“I can’t do it today,” Chloe said firmly. “Could you please take that box of canning jars and put it on the back porch for Zephyr? I told her I’d leave them there so she won’t disturb me while I’m working. Which I wish you’d consider once in a while,” she added pointedly.
“I was only asking you if you’d like to swim with us,” Tara said, adopting a mock-aggrieved tone.
“I have to finish these things for the Sanluca gift shop,” she said, shifting in her seat. Her nipples were sore and her thighs still ached from making love with Ben, but she could hardly wait to do it again.
“Isn’t it great that I’m not around all the time, bothering you and pestering you and things?”
“I like having you here,” Chloe said truthfully, though she certainly contemplated the downside of Tara’s presence a lot these days.
“That’s what Ben said. He told me so yesterday after I hammered him with a whole bunch of questions about searching for buried treasure. I found a couple of quarters on the beach with the metal detector. And I really love the scuba class.”
“Hobbies are good,” Chloe replied absently. The wire bent around the sea glass, but the cage it made was too elaborate to show off the glass’s qualities. Patiently, she unwound the wire and started over.
“I don’t mean for treasure hunting to be a hobby, or scuba, either. Florida State University has an oceanography program. Isn’t that exciting? Ben says I could become a marine archaeologist and work in his field.”
Good for Ben, Chloe thought, then said casually, “Why don’t you get some brochures. Find out the requirements for that major.”
“Jill has a Florida State course catalog. I’ll check next time I’m at her house. Oh, by the way, she didn’t get that job at the newspaper.”
“Mmm,” Chloe said.
“Are you going to open the Frangipani Inn as a bed-and-breakfast again, Chloe? Ben said you might.”
“I’ve been considering. Right now it’s too much work to contemplate, not to mention that the bedrooms provide a pleasant habitat for a whole slew of spiders, as well as the chameleon that took up residence under the dressing table in Driftwood after Butch kept chasing it.” Driftwood was the bedroom across the hall from her room, tastefully decorated in shades of gray.
“Hire Jill and me to clean for you. We could get the place shaped up by fall, when tourists start fleeing those cold northern winters.”
“Why would you want to clean house?” Tara’s parents sent her a weekly allowance.
“I’d like to save money so I can come back next summer and volunteer at the treasure museum full-time. That way I’d learn a lot and be ready for Florida State the following fall.”
“You’re planning on going back to Farish High this year, then?” Chloe asked, trying not to reveal her trepidation.
Tara appeared puzzled. “Well, sure. If I’m going to Florida State, I’ll have to graduate.”
“Good idea,” Chloe said. She certainly wasn’t breaking into a happy dance yet, since Tara had been known to change her mind on a whim.
“Ben gave me lemons that he bought at the produce stand,” Tara said. “I might as well make lemonade for the group.” She scampered off, leaving Chloe shaking her head in wonderment. What a difference a few weeks made, she marveled. How far Tara had come in the short time she’d lived at the inn!
BEN WAS CRAZY about this woman who had so amazingly appeared in his life, and the thing was, he wasn’t sure how to keep her there. She talked about staying at the Frangipani Inn through the fall and winter, and she’d mentioned renting rooms the way Tayloe and Gwynne had done. But every time he tried to pin her down, she deliberately shifted the conversation. Or maybe it just seemed that way. The two of them always had so much to talk about. Her business, his treasure hunting, Tara.
Sometimes he considered what it would be like being married to Chloe. To wake up in the morning and gaze into those lovely lavender-blue eyes. To walk up behind her when she was standing at the kitchen sink and reach around her to caress one of those lush breasts. Thinking about it wasn’t enough. He wanted to broach the subject to Chloe, though he sensed that she wasn’t ready, and neither was he. It rankled that his life and career were still on hold and that he couldn’t plan a future. So it was that he decided to confront Andy McGehee.
The city marina in Sanluca baked in the hot noon sunshine, but Ben didn’t allow himself to be distracted by the billowing sails of the boats on the water or the boisterous shouts of boys casting nets in the nearby shallows. As he passed several of the Sea Search boats, he was transported back to those heady days of the hunt. The clatter of the compressors that drove the airlift as it washed sand away from the crumbling hull of a wreck, the excitement as divers dug to uncover artifacts hidden for three hundred years. He missed it and longed to be part of it again.
As Ben approached, Andy was supervising the loading of supplies onto one of his dive boats, Vision Quest. He smiled in welcome when he saw Ben.
“Good to see you, Ben,” Andy said, shaking his hand. “How’s it going?”
“Pretty good,” Ben replied.
“Hey,” Andy hollered when a man walked past with two cardboard boxes, “watch it! That’s my own private stock of Kit Kat bars!” Andy loved Kit Kat bars and claimed he could live on them for days at a time.
Ben hid a smile, but Andy noticed. “What are you laughing at?” he demanded.
The two of them had often engaged in good-natured ribbing, and Ben was encouraged that Andy seemed inclined to relate to him in the same old way.
“Nothing,” Ben said hastily. “Nothing at all. Say, Andy, do you have a minute? We could walk up to the Sand Bar, have lunch.”
“Sure,” Andy said, and he called out a few instructions to his crew before they set off up the dock.
At the Sand Bar, Andy slid into one side of a booth, Ben into the other. Liss was working behind the bar, for which Ben was thankful, considering that she kept aiming frosty glances in his direction.
After they placed their orders with a new waitress, one Ben had never seen before, Andy leaned across the table. “You’ve been on my mind, Ben,” he said slowly. “Are things really going okay?”
Ben nodded. “Yeah, on the personal side.” He was thinking of Chloe, her body glistening with sea water as he’d made love to her on the beach.
“I heard you’re staying at the Frangipani Inn, but wasn’t it closed?”
Ben explained about Tayloe and Gwynne, and, hesitantly, about Chloe moving from Texas.
The waitress brought their sandwiches and left.
Ben cleared his throat. “About that job,” he said. “I’m sober, I’m stable and I want to dive again.”
Andy chewed and swallowed. He had gone a bit grayer since Ben had worked for him, and he was starting to put on weight. All those Kit Kat bars probably didn’t help.
“What’re the chances, Andy?” Ben asked. “Are you going to hire me?”
Andy regarded him for a long moment. “I’d like to, believe me, but you nearly caused the death of one of my men. I feel responsible for each and every diver who goes down on one of my missions. I haven’t gotten over it, Ben. Maybe I never will.”
“Even if I give you my word that I won’t drink again, ever? Even if I promise that I’ve changed?”
Andy stared out the window at the royal poinciana tree, where a cardinal landed in a flash of red feathers. “It hasn’t been that long, Ben, since you got sober.”
“I learned my lesson,” Ben said heavily.
“I believe you. Look, you’d been through a horrible experience. What happened to Ashley was horrible, more than any parent should have to bear.”
Ben felt a lump in his throat at the mention of his daughter’s name. “Losing Ashley is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to face,” he said, giving every single word due emphasis. “I didn’t care what happened to me, and so I drank. I do care what happens to others, and when Rick nearly died, it brought me up short. I deser
ve a second chance, Andy, for old times’ sake.”
Andy sighed and gazed out the window again. “I’m not going to hire you, Ben. As far as I’m concerned, you need to prove that you can stay sober.”
Ben pushed back in the booth, feeling numb. “For how long?” he asked.
“Next season, we’ll talk again.” Andy polished off his sandwich, wiped his hands on the paper napkin. “That doesn’t mean you can’t come around and chat once in a while. I miss you, Ben, but I can’t endanger my crew. You understand.”
“I guess I do,” Ben said dully, staring down at his uneaten lunch.
“Well, I’d better get back to the dock. See you around, Ben.”
“Sure,” Ben said, and he stood to shake hands with Andy before his former boss left.
“Anything wrong?” asked the waitress when she saw his untouched lunch.
“Not with lunch,” Ben said. Only everything else, he added to himself.
WHEN BEN GOT HOME after riding around aimlessly in his Jeep for a couple of hours, Chloe was vigorously sweeping the back porch. Butch lounged in the shadows, indolently flipping the tip of his tail now and then as he dreamed.
“Hi,” Chloe said, stashing the broom near the kitchen door. She shaded her eyes against the slanting afternoon sun.
“Hi,” he said dispiritedly. She was beautiful in her cutoff jeans and a little halter top that covered the essentials but left a lot of skin exposed. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a knot from which wayward wisps escaped, and she wore no makeup. He liked the way she was so unpretentious, how she was always so aboveboard about her thought processes and emotions.
“Anything wrong?” she asked.
“The usual,” he said as he walked up and lifted one foot to the bottom step. “I talked with Andy McGehee today, asked him about getting my old job back.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t give me any hope for this year.”
He flinched when her face fell. “So, I guess I’ll clean the cabinets in the annex,” Ben added.
“Sure. Good plan. Have you eaten lunch?” Chloe asked.
“I’m not hungry,” he shot back, regretting his surly tone immediately. “I mean, maybe later.” He sensed immediately that he’d hurt her feelings.
“All right,” she said. She picked up the broom and recommenced sweeping.
Feeling even more depressed, Ben continued around the house to the annex. He felt like a failure for not getting his old job back and like a cad for speaking to Chloe so sharply. He flung himself on the couch. He’d worked so hard to fight his way back from where he’d been, but in the end, he couldn’t do anything right. He’d lost the friendship of his ex-wife, Emily, and he didn’t have his daughter anymore. Ashley had been the light of his life, the joy of his existence. When she’d died, his life was over.
Yet out of the depths of his misery had risen the determination not to give up. Ever. And so he’d kept on keeping on, even though things weren’t, at present, going his way.
Well, maybe they were, sort of. He cared about Chloe and was eager to make amends to her for this afternoon’s sharp words. First, he’d get cleaned up, maybe offer to treat Chloe and Tara to dinner at Paquita Juanita’s.
After he showered, he decided to take a short nap. Sleep would revive him, perhaps dispel the tension he felt over the morning’s conversation with Andy.
He switched on the ceiling fan and let the cool breeze wash over him, and he closed his eyes. Sleep, the healer. Sleep, where he didn’t chastise himself for past mistakes.
Sleep. It was better than booze any day.
CHLOE HAD CHORES to do that afternoon. She called Gwynne’s godmother, verified that Patrice had sold two major pieces of jewelry at ridiculous prices, and promised to send more. She talked with Gwynne, who offered to pay half the cost of hiring cleaners to get Frangipani Inn in shape for boarders in the fall. She finished work on a particularly lovely sea-glass piece, which included a garnet. And through it all, she wondered about Ben.
When she finished her work, she went to the refrigerator and found the rest of the pizza that Tara had brought home from the mall’s food court yesterday. Since it had been quiet in the annex, she decided to check on Ben’s progress in cleaning the cabinets and provide him a snack at the same time. He had seemed so down after his talk with Andy.
Carrying the plate of pizza, she walked around to the sliding glass door, where she could look through the screen.
“Ben?” she called. “May I come in?”
No answer, and it was awfully quiet. “Ben?”
What if something had happened to him? He could have fallen, hit his head on the bathroom tile. He could have—Oh, no. He wouldn’t have taken a drink; she was sure of it.
She slid the screen open and stepped inside. Nothing was amiss. The steady whoosh of the ceiling fan emitted from the bedroom, and the door was half-closed. She called Ben’s name again, but he still didn’t answer, so she moved slightly to her right, where she’d be able to see through the bedroom door.
Ben was lying on the bed, stretched out on his back and naked. His skin was dark with tan, the hair on his arms bleached golden by the sun. She drew a sharp breath at the sight of his taut, muscled stomach and what lay below.
She moved softly across the room, went into the bedroom. She put the plate with the pizza on the dresser and let her clothes fall to the floor.
The radio beside the bed played soulful saxophone music. She dipped the forefinger of one hand in a glass of water on the night-stand and drew a wet line around his navel.
No reaction. She bent over and touched her tongue to one of his nipples, and his eyes opened slowly.
“Chloe,” he said.
“It’s so hot. I want to cool you off,” she said, half smiling at the perplexed but delighted expression on his face. She picked up the glass of water and spilled some onto his stomach, then used her palm and a lazy movement to run it across his chest, his abdomen.
“I’m not sure this is the right way to do it,” he said. He was exhibiting signs of arousal. Well, one major sign, at least, as her fingers teased and pressed, found erogenous zones, explored. He stroked her back, her breasts, took them in his mouth one by one as she bent over him.
“Long, sweet afternoon,” he murmured. “You’re so special, Chloe. I love doing this with you.”
The statement, though welcome, was only a few words removed from the one thing she would have liked to hear. I love you. Would that be difficult for him to say when the time came? Or would that time never come? Guys didn’t tell her they loved her. They took, she gave. At the moment, however, that seemed irrelevant. She was lost in the tenderness, the pleasure of this experience.
“When will Tara be home?” he asked before he rolled her over on her side.
“Later,” she said. She didn’t want her niece to know what was going on with Ben. When two adults consensually engaged in making love, it wasn’t anyone else’s business. Or so Chloe had believed before she had to worry about setting a good example.
Ben’s lips traversed the back of her neck, his hands sweet torture on her breasts. He entered her, and she gasped. The sunlight filtering through the curtains seemed suddenly too bright, blindingly white. She rode the waves of sensation, giving herself up to them.
Afterward, he held her tight. She kept her eyes closed, not wanting to see mundane objects such as the radio, the chipped dresser across the room, the plate of pizza slices, which were probably soggy now.
He kissed her ear—a loud smack that brought her back to reality.
“What shall we do now?” he said before getting up and going into the bathroom.
“Sleep?” she said, too drowsy to move, her limbs slowed by the heat and exertion.
He must have decided it was a good idea, because he came back in a few minutes. They drowsed, curled together spoon-style, until a car door slammed outside.
Chapter Nine
Chloe was instantly awake. “Who’
s that?”
Ben was out of bed immediately, pulling aside the curtain for a sliver’s view of the driveway.
“Tara,” he said. “She’s back.”
Chloe scrambled to grab her panties and stepped into them, nearly falling in the process. Ben was laughing, and so was she.
“Hey, do you two want to go out to dinner?” he called as she flew out of the bedroom and down the corridor to the kitchen.
She only skewered him with a frantic look before she opened the door. Good grief, wasn’t it bad enough that Tara had almost caught them in the act? Did he have to suggest that the three of them sit down in a restaurant while she and Ben were still worn out from too much sex?
If there was such a thing. With Ben, too much was an impossibility. Chloe didn’t think she’d ever get enough of this man, even if they spent a lifetime together.
A few hours later, Ben drove them to the Mexican restaurant. Tara wore a new outfit, and Chloe, freshly showered and with her hair caught up in a barrette, had donned her best white linen slacks and a print sleeveless jersey in colors of the rainbow. Ben, next to Chloe in the restaurant, reached over and caressed her thigh when Tara wasn’t looking.
Tara kept them laughing throughout the meal with descriptions of various characters who’d come into the museum, including some who had been part of the Sea Search crew when Ben had worked the wrecks offshore.
“And this guy, his name is Lundy something or other, he, like, strolls in every day to marvel over the things on display that he says he found on the Spiritu wreck. Did you ever dive on that one, Ben?”
“Lundy and I worked together, but I expect he’s retired now.”
“Yeah, but he has stories. Chloe, maybe you could make your famous fajitas some night and we could invite Lundy over to tell the kids these things. It would be something nice I could do for Jill, Greg and Aaron, and they have friends they could bring—Suzette, Marta and Julie. I’d like to meet their whole crowd for when I come back next year.”
The Treasure Man Page 13
