old coins,” Miles said simply.

  “But this collection is worth thousands, if not millions. I can tell that much just by looking at it, and I can’t see everything you’ve got there. This collection belongs in a museum.”

  The old man leaned his head back and cackled loud enough to shake the thin walls of the bungalow. “The Miles Wharton collection. That would be something, young lady.”

  He turned sharply and poured the coins like water back into the couch cushion and began to place the wads of stuffing around them.

  “But no,” he said without looking up as he worked.

  “Why not?” Reid felt a need to probe. He didn’t know what the answer to the question was, but he knew it had to be big. That faded cushion concealed some kind of secret from prying eyes.

  “It’s my inheritance.”

  “From whom?” Bree’s voice sounded as sharp as glass. Reid didn’t know the professor well, but it didn’t take an advanced degree to tell that she was beginning to harbor the same questions he held.

  Miles zipped up the cushion and raised his head, locking his dark eyes on Bree’s heart-shaped face. His mouth broke into a wide smile, revealing several gaps where teeth had been. Once more, he let out a cackle that cracked with the power of coastal lightning.

  “From the pirate. Are you saying your family wasn’t left with the same, Miss Burton?”

  The emphasis on the Burton name was unmistakable.

  And so was the implication.

  Was this the answer to the mystery of the pirate’s treasure? Had Reid broken the answer to the centuries-old story only days after coming to Treasure Harbor to investigate it?

  Never had any trip to Lookout Point driven Bree so crazy. After dropping the bomb about Drake Burton’s stash of ancient, historical coins, the eccentric old man had practically pushed Bree and Reid out of his small house.

  “I need to see if I can get a video crew out here.” Reid pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and quickly began to swipe across the screen with his thumb.

  “Why?” Bree’s head continued to spin like a moon in orbit.

  “I need B-roll of Lookout Point for the story.” He didn’t look up from the rectangular screen as he spoke. “I think it’ll take a little convincing to get Miles on camera, but I’m going to try my hardest. What do you think it would take to get an interview from him?”

  “An interview? From a hermit? About coins stashed in his couch?”

  “You clearly doubt my skills as a reporter, I see.”

  Bree was barely focused on the conversation as she tried to follow the scattered thoughts in her head. “I thought you were a meteorologist.”

  “I’m an anchor for a weather network. I cover stories, most of which are yes, weather-related in nature. I’m a journalist who specializes in the weather.”

  Bree could detect a small streak of defensiveness threaded through those sentences.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  Reid looked up from his phone and stopped his furious thumb-typing. “What?”

  No one ever said math was Bree’s strong suit, but she knew without a doubt something wasn’t adding up here. Those coins were real—she believed that without a doubt. Even Wharton’s paranoia and eccentricity were real. But the connections Reid were drawing—she couldn’t make them work in her head.

  “This isn’t Camilla Callahan’s dowry. It’s not the treasure you were sent to report on.”

  His eyes were blue, like the Carolina sky. She’d never noticed that before.

  “It can’t be. The Callahans were rich, but they were nouveau riche—new money. They made their money here in the States. Some would call Sebastian Callahan’s father a privateer. At any rate, he didn’t bring family treasures from the old world when he came here. In fact, he didn’t come with much more than the shirt on his back. There’s no way they would have had access to Byzantine coins or coins from the Columbus expedition.”

  Reid chewed on his lower lip. “Then what do you think it is?”

  Bree felt a short chill tiptoe up her spine. “I don’t know. I truly don’t know. All I know is there’s no logical reason that Miles Wharton should have a museum-worthy treasure in his couch out on Lookout Point. I think the mystery you came here to solve just became more mysterious.”

  As he lowered his gaze toward Bree, Reid crossed his arms. He vaguely resembled one of the mythological figures stamped on one of the coins she’d seen in the old man’s stash.

  The fact that she couldn’t shake that realization out of her head was just as confounding as any coin hidden in Miles Wharton’s couch.

  HIS TIMELESS TREASURE

  Chapter Three

  “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Bree sat up straight in her chair in the back corner of the Treasure Harbor Historical Society as two fingers tapped her on the shoulder. She’d tossed and turned all last night, and now she was confronted by the sound of that one voice which had echoed through most of the thoughts that had kept her awake.

  She brushed her hair behind one ear. “I was up late last night and started over-thinking yesterday.”

  “I understand.” Reid nodded his head.

  She doubted that he truly understood what she’d been thinking about at midnight, unless he’d been awake thinking about himself. But she was more than willing to let him assume her train of thought had been about long-dead Burtons and Callahans.

  “Last night, you said you thought that there was something more to Miles Wharton’s coins than a connection to Camilla Callahan’s treasure. Have you found anything in here that supports your hunch?”

  “Maybe.” Bree opened up a well-worn book with a red cloth cover. “There’s not much information on Jenny Wharton in the town’s historical documents, but there’s some. I thought I’d start there because she’s the connection between Miles Wharton today and Drake Burton three hundred years ago.”

  “That seems like a great place to start. What can I do?”

  Reid stood in front of one of the antique multi-paned windows. The light bracketed his full silhouette, making it even harder for Bree to concentrate on the research at hand.

  “In the back room are all the property records. Can you go through them? You’d probably need to start somewhere around 1710, I’d guess.”

  “Drake Wharton was born in late 1714—about two years before his father married Camilla Callahan and then died. That’s what Miles told me in a letter.” He took a step toward the opposite side of the room, where the entrance to the records annex was located. “So I’ll start right around there.”

  “Perfect.” As soon as Reid walked out of the room, Bree tried putting her nose back down in the book in front of her. She’d spent years studying dusty history books in old libraries. The smell of old books soothed her. She drank it in like intoxicating perfume…or cologne. Cologne with notes of sandalwood and a hint of fir, to be specific.

  Not that she’d sought out identifying the scent that Reid Knight wore. He just happened to have been standing close, or at least that’s what she was going to tell herself when her mind started wandering in his direction again. Besides, she had a good nose—she could smell a cupcake at twenty paces. It made it easier to justify the lie she was currently telling herself.

  At the mere thought of the cupcake, Bree’s stomach began to rumble.

  Sigh.

  She needed to get back to the order of business. The Historical Society was only open for another half hour, and then her schedule was pretty tight through the weekend. She needed to chase whatever leads she could while she could.

  Gently flipping through page after page of fragile documents, Bree read cramped, faded handwriting until her eyes began to blur.

 
A book thumped on the table in front of her.

  “Take a look at this. Jenny Wharton came to America as an indentured servant. Her contract was owned by a man named Barnabas Shelton. He owned the Old Fox Inn, where she worked.”

  “So that’s an interesting piece of the puzzle. I’m not quite sure where it fits yet, but I feel like that’s valuable. It explains how she came to work at the bar. We know that the general family history and town history puts her in a relationship with Drake Burton. But I don’t know much more about it than that.” Bree studied the facts near where Reid tapped his finger. “But I want to. There’s something there. I can feel it.”

  Reid nodded in agreement. “Me too. You’re the local historian. What’s the next step?”

  Bree started to run through a mental checklist of resources the Historical Society had that might be able to help fill in some of the blanks. Before she could even put together a plan, her stomach growled loudly.

  There was no use looking around, trying to create plausible deniability. They were the only people in the room.

  “How does something that loud come out of someone that small?” Reid couldn’t keep the laughter out of his voice. “I’d say the next step is dinner. How about Beachcombers?”

  Bree didn’t even think about denying it. She was hungry enough not just for one of Beachcombers’ legendary loaded cheeseburgers, but for getting a combo meal and upsizing it as large as she could go.

  Before leaving, Bree made arrangements with the staff for copies of the pages Reid had discovered, as well as a few more items of interest that she’d wanted to put in her notes. She’d come pick them up in the morning on her way to campus.

  Over the years, she’d heard stories of the Whartons as they connected to her family—but never before had she heard that Jenny Wharton had first come to this country with her ticket paid by an agreement for indentured service. She’d long assumed lots of things about the Burton family’s connection to the Whartons—most of it heavily colored by the stories and viewpoints of three hundred years of history. She’d been raised to not think much of the Whartons. If the Callahans felt that the Burtons ruined their family, the Burtons didn’t think highly of the line grafted onto their family tree by the local barmaid.

  But knowing that Jenny Wharton gave up everything about the life she knew—even most of her basic freedoms—to come to America in the hope that it would all be worth it in the end…that thought gave Bree pause.

  There were things in Bree’s own life she was desperate to change. But Jenny Wharton’s example whispered across history and made Bree wonder if she possessed the same kind of boldness as the former barmaid.

  Bree stood at the counter just in front of Reid, ordering her food. Although she didn’t miss a beat in talking with the woman behind the register, something seemed off.

  After placing his own order, Reid chose a table by the window with a view of the water. He tucked the plastic square bearing the number 38 in the clip by the end of the table and sat down to wait on the food—and on Bree.

  She stood across the room, completely unaware that he was watching her as she filled up a large foam cup with ice and a fountain drink. She’d certainly caught his attention—despite the million reasons he had not to let a woman get mixed up in the details of his life. More than that, he’d watched her eyes light up when he’d put the Jenny Wharton information in front of her…and he’d spent the last sixty-seven minutes since then wondering what it would take to see her eyes light up like that again.

  “So what do you think?” he asked as she sat in the chair across from him and then scooted it up to the table.

  “Think about what?’ She poked a red straw through the hold in the center of the lid on her cup.

  “About Jenny Wharton. It sounds like the answer is that Drake Burton gave her those coins as payment of some kind for their son.”

  Bree squinted. It made the top of her nose wrinkle. Reid completely forgot the conversation. He forgot about everything except the small dash of freckles that danced across the crinkled bridge of her nose.

  She looked out the window, seemingly studying the roll of the waves.

  The pause in conversation fell heavily across the table, and Reid couldn’t explain exactly why.

  “I mean guess that pretty much explains all of it. We just need to find the connection there and then I’ll get the crew, we’ll film, and I’ll be on my way.”

  Bree folded her hands deliberately around the base of her foam cup. “That’s not how history works.”

  “Okay, Mom.” Reid felt a little scolded at the clipped tone in her voice. “Then tell me how it does.”

  She pushed a loose lock of hair back from her face. “I didn’t mean to sound snappy. And believe me, there are plenty of people out there who try to connect the dots like that. They learned the shortest point from A to B is a straight line. Unfortunately, that’s geometry—where there are rules. History is the study of people, their lives and times and how they lived and the decisions they made. When it comes to humans and their choices, there are rarely straight lines. You can’t chart the human heart on a road map.”

  “Boy do I know that.” Reid joined Bree in looking out at the waves.

  Out of his peripheral vision, Reid could see one corner of Bree’s mouth twist up into a wry smile.

  “You too, huh?” She let out a breath and the soft sound drew Reid’s focus back in her direction.

  Bree continued talking. “You seem like a guy who’s got his life together. I mean, obviously, I don’t know you very well, but I did read that article PeopleWatch magazine did on you two years ago when they named you ‘Most Eligible TV Bachelor’.”

  This time, it was Reid’s turn to give a half-smirk. “I hated that article.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was all a lie.” Reid took a drink, carefully considering his words. When he interviewed people, he tried all of his professional skills to get them to tell their part of the story he was covering. Since his specialty was natural disasters, he often found himself getting the tear-jerker quotes on camera. Viewers loved tear-jerkers and rewarded networks with ratings.

  But he certainly wasn’t used to being on the other side. He wasn’t used to having his thoughts and feelings inquired about. And he wasn’t used to wanting to get to know someone so much that he considered letting his guard down and being completely honest.

  “What do you mean?” Reid could feel the weight of Bree’s gaze squarely on his face. It was as though she was studying one of the old books filled with historic records he’d sat before her earlier this afternoon.

  He thought about it for a moment longer, then convinced himself to just speak. He wasn’t going to be here much longer, anyway. It wouldn’t take long now to wrap up the story. And once he did, local college history professor Bree Burton would be a part of his own history. She didn’t seem like the type who was going to sell him out to a tabloid. So, for one evening, he decided to talk about the secret life he hadn’t shared with anyone for years.

  “I’m raising my half-sister. She was born with a disorder called hypogammaglobulinemia, which basically means she only has half of her immune system. She relies on IVIG treatments monthly to essentially top-up her immune system, and even then she battles a lot of illnesses and other things like fatigue. My mother battled chronic anxiety and depression her whole life. Taking care of Mandy overwhelmed her. She took her own life about six years ago. Mandy’s dad wasn’t ever in the picture and I couldn’t let her go to the state or get put up for adoption. So she came to live with me. But that doesn’t fit with the image of an ‘eligible bachelor,’ so it wasn’t in the story.”

  Bree’s brow furrowed slightly, then relaxed. “So where is she now?”

  “At my place in New York City. I have a full-time nanny who takes care of her when I’m traveling. I’ve got things worked out with her school and we get her tutors when she has to be out—she’s in kindergarten there and thriving, just like any other
kid her age would be. Mandy’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, despite the challenges. But I refuse to have her used like she’s some score in a game of PR points, so I don’t talk about her and I keep our story out of my bio.”

  When he finished speaking, he felt good—like the gorilla that had shadowed him for so long had instead decided to embrace him with a hug. He’d been so worried that someone with the wrong agenda would find out about Mandy and would treat her disrespectfully. He’d seen and heard so many judgmental things over the years directed at people who had special needs.

  And above all, for the last six years, he’d ultimately identified himself as his sister’s protector, her guardian.

  He’d tried to keep her secret for so many years—not because he was ashamed of her—never that—but because he’d wanted to protect her. But now, talking about her and how she was the best part of his life…it overwhelmed Reid with a sense of pride he’d never felt before.

  He didn’t feel just like her brother. He felt like Mandy’s parent. Her real parent. The only one she’d ever know.

  “My heart’s taken a very circuitous journey on life’s roadmap, but I know for certain I’m headed in the right direction,” he said with full conviction.

  Bree’s eyes were wide, but the smile on her face kept her expression from being one of shock. “I had no idea.”

  Reid shrugged his left shoulder. “That means my plan worked. It means I did a good job of keeping that trail cold and protecting her from the media.”

  “But you’re the media,” Bree said, matter-of-factly.

  “I’m an anchor for a weather channel that’s struggling to bring in the revenue. And that’s why I’m here, digging around on Lookout Point for a story about old gold coins. I’d rather be doing my day job. But if I don’t help this new series the network’s pinning all their hopes on to be a success, then NWN goes under. And if NWN goes under, I can’t afford to keep Mandy’s nanny and without insurance, I can’t afford her treatments. Depending on the demand for IVIG at any given point, they can cost anywhere from six thousand dollars up to twenty thousand dollars every time. That’s why I came to you. I’d heard good things about you from the contacts I’d made in town during and after Igor. I need to get this right. Not for me. For Mandy.”