“You look different.” His eyes narrowed. He studied her face for a moment while her pulse quickened.
“It has been six years since I saw you.” Did she look older? Her dad had aged dramatically during his swift and private fall from grace. Hollows appeared under his eyes and cheekbones, and his skin developed a bluish undertone. “You, on the other hand, look exactly the same.”
Not exactly. Time and the sun, working hand in hand, had made him look rugged and distinguished. His eyes still had that insolent flash to them, and his lip that disdainful way of curving upward so you couldn’t tell if he was laughing with you or at you.
Did she imagine it or did his left thigh creep imperceptibly closer to her right one? She could almost feel the heat of it through her pants. The salt air filled her lungs and made her giddy.
“I don’t know what exactly is different.” His eyes rested on her face—her cheek, to be precise, because she was avoiding his gaze by staring at the horizon. “Something big, though.”
She shrank a little under his inquisitive look. She was quite a different person than the brash, confident and empty-headed girl who’d partied and had sex on the beach with him that summer. Then she’d thought the world was hers for the taking and she was taking a vacation before seizing it. The years since had taught her that the world wasn’t too interested in whether she wanted it and that the foundation of her life—the privilege and wealth afforded by her proud family—had been built on the shifting sands of illusion.
She certainly didn’t intend for him to find out about that. No, they could laugh about that later once she’d made a name for herself and didn’t need to rest on anyone else’s laurels. Right now, though, she was hanging in thin air, and she intended to keep that a secret.
Which might be interesting, because she’d already committed to sharing a bed with him. Hopefully she wouldn’t talk in her sleep.
Three
Jack grilled his delicious swordfish and served it with skewered grilled vegetables out on the terrace, where the evening breeze kept bugs at bay. They could see the lights of fishing boats and the occasional cruise ship in the distance, but all was stillness and silence on the island.
“It’s so peaceful here.” Vicki looked out over the dunes. “Doesn’t it drive you nuts?”
“Maybe that’s why I’ve always been nuts.” Jack reclined in his chair. Lit tapers in the gnarled old candelabra on the table cast flickering shadows over his hard features. “I need it, though. Helps me recharge my batteries.”
“Hmm. I can just hook myself up to my car engine by the jumper cables.” She sipped her wine, then, realizing she’d had almost three glasses, pushed her wineglass out of reach. She was in danger of becoming tipsy. She’d better work on keeping her hatches more tightly battened.
“You still like living in the city?” Jack lifted his arms and placed them behind his head, giving her a breath-stealing view of his powerful biceps.
She swallowed and squinted slightly to obscure the view. “Yes. I think I love being another anonymous face in the crowd. I can’t imagine living in a small town where everyone knows who I am.”
“Sounds like you’re running from something. Or someone.”
“Maybe I prefer being out of reach.” She smiled and made a conscious effort not to pick up her glass again. If only they could go to bed so she could stop trying to put on a bravely charming front. Then again, that might be leaping from the frying pan into the fire.
“Did you ever think about me, you know, over the years?” His voice was low, gruff.
“Certainly not. You dumped me, remember?” Her adrenaline level jumped. This had to come out sooner or later. Might as well get it over with.
“I always felt bad about the way I took off. Blame it on youthful immaturity.”
She sneaked a glance at him. It was hard to read his expression in the flickering candlelight, but she imagined she saw a hint of sheepishness in his eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself that I’ve spent the last few years pining over you. I’ve had far more traumatic relationships since.” She inhaled the sea air.
“Have you? Did someone break your heart?”
“No way. Nothing in there but cogs and wheels. That’s why I can jump-start my battery so easily.” A sudden chill in the night air made goose bumps spring up on her arms, and she rubbed them. “Things may be a little rusty, but nothing’s broken.”
He chuckled. “I’ve got some oil for your rusty gears.”
“I bet you do.” She looked at him down the length of her nose. She had to work hard not to smile. It was almost impossible to be mad at Jack Drummond when she was in his presence. That came later, when she realized how he’d played her like a violin. “But you can leave it on your garage shelf. I like to think of my rust as a protective barrier.”
“I’m feeling jealous.” His annoyingly thick biceps flexed as he stretched. “I’m beginning to think I made a big mistake back then.”
“One of many, I’d imagine.” Again, she had to fight the reflex to reach for her wine. Shame she didn’t smoke. It was hard not to fidget, but she worked hard to look cool and calm.
“You know it.” That familiar lazy grin eased across his mouth. “But they’ve been fun, each and every one.”
“Just think of all the fun we’d have missed out on if we’d fallen madly in love with each other and done something stupid like getting married.” She hugged herself. It was getting colder. “That would have been quite the act of rebellion at the time.”
He laughed. “Yes, your parents might have died of shock at the prospect of their princess marrying a beach bum.”
“Until they realized how filthy rich you are. Then they’d have staged a brisk recovery and welcomed you with open arms. It would have all been very boring.”
“I spared us that by running off like a coward at the first sign of emotion.”
She froze. He’d just admitted it. That he remembered.
I love you.
She’d said it loud and clear, for the one and only time in her life. She’d rather slit her own throat than ever utter those three words again. “Emotion? I’m not sure I was ever capable of one of those.”
“Me, either. Inconvenient and messy things. Best left to those who don’t have enough going on in their lives. Speaking of which, we should get to bed.” His eyes flashed, creating a frightening jolt of response somewhere low in her belly. “Because we need to get up early in the morning, of course.” His steady, dark gaze suggested more than sleep.
Suddenly her plan to enjoy the pleasures of his body seemed like the dumbest idea she’d ever come up with. Maybe because she was tired and all this talk of old hurts made her feel vulnerable. “Do you sleep in that same room, under the map?”
“Of course. It’s always been the captain’s bedroom.” He grabbed the bottle and glasses from the table. She hesitated for a second before taking their plates and cutlery. She’d become used to being waited on hand and foot in Sinclair Drummond’s house—by the woman he’d recently become engaged to.
“That map must be emblazoned on your brain by now.”
“Hasn’t helped me find the treasure, though.”
“Maybe you’re reading it wrong?” They walked back into the air-conditioned calm of the house. “Perhaps what it needs is a different perspective.” She didn’t want to speculate on how many women’s eyes had stared up at that map over the centuries.
“I’ll welcome your angle on it. I think we’ve read it every possible way it can be read.”
“But you’ve never found the ship.”
“The ship could be broken up and washed away by now.”
And the cup gone forever. “It’s out there. I feel it in my bones.” She shot him a glance as they walked side by side down the hallway to the bedroom.
“I would definitely bet money on your intuition.”
“You should. I hooked your cousin Sinclair up with his new bride. The moment I saw the way they looked at each other, I knew
they were meant to be together.”
“Were they dating?”
“Nope, she was serving him his morning coffee and ironing his linen napkins, but I made sure Cinderella went to the ball with her handsome prince and it’s been all uphill from there.” Well, mostly. No need to mention the part about his horrid ex-wife suddenly discovering she was pregnant. “He certainly believes in my hunches now.”
“Then I’ll bet on them, too, and put my equipment and expertise at your disposal.”
He opened the door to the bedroom, dimly lit by wall sconces that cast a romantic glow over the old plasterwork. The bed looked much smaller than she remembered, its massive wood structure framing what was probably only a full-size mattress. “It’s going to be a tight fit for both of us.”
“All the better.” His feral grin flashed for a brief second. Then a more gentlemanly expression returned. “I’ll leave you to get changed while I lock up for the night.”
“Lock up? We’re on an island. Who are you trying to keep out?”
“Maybe you should ask who I’m trying to keep in.”
He vanished before she could come up with a witty reply. Or any reply. Her suitcase stood silently in one corner, and she hurried to get changed into her pj’s before he could come back and watch her undress.
She donned a bra and panties as extra armor underneath her white cotton camisole and lounge pants. Not that she expected him to do anything mischievous while she was asleep. That wasn’t his style. There was absolutely nothing sneaky about Jack Drummond. If he planned to lay siege, he’d do it while she was wide-awake.
It was her own defenses she was worried about. She didn’t want any part of her to start straying toward his side of the mattress, hoping for a casual brush against those thick biceps or one of those powerful thighs. Much better to keep everything strapped down and swathed in fabric.
She washed her face in the big onyx sink. The mirror was ancient, foggy and flecked with dark spots. When she caught sight of her reflection, it startled her. It was as if she’d seen a dream version of herself, pale and wan, lost in a strange world. She turned away sharply. When she walked back into the bedroom, Jack was there, casually stripping away his clothes and revealing his tanned physique. She made a valiant effort not to look, but it was hard because he faced the opposite direction and she had free rein to indulge an academic interest in seeing how his body compared to the one in her memory.
Favorably. She had to admire the way he’d filled out. Not a rangy, sunburned youth anymore, but a man in his prime. Broad-shouldered enough to carry the weight of the world. When his jeans slid down, she gasped at how pale his backside was. Obviously the only part of him that never got much sun exposure.
He must have heard her intake of breath because he turned his head. “I hope I’m not being rude by stripping off right here. You have seen it all before.”
“It’s your bedroom. You do what you like.” She grabbed her phone from her purse, so she could distract herself by checking her messages, then walked to the bed and climbed in, with some difficulty because it was high. She slid under the covers and was gratified to find soft sheets there. Once again, only the best for Jack Drummond. She turned on her phone and checked her texts. Nothing interesting. Her gaze drifted up to the mural painted overhead. The green shoreline, dotted with palm trees, the blue sea, the crudely painted mermaid sitting on her rock. No one would call it a work of art. The fresco obviously hadn’t ever been restored, either. Even the scant light from her phone picked out the uneven surface and revealed where tiny chips of plaster had flaked off. It was darkened by centuries of smoke from candles and pipes and who knew what else Jack’s pirate ancestors had burned in here. It would be interesting to see what a good cleaning might reveal.
“How did you measure the distances on the map to know where to look?” She kept her eyes firmly off Jack as he walked toward the bed—still naked, as far as she could tell—and climbed under the covers.
“We started a few yards off the shore and kept moving out north at the same angle. It wasn’t too scientific. In all honesty I put nearly two years into it and I’m sure I wasn’t the first.”
“One of your ancestors could have found the wreck and salvaged it.” Her skin tingled with uncomfortable awareness that his naked body shared the same dark, small space with hers.
“Found it maybe. Salvaged it? Impossible. There’s a steep shelf offshore and the wreck is somewhere outside the shelf. The water’s way too deep for anyone without sophisticated equipment like oxygen tanks to explore. No way it could have been done before the twentieth century, and if it was that recent I’d know about it.”
He rolled toward her, so close she could almost feel his hot breath on her skin. Her nerve endings pulsed and tingled—with the desire to leap out of this bed and save herself. She managed, with great effort, to keep her eyes on the low ceiling above the bed. What she saw there made her squint her eyes in an effort to focus more closely. In the dim half light from her phone the shadowy pits in the plaster stirred adrenaline in her blood. “Do you have a flashlight?”
“Sure.” She heard him turn and reach behind him. “Keep one next to the bed at all times. We often lose power during storms.”
She turned to take it and got a disarming eyeful of his tanned pecs. “Thanks.” She climbed out from under the covers, careful not to accidentally dislodge them from any more of his bare flesh, and stood on the mattress. Holding the flashlight above her head, she shone it at the ceiling. “Interesting.” Her pulse quickened and she moved her arm higher, trying to keep her balance on the squishy surface of the mattress, which was already thrown off balance by Jack’s heavy form.
“What do you see?”
“The plaster has some tiny chips, but there’s still color behind them. I think there’s another painting underneath this one.”
“You’re kidding.” She braced as he shifted the mattress by sitting up.
“You should already know I’m not the jolly jokester type.” Gingerly she reached up and touched one of the indentations in the surface. She scraped the edge of the hole lightly with her fingernail—museum curators would shudder—and tiny fragments of plaster came away, but the surface beneath stayed intact. And was definitely pigmented. “I wonder if one of your sneaky ancestors covered up the real map with a misleading one to put someone else off the scent.”
“If they did, it’s worked very well. How do you remove the top layer?”
“It looks like someone slathered a fresh layer of plaster over a previous painting. If that’s the case we should be able to chip it off. Look...” She pointed to the chip in the fresco. “There’s a patch of blue underneath this green area. That’s what makes me think there’s another picture.”
Jack rose to his feet, shifting the entire mattress in his direction. She struggled to keep her footing, but had to put out a hand and steady herself on the rock-hard muscle of his torso. Once she had her balance again, she snatched her hand back as if his skin had burned it. “Of course, chipping it off will destroy the painting. I know it’s part of your family history.”
“We Drummonds have far too much family history.”
“There are ways of lifting it off, using glue and fabric to transfer it to a new surface, but we’d have to hunt down the materials and I’ve never done it before, so it would take some research and experimentation....”
“I’ll go get a couple of chisels.” Jack jumped off the bed, throwing her off balance again. She had to steady herself by thrusting her arm up toward the ceiling. Where her fingers met the surface she could swear she felt it crack slightly, ready to release it’s grip on the ceiling above and fall away to reveal its secrets.
Jack had left the room, so she took a moment to heave a tiny sigh of relief. Instead of an awkward night beneath the sheets with him, it looked as though they were in for an interesting night of discovery.
Either that or she was about to destroy a Drummond family heirloom. She pulled her camera from
her bag and took about fifty pictures of the painting from all angles, in case removing it should prove to be a mistake.
Jack returned a minute later with an armory of tools in a wooden box, and some khaki shorts—thank goodness—covering his man bits. She rifled through the box and chose an ancient flat-head screwdriver and a tiny hammer. “We want to use something blunt, so we don’t chip right through it. Hopefully if we can crack the surface it will fall away like it’s already started to do.”
She started first, chipping gently next to one of the existing holes. Spider cracks crawled slowly across the plaster, a few millimeters at a time. She was barely breathing. This could all be a stupid mistake—someone might have just painted the wall a flat color before creating the map. She kept going, though, and after about two minutes, a tiny chunk of plaster no larger than a pinky nail fell to the sheets below. Underneath it was more of the rich indigo-blue color she’d glimpsed. “You’d better get a drop cloth for the bed or your sheets will get dusty.” She spoke through a smile.
“Never mind that.” Jack picked up the little hammer and began tapping. “I can’t believe I’ve slept under this thing for years and never thought to look beneath the surface.”
“Then it’s rather a miracle that I came back into your life, isn’t it?”
“Indeed it is.”
* * *
Jack’s arm ached from holding it over his head while tapping at the fresco. They couldn’t risk being too aggressive and damaging the painting beneath, so it was slow going. As 3:00 a.m. rolled past, they’d revealed enough to see that there was indeed another map painted below in far richer and more saturated colors. This map showed only the shore of the island, a detailed outline with nooks and crannies and rock outcroppings. The rest of the painting, so far, was all indigo-blue sea. No sign of an X, or even a helpful mermaid.
“What do you think of all these white lines?” The blue ocean surface was crisscrossed with faint white hatch marks, which gave the appearance of ocean peaks and waves.
The Deeper the Passion... Page 4
