The Treasure Man

by Pamela Browning

  “Palmetto bugs?”

  “The state insect of Florida. See, there’s one on the curtain.” He pointed at a huge cockroachlike bug in the library on the other side of the foyer. It was an ugly dark brown, almost two inches long and waving curious feelers in their direction.

  Chloe shuddered. She’d rather eat roadkill than bunk near that creature. “I’ll sleep in the car. I’ll—”

  “No need to do any such thing. I’ll run over to the other part of the house and get the bug spray.” He started toward the kitchen.

  Since she had no intention of being left alone with the palmetto bug, Chloe wasn’t far behind. “Okay, but what about the mice?” She was seriously questioning her recent and possibly foolhardy choice to start a new life in this place.

  “I’ll take care of them, don’t worry.”

  “Humanely, I hope.”

  He glanced at her over his shoulder, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Oh, of course. I’ll invite them to leave in a pleasant voice, and I’ll reassure them it’s not them, it’s me. I’ll say that I hope we can still be friends, and even throw them a farewell party if you’d like.”

  “Please,” she warned, “don’t make light of this.” She wasn’t in the mood for humor.

  “I thought maybe kindness to rodents ran in your family. Tayloe used to trap live mice and release them in the thickets, which I warned her was silly, since they—and their loved ones—would only come back for a return engagement, but that was the way she wanted it.”

  “You know where to find the mousetraps?”

  “They’re in the hall leading to the caretakers’ annex.”

  They went along turning on lights until they came to the kitchen, Chloe doing her best to unstick her wet blouse from her skin along the way. Someone had broken a window in the back door and had evidently camped out there, abandoning dirty dishes and silverware in the sink, which was dripping a steady stream of rusty water.

  “Here we are,” Ben said, throwing back the bolt to the door of the annex, where a small apartment was built down close to the dunes. “Bug spray. And traps.”

  “Could you deal with the palmetto bug first? He creeps me out big-time.”

  While Ben was rummaging in the hallway, Chloe gave up on her wet blouse and resigned herself to its present see-through state until she could find a dry towel. She ventured a cautious peek into the pantry, which turned up nothing more than an unopened jar of pickles and several warm cans of cola. “I have food in the car, a bag of canned goods and a cooler,” she called to Ben. “I could offer you something to eat in exchange for your trouble.”

  “It’s okay,” he said on his way back through the kitchen. “I’ll be satisfied with a glass of water.” He avoided looking at her—which, considering the transparency of her wet clothes, she appreciated.

  She followed him. “The water softener isn’t hooked up, so we won’t want to drink the water yet. I brought a bottle of wine in my backpack. It’s a really good Estancia pinot grigio.”

  “No, thanks. And if you don’t want to witness instant death, I suggest you leave the palmetto bug to me.”

  Since bug killing held no interest as a spectator sport, Chloe decided to locate a dry towel. The staircase was dusty, the white paint on the banister chipped, and upstairs the bedrooms, like the parlor below, were swathed in white muslin.

  The linen closet was located on the landing, and although the towels smelled musty, they suited her purpose. As she towel-dried her hair, she wandered around, reacquainting herself with the second floor.

  Her aunt had assigned each bedroom a name. The master suite was Sea Oats and decorated in golden tones. The room that had always been Chloe’s was the turret room, Moonglow, and after she’d removed the dust covers and piled them in the hall, it appeared exactly as it had every year. She opened the windows an inch or so, enough to admit fresh air but not much rain.

  Nostalgia swept over her as she took in the curved walls, the pretty blue-painted bureau, ornate wicker headboard and dotted-swiss curtains. She and Naomi had enjoyed many good times here with Gwynne—reading under the covers at night after Tayloe had told them to go to sleep, racing down the wide staircase in a flurry of anticipation when Zephyr the Turtle Lady tossed seashells against their windows early in the morning and invited them down the beach to inspect the newest turtle nest. Being in this room made her feel like a little girl again. Considering that she was over thirty and more worldly wise than she would have liked, that was a good thing.

  “Chloe?”

  Leaving the towel draped across her shoulders, she poked her head out the door, and saw Ben standing at the bottom of the stairs.

  “The palmetto bug is history,” Ben reported.

  “Good. Now maybe I should squirt some of that stuff around my room.”

  “I’ll be glad to spray the rest of the house. Then I’ll set out the mousetraps.”

  “We don’t have anything to bait them with,” she said, coming out to the landing. “Unless mice are into dill pickles.”

  “I’m prepared to donate the cheese crackers in my pocket. That should work.” He pulled out a package and opened it.

  Chloe descended the staircase. “Not so fast. We might have to eat those ourselves.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “A little.” Self-consciously, she ran her fingers through her hair, hoping it wasn’t standing up in spikes.

  Ben handed her a cracker. “That’s to tide you over until I can run out to your car and bring in the food.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Hey,” he said. “I can’t stand to watch a woman starve. No big deal.” He brushed past her up the stairs, carrying the can of insecticide, and she heard him humming tunelessly to himself as he went from room to room, anointing each one in turn.

  Since there were eight bedrooms, each with its own bath, this took quite a while, during which Chloe inspected the dining room and removed the covers from the big mahogany dining-room table and chairs. The breakfront was devoid of its usual heirloom silver trays and goblets, which made the room seem bare, and Chloe recalled Gwynne’s telling her that she’d put them in storage. The elegant bone china was still there, and so was the antique crystal, all under the surveillance of numerous saturnine Timberlake ancestors glaring down from ornate gilt frames.

  When she’d finishing in the dining room, Chloe retreated to the kitchen and munched gloomily on Ben’s cracker. The inn was a disappointment. True, her memories were based on idealized moments from past vacations. She hadn’t been prepared for the general disrepair of the place, but she definitely couldn’t go back to Texas. Her grandmother, with whom she’d lived for the past five years, had sold her house and moved to an assisted-living facility.

  During the years with Grandma Nell, Chloe had saved her money in order to give herself a chance to do what she did best—design jewelry. Her cousin’s offer to let her live here had been a godsend. But Chloe’s work would suffer if she was forced to spend all her time cleaning and repairing the Frangipani Inn, not to mention that she didn’t have a clue how to go about it.

  When Ben returned, she wordlessly handed a can of warm cola up to him. He popped the top, sat down on a chair beside hers and drank, his throat working as he swallowed. “You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked him suddenly.

  He lifted a brow. “Cute. Red hair. Gwynne’s cousin.”

  “Well, thanks for the cute, anyway,” she said wryly.

  “It was a long time ago. You were how old? Fourteen? Fifteen?”

  “Sixteen,” she told him, remembering the pain of longing for a guy who hadn’t recognized her existence. He’d called her Carrots because of her red hair, and she’d hated that nickname.

  “I was twenty-one and in my first season of diving for Sea Search, Inc.”

  “You seemed much older to me.”

  He snorted. “Honey, that summer I was getting older by the minute.” His curt laughter didn’t convey humor.

&nbs
p; She got up to plug in the refrigerator. “I’ve been thinking,” she said.

  “Oh?” His eyebrows shot up.

  “About your request to stay here. I wasn’t anticipating sharing the place with anyone else because I have work to do, but if you’d help with repairs in exchange for rent, you could live in the annex. You’d have your own entrance and everything, and—”

  “Hold it,” he said. “You don’t have to talk me into it. I have nowhere else to go, and I’m a decent handyman.”

  “That’s good, because I don’t know one screw from another.”

  He blinked at her, and she realized what he must be thinking. She felt her neck coloring. “We could give it a trial,” she said quickly to cover her embarrassment. “Maybe a week or two?”

  “That suits me, since I’m waiting for a job to come through and money is tight.”

  “You don’t work with Sea Search anymore?”

  “I haven’t been employed there for over a year.” Ben drained the can in one easy motion and stood up, crumpling it in his hand. “The rain has let up enough so that I can retrieve the food from your car,” he said before tossing the can into the trash bin beside the door.

  Chloe, her cheeks still flushed from her gaffe, handed over her car keys and watched from the window as Ben loped through the curtain of rain. He soon returned carrying bags of groceries that she’d bought before leaving Texas, sprinkling wet droplets around the kitchen as he shook water from his eyes.

  “I spotted your cat. He’s sitting under the porch steps.”

  “Butch will be okay on his own. He loves it here.” She set a box of cat crunchies out on the counter for later and started to stash the rest of the food in the pantry.

  “Would you like a sandwich?” she asked.

  “No, I’d rather inspect my new digs.”

  “You’ll have to plug in the refrigerator in there, and I’m not sure the hot-water heater works. Gwynne mentioned something about it.”

  “I’ll check everything.” He rose, and she found herself staring point-blank at his bare damp torso, exposed when his shirt had come unbuttoned. His physique, even though he was older than when she saw him last, was close to spectacular. Wide shoulders tapered to a narrow waist, and his legs were muscular and nicely formed.

  “I’d better call Butch one more time,” she said, mostly for something to do besides stare at the line of hair pointing toward his navel.

  She stood and went to the door as Ben disappeared into the annex. Butch didn’t appear when she called. Since she wasn’t interested in flailing around beneath the porch in the hope of chasing him out, she went back inside and opened the can of tuna.

  After her solitary meal, she climbed the stairs to her room and stripped off her wet clothes, noticing that the stream of water from her bathroom sink ran nonstop, a knob was missing from the vanity and the hook from the closet door lay on the floor. Thank goodness Ben Derrick had shown up. With him to help her, she might be able to make her ambitious plans for the summer work after all.

  She was brushing her teeth when she heard a door open downstairs. “Chloe?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said through a mouthful of toothpaste. She grabbed a glass of water, rinsed her mouth and spit; the water here had a foul sulfur taste, but the water softener would take care of that.

  “You’re right. The hot-water heater isn’t working.”

  She wrapped her robe tightly around her and went to the top of the stairs. Ben was standing in the foyer below.

  “I’ll look at it tomorrow,” he said.

  “Okay,” Chloe said, her heart sinking. She didn’t have extra money to pay for major repairs, and anyway, she wasn’t sure whose responsibility they would be, hers or Gwynne’s.

  “I figured I’d better report it.”

  “Thanks. I think. Hey, you’ll be needing a hot shower, won’t you?”

  “That would be nice, but I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

  “The bathrooms up here are all supplied by the water heater under the attic stairs,” she said, inclining her head in that direction. “It’s working fine. I have personal knowledge of this.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind—” Ben began, but she shushed him by holding up a hand.

  “Use the bathroom off the master suite to my right. You won’t be in my way.”

  “Cool,” Ben said, and for a moment she could have sworn that he was ogling her bare legs below her short terry-cloth robe.

  “No, hot,” she said, referring to the water, but as he raised his eyebrows, she realized that he thought she was making a flirtatious comment about him.

  “Good night,” she mumbled in embarrassment, turning on her heel and fleeing to her own room, knowing that she hadn’t mistaken the humorous glint in his eyes.

  “Good night, Chloe,” he replied, a hint of laughter in his voice.

  Her room was filled with the sound of the rain on the roof and Ben taking his shower on the other side of the wall, which divided her room from the master bath. She couldn’t stop visualizing Ben standing under the shower spray, soaping himself all over. The more she tried to banish him from her mind, the more vividly her imagination embellished his image.

  “Ridiculous,” she muttered as she fluffed her pillow for the fourth time. “I’m not here to get involved with a guy.”

  Except that it was a strange thing about not wanting to meet men. Sometimes all you had to do was decide that you didn’t want any part of them, and suddenly, they were everywhere. Popping up in your headlights. Crawling out of the woodwork like palmetto bugs. Showering in the room next door. Reminding you of when you were sixteen years old and eager to find out what love was all about.

  Too bad that you couldn’t just squirt men with something in a spray can and make them go away. Although even if that were possible, she wouldn’t get rid of Ben Derrick.

  Not that anyone could ever recapture the thrill of a first crush. No, better that Ben never realize that she’d cared for him. Better to hunker down at the Frangipani Inn, get to work and forget all about that special summer.

  Chapter Two

  Chloe’s goal in taking up residence at the inn was twofold. The solitude would allow her to get her fledgling jewelry business off the ground, and she could stop solving other people’s problems. It was difficult, after years of accepting the roles that other people expected her to play in their lives, to disengage. Grandma Nell had understood.

  “You can’t create space for new experiences and new people in your life if you’re giving all your energy to people who drag you down,” her grandmother had said. “It’s time for you to leave behind unproductive and outmoded situations, Chloe. Go to Sanluca. Stay awhile.”

  The resounding message was that she needed to concentrate on herself for a change. After several rescue operations involving unsuitable men, Chloe couldn’t have agreed more.

  Of course, there would always be room in her life for Butch, who woke her the morning after she arrived by jumping on her feet and nibbling at her toes. Hoping to get back to sleep, she yanked one foot away, then the other. This only caused the cat to settle on her chest, purring loudly as he kneaded sharp claws in and out of her shoulder.

  “All right, I’m awake,” she told him grudgingly, treating him to a vigorous rub behind the ears before sliding out of bed and padding into the bathroom.

  “How did you get in, anyway?” she asked, knowing that Ben must have opened the door for the cat. A glance at her watch told her that it was almost nine o’clock, late by her standards. Usually, when she was here, she was awake at dawn, since the rising sun’s rays easily penetrated the thin curtains of her room.

  Butch meowed and pawed at her leg. “Okay, okay,” she said, lifting the toilet lid. Butch was toilet trained because she’d been relentless in her expectations. She took a dim view of scooping cat litter, and so did her grandmother, who had been skeptical about adopting a pet in the first place. Chloe had insisted that they keep Butch after he’d ventured out of th
e woods behind their house, skinny and scared. Now he weighed in at a hefty twenty pounds and was afraid of nothing.

  Since Butch preferred privacy when he performed, Chloe wandered into the bedroom. She opened the windows to let in the breeze, marveling at the sight of the waves lapping on the shore. Though born and bred in the heart of Texas, she’d always felt a kinship with the sea.

  Ben was sitting at the edge of the ocean, staring toward the horizon. She almost called to him, but something about the set of his shoulders gave her pause. She read discouragement in the way they slumped, and something else. Sadness? Sorrow? She wasn’t sure, but she sensed that he was weighed down by some indefinable burden. He seemed different from when she’d first met him. In those days, he’d been full of personality, convivial and gregarious. People had been naturally drawn to him, and he’d basked in his own popularity. The change in him tugged at her heart even as she cautioned herself that whatever Ben’s problems were, she wanted no part of them.

  She returned to the bathroom, where Butch was now waiting at the edge of the sink for his morning drink of water. After turning on the tap for him, she flushed the toilet, a skill that the cat had unfortunately not mastered. After one lick at the dripping faucet, Butch gave a disdainful little brrrup!—his equivalent of “yuck”—and jumped down.

  Chloe started a shopping list. Bottled water, she wrote at the top as her cell phone rang. The caller ID revealed that it was Naomi, who, until she’d married her husband, Ray, the summer of high-school graduation, had accompanied her to Sanluca during their childhood summer vacations.

  Naomi wasted no time getting to the point. “Chloe, guess what Tara’s done now.”

  “I couldn’t say right off,” Chloe said cautiously as possibilities sequenced through her mind. Her teenage niece had recently decided that she didn’t want to go back to high school in the fall. “Taken up skydiving? Joined a convent?” Chloe figured the only way to calm Naomi down was to make light of the situation.

  “She’s run away from home, that’s what! Ray and I are frantic with worry. Tara finished her final exams and split. No one has a clue where she is.”