Dangerous Embrace

by Nora Roberts

  “While you take all the risks?” she countered. “Is that supposed to be the balance of our relationship, Ky? You man, me woman? I bake bread, you hunt the meat?”

  “Damn it, Kate, it’s not as basic as that.”

  “It’s just as basic as that,” she tossed back. The color had come back to her face. Her legs were steady again. And she would be heard. “You want me to be quiet and content—and amenable to the way you choose to live. You want me to do as you say, bend to your will, and yet I know how you felt about my father.”

  It didn’t seem she had the energy to be angry any longer. She was just weary, bone weary from slamming herself up against a wall that didn’t seem ready to budge.

  “I spent all my life doing what it pleased him to have me do,” she continued in calmer tones. “No waves, no problems, no rebellion. He gave me a nod of approval, but no true respect and certainly no true affection. Now, you’re asking me to do the same thing again with you.” She felt no tears, only that weariness of spirit. “Why do you suppose the only two men I’ve ever loved should want me to be so utterly pliant to their will? Why do you suppose I lost both of them because I tried so hard to do just that?”

  “No.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “No, that’s not true. It’s not what I want from you or for you. I just want to take care of you.”

  She shook her head. “What’s the difference, Ky?” she whispered. “What the hell’s the difference?” Pushing past him, Kate went out on deck.

  CHAPTER 12

  Because in her quiet, immovable way Kate had demanded it, Ky left her alone. Perhaps it was for the best as it gave him time to think and to reassess what he wanted.

  He realized that because of his fear for her, because of his need to care for her, he’d hurt her and damaged their already tenuous relationship.

  On a certain level, she’d hit the mark in her accusations. He did want her to be safe and cared for while he sweated and took the risks. It was his nature to protect what he loved—in Kate’s case, perhaps too much. It was also his nature to want other wills bent to his. He wanted Kate, and was honest enough to admit that he’d already outlined the terms in his own mind.

  Her father’s quiet manipulating had infuriated Ky and yet, he found himself doing the same thing. Not so quietly, he admitted, not nearly as subtly, but he was doing the same thing. Still, it wasn’t for the same reasons. He wanted Kate to be with him, to align herself to him. It was as simple as that. He was certain, if she’d just let him, that he could make her happy.

  But he never fully considered that she’d have demands or terms of her own. Until now, Ky hadn’t thought how he’d adjust to them.

  * * *

  The light of dawn was quiet as Ky added the finishing touches to the lettering on his sailboat. For most of the night, he’d worked in the shed, giving Kate her time alone, and himself the time to think. Now that the night was over, only one thing remained clear. He loved her. But it had come home to him that it might not be enough. Though impatience continued to push at him, he reined it in. Perhaps he had to leave it to her to show him what would be.

  For the next few days, they would concentrate on excavating the cargo that had sunk two centuries before. The longer they searched, the more the treasure became a symbol for him. If he could give it to her, it would be the end of the quest for both of them. Once it was over, they’d both have what they wanted. She, the fulfillment of her father’s dream, and he, the satisfaction of seeing her freed from it.

  Ky closed the shed doors behind him and headed back for the house. In a few days, he thought with a glance over his shoulder, he’d have something else to give her. Something else to ask her.

  He was still some feet away from the house when he smelled the morning scents of bacon and coffee drifting through the kitchen windows. When he entered, Kate was standing at the stove, a long T-shirt over her tank suit, her feet bare, her hair loose. He could see the light dusting of freckles over the bridge of her nose, and the pale soft curve of her lips.

  His need to gather her close rammed into him with such power, he had to stop and catch his breath. “Kate—”

  “I thought since we’d be putting in a long day we should have a full breakfast.” She’d heard him come in, sensed it. Because it made her knees weak, she spoke briskly. “I’d like to get an early start.”

  He watched her drop eggs into the skillet where the white began to sizzle and solidify around the edges.

  “Kate, I’d like to talk to you.”

  “I’ve been thinking we might consider renting a salvage ship after all,” she interrupted, “and perhaps hiring another couple of divers. Excavating the cargo’s going to be very slow work with just the two of us. It’s certainly time we looked into lifting bags and lines.”

  Long days in the sun had lightened her hair. There were shades upon shades of variation so that as it flowed it reminded him of the smooth soft pelt of a deer. “I don’t want to talk business now.”

  “It’s not something we can put off too much longer.” Efficiently, she scooped up the eggs and slid them onto plates. “I’m beginning to think we should expedite the excavation rather than dragging it out for what may very well be several more weeks. Then, of course, if we’re talking about excavating the entire site, it would be months.”

  “Not now.” Ky turned off the burner under the skillet. Taking both plates from Kate, he set them on the table. “Look, I have to do something, and I’m not sure I’ll do it very well.”

  Turning, Kate took silverware from the drawer and went to the table. “What?”

  “Apologize.” When she looked back at him in her cool, quiet way, he swore. “No, I won’t do it well.”

  “It isn’t necessary.”

  “Yes, it’s necessary. Sit down.” He let out a long breath as she remained standing. “Please,” he added, then took a chair himself. Without a word, Kate sat across from him. “You saved my life yesterday.” Even saying it aloud, he felt uneasy about it. “It was no less than that. I never could have taken that shark with my diver’s knife. The only reason I did was because you’d weakened and distracted him.”

  Kate lifted her coffee and drank as though they were discussing the weather. It was the only way she had of blocking out images of what might have been. “Yes.”

  With a frustrated laugh, Ky stabbed at his eggs. “Not going to make it easy on me, are you?”

  “No, I don’t think I am.”

  “I’ve never been that scared,” he said quietly. “Not for myself, certainly not for anyone else. I thought he had you.” He looked up and met her calm, patient eyes. “I was still too far away to do anything about it. If…”

  “Sometimes it’s best not to think about the ifs.”

  “All right.” He nodded and reached for her hand. “Kate, realizing you put yourself in danger to protect me only made it worse somehow. The possibility of anything happening to you was bad enough, but the idea of it happening because of me was unbearable.”

  “You would’ve protected me.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “There shouldn’t be any buts, Ky.”

  “Maybe there shouldn’t be,” he agreed, “but I can’t promise there won’t be.”

  “I’ve changed.” The fact filled her with an odd sense of power and unease. “For too many years I’ve channeled my own desires because I thought somehow that approval could be equated with love. I know better now.”

  “I’m not your father, Kate.”

  “No, but you also have a way of imposing your will on me. My fault to a point.” Her voice was calm, level, as it was when she lectured her students. She hadn’t slept while Ky had spent his hours in the shed. Like him, she’d spent her time in thought, in search for the right answers.

  “Four years ago, I had to give to one of you and deny the other. It broke my heart. Today, I know I have to answer to myself first.” With her breakfast hardly touched, she took her plate to the sink. “I love you, Ky,” she murmu
red. “But I have to answer to myself first.”

  Rising, he went to her and laid his hands on her shoulders. Somehow the strength that suddenly seemed so powerful in her both attracted him yet left him uneasy. “Okay.” When she turned into his arms, he felt the world settle a bit. “Just let me know what the answer is.”

  “When I can.” She closed her eyes and held tight. “When I can.”

  * * *

  For three long days they dove, working away the silt to find new discoveries. With a small air lift and their own hands, they found the practical, the beautiful and the ordinary. They came upon more than eight thousand of the ten thousand decorated pipes on the Liberty’s manifest. At least half of them, to Kate’s delight, had their bowls intact. They were clay, long-stemmed pipes with the bowls decorated with oak leaves or bunches of grapes and flowers. In a heady moment of pleasure, she snapped Ky’s picture as he held one up to his lips.

  She knew that at auction, they would more than pay for the investment she’d made. And, with them, the donation she’d make to a museum in her father’s name was steadily growing. But more than this, the discovery of so many pipes on a wreck added force to their claim that the ship was English.

  There were also snuff boxes, again thousands, leaving literally no doubt in her mind that they’d found the merchantman Liberty. They found tableware, some of it elegant, some basic utility-ware, but again in quantity. Their list of salvage grew beyond anything Kate had imagined, but they found no chest of gold.

  They took turns hauling their finds to the surface, using an inverted plastic trash can filled with air to help them lift. Even with this, they stored the bulk of it on the sea floor. They were working alone again, without a need for Marsh to man the prop-wash. As it had been in the beginning, the project became a personal chore for only the two of them. What they found became a personal triumph. What they didn’t find, a personal disappointment.

  Kate delegated herself to deal with the snuff boxes, transporting them to the mesh baskets. Already, she was planning to clean several of them herself as part of the discovery. Beneath the layers of time there might be something elegant, ornate or ugly. She didn’t believe it mattered what she found, as long as she found it.

  Tea, sugar and other perishables the merchant ship had carried were long since gone without a trace. What she and Ky found now were the solid pieces of civilization that had survived centuries in the sea. A pipe meant for an eighteenth-century man had never reached the New World. It should have made her sad but, because it had survived, because she could hold it in her hand more than two hundred years later, Kate felt a quiet triumph. Some things last, whatever the odds.

  Reaching down, she disturbed something that lay among the jumbled snuff boxes. Automatically, she jerked her hand back. Memories of the stingray and other dangers were still very fresh. When the small round object clinked against the side of a box and lay still, her heart began to pound. Almost afraid to touch, Kate reached for it. Between her fingers, she held a gold coin from another era.

  Though she had read it was likely, she hadn’t expected it to be as bright and shiny as the day it was minted. The pieces of silver they’d found had blackened, and other metal pieces had corroded, some of them crystalized almost beyond recognition. Yet, the gold, the small coin she’d plucked from the sea floor, winked back at her.

  Its origin was English. The long-dead king stared out at her. The date was 1750.

  Ky! Foolishly, she said his name. Though the sound was muffled and indistinguishable, he turned. Unable to wait, Kate swam toward him, clutching the coin. When she reached him, she took his hand and pressed the gold into his palm.

  He knew at the moment of contact. He had only to look into her eyes. Taking her hand, he brought it to his lips. She’d found what she wanted. For no reason he could name, he felt empty. He pressed the coin back into her hand, closing her fingers over it tightly. The gold was hers.

  Swimming beside her, Ky moved to the spot where Kate had found the coin. Together, they fanned, using all the patience each of them had stored. In the twenty minutes of bottom time they had left, they uncovered only five more coins. As if they were as fragile as glass, Kate placed them in her bag. Each took a mesh basket filled with salvage and surfaced.

  “It’s there, Ky.” Kate let her mouthpiece drop as Ky hauled the first basket over the rail. “It’s the Liberty, we’ve proven it.”

  “It’s the Liberty,” he agreed, taking the second basket from her. “You’ve finished what your father started.”

  “Yes.” She unhooked her tanks, but it was more than their weight she felt lifted from her shoulders. “I’ve finished.” Digging into her bag, she pulled out the six bright coins. “These were loose. We still haven’t found the chest. If it still exists.”

  He’d already thought of that, but not how he’d tell her his own theory. “They might have taken the chest to another part of the boat when the storm hit.” It was a possibility; it had given them hope that the chest was still there.

  Kate looked down. The glittery metal seemed to mock her. “It’s possible they put the gold in one of the lifeboats when they manned them. The survivor’s story wasn’t clear after the ship began to break up.”

  “A lot of things are possible.” He touched her cheek briefly before he started to strip off his gear. “With a little luck and a little more time, we might find it all.”

  She smiled as she dropped the coins back into her bag. “Then you could buy your boat.”

  “And you could go to Greece.” Stripped down to his bathing trunks, Ky went to the helm. “We need to give ourselves the full twelve hours before we dive again, Kate. We’ve been calling it close as it is.”

  “That’s fine.” She made a business of removing her own suit. She needed the twelve hours, she discovered, for more than the practical reason of residual nitrogen.

  They spoke little on the trip back. They should’ve been ecstatic. Kate knew it, and though she tried, she couldn’t recapture that quick boost she’d felt when she picked up the first coin.

  She discovered that if she’d had a choice she would have gone back weeks, to the time when the gold was a distant goal and the search was everything.

  It took the rest of the day to transport the salvage from the Vortex to Ky’s house, to separate and catalog it. She’d already decided to contact the Park Service. Their advice in placing many of the artifacts would be invaluable. After taxes, she’d give her father his memorial. And, she mused, she’d give Ky whatever he wanted out of the salvage.

  Their original agreement no longer mattered to her. If he wanted half, she’d give it. All she wanted, Kate realized, was the first bowl she’d found, the blackened silver coin and the gold one that had led her to the five other coins.

  “We might think about investing in a small electrolytic reduction bath,” Ky murmured as he turned what he guessed was a silver snuff box in his palm. “We could treat a lot of this salvage ourselves.” Coming to a decision, he set the box down. “We’re going to have to think about a bigger ship and equipment. It might be best to stop diving for the next couple of days while we arrange for it. It’s been six weeks, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s down there.”

  She nodded, not entirely sure why she wanted to weep. He was right. It was time to move on, to expand. How could she explain to him, when she couldn’t explain to herself, that she wanted nothing else from the sea? While the sun set, she watched him meticulously list the salvage.

  “Ky…” She broke off because she couldn’t find the words to tell him what moved through her. Sadness, emptiness, needs.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” But she took his hands as she rose. “Come upstairs now,” she said quietly. “Make love with me before the sun goes down.”

  Questions ran through him, but he told himself they could wait. The need he felt from her touched off his own. He wanted to give her, and to take from her, what couldn’t be found anywhere els
e.

  When they entered the bedroom it was washed with the warm, lingering light of the sun. The sky was slowly turning red as he lay beside her. Her arms reached out to gather him close. Her lips parted. Refusing to rush, they undressed each other. No boundaries. Flesh against flesh they lay. Mouth against mouth they touched.

  Kisses—long and deep—took them both beyond the ordinary world of place and time. Here, there were dozens of sensations to be felt, and no questions to be asked. Here, there was no past, no tomorrow, only the moment. Her body went limp under his, but her mouth hungered and sought.

  No one else… No one else had ever taken her beyond herself so effortlessly. Never before had anyone made her so completely aware of her own body. A feathery touch along her skin drove pleasure through her with inescapable force.

  The scent of sea still clung to both of them. As pleasure became liquid, they might have been fathoms under the ocean, moving freely without the strict rules of gravity. There were no rules here.

  As his hands brought their emotions rising to the surface, so did hers for him. She explored the rippling muscles of his back, near the shoulders. Lingering there, she enjoyed just the feel of one of the subtle differences between them. His skin was smooth, but muscles bunched under it. His hands were gentle, but the palms were hard. He was lean, but there was no softness there.

  Again and again she touched and tasted, needing to absorb him. Above all else, she needed to experience everything they’d ever had together this one time. They made love here, she remembered, that first time. The first time…and the last. Whenever she thought of him, she’d remember the quieting light of dusk and the distant sound of surf.

  He didn’t understand why he felt such restrained urgency from her, but he knew she needed everything he could give her. He loved her, perhaps not as gently as he could, but more thoroughly than ever before.

  He touched. “Here,” Ky murmured, using his fingertips to drive her up. As she gasped and arched, he watched her. “You’re soft and hot.”