The Treasure Man
The Treasure Man
Pamela Browning
Finders, Keepers?When Chloe Timberlake agrees to look after the Frangipani Inn, her cousin's bed-and-breakfast, she expects to find the fabulous Florida inn of her youth–not a derelict mansion that could collapse around her if she so much as slammed a door. Soon-to-be live-in handyman Ben Derrick is also a shock. The golden boy of her teenage fantasies appears tarnished beyond repair.Tragedy, as Chloe soon learns, hit Ben Derrick so hard that he spent years drowning the pain. Unable to work as a salvage diver, he gave up hope of ever finding a pot of gold.Unexpectedly, Chloe gives him a second chance. Maybe this time he'll be able to keep the treasure he's found.
“It was another kind of dream.”
The worst kind, he could have added, but didn’t. It was a nightmare that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Chloe lay awake long after Ben had gone back to sleep. Not for the first time, she sensed that he had deeper, sadder memories than he wanted to reveal.
To be honest, she was glad he hadn’t told her about them. Once he let her in on what was bothering him, she’d feel duty-bound to make things right. And at this point in her life, that wasn’t supposed to be an option. She was trying her hardest to focus on herself, never mind that she’d taken on the responsibility for her niece. That was turning out to be easier than she’d expected.
Ben was another story. She was planning to stay uninvolved in his problems, whatever they were, and no matter how sympathetic she might be.
That didn’t mean she didn’t care—far from it. Ben was far more important to her now than she could have thought possible when she’d first arrived at the Frangipani Inn.
The key was to keep things in perspective. Wasn’t it?
Dear Reader,
This is Chloe’s book.
Chloe Timberlake appeared briefly as my heroine’s best friend in my last book, Breakfast with Santa. I didn’t intend for her to remain in my consciousness after I finished writing the book. After all, she was a minor character, named after one of my favorite cats.
But sometimes writers create characters who just won’t let go. Chloe was at a juncture in her life; she was on the brink of leaving her hometown of Farish, Texas, to strike out on a new venture. I kept wondering what would happen to her. And besides, she was alone, and she seemed too nice not to have someone special in her life.
Fortunately, I found exactly the right guy for her. Ben Derrick is someone she knew long ago—a man who, as it turns out, appreciates Chloe’s quirky qualities. He’s suffered great tragedy in the past and has finally managed to start putting his life back together. Enter (ta-dah!) Chloe.
Their love story illustrates that sometimes you have to wait a long time to find true love, but that the greatest riches of all are the treasures of the heart. Enjoy!
Love,
Pamela Browning
P.S. Please visit my Web site at www.pamelabrowning.com.
The Treasure Man
Pamela Browning
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For the Florida hurricane victims of 2004, and for those who came to the rescue…thank you.
Books by Pamela Browning
HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE
854—BABY CHRISTMAS
874—COWBOY WITH A SECRET
907—PREGNANT AND INCOGNITO
922—RANCHER'S DOUBLE DILEMMA
982—COWBOY ENCHANTMENT
994—BABY ENCHANTMENT
1039—HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE
1070—THE MOMMY WISH
1091—BREAKFAST WITH SANTA
Contents
Prologue (#ued7d1f4a-d2df-5940-a0ec-47f0cfb0b83e)
Chapter One (#u1d0b4450-03d2-5687-b862-3d35ed2a9bb3)
Chapter Two (#u01fb4b22-1d8b-5987-bd95-d2423c5f96b1)
Chapter Three (#u92128f18-b9dc-5957-961d-d2efea0253da)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Afterward, Ben couldn’t recall when he first smelled smoke. He had a vague memory of a whiff of it as he left Ashley in her seat at the front of the auditorium, but it was intermission at the Chico Chico concert, and a lot of people had gone out for a cigarette. If he’d noticed it then, he would have thought it was people smoking.
A long line of concertgoers wended their way through the lobby to the refreshment stand, and he hoped there would be some root beer left by the time he reached the counter. Root beer was his thirteen-year-old daughter’s favorite drink, and since it was her birthday, he didn’t want to substitute cola or 7-Up or whatever else might be left. Still, he hung back, figuring it was more important for the kids attending the show to buy their drinks and hurry back to their seats; he could always slip into place beside Ashley after the performance resumed.
And then he saw it—a huge black billow of smoke rushing toward him down the aisle. Simultaneously, someone in the theater yelled, “Fire!” A woman screamed over the cacophony of voices, and people started to pour into the lobby.
Ben knew this was bad trouble. With the acrid odor of smoke stinging his nostrils, the crackle of flames in his ears, he fought his way past the first wave of panic-stricken concertgoers.
“Daddy! Daddy! Help!”
It was his daughter’s voice. He’d recognize it anywhere. People pushed past him, running, screaming, crying. He tried to forge a path through the crowd, but there was no space. He noted with alarm that flames were now licking at the stage curtains, and the ceiling was ablaze.
Someone struck Ben a glancing blow on his forehead, but he kept pushing. It was like swimming against a fierce current, something he’d done many times in his work as a diver. Despite his anguish, he was driven away from Ashley, not toward her.
Desperately, he shouted her name, choking on the smoke. “Ashley! Daddy’s coming!”
He fell to his knees, struggled and stood, was bowled over again.
“Out of the way, man! The place is burning!” A man tried to help him to his feet but was swept into the melee.
Ben accidentally tripped a woman, but together they managed to regain their footing. Her progress toward the door left a small hole in the sea of people, and he pressed toward Ashley. He had to make sure she was safe, had to reach his daughter.
The heat of the blaze scorched his face, seared his lungs. Glowing sparks swirled in the air above his head—a surreal dance performed amid chaos and destruction. An usher’s shirt was on fire, and he screamed as he tore at the blackened fabric. Through a gap in the crowd, Ben saw that the seats where he had left Ashley only minutes ago were engulfed in flames.
Eyes streaming with tears, he crawled over several fallen bodies and managed to grab on to a theater seat so that he wouldn’t be carried backward. Now the smoke was so thick that he could see nothing through the tunnel of fire ahead, and it hurt too much to breathe. He went down again but clung to the seat to pull himself to his feet. His gut wrenched with the certain knowledge that he was losing strength.
A father’s main job was to protect his child, and he hadn’t been able to do that. As the blackness all around began to blot out his consciousness, Ben prayed that Ashley had found a way out of the building. They had been sitting near an emergency exit, so perhaps she had kept her head and escaped. He held that hope in his heart as he slid slowly to the floor, the roar of the flames echoing inside his head until he heard…nothing.
Chapter One
Chloe Timberlake knew that she had truly reached the end of her long journey to Sanluca, Florida, when the earthy scent of the Everglades muck gave way to the fragrance of the Atlantic Ocean wafting on the breeze. She leaned her head out the car window and let go an exuberant whoop that was heard by no one except perhaps a few tree frogs chirring in the scrub oaks overarching the road. And her cat, of course.
“Come on out, Butch,” she said. “We’re a long way from Farish, Texas. The Frangipani Inn is straight ahead.” She nudged open the tattered carpetbag where the big orange tomcat liked to sleep when traveling.
Butch poked his head out and twitched his whiskers. No litter box for him; Butch was toilet trained and hadn’t forgiven her for that last grungy rest stop on the Glades Highway. He looked down his nose at her before indulging in an indolent stretch, then sniffed appreciatively at the brine and seaweed.
When the car emerged from the shelter of the trees, Chloe turned off at 1200 Beach Road, the shell-rock driveway crunching under the old blue Volvo’s tires. Ahead of them, her father’s family home was surrounded by an encroaching tangle of vegetation, growing thick and lush now, in late May. Nearby, a boardwalk led down to the beach.
“I wonder whose Jeep that is,” Chloe mused as the headlights swung past a decrepit vehicle, its pockmarked sides spattered with mud. As she braked to a stop under a gumbo-limbo tree at the rear of the inn, a lithe shape detached itself from the side of the building and moved toward her. Chloe was wary; the inn, her cousin Gwynne had assured her, was unoccupied.
The shape morphed into a man and, still suspicious, Chloe rammed the car into Reverse for a quick getaway. His presence rattled her, even though Sanluca’s crime rate ranked so low it wasn’t even on the charts. Yet why was this fellow, who was now sauntering toward her car, lurking in the shadows of the Frangipani Inn?
He stepped within the circle of headlights, and with a jolt, she recognized him. She hadn’t seen Ben Derrick in years, not since that summer when she was sixteen; but she would have known him anywhere. He’d been unrepentantly handsome and sexy as sin, though he’d never seemed to realize it. Now he was barefoot—ill-advised considering the incidence of sandspurs in the native scrub. Baggy shorts rode low on his hips, and his hair—dark, generously sun-streaked and needing cutting—was tousled by the breeze from the ocean. He looked scruffy and nondescript, and he was sixteen years older than when she’d last seen him, but he was still Ben Derrick. And still a heartbreaker, no doubt.
He squinted into the glare. “Gwynne?” he said.
Of course. He’d always preferred her cousin, teasing her, joking with her and ignoring Chloe. When Ben had disappeared late in that summer of her sixteenth year, Chloe had been devastated. She’d been shy in those days, had never done anything to draw attention to herself, had been content to hang out in Gwynne’s shadow. She’d never told anyone that she’d fallen hopelessly in love with Ben Derrick.
Chloe rested a restraining hand on Butch’s head so that he wouldn’t take it into his fool head to make a grand leap from the car. “I’m Chloe Timberlake,” she said over the stutter of the Volvo’s engine. “Gwynne’s my cousin.” She didn’t add, You remember—I was the redheaded, flat-chested girl who hung on your every word, who followed you around like a lovesick fool for two whole months. And you couldn’t have cared less.
Ben leaned down and peered in the window, studying her. “You’re Chloe?” His voice was a rumble in his chest.
“Right,” Chloe said. “I was here one summer a long time ago. Actually, I visited a lot of summers, but we only ran into each other that year.” He’d worked as a diver for Sea Search, Inc., the local marine salvage company whose search for sunken treasure had been the subject of many National Geographic television programs.
“I boarded here sometimes when Gwynne and her mom ran the place as a bed-and-breakfast.”
“I remember.” Oh, yes. He’d been a charismatic character in those days, tall and tanned and utterly charming.
If Ben recognized her, he gave no sign. “I’ve just rolled into town and was counting on Gwynne and Tayloe’s having a room for me.”
“You didn’t call first?”
“I got a recorded message about the number not being in service at this time.”
“That’s because the Frangipani Inn is no longer a bed-and-breakfast.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” For someone who needed a place to sleep for the night, he delivered the line with a bit too much nonchalance. He slapped absently at a whining mosquito. “Where have Gwynne and Tayloe gone?”
“Gwynne’s off finishing her master’s degree in speech pathology, and my aunt Tayloe remarried last year and lives in Mexico with her husband. I’m here to work for the summer. I design jewelry.”
This was the season for thunderstorms riding in on warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, and over the sound of her voice, Chloe detected a rumble of thunder in the distance. Tonight’s predicted stormy weather was fast closing in.
“I don’t suppose you’d rent me a room anyway,” he said.
The crash of the breakers on the other side of the dunes filled the silence. She gazed up at the clouds scudding past the turret of the inn for a long moment before answering. “I’m not planning to run the house as a B and B.”
Chloe felt the first spatter of rain. As she raised the window and cut the Volvo’s engine, the scene went dark, and all she could see was the white stripes of Ben’s shirt a few feet away.
“C’mon, Butch,” Chloe said. She grabbed the cat and her backpack. Fortunately, the clouds from the oncoming storm had not yet obscured the moon, and as she slid out of the car she was able to get a good look at Ben Derrick. His eyes were murky in the darkness, and she couldn’t recall their color. Strange, since she’d thought she’d never forget anything about him. Were they blue? Gray? She had no idea.
“Can I help you with that?” He reached for her pack, but she sidestepped quickly and whipped it out of his reach.
“No, I’ll handle it. Thanks.”
“I’d better check out the house with you this first time,” Ben said gruffly.
“I don’t think so,” Chloe retorted. She turned, wondering what it would take to make this guy get in his Jeep and go. Couldn’t he take a hint?
“The reason I suggested going in with you,” Ben said with great patience, “is that if the house has been vacant, no telling what’s inside.”
Chloe was mindful of Gwynne’s stated reasons for offering to let her live in the sea-worn old mansion. She’d mentioned concerns about vagrants, beach bums, kids partying inside and no one detecting their presence until much harm had been done. Maybe it would be a good idea to let Ben check out the place.
“Let’s hurry. It’s beginning to rain,” Chloe said tersely. She started along the winding sandy path to the house as huge raindrops began to fall. The wind kicked up, and the air took on a sudden chill as rain sluiced down in great torrents, drenching them both.
They ran past thrashing clumps of sea oats and salt grass. When she reached the haven of the porch, Chloe set Butch down. The cat, spooked by the change in weather, shook himself and immediately bounded into the bushes below.
“Butch! Get back here!” She could barely make herself heard over the wind and rain.
Of course the cat didn’t. Chloe wasn’t concerned that Butch would try a disappearing act, since he knew who his food came from, but she wished he hadn’t left her alone with Ben.
Who conveniently produced a flashlight from his pocket and beamed it on the rusty old lock. Chloe, clumsy in her haste, fumbled with the key, inserted it and swung the door open on a cavernous front hall.
A flock of dust bunnies scattered in the fresh gusts admitted through the open door as something dark scurried toward the nether regions of the house. Chloe groped for the light switch and flipped it. The lone bulb remaining in the overhead fixture flared and died.
“I’ll turn on a lamp,” Chloe said, wiping her face with her forearm before dropping her backpack on the hall settee. As she spoke, Ben trained the flashlight on the parlor to her right.
The house had been in her father’s family since the early part of the century, and she and her older sister, Naomi, had spent many glorious summer vacations in the big Victorian mansion when she was growing up. A year ago when she’d last visited, the Frangipani Inn hadn’t been in this state of disrepair. The furniture, layered with white covers, loomed eerily as she felt her way into the parlor’s depths, where she knocked into a table, caught herself before keeling over and managed to turn on the light over the piano. It cast the shrouded shapes into gloomy shadows.
Dust was everywhere, and cobwebs trailed spookily from the high ceiling. The windows were coated with a thick coat of salt spray, and the air smelled musty. As she stood taking in all the decrepitude of a place that she remembered as bright, light and uplifting, Ben said, “Things deteriorate rapidly near the ocean. The place has been unoccupied for how long?”
“Almost a year,” Chloe told him, her voice echoing because of the high ceiling. In order to see what was what, she shoved aside white muslin to reveal a wicker chair that belonged on the porch. One of its wooden rockers was split, and she tugged the cover back over it. As she did so, something scrambled frantically across her toes, something warm and furry with quick little feet.
At the same time, a flash of lightning and an earsplitting clap of thunder rent the silence. Chloe screamed and would have bolted if Ben hadn’t caught her and held her steady.
“Easy,” he said. “That was only a field mouse.” His arms were hard-muscled and strong, she noticed through her panic. His heart beat steadily beneath his damp shirt, and his wet skin was slick beneath her fingers.
“I h-hate mice,” she stammered.
He released her, and she saw that his eyes were a deep, velvety brown. He smelled of sun and salt, of the sea and sand, bringing back memories of that summer so long ago.
“There are bound to be one or two mice in here,” he said, the voice of reason.
She recovered enough to scoff at that. “One or two? Ha! They breed,” she said. She stalked toward the door. “I can’t live with mice. I’m leaving.”
Ben cocked a head toward one of the windows, which was rattling in its frame due to the energetic pummeling of the elements. “It’s raining hard now, and there’s lightning. Besides, there’s nowhere else to go.”
“Where is that cat when I need him?” she muttered. She threw the door open. “Butch? Butch!” Rain blew in her face; it tasted of salt. There was no sign of a big orange cat, no glimmer of his white bib under the shelter of the rubbery round leaves of the sea grapes.
Ben walked up behind her. “I saw him run under the house. He’ll have a grand old time there chasing the mice and palmetto bugs.”
“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.
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 the 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.”
“Did she leave a note?”
“She propped a sweet little card on her pillow, telling us not to worry.”
“As if you wouldn’t.”
“As if,” Naomi agreed with a sigh.
“At least Tara took her exams,” Chloe pointed out.
“Why do you find this funny?” Naomi asked with remarkable forbearance. “We’re beside ourselves with worry.”
“Tara confided before I left Farish that she’d reformed. My guess is that she’s hiding at a friend’s house and they’re pigging out on hot-fudge sundaes. You used to do that when finals were over, remember?”
“We’re checking with all her friends, and in the old bunkhouses on some of their parents’ ranches, and every other possible place. The police don’t consider her disappearance a criminal matter because Tara left a note, went of her own accord and kids run away all the time. They believe she’ll be back. I’m not so sure, Chloe. Tara and I had a big argument a couple of days ago.”
Chloe’s heart sank. “I’m sorry to hear that. Care to tell me about it?” She’d hoped that Tara was sufficiently chastened after her latest transgression of hosting an unchaperoned party when her parents weren’t home. But then, Chloe knew about rebellion for rebellion’s sake. She’d been a difficult teenager herself.
“On Sunday, Tara wanted to wear this really horrible outfit to church. I mean, it was so short that it would have raised the eyebrows of every little old lady in the congregation, including Grandma. Especially Grandma. And no bra, and—”
“I don’t wear a bra sometimes.” Like maybe never, Chloe was thinking, if the weather didn’t cool off.
“You’re a grown woman, free to make your own decisions about how you dress. Tara’s still a kid. I told her that over my dead body would she leave the house in that getup, and she said that she hoped I wasn’t planning to assume room temperature any time soon, but she was going, like it or not. And I said she wasn’t, and she said I was a bitch, and—”
“She called you a bitch?”
“As well as other names I would rather not repeat. Then she stormed out of the house, wearing a dress no bigger than a sticky note. Ray and the twins and I waited for her to come home and were late for church because she never showed up. Or at least, she didn’t come home until we were gone. I didn’t figure out until late that night that she’d taken a duffel. She packed clothes, Chloe, and her teddy bear. She never goes anywhere without that bear.”
Chloe sighed. This sounded like an updated version of her own difficult adolescence, though she hadn’t had the comfort of a stuffed animal when, during Christmas vacation in her senior year of high school, she hitchhiked to visit a boyfriend who had recently moved to California.
“That’s awful, Naomi. You have my heartfelt sympathies,” Chloe told her.
“We’ve set off alarms in every direction. I’ve alerted Marilyn and her group in case she shows up in Dallas.” Marilyn, their cousin, and her husband, Donald, had five kids. Tara had been close to that branch of the family most of her life.
“You’ll call when you find her, won’t you?”
“Sure. Let’s hope it’s soon.”
“I’m sure it will be. She’s a good kid, Naomi.”
“I keep expecting her to walk through the front door—” Naomi broke off her sentence, a sob catching in her throat.
“I’m so sorry, Mimi.” Chloe was the only one allowed to call Naomi by her old childhood nickname.
“I’ll keep you posted. I wish I were in Florida with you. I worry about you being all alone there.”
“Well, don’t. Ben Derrick showed up.”
“Who?”
“You wouldn’t remember. You were already married to Ray the summer that Ben boarded at the inn and I was here.”
“He’s nice?”
“Also helpful.”
“Age?”
It took a moment for Chloe to figure this out. “Thirty-seven.”
She could picture her sister narrowing her eyes on the other end of the phone. “You haven’t taken up with him already, have you?”
Chloe let out an exasperated sigh. “I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours, Naomi. Surely you jest.”
“I am not in the mood for joking, Chloe. I’m falling apart. I can’t even pull myself together long enough to throw a load of laundry into the washing machine.”
“Do you want me to come home, Naomi? Help you out?” She waited with dread for her sister’s answer, knowing that she’d go if Naomi needed her.
“No, Chloe,” Naomi said. “We’ll get through this. But thanks.”
Chloe, all but heaving a giant sigh of relief, decided to broach a new topic. “How are Jennifer and Jodie?” she asked. Naomi and Ray’s twin daughters were ten years old and never gave them any trouble. So far, anyway.
“J and J are upset that Tara’s disappeared, like all of us.”
“Give them my love.”
“I will.”
“And Grandma Nell—is she adjusting to the assisted-living home? Or is she still trying to decide if she likes it?”
“Chloe,” Naomi said patiently. “Stop assuming responsibility for other people’s well-being. Our grandmother is doing fine. She’s made a new friend, and they watch their favorite TV program together every day. The friend’s family treats them to dinner at the country club. Grandma’s happy. Repeat after me. Grandma’s happy.”
“‘Grandma’s happy,’” Chloe recited as if by rote.
“You’ve got it. You’ve got it! Listen, Chloe, I’d better hang up in case Tara tries to call home on this line instead of our cell phones.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Love you,” said Naomi.
“Love you, too.”
She heard the sliding glass door to the annex grinding along its track. It was located under her bedroom window, and a glance outside told her that Ben was no longer sitting and staring morosely out to sea. While she dressed, she heard the Jeep’s engine roar to life as Ben left. Briefly, she wondered where he was going, but she didn’t have time to mull it over. She had work to do.
Downstairs, she threw all the windows open and hauled the wicker rockers outside to the front porch, where last night’s rain had washed everything fresh and clean. A row of red hibiscus bushes bordered the porch, their flowers as big as saucers, and overhead, in a nearby palmetto tree, a mockingbird’s white feathers flashed as it flitted to and fro. Beyond the rolling dunes, the sea was glassy and calm. This day, like every day in summer, would be scorchingly hot. The sun was already blazing down on the sand.
Unfortunately, the Frangipani Inn wasn’t air-conditioned. Tayloe had been adamant that the winds off the ocean cooled it enough; she’d insisted that if the natural breezes had been good enough for her grandparents, they were good enough for her. Chloe wasn’t so sure. Sea breeze or not, air-conditioning seemed like a really good idea in this hot and steamy climate.
Once she’d opened the house, she tackled the dirty dishes in the sink, then measured the small study off the library, where she intended to set up her workshop. The space was cluttered with an old treadle sewing machine, a box of dusty jelly jars and various other debris. She’d place a workbench at one end of the long, narrow room A telephone outlet behind Tayloe’s old desk would make it convenient to connect to the Internet. Between the workshop and the kitchen, a large closet, formerly a butler’s pantry, would house her jewelry-making supplies. The closet contained a safe, where she’d keep the precious and semiprecious gems she used in her one-of-a-kind designs.
All that decided, she was finishing off a slice of peanut butter toast when someone began hammering on the front door.
Through the sidelight, Chloe spotted a tattered white sailor hat with the brim pulled low. She threw the door open to Zephyr Wills, one of the most senior of Sanluca’s senior citizens. Known as the Turtle Lady, she felt that it was her obligation to safeguard the big loggerhead turtles that nested up and down the coast.
“Chloe!” Zephyr cried, her round wizened face crinkling into a broad smile. She was under five feet tall and as frail as a bird. “Gwynne told me you were driving all the way from Texas, gal. What’s the matter—you tired of cowboys?”
“And how,” Chloe said with feeling.
“Well, no wonder. All those sweaty horses, all that nasty dust. I knew a cowboy once, but never mind about that right now. Thought you’d never open the door. With Tayloe and Gwynne, I always walked right in. Didn’t think you’d care for that, though.”
“I, um, wouldn’t have expected it,” Chloe admitted.
The Turtle Lady wore her customary white long-sleeved shirt, which she donned every day for protection from the hot sun. Chloe could have sworn that Zephyr’s plaid shorts were twenty years old, which was almost as long as Chloe had been vacationing at the Frangipani Inn. Zephyr carried a ruffled parasol; it was her trademark.
“Come for a walk with me, Chloe. We’ll check out the latest nests.”
Zephyr had always liked company on her morning nest-hunting expeditions. Tayloe was usually willing to oblige; Gwynne, too.
“I’d love to,” Chloe told her, nudging Butch back inside with her foot.
“Get a hat. You don’t want to have a sunstroke. Is your cat coming with us?
“No, he doesn’t much like the beach.”
“That’s just as well. No telling what trouble he could get into out there.”
Chloe found a hat on the rack inside the door and skipped down the steps with a kind of heady anticipation. In her girlhood, she had listened with fascination to Zephyr’s explanation of the habits of loggerhead turtles. During their summer breeding season, female turtles lumbered onto land to lay eggs in a shallow nest in the sand. Then they returned to the ocean, never to see their own offspring, which hatched in a matter of weeks and clambered down the beach to the ocean, subject to predators and often so confused by the lights on land that they headed the wrong way. Zephyr considered it her mission in life to make sure the babies found the sea, and she sent them off with a little blessing and prayer for their safety.
Due to the nearby coral reefs being constantly ground to bits by wave action, the sand on this beach was famously pink. The ocean at this hour was still a deep cerulean blue, but as the day progressed and the sun climbed higher, its color would change to a cool, inviting turquoise. An onshore breeze, picking up now, fluttered the brim of Chloe’s hat and ruffled her hair. As they walked, Zephyr cast inquisitive glances at her from under the parasol.
“You used to be a redhead,” Zephyr stated. “What happened?”
“Uh, well, magenta and bronze and green and a color called Desert Dream, which I’ve settled on, finally. I want to look like a normal person for a change.” She wore her hair in a straight bob slightly longer than chin length, having dispensed with the spiky style she’d tried last year.
“You always were kind of different,” Zephyr ventured. “Gwynne was predictable, Naomi was sedate, but you were always turning cartwheels down the beach or ripping off all your clothes and jumping in the water.”
Chloe laughed. “I doubt if I’ll be doing any nude swimming around here now. There are lots more people on the beach these days.”
“We have the new wilderness preserve to thank for that,” Zephyr told her. “Lost Galleons Park, they call it, after the 1715 Spanish fleet that wrecked on the reefs while transporting gold and silver from the New World to Spain. Strange juxtaposition if you ask me—galleons in the New World and space launches right up the coast trying to find other new worlds. We’re going to have a space-shuttle launch later this summer. You going to be around?”
“I’m sure I will. I like the name Lost Galleons Park.”
“Ha! It’s a descriptive name, but I wish they’d named the park after the turtles. Someone at the state capitol must have decided treasure is more important than loggerheads, though I don’t see how.”
“So much of the economy around here derives from the search for treasure,” Chloe said. “Sanluca owes a lot to those sunken ships.”
“Oh, it’s ‘treasure this and treasure that,’” Zephyr agreed. “Since I was knee-high to a sandpiper, those old ships have been the sole local industry.”
“Gwynne told me the Frangipani Inn will become part of the park complex eventually.”
“The house and its land will be absorbed into the system once Gwynne and her mother die. That’s the way Tayloe wanted it. Can’t say if it’s a good idea of not. Bunch of tourists browsing through that grand old house! The park people intend to use it for a museum or some such.”
“That’s better than tearing it down and building a condominium,” Chloe said with conviction. She regretted that concrete-and-glass condo buildings had sprung up along much of the Florida coastline. The tall towers blocked the very thing that people had moved here to enjoy—abundant sunshine.
“Ben, now, he’d agree with us about condos,” Zephyr said.
Chloe kept planting one foot in front of the other. “You’ve seen him lately, I take it.”
“I ran into him on the beach last night before the storm. First met him years ago when he first came to Sanluca from a little town in the Glades. I already knew his mama and daddy from a time when I lived out there. I hadn’t seen him in a long while. Hardly had a chance to talk with him before the wind and rain came up. Bad storm, that. Knocked a bunch of mangoes off the tree at my house. Look over there now and you’ll see the latest turtle clutch.”
Chloe shaded her eyes from the sun when she spied the orange flag signaling a turtle nest. Zephyr gestured at the mesh net, about two feet high, that she’d placed around the nest to keep raccoons, possums and other land predators from disturbing the eggs. “Last night, I was watching the mama turtle and waiting for her to finish when Ben came along with his metal detector,” Zephyr said. “The man startled me, I’ll grant him that. I was paying attention to the eggs dropping into the sand when up walks someone I didn’t recognize at first. Never saw Ben Derrick with a beard before.”
“It’s not quite a beard, only the beginning of one.”
“You ask me, he’s going for the whole megillah. You should talk him out of it.”
“Like he’d pay any attention,” Chloe retorted as they headed back toward the inn. “I hardly know him.” She wished her friend would talk more about Ben, but she was disappointed when instead, Zephyr changed the subject.
“Say, about that cat of yours. You’ll need to put a bell on him if he’s to run loose. Prevent him from sneaking up on the shore birds,” she said.
“He’ll have enough to do with keeping the mice at bay in the inn.”
“Never saw a cat that didn’t stalk birds.”
“Butch is different.” She decided against telling Zephyr that Butch was toilet trained. Zephyr probably wouldn’t believe it anyway.
They started up the boardwalk, which meant that if Chloe was going to learn anything more about Ben, she’d better get Zephyr talking. “Ben’s been away from Sanluca a long time, I guess,” she prodded.
“Couple of years. Had to leave after he got fired from Sea Search. Not that I pay much attention to what people say, when all’s said and done. People say too much. That’s why I like animals a lot more.”
Keeping Zephyr on the topic was hard. “Ben was fired?” Chloe asked. This was electrifying information; she’d had no idea.
“That’s all I’ll mention, though he’s lucky to be alive after that accident.”
“What accident?”
“Not on that motorcycle of his, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“He drives a Jeep now.”
“It was a diving accident. He surfaced from one of the shipwreck sites too fast. They get the bends, divers do, if they don’t take time to decompress on the way up.”
“They can die,” Chloe said, remembering how Gwynne had explained it to her one summer, complete with facial grimaces and elaborate descriptions of how a diver’s blood could boil and their hearts could burst. Now that she was grown-up, Chloe suspected that Gwynne had embellished her story for effect, but the bends—or DCS, which stood for decompression sickness—was still nothing to fool with.
“Dumb thing, that,” Zephyr said. “Ben not taking care of himself, I mean. Losing his job. By the way, I’ve got some of those windfall mangoes in my car. Thought you might like a few to eat. I’ll get them for you.”
“Great,” Chloe said with little enthusiasm as Zephyr left her to go to the parking lot. She wondered why Ben had surfaced too fast from a dive. As an experienced diver, he would have known better.
Zephyr returned with the mangoes, and Chloe invited her inside for a while.
“Nope, I’ve got to get back home. Maybe some other time. I’m glad you’re here, Chloe. The inn has been vacant too long.”
“The whole place needs tidying up,” Chloe confessed, “but I’m too busy right now setting up my workshop. Maybe I’ll get around to cleaning in a few days.” Privately, she doubted she’d have time.
“You want that big place clean you should hire locals to do it. Too many people are without jobs these days. Citrus harvest is in the winter, and in the summer the packing houses are closed. Teenagers especially need work,” Zephyr said. She gestured down the boardwalk, where a group of girls and boys were horsing around, slapping one another with damp towels and shrieking. “They get up to no good if they don’t have enough to do for three months. Ben may know someone. Maybe even those kids.”
“Perhaps I’ll ask him,” Chloe said, and left it at that.
THE FIRST THING Ben did when he left the inn the morning after his arrival was to stop by Keefe’s Dive Shop, where local divers congregated and bought equipment as well as supplies. Dave Keefe, the genial owner who had outfitted Ben with scuba gear years ago when he’d first come to town, greeted him effusively.
“Ben, I’m glad to see you,” he said, after clapping Ben on the back and shaking his hand. “You’ve been gone too long. What are you doing with yourself these days?”
“Trying to earn a living. I don’t work for Sea Search anymore.”
A shadow passed over Dave’s face. “I heard.”
“The thing is, Dave, I’m still a certified scuba instructor. I’d like to pick up a class or two. It would help me make ends meet.”
Seeming thoughtful, Dave circled back behind the counter. “I can help you out,” he said slowly. “I’m teaching a group of beginners, but I’d like some time off. Would you consider taking over? The class is on Thursday evenings, seven to ten, in the pool out back. I teach the basic stuff.”
“You’ve got a deal,” Ben said, his hopes rising. Maybe reestablishing himself around here wouldn’t be so difficult to after all.
“See you next Thursday? I’ll introduce you to the students and bug out right away.”
“Sure.”
Dave rummaged on a shelf under the counter. “Here’s the scuba manual. I can’t teach you much about diving, but you should be familiar with questions the students will ask.”
“No problem,” Ben assured him.
His spirits were high as he drove down Loquat Street, which passed for the main drag in Sanluca. The town’s appellation was a corruption of San Luca, which was the name of the spring-fed river that drained into the Intracoastal Waterway, known in these parts as Spaniard’s Lagoon. Back in the days when Florida belonged to Spain, the lagoon, protected by several barrier islands and accessible from the ocean through a natural inlet, had been a popular safe anchorage for ships that plied the shore.
A sign at the edge of town welcomed visitors: Sanluca, it proclaimed. Home Of Sea Search, Inc., And Not Much Else. Underneath, in smaller letters, it said, Proudly Undeveloped. True, because on Florida’s east coast, to find any place that hadn’t been overbuilt, straining schools, social services and infrastructure, was rare. Sanluca had avoided that fate because the town was small in area and most of it had been set aside as a nature preserve.
Besides Dave’s dive shop, Sanluca’s business district encompassed a post office, a gas station, a combined art gallery and gift shop, a small treasure museum and the Sand Bar, which was a local hangout at the city marina. For nostalgia’s sake and in celebration of landing the teaching job, Ben acted on impulse and stopped in at the Sand Bar to order a burger, medium rare, with cheese and onions.
“Want a beer?” asked Joe Devane, the beefy bushy-haired bartender. He and Ben went back a long way, to the first year Ben worked at Sea Search.
“No, a glass of water will do,” Ben told him, reacquainting himself with the Sand Bar’s decor, which consisted of fishnet draped around dried starfish hung on the wall. An old ship’s wheel was mounted above the pool table, and outside was a thatched hut where you could belly up to the bar and listen to pickup jazz sessions at night.
Joe slid a glass across to Ben, leaving a slick, wet trail on the polished wood. Ben drained the drink in almost one gulp. It was easy to get dehydrated in this tropical climate. The sun baked the moisture right out of a person’s skin.
“You working for Andy McGehee again?” Joe asked.
Ben shrugged. “I’ve talked to him about it. He’s full up. Got enough divers, he says.” He wasn’t surprised at Joe’s question. At the Sand Bar, local treasure hunters talked casually and often about the business.
“There’re always one or two divers who quit in the course of a summer. He’ll hire you.”
“Maybe. In the meantime, I’m going to be teaching a scuba class for Dave Keefe.”
“That’s great, but don’t give up on Andy. He was in here the other day with some of the guys on his crew. They were talking about last year’s hurricane and how it uncovered new sections of the wrecks offshore.”
“Couldn’t help but do that,” Ben agreed. A good storm was a treasure hunter’s dream.
“He’ll need all the divers he can get.”
“Yeah, well,” Ben said. He understood Andy’s unwillingness to hire him after he’d let him go during what Ben privately thought of as the bad time. Andy was probably unconvinced that Ben had since shaped up, and that was understandable.
“Are you staying around here somewhere?” Joe asked. There weren’t many options, even in the off-season. The Sanluca Motel was a dilapidated scratcher with ten dimly lit rooms where people rarely wanted to spend more than one night. The nearest real hotel was twelve miles away and charged for one night’s lodging twice what most locals earned in a day. The other alternative was an RV park where the owner, old Ducky Hester of the gnarled teeth and bodacious BO, might let someone stay for a night or two in the trailer of an owner who only occupied it in the winter; Ducky pocketed the money with the owner none the wiser. Ben considered himself lucky to have run into Chloe Timberlake last night, and even luckier that she was allowing him to stay in the apartment at the Frangipani Inn.
“I’m living at Tayloe and Gwynne’s place,” he said.
“I heard they closed up the inn and moved away.”
Ben shrugged. “Tayloe’s niece is looking after things,” he said.
“That’s good. For you, I mean.”
Ben nodded and took a long drink of water as Joe moved away to greet another customer.
His hamburger was done perfectly, and Ben soon became aware that the waitress, who wore a halter top and sported a silver ring in her navel, was sending soulful looks in his direction. When she slapped the check on the table, she sidled a little closer than necessary. “Joe says you’re hoping to sign on with Sea Search,” she said. He made himself focus on a large white pelican, one of a flock that roosted on the pilings around the place.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s the plan.”
“My brother works for Andy McGehee. I could put in a good word for you.”
The pelican flew away, flapping its wings as it soared awkwardly above the lagoon. “Sure,” he said easily. “If you want.” He waited for her to reel in whatever strings were attached.
“Okay, I’ll mention it. You’re Ben, right?”
“Ben Derrick,” he said.
“I’m Liss,” she said. “Liss Alderman.”
He vaguely remembered a young guy named Alderman. The kid had hung around the city docks a lot, and in fact, Tommy Alderman had still been in high school back when Ben had worked for Andy McGehee.
“Nice to meet you,” Ben said. He didn’t mention that he’d met Tommy. That would only encourage her.
“Same here.” Liss favored him with a blindingly white smile and flounced away, twitching her derriere. Damn, but she was young. Only twenty-two or so, and that was too much of an age difference. He didn’t dare bring women around to the inn anyway, since his landlady might object.
Not that Chloe was interested in him, though she’d warmed up considerably after he played Bwana of the Jungle and wiped out a couple of palmetto bugs. He smiled, recollecting how she’d flown into his arms when the mouse ran over her foot. She’d reacted like a scared schoolgirl, like his thirteen-year-old daughter, for Pete’s sake.
That thought sobered him quickly, and a mantle of sadness settled over him. After two years, he should have stopped obsessing about what had happened. About how it was all his fault.
He tossed money on the table, gave Joe a salute of sorts, and, head down, hurried to his Jeep. Better to stay busy doing something, anything, than to start thinking. Booze used to work, but he’d given it up after drinking had almost scuttled what was left of his life deeper than any of those old shipwrecks out on the reef. But, finally, he was sober again. The trick would be to stay that way. Some trick.
“’Bye, Ben,” Liss called through one of the open windows.
He waved halfheartedly in her direction, wondering what days she didn’t work. No need to come back if she was going to put the moves on him.
He’d managed to avoid Chloe this morning. If his luck held, she’d be out when he got back to the Frangipani Inn. That way, he wouldn’t have to talk to her. Not that she was hard to talk to, really. He even liked her, sort of. He almost remembered her from the year when his life had changed, the year when he’d married Emily.
Marrying Emily had taught him not to get close to anyone. He’d abandoned that precept when Ashley was alive, but those circumstances had been different. Ashley had been his adored daughter, and it had been easy to give her his heart.
Never again. He didn’t want to love anyone that much. Saying goodbye was always so painful. And sometimes goodbyes happened whether you expected them or not.
“BEN!” CHLOE CALLED.
Ben stuck his head out of the closet where he was installing a new heating element in the annex water heater. He’d hoped he’d be through in here and could make himself scarce before Chloe stopped pushing and dragging things around Tayloe’s old study. He’d heard her at it when he returned home after lunch, and he’d called out an offer to help, which she’d turned down. Well, he had enough to do, and he wished Chloe hadn’t chosen this moment to pay a visit.
“Back here,” he replied. “In the annex.”
Chloe appeared in the hall from the kitchen, her hair piled on top of her head and damp tendrils trailing down her neck. She was wearing a sleeveless tie-dyed T-shirt cut off above her waist, and a pair of the shortest shorts he’d ever seen. Last night he hadn’t paid much attention to her, except for that remark about his being hot. Well, she hadn’t meant him—he was pretty sure of that by the way she’d slunk off to her room afterward—but now, well, she was the hot one. He made himself pull his gaze away from the swell of her breasts under that tight-fitting shirt.
“What’s wrong with the water heater?” she asked.
“The thermostat. Not too difficult to repair, but it gets hot in the closet.” There was that word again. Hot. It had popped out without his thinking about it. Embarrassed, he wedged himself back into the stifling space.
“We could open these windows wider,” she said, walking past him and heading for his bedroom. He didn’t like her trespassing on what he now considered his territory; it was only a bedroom, a living area and a small kitchen, but he’d spread his meager possessions throughout, and it would be his home for a while. He hoped.
“Euwww, there’s a lizard in here.” Chloe made tracks back toward the kitchen.
“He won’t hurt you,” Ben said curtly. “In fact, he’ll help keep the insect population down.”
“Well, I guess a lizard’s not so bad. I was used to them in Texas. Didn’t you spray insecticide in this apartment?”
“Nah, I don’t like the smell of it. Me and my lizard buddy will make out fine. Say, could you see if there’s a rubber gasket lying around anywhere? I’m missing one.”
“Here it is.” She handed it to him, which meant that she had to step inside the closet, which meant he got a close-up view of most of her.
She had a freckle in the white of her eye, an adjunct to the liberal dusting of freckles on her upturned nose. This fascinating combination caused him to stare at her a tad longer than made her comfortable, if fidgeting was any indication.
“The fridge in the apartment works okay?” she asked. She lifted a straggle of pale hair off her face.
“Sure. I put bottles of water in there earlier. Help yourself.”
“Got any beer?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
“That’s okay.” She wore multiple earrings, which jingled as she went to the kitchen, and he heard the sound of her opening and closing the refrigerator door. “Can I bring you anything?”
“I’ll be through in here in a minute.” He cast a glance out of the closet and saw her sauntering to the glass door. He liked the way she looked silhouetted against the sand dunes outside, all legs and pout. Not a perturbed pout, just one that occurred naturally when she was thinking. What would she be thinking at the moment? He had no idea.
He edged his way out of the closet and mopped his brow with a rag. She turned toward him. “I’ve arranged for the phone to be hooked up, and the water-softener folks are sending a man out as soon as possible.”
“Good, since I’ve never owned a cell phone and hope I never will,” he replied. “Plus bottled water can get pricey after a while.”
“Also, Ben, keep track of your expenses for the water heater and everything else that you do. I’ll see that you’re reimbursed, but whether it’ll be me who does the reimbursing, I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Gwynne.”
“You talk to her much?” He brushed past Chloe into the kitchen. Her hair was the prettiest shade of blond, shimmery like sunbeams. It wasn’t her natural color—he remembered her as a redhead. Not that it mattered. She was one of those women who was born to be blond. In the sun streaming through the window, her skin, damp with perspiration, gleamed.
She kept her head turned away. “Gwynne doesn’t answer her phone.”
While he washed his hands at the kitchen sink, Chloe wandered over to a shelf built into the wall. “What’s all this?” she asked with interest.
“A collection of artifacts that I’ve recovered over the course of my career.” He didn’t add that they were small and could be transported easily when moving around a lot. They were his connection with his chosen line of work, the only remembrance he’d kept of his past life before the bad time.
“I’ve never seen anything like that statuette,” she said.
“It’s a clay dog, probably a toy made by descendants of the Mayans in Mexico. That’s a silver bosun’s whistle beside it, and a pewter shoe buckle in the front. All those objects date from the 1700s.”
“This must be a wine bottle,” she said, studying it.
“Not too many bottles survived in perfect condition like that one,” he told her.
“And this?” She gestured at a slim gold ring intricately carved and set with three emeralds.
“Recovered from a wreck of a merchant ship in the keys. It was so beautiful I’ve never wanted to sell it. See, the emeralds aren’t cut with the precision we’ve grown to expect in modern times. They’re rough, without many facets. That only adds to the charm as far as I’m concerned.” He’d planned to give the ring to Ashley when she was older, and now it made him sad.
He went abruptly to the refrigerator, twisted off the top of a bottle of water and drank deeply.
“It’s beautiful,” Chloe said, still appraising the ring. “Artistically crafted.”
He surmised that since she designed jewelry, the ring was of particular interest to her, but he didn’t want to discuss it anymore.
“I could use a swim about now,” he said. It was a remark meant to distract, not necessarily to produce results.
“Race you to the beach.”
In a matter of seconds, Chloe had wriggled out of her shirt. Her breasts were covered—if you could call it that—by a wisp of a bikini bra in a delicate shell-pink. It was almost the exact shade of her skin, and he did a double take before he figured out that it wasn’t her underwear but a swimsuit.
Next, she stepped out of her shorts, revealing an even briefer excuse for a bikini bottom.
“Let’s go!” she said.
“I—well, I have to put on swim trunks.”
“Okay, meet you down there.” She set the empty water bottle on the table beside a chair and headed out the sliding glass door, leaving him agog in her wake.
Nothing shy about Chloe Timberlake, that was certain. He wondered if she was as easygoing about the rest of her life, like making love, for instance.
Why this occurred to him he couldn’t imagine, though he supposed that her near-naked body might have something to do with it. His memories of her when she was a kid were spotty at best, but he was sure that she hadn’t been this well-endowed, her breasts high and firm, her derriere rounded in the right places.
He pulled on his trunks in record time, grabbed a towel and followed her. The sky above was laced with slow-moving clouds, and the sun-baked sand burned his bare feet. As he jogged out of the dunes, he spotted Chloe lolling in the shallows close to shore where last night’s wave action had scooped out a tidal pool right below the high-tide line.
“Hi,” Chloe said, interrupting his reverie. “Come on in. I’d forgotten how this is like having our own little swimming pool right down here on the beach.”
He waded in. The water was too warm, more like the temperature of a bathtub than the ocean, and it was translucent, so that every shell and rock on the bottom was clear.
“I know what I want,” Chloe said, leaping to her feet and scrambling out of the water. That swimsuit of hers was almost transparent; the outlines of her nipples were visible. He glanced away, his mouth suddenly dry.
“I’ll be right back,” she said. She ran up the beach and disappeared into the dunes.
I know what I want, she’d said. He tried to stop thinking about what he wanted, which was, let’s be honest here, a tumble with her.
Once, he wouldn’t have put it in those terms. Each woman he’d met before the bad time was new territory to be explored, and he didn’t only consider their bodies. No, he’d always been vitally interested in what went on in their heads. He’d been fascinated with the dimensions of women’s minds, how they brought different perspectives to life than men, how they never failed to surprise and delight him. There had been many women after Ashley’s mother, from whom he’d been divorced shortly after their daughter was born.
All the women after Emily had enriched his life immeasurably, but he’d never remarried. He’d flitted here and there like a butterfly, alighting in one place for a while and then moving on to something that promised to be sweeter but often wasn’t. He wouldn’t ever do that again. It was a way of life requiring optimism, a quality that was missing in his makeup these days.
So why was he feeling positively hopeful as Chloe Timberlake reappeared on the path?
Chapter Three
Chloe, he saw as she moved closer, was carrying a couple of deflated beach rafts over her arm.
“I discovered these in the hall closet,” she said as she sat on the sand at the edge of the pool. “Here, one’s for you.” She tossed it to him.
Chloe made a comical sight with her cheeks puffed out as she prepared to blow up the raft. This was a woman who was as unselfconscious as they came.
“I’m looking forward to floating around in the water and getting a suntan,” she said between breaths. She acted as if anything she suggested should be all right with him.
“Okay,” he said. Her plan didn’t sound half-bad, though he didn’t need a tan. He could understand why she wanted one. Her skin was as pale as a tourist’s.
“You’d better put on sunscreen,” he cautioned.
“Already did,” she said in that jaunty way of hers, the faint aroma of coconut-scented suntan lotion wafting in his direction.
Ben concentrated on inflating the raft, wondering if it wouldn’t have made more sense to use the air compressor in the annex closet to do the job. But then he wouldn’t have had the pleasure of watching Chloe puckering up, a sight that put him in mind of other reasons she might do so. He’d bet her lips were soft and pliant, capable of eliciting the most delectable sensations.
Damn, he’d better stop thinking in such terms or this raft wouldn’t be the only thing that inflated.
“There,” Chloe said with satisfaction. She launched the raft with a little push. A couple of fish skittered away, but Ben scarcely noticed now that Chloe was splashing into the water and preparing to board.
Ben knew for certain that there was no graceful way to get on a raft that was floating in the water. You could belly flop, or you could straddle it, or you could shove it under your body and hope it didn’t go all cattywampus. But somehow Chloe managed to arrive stomach-up on the raft with remarkable grace, holding him spellbound in the process.
When she was settled, one hand trailed in the water, the other rested on her abdomen. Her eyes, he discerned in the bright sunlight, were not blue but a delicate shade of lavender, with long dark lashes. Ben usually wasn’t a fan of women with pointy chins, and he couldn’t exactly say that Chloe’s was pointy, but it wasn’t rounded, either. In the middle of it was a dimple that fascinated him because it went away when she smiled, which was exactly the opposite of what dimples usually did. And her eyebrows had a coquettish slant to them, which he didn’t think came from plucking or waxing.
“Is something wrong?” Chloe asked suddenly.
“No, no,” he said too hastily. “I was just watching that guy with the parasail over there.” Down near the inlet, someone was floating effortlessly above the ocean, dangling from a multicolored nylon parachute.
“Right,” Chloe said, after gazing in that direction for a moment, but she sounded unconvinced.
“When the tide comes in, this pool will disappear,” he said, mostly for conversation’s sake. He launched himself onto his raft stomach down, then paddled toward the far end of the pool, which was perhaps twenty-five feet away.
“That’s why it’s important to take advantage of it,” Chloe said as she drifted along beside him. “I intended to go for a quick swim, cool off a bit before getting to work, but it’s going to be difficult to concentrate. I keep worrying about my niece. She’s AWOL, and my sister is beside herself.”
“They live in Texas?”
“Back home in Farish.” Chloe outlined how Tara had disappeared.
“Like you say, she’s probably fine,” Ben said.
Chloe sighed. “Things had seemed to settle down with her, but I should have known better. I had a difficult adolescence myself.”
“I was into trouble most of my teenage years,” he told her. “Riding with a group of kids on motorcycles, finding all kinds of mischief. I lived in Yahola, a small town inland from here. Lake Okeechobee was to the south, a bunch of cattle ranches situated to the north, and I was bored out of my gourd.” He slanted a look at her to assess how she was taking this. She seemed interested rather than critical.
“Me, too,” she said. “To me, Farish, Texas, was the most nowhere place in the world. Our Main Street started at the courthouse square and ended in a cow pasture.” She laughed. “I can’t believe I’ve voluntarily moved to Sanluca, population two thousand. That’s approximately six thousand fewer people than Farish.”
“If this is where you can pursue your dream, it’s worth it, Chloe. That’s how I ended up here when I was nineteen.”
“What got you from Yahola to Sanluca?” Curious, she glanced at him.
“I got a book at the library, and it showed pictures of people diving for treasure off the Florida Keys. After I read it, I hopped on my motorcycle and rode over to see a friend who had moved here, keen to find out if he knew anything about Sea Search. He introduced me to Andy McGehee. Andy said, ‘Kid, you’ve gotta learn to dive before I’ll talk to you,’ so after that, I spent every penny I earned on scuba lessons and all my spare time diving.”
“You had a passion,” she said softly, shading her eyes with a hand for a moment to stare at him.
“I’ll always be grateful to the librarian who recommended that book.”
“That’s probably the key to reaching Tara. Helping her find her niche, I mean. She’s assured me she’s over her past problems. Maybe she’ll find her own passion.”
“What kind of problems has she had?” he asked.
“Tara shoplifted on a dare and got caught. She lifted a pair of panty hose from a store in a mall in Austin. She was only thirteen at the time.”
“I did worse than that myself. I set the local postmaster’s rural mailbox on fire.”
She lifted her head to stare at him. “You didn’t!”
“’Fraid so. It’s a federal crime. He was friendly with my folks, though, and didn’t prosecute.”
“Whatever possessed you?”
“I probably just wanted attention.”
“Maybe that’s Tara’s problem. Her twin sisters are six years younger, and they tend to steal the show. When Tara got in trouble for shoplifting, Naomi and Ray were forced to notice her.”
“Don’t they usually?”
“They adore her, and the twins, too. Unfortunately, twins tend to take up a lot of time. It’s even worse when they’re adorably cute like Jennifer and Jodie.”
“I hope Tara shows up soon, Chloe.”
“Thanks. I shouldn’t let myself obsess about her to the point where I can’t work, especially since I’m sure she’s hiding out someplace safe—maybe an older friend’s apartment or the house of a family who’s on vacation.”
He turned his head toward her. “What kind of work do you plan to do here?” he asked. If she really was a jewelry designer, he couldn’t imagine why she’d come to Sanluca.
“I’m into a new venture. Sea-glass jewelry.” A glimmer of perspiration had appeared on her top lip. Ben quashed a desire to lick it away.
“Sea glass, huh?”
“Well, it’s better than a couple of things I’ve tried in the past. Like gourmet dog biscuits and feng shui, neither of which went over too well in Farish.”
“What’s sea glass, anyway?” At least Ben knew what gourmet dog biscuits were; he wasn’t sure about feng shui.
“It’s glass that has been tumbled and scoured by the sand and the sea. It comes in all different colors—cobalt-blue, turquoise, the deepest purple or amethyst, celadon, jade. I got the idea when I was visiting Gwynne last summer and we picked up the most lovely specimens down here on the beach. I fiddled around with it, learned to encase it in cages of sterling silver or fourteen-carat gold. I’ve designed earrings around sea glass, and rings, and bracelets, and necklaces, and slides, and all sorts of things.”
He’d noticed the small pendant she wore. “Is that one of your pieces?” he asked. The jewellike shard of translucent celadon couched in silver was cradled in the hollow of her throat.
“I found this bit on a day that I was beachcombing with Tayloe and Gwynne. It’s the first necklace I made. Now I craft more intricate designs, compositions of sea glass intermingled with precious and semiprecious stones.”
“Very clever. Can you actually make a living doing that?” he asked.
“It depends. My grand plan involves placing my more elaborate pieces in high-end stores.”
“I bet that’s not easy to do.”
“I have a couple of ideas in mind. Gwynne’s godmother, Patrice DesJardin, owns a shop in Palm Beach. I’ve called and left her a message about my jewelry. Gwynne thinks Patrice will be interested.” Her raft rose and fell with the gentle motion of the water. They didn’t speak for a few minutes.
“When will you find out if your job’s going to materialize?” she asked after a while.
“In a few weeks, I hope. I’ve been talking to Andy McGehee about working with him at Sea Search again. In the meantime, I’ll be teaching a scuba class.”
“Andy’s something of a local legend. Do you know him well?” She seemed to be choosing her words carefully.
“I worked for him for a long time,” he said, unwilling to give anything away.
“Tayloe mentioned that he’s made a lot of money with Sea Search,” Chloe said. “I’ve passed by the treasure museum in town where he displays some of the loot, and Gwynne told me he’s built a huge compound for his family on Manatee Island.” The island, reachable by Beach Road over a bridge from Stuart’s Point, which was about four miles north of the inn, was where many celebrities kept large and exquisitely appointed winter homes.
“Andy is a millionaire several times over. He started treasure salvage in the early days, when not many people believed it could be done. ‘What’s lost is lost,’ they used to say around here, but Andy proved them wrong.”
“How do the divers in one of these treasure-hunting outfits divvy up the find? I’ve always wondered.”
His raft was drifting closer to hers, and if it continued on its course, they’d collide. Ben kicked lazily with one foot until he’d turned around where he could see her. “A lot of people ask that. After we bring the treasure up, it’s all kept in one big pile, so to speak. At the end of the season, the state of Florida takes its percentage due under the law. The rest is parceled out equally among the group.”
“Have you ever found anything really valuable?”
“One year I found a chunk of coral that broke away to reveal a beautiful gold crucifix. I sold it to a collector for sixty thousand dollars.”
“No kidding!” Chloe raised her head. Her earrings, all three pairs, glinted in the sun.
“There’s a lot more out there,” he said. “That’s why I’ve got gold fever.”
“And sea water in your veins,” Chloe added.
“Right,” he said, amused.
They floated silently for a while, listening to the soothing sound of waves breaking nearby. Every so often, a flock of gulls circled, soon soaring away in search of something more interesting. After a couple with two children and a dog ambled past, Chloe flipped over onto her stomach, the motion sending a wake across the pool.
“I’m going to the store later,” she announced suddenly. “We could cook steaks for dinner if you’d like to join me.”
“Steak sounds good,” he heard himself saying, though he’d figured he could grab something at the Sand Bar.
“Great. Seven o’clock, and I’ll provide a salad, too.”
“I’ll bring a couple of baking potatoes,” he offered.
Chloe levered herself off her raft into the water and submerged for a moment. When she came up, her hair was plastered to her head and her skin glistened with water. Tiny drops beaded her eyelashes, shimmering in the sun. The effect was enchanting.
Ben found it impossible to pull his eyes away as Chloe towed her raft toward the edge of the pool. Her wet bikini clung to her form, delineating every curve. When she half turned toward him, he swallowed, wishing that he didn’t have such a ready response to this woman. For her part, she seemed totally unaware of her electrifying effect on him as she bent to pluck something from the water.
“This is a wonderful example of sea glass,” she said, holding it toward him. The breeze blew a few drops of dripping water onto his warm forearm. In the palm of her hand was a slim half-moon shape, slightly curved, its color as delicate as a lilac petal.
“It’s almost the same shade as your eyes,” he blurted, and the look she gave him indicated an awareness that hadn’t been there before. An awareness of—what?
Her fingers closed over the shard, and he stared at her from behind his sunglasses, overcome with regret that they had become so sexually aware of each other in such a short time. He needed someone he could talk with, hang out with, maybe who would like to take in a movie occasionally. He most certainly didn’t need the complication of a woman and all the accompanying hassles.
“Dinner,” she said, aiming a coquettish grin at him. He was convinced that she didn’t mean to flirt. Those glances, the sparkle in her eyes, that sinuous walk meant nothing.
“Right,” he replied.
She waded out of the water, and Ben was relieved when she disappeared beyond the dunes. She might not realize her effect on him, but he certainly did, and he was wary of starting anything with her.
On the other hand, why not go for it?
Because you can’t care about her in any meaningful way, he told himself. That should have been sufficient reason, but as he watched her progress toward the inn, it wasn’t at all.
CHLOE WAS GLAD Ben had accepted her dinner invitation, which she had half expected him to refuse. He had a way of keeping a his distance, like a lot of loners, and the loner species of male wasn’t one that she wanted to cultivate. Certainly he was polite enough, and today they’d established a personal connection when he’d revealed something about his troubled youth.
“I wouldn’t be alone, even without him,” she said to Butch, who bounded out of the nearby stand of Australian pines and met her at the spigot near the bottom of the porch stairs, where she’d stopped to wash the sand off her feet. “I’d have you, wouldn’t I?” She shook the water off and dried her feet on a towel.
Butch, after allowing himself to be petted, led her into the house, tail high. He jockeyed into position near his food dish for a handout, so she relented and gave him the leftover tuna that she’d saved from last night.
“I can’t figure out how you manage in that fur coat of yours,” she said to Butch. “This weather is so hot, even for me.” She headed for the shower, her second of the day.
Afterward, she slipped into a clean sleeveless blouse and comfortable khaki shorts, and went to put the barbecue together. She’d noticed the pieces strewn around the back porch earlier. With a good deal of effort, she managed to insert the legs into their slots on the bottom of the grill pan but couldn’t figure out how to get the rack to fit evenly on top.
Butch sat on the back porch railing, all but rolling his eyes at her clumsiness. “I’ve already broken a fingernail, not that it matters, and this stupid thing doesn’t fit,” she fumed as she fussed this way and that with the rack.
“Can I help?”
Ben strolled with unhurried ease out of the long shadows bordering the house. He wore pale blue jeans with a white shirt open at the throat, Top-Siders with no socks, and his hair was freshly washed and blown dry. He’d shaved off the beard stubble, which revealed his strong jaw and made him look five years younger. This put her in mind of the night she’d first met him all those years ago. She’d found him incredibly handsome, and he’d been completely uninterested in a gangly teenager with a Texas accent.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d check it out,” Chloe said matter-of-factly, gesturing toward the barbecue. “I need to wash my hands.”
“Here, you can take these into the kitchen when you go,” he said, thrusting a dish in her direction. It held two Idaho potatoes, already baked.
“They’re cooked,” Chloe said in surprise.
“They’ll be even more so before we eat them. What’s the matter with the grill?”
“The thing that holds the meat doesn’t fit on top,” she said. She was on her way through the door to the kitchen when her cell phone rang. She balanced the dish with the potatoes in one hand as she yanked it out of her pocket, hoping the call would be good news about Tara.
“This is Patrice DesJardin calling,” said a pleasant voice. “Is this Chloe?”
“Yes, it is,” Chloe said, setting the potatoes on the wicker porch table before sinking onto the swing. It gave a disconcerting wobble, and she stood up quickly. The grommet, or whatever it was that held the chain on the back of the swing, was loose, threatening to dump anyone who sat on it.
Ben turned at the sound of the swing smacking against the railing and frowned.
Patrice said, “I remember meeting you at the Frangipani Inn a couple of years ago. We had a delightful time.”
Chloe recalled that day well. Tayloe had made orangeade and egg salad sandwiches for lunch, and they’d listened long into the night as Patrice and Tayloe reminisced about their college days when they’d been roommates.
“It was fun,” Chloe said, unsure how to segue into a sales spiel about her jewelry. Patrice could be a great help to her, since her boutique on Palm Beach’s famed Worth Avenue was patronized by the rich and famous whose interest or lack of interest in Chloe’s designs could either make or break her budding venture.
“Tell me about this exciting new direction of yours,” Patrice said warmly, and that made it easy.
With the phone to her ear, Chloe wandered into the house, followed by Ben, who disappeared down the hall to the annex. “It all started right here on this beach,” Chloe told Patrice, going on to relate how the lovely colors of sea glass had always fascinated her. “After I made my first pendant, so many people complimented me that I designed more and more, realizing in the process that I didn’t want to do anything else.”
“I’d love to see what you do,” Patrice said. “The jewelry sounds like something that my customers might really like.” Before they hung up, they agreed on a day and a time when Chloe would drive to Palm Beach.
Ben emerged from the annex as Chloe clicked off her phone.
“You seem much more cheerful than you did a few minutes ago,” he observed as Chloe followed him outside.
She leaned back against the railing, watching as, with a variety of tools, he attacked the swing and the chain that held it. “That was Gwynne’s godmother. She invited me to show her my designs. Patrice is key to my plan, so I’m very happy about it.” And relieved, though she didn’t add that.
“Good for you.” Ben finished his work with the swing and gave it an experimental push before chucking the tools into a corner. “I brought a different rack that should fit. That one—” he nodded toward the rack responsible for Chloe’s broken fingernail “—belongs to another barbecue that got thrown away. I recall something about it.”
Chloe lowered herself to the top step as Ben dumped charcoal into the barbecue and doused it with charcoal lighter. “You must have lived at Frangipani Inn for quite a while,” she observed.
“In spells, every now and then,” he said.
She digested this, wondering if he was being intentionally vague. She well remembered how suddenly, that year she’d fallen in love with him, he’d disappeared from the inn. She’d heard rumors that Ben was still working at Sea Search. Someone ran into him on the beach but learned nothing about where he was living. In the fall, when Chloe was back in Farish, Gwynne had written that Ben was married. The news had devastated Chloe.
“You haven’t been here much as an adult yourself, have you?” Ben, unaware of her thoughts, accompanied his question with a curious glance.
“Only once in the past five years, since I didn’t like to leave Grandma Nell alone. Last summer, Gwynne was still at the inn, but Tayloe had gone to live with her new husband in Mexico.” Chloe brushed away a grasshopper who wouldn’t survive long if Butch caught a glimpse of him.
“Tayloe’s gone from the inn for good, I take it.”
“I think so. Gwynne, too. Once she gets her master’s degree, she’ll have the credentials to work with kids who have serious speech problems. I wouldn’t be surprised if she wanted to live in a larger city.”
“Good for her.” Ben touched a match to the charcoal and stood back while it caught fire. “Now that we’ve got this going, I’ll finish cooking the potatoes,” he said.
Ben started up the steps, and she trailed him into the kitchen, where he asked for milk, butter and salt. From his pocket he produced a packet of cheese. Before scooping the potatoes out of their shells, he dumped all these ingredients into a bowl.
Chloe watched, fascinated by his kitchen skills. She wondered if he’d cooked for his wife when he’d been married. She wondered how long the marriage had lasted.
“We’re making twice-baked potatoes,” Ben said. “You can help me put the filling back in the shells.” He handed her a spoon.
She wasn’t much of a cook herself, though Tara had often said that she made the best fajitas in the world. Ben’s delegation of duties took her by surprise.
“I’m not sure I—”
“Of course you can,” he said, demonstrating how to spoon the filling out of the bowl and smooth it into the potato skin.
“I’ve always been such a klutz at things like this,” Chloe said apologetically.
“You must be manually dexterous, or you wouldn’t be good at making jewelry,” Ben pointed out, looking over her shoulder. “You’re doing fine.”
Chloe decided that she liked the job after all, and when she set her stuffed potatoes beside Ben’s, no one could have told the difference.
“High five,” he said, holding up his hand, and she slapped him one in exuberance. She was beginning to feel really comfortable around him, as if they’d known each other for a long time. Which they had, of course, but now they related as adult to adult.
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Pamela Browning
Finders, Keepers?When Chloe Timberlake agrees to look after the Frangipani Inn, her cousin's bed-and-breakfast, she expects to find the fabulous Florida inn of her youth–not a derelict mansion that could collapse around her if she so much as slammed a door. Soon-to-be live-in handyman Ben Derrick is also a shock. The golden boy of her teenage fantasies appears tarnished beyond repair.Tragedy, as Chloe soon learns, hit Ben Derrick so hard that he spent years drowning the pain. Unable to work as a salvage diver, he gave up hope of ever finding a pot of gold.Unexpectedly, Chloe gives him a second chance. Maybe this time he'll be able to keep the treasure he's found.
“It was another kind of dream.”
The worst kind, he could have added, but didn’t. It was a nightmare that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Chloe lay awake long after Ben had gone back to sleep. Not for the first time, she sensed that he had deeper, sadder memories than he wanted to reveal.
To be honest, she was glad he hadn’t told her about them. Once he let her in on what was bothering him, she’d feel duty-bound to make things right. And at this point in her life, that wasn’t supposed to be an option. She was trying her hardest to focus on herself, never mind that she’d taken on the responsibility for her niece. That was turning out to be easier than she’d expected.
Ben was another story. She was planning to stay uninvolved in his problems, whatever they were, and no matter how sympathetic she might be.
That didn’t mean she didn’t care—far from it. Ben was far more important to her now than she could have thought possible when she’d first arrived at the Frangipani Inn.
The key was to keep things in perspective. Wasn’t it?
Dear Reader,
This is Chloe’s book.
Chloe Timberlake appeared briefly as my heroine’s best friend in my last book, Breakfast with Santa. I didn’t intend for her to remain in my consciousness after I finished writing the book. After all, she was a minor character, named after one of my favorite cats.
But sometimes writers create characters who just won’t let go. Chloe was at a juncture in her life; she was on the brink of leaving her hometown of Farish, Texas, to strike out on a new venture. I kept wondering what would happen to her. And besides, she was alone, and she seemed too nice not to have someone special in her life.
Fortunately, I found exactly the right guy for her. Ben Derrick is someone she knew long ago—a man who, as it turns out, appreciates Chloe’s quirky qualities. He’s suffered great tragedy in the past and has finally managed to start putting his life back together. Enter (ta-dah!) Chloe.
Their love story illustrates that sometimes you have to wait a long time to find true love, but that the greatest riches of all are the treasures of the heart. Enjoy!
Love,
Pamela Browning
P.S. Please visit my Web site at www.pamelabrowning.com.
The Treasure Man
Pamela Browning
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For the Florida hurricane victims of 2004, and for those who came to the rescue…thank you.
Books by Pamela Browning
HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE
854—BABY CHRISTMAS
874—COWBOY WITH A SECRET
907—PREGNANT AND INCOGNITO
922—RANCHER'S DOUBLE DILEMMA
982—COWBOY ENCHANTMENT
994—BABY ENCHANTMENT
1039—HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE
1070—THE MOMMY WISH
1091—BREAKFAST WITH SANTA
Contents
Prologue (#ued7d1f4a-d2df-5940-a0ec-47f0cfb0b83e)
Chapter One (#u1d0b4450-03d2-5687-b862-3d35ed2a9bb3)
Chapter Two (#u01fb4b22-1d8b-5987-bd95-d2423c5f96b1)
Chapter Three (#u92128f18-b9dc-5957-961d-d2efea0253da)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Afterward, Ben couldn’t recall when he first smelled smoke. He had a vague memory of a whiff of it as he left Ashley in her seat at the front of the auditorium, but it was intermission at the Chico Chico concert, and a lot of people had gone out for a cigarette. If he’d noticed it then, he would have thought it was people smoking.
A long line of concertgoers wended their way through the lobby to the refreshment stand, and he hoped there would be some root beer left by the time he reached the counter. Root beer was his thirteen-year-old daughter’s favorite drink, and since it was her birthday, he didn’t want to substitute cola or 7-Up or whatever else might be left. Still, he hung back, figuring it was more important for the kids attending the show to buy their drinks and hurry back to their seats; he could always slip into place beside Ashley after the performance resumed.
And then he saw it—a huge black billow of smoke rushing toward him down the aisle. Simultaneously, someone in the theater yelled, “Fire!” A woman screamed over the cacophony of voices, and people started to pour into the lobby.
Ben knew this was bad trouble. With the acrid odor of smoke stinging his nostrils, the crackle of flames in his ears, he fought his way past the first wave of panic-stricken concertgoers.
“Daddy! Daddy! Help!”
It was his daughter’s voice. He’d recognize it anywhere. People pushed past him, running, screaming, crying. He tried to forge a path through the crowd, but there was no space. He noted with alarm that flames were now licking at the stage curtains, and the ceiling was ablaze.
Someone struck Ben a glancing blow on his forehead, but he kept pushing. It was like swimming against a fierce current, something he’d done many times in his work as a diver. Despite his anguish, he was driven away from Ashley, not toward her.
Desperately, he shouted her name, choking on the smoke. “Ashley! Daddy’s coming!”
He fell to his knees, struggled and stood, was bowled over again.
“Out of the way, man! The place is burning!” A man tried to help him to his feet but was swept into the melee.
Ben accidentally tripped a woman, but together they managed to regain their footing. Her progress toward the door left a small hole in the sea of people, and he pressed toward Ashley. He had to make sure she was safe, had to reach his daughter.
The heat of the blaze scorched his face, seared his lungs. Glowing sparks swirled in the air above his head—a surreal dance performed amid chaos and destruction. An usher’s shirt was on fire, and he screamed as he tore at the blackened fabric. Through a gap in the crowd, Ben saw that the seats where he had left Ashley only minutes ago were engulfed in flames.
Eyes streaming with tears, he crawled over several fallen bodies and managed to grab on to a theater seat so that he wouldn’t be carried backward. Now the smoke was so thick that he could see nothing through the tunnel of fire ahead, and it hurt too much to breathe. He went down again but clung to the seat to pull himself to his feet. His gut wrenched with the certain knowledge that he was losing strength.
A father’s main job was to protect his child, and he hadn’t been able to do that. As the blackness all around began to blot out his consciousness, Ben prayed that Ashley had found a way out of the building. They had been sitting near an emergency exit, so perhaps she had kept her head and escaped. He held that hope in his heart as he slid slowly to the floor, the roar of the flames echoing inside his head until he heard…nothing.
Chapter One
Chloe Timberlake knew that she had truly reached the end of her long journey to Sanluca, Florida, when the earthy scent of the Everglades muck gave way to the fragrance of the Atlantic Ocean wafting on the breeze. She leaned her head out the car window and let go an exuberant whoop that was heard by no one except perhaps a few tree frogs chirring in the scrub oaks overarching the road. And her cat, of course.
“Come on out, Butch,” she said. “We’re a long way from Farish, Texas. The Frangipani Inn is straight ahead.” She nudged open the tattered carpetbag where the big orange tomcat liked to sleep when traveling.
Butch poked his head out and twitched his whiskers. No litter box for him; Butch was toilet trained and hadn’t forgiven her for that last grungy rest stop on the Glades Highway. He looked down his nose at her before indulging in an indolent stretch, then sniffed appreciatively at the brine and seaweed.
When the car emerged from the shelter of the trees, Chloe turned off at 1200 Beach Road, the shell-rock driveway crunching under the old blue Volvo’s tires. Ahead of them, her father’s family home was surrounded by an encroaching tangle of vegetation, growing thick and lush now, in late May. Nearby, a boardwalk led down to the beach.
“I wonder whose Jeep that is,” Chloe mused as the headlights swung past a decrepit vehicle, its pockmarked sides spattered with mud. As she braked to a stop under a gumbo-limbo tree at the rear of the inn, a lithe shape detached itself from the side of the building and moved toward her. Chloe was wary; the inn, her cousin Gwynne had assured her, was unoccupied.
The shape morphed into a man and, still suspicious, Chloe rammed the car into Reverse for a quick getaway. His presence rattled her, even though Sanluca’s crime rate ranked so low it wasn’t even on the charts. Yet why was this fellow, who was now sauntering toward her car, lurking in the shadows of the Frangipani Inn?
He stepped within the circle of headlights, and with a jolt, she recognized him. She hadn’t seen Ben Derrick in years, not since that summer when she was sixteen; but she would have known him anywhere. He’d been unrepentantly handsome and sexy as sin, though he’d never seemed to realize it. Now he was barefoot—ill-advised considering the incidence of sandspurs in the native scrub. Baggy shorts rode low on his hips, and his hair—dark, generously sun-streaked and needing cutting—was tousled by the breeze from the ocean. He looked scruffy and nondescript, and he was sixteen years older than when she’d last seen him, but he was still Ben Derrick. And still a heartbreaker, no doubt.
He squinted into the glare. “Gwynne?” he said.
Of course. He’d always preferred her cousin, teasing her, joking with her and ignoring Chloe. When Ben had disappeared late in that summer of her sixteenth year, Chloe had been devastated. She’d been shy in those days, had never done anything to draw attention to herself, had been content to hang out in Gwynne’s shadow. She’d never told anyone that she’d fallen hopelessly in love with Ben Derrick.
Chloe rested a restraining hand on Butch’s head so that he wouldn’t take it into his fool head to make a grand leap from the car. “I’m Chloe Timberlake,” she said over the stutter of the Volvo’s engine. “Gwynne’s my cousin.” She didn’t add, You remember—I was the redheaded, flat-chested girl who hung on your every word, who followed you around like a lovesick fool for two whole months. And you couldn’t have cared less.
Ben leaned down and peered in the window, studying her. “You’re Chloe?” His voice was a rumble in his chest.
“Right,” Chloe said. “I was here one summer a long time ago. Actually, I visited a lot of summers, but we only ran into each other that year.” He’d worked as a diver for Sea Search, Inc., the local marine salvage company whose search for sunken treasure had been the subject of many National Geographic television programs.
“I boarded here sometimes when Gwynne and her mom ran the place as a bed-and-breakfast.”
“I remember.” Oh, yes. He’d been a charismatic character in those days, tall and tanned and utterly charming.
If Ben recognized her, he gave no sign. “I’ve just rolled into town and was counting on Gwynne and Tayloe’s having a room for me.”
“You didn’t call first?”
“I got a recorded message about the number not being in service at this time.”
“That’s because the Frangipani Inn is no longer a bed-and-breakfast.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” For someone who needed a place to sleep for the night, he delivered the line with a bit too much nonchalance. He slapped absently at a whining mosquito. “Where have Gwynne and Tayloe gone?”
“Gwynne’s off finishing her master’s degree in speech pathology, and my aunt Tayloe remarried last year and lives in Mexico with her husband. I’m here to work for the summer. I design jewelry.”
This was the season for thunderstorms riding in on warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, and over the sound of her voice, Chloe detected a rumble of thunder in the distance. Tonight’s predicted stormy weather was fast closing in.
“I don’t suppose you’d rent me a room anyway,” he said.
The crash of the breakers on the other side of the dunes filled the silence. She gazed up at the clouds scudding past the turret of the inn for a long moment before answering. “I’m not planning to run the house as a B and B.”
Chloe felt the first spatter of rain. As she raised the window and cut the Volvo’s engine, the scene went dark, and all she could see was the white stripes of Ben’s shirt a few feet away.
“C’mon, Butch,” Chloe said. She grabbed the cat and her backpack. Fortunately, the clouds from the oncoming storm had not yet obscured the moon, and as she slid out of the car she was able to get a good look at Ben Derrick. His eyes were murky in the darkness, and she couldn’t recall their color. Strange, since she’d thought she’d never forget anything about him. Were they blue? Gray? She had no idea.
“Can I help you with that?” He reached for her pack, but she sidestepped quickly and whipped it out of his reach.
“No, I’ll handle it. Thanks.”
“I’d better check out the house with you this first time,” Ben said gruffly.
“I don’t think so,” Chloe retorted. She turned, wondering what it would take to make this guy get in his Jeep and go. Couldn’t he take a hint?
“The reason I suggested going in with you,” Ben said with great patience, “is that if the house has been vacant, no telling what’s inside.”
Chloe was mindful of Gwynne’s stated reasons for offering to let her live in the sea-worn old mansion. She’d mentioned concerns about vagrants, beach bums, kids partying inside and no one detecting their presence until much harm had been done. Maybe it would be a good idea to let Ben check out the place.
“Let’s hurry. It’s beginning to rain,” Chloe said tersely. She started along the winding sandy path to the house as huge raindrops began to fall. The wind kicked up, and the air took on a sudden chill as rain sluiced down in great torrents, drenching them both.
They ran past thrashing clumps of sea oats and salt grass. When she reached the haven of the porch, Chloe set Butch down. The cat, spooked by the change in weather, shook himself and immediately bounded into the bushes below.
“Butch! Get back here!” She could barely make herself heard over the wind and rain.
Of course the cat didn’t. Chloe wasn’t concerned that Butch would try a disappearing act, since he knew who his food came from, but she wished he hadn’t left her alone with Ben.
Who conveniently produced a flashlight from his pocket and beamed it on the rusty old lock. Chloe, clumsy in her haste, fumbled with the key, inserted it and swung the door open on a cavernous front hall.
A flock of dust bunnies scattered in the fresh gusts admitted through the open door as something dark scurried toward the nether regions of the house. Chloe groped for the light switch and flipped it. The lone bulb remaining in the overhead fixture flared and died.
“I’ll turn on a lamp,” Chloe said, wiping her face with her forearm before dropping her backpack on the hall settee. As she spoke, Ben trained the flashlight on the parlor to her right.
The house had been in her father’s family since the early part of the century, and she and her older sister, Naomi, had spent many glorious summer vacations in the big Victorian mansion when she was growing up. A year ago when she’d last visited, the Frangipani Inn hadn’t been in this state of disrepair. The furniture, layered with white covers, loomed eerily as she felt her way into the parlor’s depths, where she knocked into a table, caught herself before keeling over and managed to turn on the light over the piano. It cast the shrouded shapes into gloomy shadows.
Dust was everywhere, and cobwebs trailed spookily from the high ceiling. The windows were coated with a thick coat of salt spray, and the air smelled musty. As she stood taking in all the decrepitude of a place that she remembered as bright, light and uplifting, Ben said, “Things deteriorate rapidly near the ocean. The place has been unoccupied for how long?”
“Almost a year,” Chloe told him, her voice echoing because of the high ceiling. In order to see what was what, she shoved aside white muslin to reveal a wicker chair that belonged on the porch. One of its wooden rockers was split, and she tugged the cover back over it. As she did so, something scrambled frantically across her toes, something warm and furry with quick little feet.
At the same time, a flash of lightning and an earsplitting clap of thunder rent the silence. Chloe screamed and would have bolted if Ben hadn’t caught her and held her steady.
“Easy,” he said. “That was only a field mouse.” His arms were hard-muscled and strong, she noticed through her panic. His heart beat steadily beneath his damp shirt, and his wet skin was slick beneath her fingers.
“I h-hate mice,” she stammered.
He released her, and she saw that his eyes were a deep, velvety brown. He smelled of sun and salt, of the sea and sand, bringing back memories of that summer so long ago.
“There are bound to be one or two mice in here,” he said, the voice of reason.
She recovered enough to scoff at that. “One or two? Ha! They breed,” she said. She stalked toward the door. “I can’t live with mice. I’m leaving.”
Ben cocked a head toward one of the windows, which was rattling in its frame due to the energetic pummeling of the elements. “It’s raining hard now, and there’s lightning. Besides, there’s nowhere else to go.”
“Where is that cat when I need him?” she muttered. She threw the door open. “Butch? Butch!” Rain blew in her face; it tasted of salt. There was no sign of a big orange cat, no glimmer of his white bib under the shelter of the rubbery round leaves of the sea grapes.
Ben walked up behind her. “I saw him run under the house. He’ll have a grand old time there chasing the mice and palmetto bugs.”
“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.
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 the 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.”
“Did she leave a note?”
“She propped a sweet little card on her pillow, telling us not to worry.”
“As if you wouldn’t.”
“As if,” Naomi agreed with a sigh.
“At least Tara took her exams,” Chloe pointed out.
“Why do you find this funny?” Naomi asked with remarkable forbearance. “We’re beside ourselves with worry.”
“Tara confided before I left Farish that she’d reformed. My guess is that she’s hiding at a friend’s house and they’re pigging out on hot-fudge sundaes. You used to do that when finals were over, remember?”
“We’re checking with all her friends, and in the old bunkhouses on some of their parents’ ranches, and every other possible place. The police don’t consider her disappearance a criminal matter because Tara left a note, went of her own accord and kids run away all the time. They believe she’ll be back. I’m not so sure, Chloe. Tara and I had a big argument a couple of days ago.”
Chloe’s heart sank. “I’m sorry to hear that. Care to tell me about it?” She’d hoped that Tara was sufficiently chastened after her latest transgression of hosting an unchaperoned party when her parents weren’t home. But then, Chloe knew about rebellion for rebellion’s sake. She’d been a difficult teenager herself.
“On Sunday, Tara wanted to wear this really horrible outfit to church. I mean, it was so short that it would have raised the eyebrows of every little old lady in the congregation, including Grandma. Especially Grandma. And no bra, and—”
“I don’t wear a bra sometimes.” Like maybe never, Chloe was thinking, if the weather didn’t cool off.
“You’re a grown woman, free to make your own decisions about how you dress. Tara’s still a kid. I told her that over my dead body would she leave the house in that getup, and she said that she hoped I wasn’t planning to assume room temperature any time soon, but she was going, like it or not. And I said she wasn’t, and she said I was a bitch, and—”
“She called you a bitch?”
“As well as other names I would rather not repeat. Then she stormed out of the house, wearing a dress no bigger than a sticky note. Ray and the twins and I waited for her to come home and were late for church because she never showed up. Or at least, she didn’t come home until we were gone. I didn’t figure out until late that night that she’d taken a duffel. She packed clothes, Chloe, and her teddy bear. She never goes anywhere without that bear.”
Chloe sighed. This sounded like an updated version of her own difficult adolescence, though she hadn’t had the comfort of a stuffed animal when, during Christmas vacation in her senior year of high school, she hitchhiked to visit a boyfriend who had recently moved to California.
“That’s awful, Naomi. You have my heartfelt sympathies,” Chloe told her.
“We’ve set off alarms in every direction. I’ve alerted Marilyn and her group in case she shows up in Dallas.” Marilyn, their cousin, and her husband, Donald, had five kids. Tara had been close to that branch of the family most of her life.
“You’ll call when you find her, won’t you?”
“Sure. Let’s hope it’s soon.”
“I’m sure it will be. She’s a good kid, Naomi.”
“I keep expecting her to walk through the front door—” Naomi broke off her sentence, a sob catching in her throat.
“I’m so sorry, Mimi.” Chloe was the only one allowed to call Naomi by her old childhood nickname.
“I’ll keep you posted. I wish I were in Florida with you. I worry about you being all alone there.”
“Well, don’t. Ben Derrick showed up.”
“Who?”
“You wouldn’t remember. You were already married to Ray the summer that Ben boarded at the inn and I was here.”
“He’s nice?”
“Also helpful.”
“Age?”
It took a moment for Chloe to figure this out. “Thirty-seven.”
She could picture her sister narrowing her eyes on the other end of the phone. “You haven’t taken up with him already, have you?”
Chloe let out an exasperated sigh. “I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours, Naomi. Surely you jest.”
“I am not in the mood for joking, Chloe. I’m falling apart. I can’t even pull myself together long enough to throw a load of laundry into the washing machine.”
“Do you want me to come home, Naomi? Help you out?” She waited with dread for her sister’s answer, knowing that she’d go if Naomi needed her.
“No, Chloe,” Naomi said. “We’ll get through this. But thanks.”
Chloe, all but heaving a giant sigh of relief, decided to broach a new topic. “How are Jennifer and Jodie?” she asked. Naomi and Ray’s twin daughters were ten years old and never gave them any trouble. So far, anyway.
“J and J are upset that Tara’s disappeared, like all of us.”
“Give them my love.”
“I will.”
“And Grandma Nell—is she adjusting to the assisted-living home? Or is she still trying to decide if she likes it?”
“Chloe,” Naomi said patiently. “Stop assuming responsibility for other people’s well-being. Our grandmother is doing fine. She’s made a new friend, and they watch their favorite TV program together every day. The friend’s family treats them to dinner at the country club. Grandma’s happy. Repeat after me. Grandma’s happy.”
“‘Grandma’s happy,’” Chloe recited as if by rote.
“You’ve got it. You’ve got it! Listen, Chloe, I’d better hang up in case Tara tries to call home on this line instead of our cell phones.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Love you,” said Naomi.
“Love you, too.”
She heard the sliding glass door to the annex grinding along its track. It was located under her bedroom window, and a glance outside told her that Ben was no longer sitting and staring morosely out to sea. While she dressed, she heard the Jeep’s engine roar to life as Ben left. Briefly, she wondered where he was going, but she didn’t have time to mull it over. She had work to do.
Downstairs, she threw all the windows open and hauled the wicker rockers outside to the front porch, where last night’s rain had washed everything fresh and clean. A row of red hibiscus bushes bordered the porch, their flowers as big as saucers, and overhead, in a nearby palmetto tree, a mockingbird’s white feathers flashed as it flitted to and fro. Beyond the rolling dunes, the sea was glassy and calm. This day, like every day in summer, would be scorchingly hot. The sun was already blazing down on the sand.
Unfortunately, the Frangipani Inn wasn’t air-conditioned. Tayloe had been adamant that the winds off the ocean cooled it enough; she’d insisted that if the natural breezes had been good enough for her grandparents, they were good enough for her. Chloe wasn’t so sure. Sea breeze or not, air-conditioning seemed like a really good idea in this hot and steamy climate.
Once she’d opened the house, she tackled the dirty dishes in the sink, then measured the small study off the library, where she intended to set up her workshop. The space was cluttered with an old treadle sewing machine, a box of dusty jelly jars and various other debris. She’d place a workbench at one end of the long, narrow room A telephone outlet behind Tayloe’s old desk would make it convenient to connect to the Internet. Between the workshop and the kitchen, a large closet, formerly a butler’s pantry, would house her jewelry-making supplies. The closet contained a safe, where she’d keep the precious and semiprecious gems she used in her one-of-a-kind designs.
All that decided, she was finishing off a slice of peanut butter toast when someone began hammering on the front door.
Through the sidelight, Chloe spotted a tattered white sailor hat with the brim pulled low. She threw the door open to Zephyr Wills, one of the most senior of Sanluca’s senior citizens. Known as the Turtle Lady, she felt that it was her obligation to safeguard the big loggerhead turtles that nested up and down the coast.
“Chloe!” Zephyr cried, her round wizened face crinkling into a broad smile. She was under five feet tall and as frail as a bird. “Gwynne told me you were driving all the way from Texas, gal. What’s the matter—you tired of cowboys?”
“And how,” Chloe said with feeling.
“Well, no wonder. All those sweaty horses, all that nasty dust. I knew a cowboy once, but never mind about that right now. Thought you’d never open the door. With Tayloe and Gwynne, I always walked right in. Didn’t think you’d care for that, though.”
“I, um, wouldn’t have expected it,” Chloe admitted.
The Turtle Lady wore her customary white long-sleeved shirt, which she donned every day for protection from the hot sun. Chloe could have sworn that Zephyr’s plaid shorts were twenty years old, which was almost as long as Chloe had been vacationing at the Frangipani Inn. Zephyr carried a ruffled parasol; it was her trademark.
“Come for a walk with me, Chloe. We’ll check out the latest nests.”
Zephyr had always liked company on her morning nest-hunting expeditions. Tayloe was usually willing to oblige; Gwynne, too.
“I’d love to,” Chloe told her, nudging Butch back inside with her foot.
“Get a hat. You don’t want to have a sunstroke. Is your cat coming with us?
“No, he doesn’t much like the beach.”
“That’s just as well. No telling what trouble he could get into out there.”
Chloe found a hat on the rack inside the door and skipped down the steps with a kind of heady anticipation. In her girlhood, she had listened with fascination to Zephyr’s explanation of the habits of loggerhead turtles. During their summer breeding season, female turtles lumbered onto land to lay eggs in a shallow nest in the sand. Then they returned to the ocean, never to see their own offspring, which hatched in a matter of weeks and clambered down the beach to the ocean, subject to predators and often so confused by the lights on land that they headed the wrong way. Zephyr considered it her mission in life to make sure the babies found the sea, and she sent them off with a little blessing and prayer for their safety.
Due to the nearby coral reefs being constantly ground to bits by wave action, the sand on this beach was famously pink. The ocean at this hour was still a deep cerulean blue, but as the day progressed and the sun climbed higher, its color would change to a cool, inviting turquoise. An onshore breeze, picking up now, fluttered the brim of Chloe’s hat and ruffled her hair. As they walked, Zephyr cast inquisitive glances at her from under the parasol.
“You used to be a redhead,” Zephyr stated. “What happened?”
“Uh, well, magenta and bronze and green and a color called Desert Dream, which I’ve settled on, finally. I want to look like a normal person for a change.” She wore her hair in a straight bob slightly longer than chin length, having dispensed with the spiky style she’d tried last year.
“You always were kind of different,” Zephyr ventured. “Gwynne was predictable, Naomi was sedate, but you were always turning cartwheels down the beach or ripping off all your clothes and jumping in the water.”
Chloe laughed. “I doubt if I’ll be doing any nude swimming around here now. There are lots more people on the beach these days.”
“We have the new wilderness preserve to thank for that,” Zephyr told her. “Lost Galleons Park, they call it, after the 1715 Spanish fleet that wrecked on the reefs while transporting gold and silver from the New World to Spain. Strange juxtaposition if you ask me—galleons in the New World and space launches right up the coast trying to find other new worlds. We’re going to have a space-shuttle launch later this summer. You going to be around?”
“I’m sure I will. I like the name Lost Galleons Park.”
“Ha! It’s a descriptive name, but I wish they’d named the park after the turtles. Someone at the state capitol must have decided treasure is more important than loggerheads, though I don’t see how.”
“So much of the economy around here derives from the search for treasure,” Chloe said. “Sanluca owes a lot to those sunken ships.”
“Oh, it’s ‘treasure this and treasure that,’” Zephyr agreed. “Since I was knee-high to a sandpiper, those old ships have been the sole local industry.”
“Gwynne told me the Frangipani Inn will become part of the park complex eventually.”
“The house and its land will be absorbed into the system once Gwynne and her mother die. That’s the way Tayloe wanted it. Can’t say if it’s a good idea of not. Bunch of tourists browsing through that grand old house! The park people intend to use it for a museum or some such.”
“That’s better than tearing it down and building a condominium,” Chloe said with conviction. She regretted that concrete-and-glass condo buildings had sprung up along much of the Florida coastline. The tall towers blocked the very thing that people had moved here to enjoy—abundant sunshine.
“Ben, now, he’d agree with us about condos,” Zephyr said.
Chloe kept planting one foot in front of the other. “You’ve seen him lately, I take it.”
“I ran into him on the beach last night before the storm. First met him years ago when he first came to Sanluca from a little town in the Glades. I already knew his mama and daddy from a time when I lived out there. I hadn’t seen him in a long while. Hardly had a chance to talk with him before the wind and rain came up. Bad storm, that. Knocked a bunch of mangoes off the tree at my house. Look over there now and you’ll see the latest turtle clutch.”
Chloe shaded her eyes from the sun when she spied the orange flag signaling a turtle nest. Zephyr gestured at the mesh net, about two feet high, that she’d placed around the nest to keep raccoons, possums and other land predators from disturbing the eggs. “Last night, I was watching the mama turtle and waiting for her to finish when Ben came along with his metal detector,” Zephyr said. “The man startled me, I’ll grant him that. I was paying attention to the eggs dropping into the sand when up walks someone I didn’t recognize at first. Never saw Ben Derrick with a beard before.”
“It’s not quite a beard, only the beginning of one.”
“You ask me, he’s going for the whole megillah. You should talk him out of it.”
“Like he’d pay any attention,” Chloe retorted as they headed back toward the inn. “I hardly know him.” She wished her friend would talk more about Ben, but she was disappointed when instead, Zephyr changed the subject.
“Say, about that cat of yours. You’ll need to put a bell on him if he’s to run loose. Prevent him from sneaking up on the shore birds,” she said.
“He’ll have enough to do with keeping the mice at bay in the inn.”
“Never saw a cat that didn’t stalk birds.”
“Butch is different.” She decided against telling Zephyr that Butch was toilet trained. Zephyr probably wouldn’t believe it anyway.
They started up the boardwalk, which meant that if Chloe was going to learn anything more about Ben, she’d better get Zephyr talking. “Ben’s been away from Sanluca a long time, I guess,” she prodded.
“Couple of years. Had to leave after he got fired from Sea Search. Not that I pay much attention to what people say, when all’s said and done. People say too much. That’s why I like animals a lot more.”
Keeping Zephyr on the topic was hard. “Ben was fired?” Chloe asked. This was electrifying information; she’d had no idea.
“That’s all I’ll mention, though he’s lucky to be alive after that accident.”
“What accident?”
“Not on that motorcycle of his, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“He drives a Jeep now.”
“It was a diving accident. He surfaced from one of the shipwreck sites too fast. They get the bends, divers do, if they don’t take time to decompress on the way up.”
“They can die,” Chloe said, remembering how Gwynne had explained it to her one summer, complete with facial grimaces and elaborate descriptions of how a diver’s blood could boil and their hearts could burst. Now that she was grown-up, Chloe suspected that Gwynne had embellished her story for effect, but the bends—or DCS, which stood for decompression sickness—was still nothing to fool with.
“Dumb thing, that,” Zephyr said. “Ben not taking care of himself, I mean. Losing his job. By the way, I’ve got some of those windfall mangoes in my car. Thought you might like a few to eat. I’ll get them for you.”
“Great,” Chloe said with little enthusiasm as Zephyr left her to go to the parking lot. She wondered why Ben had surfaced too fast from a dive. As an experienced diver, he would have known better.
Zephyr returned with the mangoes, and Chloe invited her inside for a while.
“Nope, I’ve got to get back home. Maybe some other time. I’m glad you’re here, Chloe. The inn has been vacant too long.”
“The whole place needs tidying up,” Chloe confessed, “but I’m too busy right now setting up my workshop. Maybe I’ll get around to cleaning in a few days.” Privately, she doubted she’d have time.
“You want that big place clean you should hire locals to do it. Too many people are without jobs these days. Citrus harvest is in the winter, and in the summer the packing houses are closed. Teenagers especially need work,” Zephyr said. She gestured down the boardwalk, where a group of girls and boys were horsing around, slapping one another with damp towels and shrieking. “They get up to no good if they don’t have enough to do for three months. Ben may know someone. Maybe even those kids.”
“Perhaps I’ll ask him,” Chloe said, and left it at that.
THE FIRST THING Ben did when he left the inn the morning after his arrival was to stop by Keefe’s Dive Shop, where local divers congregated and bought equipment as well as supplies. Dave Keefe, the genial owner who had outfitted Ben with scuba gear years ago when he’d first come to town, greeted him effusively.
“Ben, I’m glad to see you,” he said, after clapping Ben on the back and shaking his hand. “You’ve been gone too long. What are you doing with yourself these days?”
“Trying to earn a living. I don’t work for Sea Search anymore.”
A shadow passed over Dave’s face. “I heard.”
“The thing is, Dave, I’m still a certified scuba instructor. I’d like to pick up a class or two. It would help me make ends meet.”
Seeming thoughtful, Dave circled back behind the counter. “I can help you out,” he said slowly. “I’m teaching a group of beginners, but I’d like some time off. Would you consider taking over? The class is on Thursday evenings, seven to ten, in the pool out back. I teach the basic stuff.”
“You’ve got a deal,” Ben said, his hopes rising. Maybe reestablishing himself around here wouldn’t be so difficult to after all.
“See you next Thursday? I’ll introduce you to the students and bug out right away.”
“Sure.”
Dave rummaged on a shelf under the counter. “Here’s the scuba manual. I can’t teach you much about diving, but you should be familiar with questions the students will ask.”
“No problem,” Ben assured him.
His spirits were high as he drove down Loquat Street, which passed for the main drag in Sanluca. The town’s appellation was a corruption of San Luca, which was the name of the spring-fed river that drained into the Intracoastal Waterway, known in these parts as Spaniard’s Lagoon. Back in the days when Florida belonged to Spain, the lagoon, protected by several barrier islands and accessible from the ocean through a natural inlet, had been a popular safe anchorage for ships that plied the shore.
A sign at the edge of town welcomed visitors: Sanluca, it proclaimed. Home Of Sea Search, Inc., And Not Much Else. Underneath, in smaller letters, it said, Proudly Undeveloped. True, because on Florida’s east coast, to find any place that hadn’t been overbuilt, straining schools, social services and infrastructure, was rare. Sanluca had avoided that fate because the town was small in area and most of it had been set aside as a nature preserve.
Besides Dave’s dive shop, Sanluca’s business district encompassed a post office, a gas station, a combined art gallery and gift shop, a small treasure museum and the Sand Bar, which was a local hangout at the city marina. For nostalgia’s sake and in celebration of landing the teaching job, Ben acted on impulse and stopped in at the Sand Bar to order a burger, medium rare, with cheese and onions.
“Want a beer?” asked Joe Devane, the beefy bushy-haired bartender. He and Ben went back a long way, to the first year Ben worked at Sea Search.
“No, a glass of water will do,” Ben told him, reacquainting himself with the Sand Bar’s decor, which consisted of fishnet draped around dried starfish hung on the wall. An old ship’s wheel was mounted above the pool table, and outside was a thatched hut where you could belly up to the bar and listen to pickup jazz sessions at night.
Joe slid a glass across to Ben, leaving a slick, wet trail on the polished wood. Ben drained the drink in almost one gulp. It was easy to get dehydrated in this tropical climate. The sun baked the moisture right out of a person’s skin.
“You working for Andy McGehee again?” Joe asked.
Ben shrugged. “I’ve talked to him about it. He’s full up. Got enough divers, he says.” He wasn’t surprised at Joe’s question. At the Sand Bar, local treasure hunters talked casually and often about the business.
“There’re always one or two divers who quit in the course of a summer. He’ll hire you.”
“Maybe. In the meantime, I’m going to be teaching a scuba class for Dave Keefe.”
“That’s great, but don’t give up on Andy. He was in here the other day with some of the guys on his crew. They were talking about last year’s hurricane and how it uncovered new sections of the wrecks offshore.”
“Couldn’t help but do that,” Ben agreed. A good storm was a treasure hunter’s dream.
“He’ll need all the divers he can get.”
“Yeah, well,” Ben said. He understood Andy’s unwillingness to hire him after he’d let him go during what Ben privately thought of as the bad time. Andy was probably unconvinced that Ben had since shaped up, and that was understandable.
“Are you staying around here somewhere?” Joe asked. There weren’t many options, even in the off-season. The Sanluca Motel was a dilapidated scratcher with ten dimly lit rooms where people rarely wanted to spend more than one night. The nearest real hotel was twelve miles away and charged for one night’s lodging twice what most locals earned in a day. The other alternative was an RV park where the owner, old Ducky Hester of the gnarled teeth and bodacious BO, might let someone stay for a night or two in the trailer of an owner who only occupied it in the winter; Ducky pocketed the money with the owner none the wiser. Ben considered himself lucky to have run into Chloe Timberlake last night, and even luckier that she was allowing him to stay in the apartment at the Frangipani Inn.
“I’m living at Tayloe and Gwynne’s place,” he said.
“I heard they closed up the inn and moved away.”
Ben shrugged. “Tayloe’s niece is looking after things,” he said.
“That’s good. For you, I mean.”
Ben nodded and took a long drink of water as Joe moved away to greet another customer.
His hamburger was done perfectly, and Ben soon became aware that the waitress, who wore a halter top and sported a silver ring in her navel, was sending soulful looks in his direction. When she slapped the check on the table, she sidled a little closer than necessary. “Joe says you’re hoping to sign on with Sea Search,” she said. He made himself focus on a large white pelican, one of a flock that roosted on the pilings around the place.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s the plan.”
“My brother works for Andy McGehee. I could put in a good word for you.”
The pelican flew away, flapping its wings as it soared awkwardly above the lagoon. “Sure,” he said easily. “If you want.” He waited for her to reel in whatever strings were attached.
“Okay, I’ll mention it. You’re Ben, right?”
“Ben Derrick,” he said.
“I’m Liss,” she said. “Liss Alderman.”
He vaguely remembered a young guy named Alderman. The kid had hung around the city docks a lot, and in fact, Tommy Alderman had still been in high school back when Ben had worked for Andy McGehee.
“Nice to meet you,” Ben said. He didn’t mention that he’d met Tommy. That would only encourage her.
“Same here.” Liss favored him with a blindingly white smile and flounced away, twitching her derriere. Damn, but she was young. Only twenty-two or so, and that was too much of an age difference. He didn’t dare bring women around to the inn anyway, since his landlady might object.
Not that Chloe was interested in him, though she’d warmed up considerably after he played Bwana of the Jungle and wiped out a couple of palmetto bugs. He smiled, recollecting how she’d flown into his arms when the mouse ran over her foot. She’d reacted like a scared schoolgirl, like his thirteen-year-old daughter, for Pete’s sake.
That thought sobered him quickly, and a mantle of sadness settled over him. After two years, he should have stopped obsessing about what had happened. About how it was all his fault.
He tossed money on the table, gave Joe a salute of sorts, and, head down, hurried to his Jeep. Better to stay busy doing something, anything, than to start thinking. Booze used to work, but he’d given it up after drinking had almost scuttled what was left of his life deeper than any of those old shipwrecks out on the reef. But, finally, he was sober again. The trick would be to stay that way. Some trick.
“’Bye, Ben,” Liss called through one of the open windows.
He waved halfheartedly in her direction, wondering what days she didn’t work. No need to come back if she was going to put the moves on him.
He’d managed to avoid Chloe this morning. If his luck held, she’d be out when he got back to the Frangipani Inn. That way, he wouldn’t have to talk to her. Not that she was hard to talk to, really. He even liked her, sort of. He almost remembered her from the year when his life had changed, the year when he’d married Emily.
Marrying Emily had taught him not to get close to anyone. He’d abandoned that precept when Ashley was alive, but those circumstances had been different. Ashley had been his adored daughter, and it had been easy to give her his heart.
Never again. He didn’t want to love anyone that much. Saying goodbye was always so painful. And sometimes goodbyes happened whether you expected them or not.
“BEN!” CHLOE CALLED.
Ben stuck his head out of the closet where he was installing a new heating element in the annex water heater. He’d hoped he’d be through in here and could make himself scarce before Chloe stopped pushing and dragging things around Tayloe’s old study. He’d heard her at it when he returned home after lunch, and he’d called out an offer to help, which she’d turned down. Well, he had enough to do, and he wished Chloe hadn’t chosen this moment to pay a visit.
“Back here,” he replied. “In the annex.”
Chloe appeared in the hall from the kitchen, her hair piled on top of her head and damp tendrils trailing down her neck. She was wearing a sleeveless tie-dyed T-shirt cut off above her waist, and a pair of the shortest shorts he’d ever seen. Last night he hadn’t paid much attention to her, except for that remark about his being hot. Well, she hadn’t meant him—he was pretty sure of that by the way she’d slunk off to her room afterward—but now, well, she was the hot one. He made himself pull his gaze away from the swell of her breasts under that tight-fitting shirt.
“What’s wrong with the water heater?” she asked.
“The thermostat. Not too difficult to repair, but it gets hot in the closet.” There was that word again. Hot. It had popped out without his thinking about it. Embarrassed, he wedged himself back into the stifling space.
“We could open these windows wider,” she said, walking past him and heading for his bedroom. He didn’t like her trespassing on what he now considered his territory; it was only a bedroom, a living area and a small kitchen, but he’d spread his meager possessions throughout, and it would be his home for a while. He hoped.
“Euwww, there’s a lizard in here.” Chloe made tracks back toward the kitchen.
“He won’t hurt you,” Ben said curtly. “In fact, he’ll help keep the insect population down.”
“Well, I guess a lizard’s not so bad. I was used to them in Texas. Didn’t you spray insecticide in this apartment?”
“Nah, I don’t like the smell of it. Me and my lizard buddy will make out fine. Say, could you see if there’s a rubber gasket lying around anywhere? I’m missing one.”
“Here it is.” She handed it to him, which meant that she had to step inside the closet, which meant he got a close-up view of most of her.
She had a freckle in the white of her eye, an adjunct to the liberal dusting of freckles on her upturned nose. This fascinating combination caused him to stare at her a tad longer than made her comfortable, if fidgeting was any indication.
“The fridge in the apartment works okay?” she asked. She lifted a straggle of pale hair off her face.
“Sure. I put bottles of water in there earlier. Help yourself.”
“Got any beer?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
“That’s okay.” She wore multiple earrings, which jingled as she went to the kitchen, and he heard the sound of her opening and closing the refrigerator door. “Can I bring you anything?”
“I’ll be through in here in a minute.” He cast a glance out of the closet and saw her sauntering to the glass door. He liked the way she looked silhouetted against the sand dunes outside, all legs and pout. Not a perturbed pout, just one that occurred naturally when she was thinking. What would she be thinking at the moment? He had no idea.
He edged his way out of the closet and mopped his brow with a rag. She turned toward him. “I’ve arranged for the phone to be hooked up, and the water-softener folks are sending a man out as soon as possible.”
“Good, since I’ve never owned a cell phone and hope I never will,” he replied. “Plus bottled water can get pricey after a while.”
“Also, Ben, keep track of your expenses for the water heater and everything else that you do. I’ll see that you’re reimbursed, but whether it’ll be me who does the reimbursing, I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Gwynne.”
“You talk to her much?” He brushed past Chloe into the kitchen. Her hair was the prettiest shade of blond, shimmery like sunbeams. It wasn’t her natural color—he remembered her as a redhead. Not that it mattered. She was one of those women who was born to be blond. In the sun streaming through the window, her skin, damp with perspiration, gleamed.
She kept her head turned away. “Gwynne doesn’t answer her phone.”
While he washed his hands at the kitchen sink, Chloe wandered over to a shelf built into the wall. “What’s all this?” she asked with interest.
“A collection of artifacts that I’ve recovered over the course of my career.” He didn’t add that they were small and could be transported easily when moving around a lot. They were his connection with his chosen line of work, the only remembrance he’d kept of his past life before the bad time.
“I’ve never seen anything like that statuette,” she said.
“It’s a clay dog, probably a toy made by descendants of the Mayans in Mexico. That’s a silver bosun’s whistle beside it, and a pewter shoe buckle in the front. All those objects date from the 1700s.”
“This must be a wine bottle,” she said, studying it.
“Not too many bottles survived in perfect condition like that one,” he told her.
“And this?” She gestured at a slim gold ring intricately carved and set with three emeralds.
“Recovered from a wreck of a merchant ship in the keys. It was so beautiful I’ve never wanted to sell it. See, the emeralds aren’t cut with the precision we’ve grown to expect in modern times. They’re rough, without many facets. That only adds to the charm as far as I’m concerned.” He’d planned to give the ring to Ashley when she was older, and now it made him sad.
He went abruptly to the refrigerator, twisted off the top of a bottle of water and drank deeply.
“It’s beautiful,” Chloe said, still appraising the ring. “Artistically crafted.”
He surmised that since she designed jewelry, the ring was of particular interest to her, but he didn’t want to discuss it anymore.
“I could use a swim about now,” he said. It was a remark meant to distract, not necessarily to produce results.
“Race you to the beach.”
In a matter of seconds, Chloe had wriggled out of her shirt. Her breasts were covered—if you could call it that—by a wisp of a bikini bra in a delicate shell-pink. It was almost the exact shade of her skin, and he did a double take before he figured out that it wasn’t her underwear but a swimsuit.
Next, she stepped out of her shorts, revealing an even briefer excuse for a bikini bottom.
“Let’s go!” she said.
“I—well, I have to put on swim trunks.”
“Okay, meet you down there.” She set the empty water bottle on the table beside a chair and headed out the sliding glass door, leaving him agog in her wake.
Nothing shy about Chloe Timberlake, that was certain. He wondered if she was as easygoing about the rest of her life, like making love, for instance.
Why this occurred to him he couldn’t imagine, though he supposed that her near-naked body might have something to do with it. His memories of her when she was a kid were spotty at best, but he was sure that she hadn’t been this well-endowed, her breasts high and firm, her derriere rounded in the right places.
He pulled on his trunks in record time, grabbed a towel and followed her. The sky above was laced with slow-moving clouds, and the sun-baked sand burned his bare feet. As he jogged out of the dunes, he spotted Chloe lolling in the shallows close to shore where last night’s wave action had scooped out a tidal pool right below the high-tide line.
“Hi,” Chloe said, interrupting his reverie. “Come on in. I’d forgotten how this is like having our own little swimming pool right down here on the beach.”
He waded in. The water was too warm, more like the temperature of a bathtub than the ocean, and it was translucent, so that every shell and rock on the bottom was clear.
“I know what I want,” Chloe said, leaping to her feet and scrambling out of the water. That swimsuit of hers was almost transparent; the outlines of her nipples were visible. He glanced away, his mouth suddenly dry.
“I’ll be right back,” she said. She ran up the beach and disappeared into the dunes.
I know what I want, she’d said. He tried to stop thinking about what he wanted, which was, let’s be honest here, a tumble with her.
Once, he wouldn’t have put it in those terms. Each woman he’d met before the bad time was new territory to be explored, and he didn’t only consider their bodies. No, he’d always been vitally interested in what went on in their heads. He’d been fascinated with the dimensions of women’s minds, how they brought different perspectives to life than men, how they never failed to surprise and delight him. There had been many women after Ashley’s mother, from whom he’d been divorced shortly after their daughter was born.
All the women after Emily had enriched his life immeasurably, but he’d never remarried. He’d flitted here and there like a butterfly, alighting in one place for a while and then moving on to something that promised to be sweeter but often wasn’t. He wouldn’t ever do that again. It was a way of life requiring optimism, a quality that was missing in his makeup these days.
So why was he feeling positively hopeful as Chloe Timberlake reappeared on the path?
Chapter Three
Chloe, he saw as she moved closer, was carrying a couple of deflated beach rafts over her arm.
“I discovered these in the hall closet,” she said as she sat on the sand at the edge of the pool. “Here, one’s for you.” She tossed it to him.
Chloe made a comical sight with her cheeks puffed out as she prepared to blow up the raft. This was a woman who was as unselfconscious as they came.
“I’m looking forward to floating around in the water and getting a suntan,” she said between breaths. She acted as if anything she suggested should be all right with him.
“Okay,” he said. Her plan didn’t sound half-bad, though he didn’t need a tan. He could understand why she wanted one. Her skin was as pale as a tourist’s.
“You’d better put on sunscreen,” he cautioned.
“Already did,” she said in that jaunty way of hers, the faint aroma of coconut-scented suntan lotion wafting in his direction.
Ben concentrated on inflating the raft, wondering if it wouldn’t have made more sense to use the air compressor in the annex closet to do the job. But then he wouldn’t have had the pleasure of watching Chloe puckering up, a sight that put him in mind of other reasons she might do so. He’d bet her lips were soft and pliant, capable of eliciting the most delectable sensations.
Damn, he’d better stop thinking in such terms or this raft wouldn’t be the only thing that inflated.
“There,” Chloe said with satisfaction. She launched the raft with a little push. A couple of fish skittered away, but Ben scarcely noticed now that Chloe was splashing into the water and preparing to board.
Ben knew for certain that there was no graceful way to get on a raft that was floating in the water. You could belly flop, or you could straddle it, or you could shove it under your body and hope it didn’t go all cattywampus. But somehow Chloe managed to arrive stomach-up on the raft with remarkable grace, holding him spellbound in the process.
When she was settled, one hand trailed in the water, the other rested on her abdomen. Her eyes, he discerned in the bright sunlight, were not blue but a delicate shade of lavender, with long dark lashes. Ben usually wasn’t a fan of women with pointy chins, and he couldn’t exactly say that Chloe’s was pointy, but it wasn’t rounded, either. In the middle of it was a dimple that fascinated him because it went away when she smiled, which was exactly the opposite of what dimples usually did. And her eyebrows had a coquettish slant to them, which he didn’t think came from plucking or waxing.
“Is something wrong?” Chloe asked suddenly.
“No, no,” he said too hastily. “I was just watching that guy with the parasail over there.” Down near the inlet, someone was floating effortlessly above the ocean, dangling from a multicolored nylon parachute.
“Right,” Chloe said, after gazing in that direction for a moment, but she sounded unconvinced.
“When the tide comes in, this pool will disappear,” he said, mostly for conversation’s sake. He launched himself onto his raft stomach down, then paddled toward the far end of the pool, which was perhaps twenty-five feet away.
“That’s why it’s important to take advantage of it,” Chloe said as she drifted along beside him. “I intended to go for a quick swim, cool off a bit before getting to work, but it’s going to be difficult to concentrate. I keep worrying about my niece. She’s AWOL, and my sister is beside herself.”
“They live in Texas?”
“Back home in Farish.” Chloe outlined how Tara had disappeared.
“Like you say, she’s probably fine,” Ben said.
Chloe sighed. “Things had seemed to settle down with her, but I should have known better. I had a difficult adolescence myself.”
“I was into trouble most of my teenage years,” he told her. “Riding with a group of kids on motorcycles, finding all kinds of mischief. I lived in Yahola, a small town inland from here. Lake Okeechobee was to the south, a bunch of cattle ranches situated to the north, and I was bored out of my gourd.” He slanted a look at her to assess how she was taking this. She seemed interested rather than critical.
“Me, too,” she said. “To me, Farish, Texas, was the most nowhere place in the world. Our Main Street started at the courthouse square and ended in a cow pasture.” She laughed. “I can’t believe I’ve voluntarily moved to Sanluca, population two thousand. That’s approximately six thousand fewer people than Farish.”
“If this is where you can pursue your dream, it’s worth it, Chloe. That’s how I ended up here when I was nineteen.”
“What got you from Yahola to Sanluca?” Curious, she glanced at him.
“I got a book at the library, and it showed pictures of people diving for treasure off the Florida Keys. After I read it, I hopped on my motorcycle and rode over to see a friend who had moved here, keen to find out if he knew anything about Sea Search. He introduced me to Andy McGehee. Andy said, ‘Kid, you’ve gotta learn to dive before I’ll talk to you,’ so after that, I spent every penny I earned on scuba lessons and all my spare time diving.”
“You had a passion,” she said softly, shading her eyes with a hand for a moment to stare at him.
“I’ll always be grateful to the librarian who recommended that book.”
“That’s probably the key to reaching Tara. Helping her find her niche, I mean. She’s assured me she’s over her past problems. Maybe she’ll find her own passion.”
“What kind of problems has she had?” he asked.
“Tara shoplifted on a dare and got caught. She lifted a pair of panty hose from a store in a mall in Austin. She was only thirteen at the time.”
“I did worse than that myself. I set the local postmaster’s rural mailbox on fire.”
She lifted her head to stare at him. “You didn’t!”
“’Fraid so. It’s a federal crime. He was friendly with my folks, though, and didn’t prosecute.”
“Whatever possessed you?”
“I probably just wanted attention.”
“Maybe that’s Tara’s problem. Her twin sisters are six years younger, and they tend to steal the show. When Tara got in trouble for shoplifting, Naomi and Ray were forced to notice her.”
“Don’t they usually?”
“They adore her, and the twins, too. Unfortunately, twins tend to take up a lot of time. It’s even worse when they’re adorably cute like Jennifer and Jodie.”
“I hope Tara shows up soon, Chloe.”
“Thanks. I shouldn’t let myself obsess about her to the point where I can’t work, especially since I’m sure she’s hiding out someplace safe—maybe an older friend’s apartment or the house of a family who’s on vacation.”
He turned his head toward her. “What kind of work do you plan to do here?” he asked. If she really was a jewelry designer, he couldn’t imagine why she’d come to Sanluca.
“I’m into a new venture. Sea-glass jewelry.” A glimmer of perspiration had appeared on her top lip. Ben quashed a desire to lick it away.
“Sea glass, huh?”
“Well, it’s better than a couple of things I’ve tried in the past. Like gourmet dog biscuits and feng shui, neither of which went over too well in Farish.”
“What’s sea glass, anyway?” At least Ben knew what gourmet dog biscuits were; he wasn’t sure about feng shui.
“It’s glass that has been tumbled and scoured by the sand and the sea. It comes in all different colors—cobalt-blue, turquoise, the deepest purple or amethyst, celadon, jade. I got the idea when I was visiting Gwynne last summer and we picked up the most lovely specimens down here on the beach. I fiddled around with it, learned to encase it in cages of sterling silver or fourteen-carat gold. I’ve designed earrings around sea glass, and rings, and bracelets, and necklaces, and slides, and all sorts of things.”
He’d noticed the small pendant she wore. “Is that one of your pieces?” he asked. The jewellike shard of translucent celadon couched in silver was cradled in the hollow of her throat.
“I found this bit on a day that I was beachcombing with Tayloe and Gwynne. It’s the first necklace I made. Now I craft more intricate designs, compositions of sea glass intermingled with precious and semiprecious stones.”
“Very clever. Can you actually make a living doing that?” he asked.
“It depends. My grand plan involves placing my more elaborate pieces in high-end stores.”
“I bet that’s not easy to do.”
“I have a couple of ideas in mind. Gwynne’s godmother, Patrice DesJardin, owns a shop in Palm Beach. I’ve called and left her a message about my jewelry. Gwynne thinks Patrice will be interested.” Her raft rose and fell with the gentle motion of the water. They didn’t speak for a few minutes.
“When will you find out if your job’s going to materialize?” she asked after a while.
“In a few weeks, I hope. I’ve been talking to Andy McGehee about working with him at Sea Search again. In the meantime, I’ll be teaching a scuba class.”
“Andy’s something of a local legend. Do you know him well?” She seemed to be choosing her words carefully.
“I worked for him for a long time,” he said, unwilling to give anything away.
“Tayloe mentioned that he’s made a lot of money with Sea Search,” Chloe said. “I’ve passed by the treasure museum in town where he displays some of the loot, and Gwynne told me he’s built a huge compound for his family on Manatee Island.” The island, reachable by Beach Road over a bridge from Stuart’s Point, which was about four miles north of the inn, was where many celebrities kept large and exquisitely appointed winter homes.
“Andy is a millionaire several times over. He started treasure salvage in the early days, when not many people believed it could be done. ‘What’s lost is lost,’ they used to say around here, but Andy proved them wrong.”
“How do the divers in one of these treasure-hunting outfits divvy up the find? I’ve always wondered.”
His raft was drifting closer to hers, and if it continued on its course, they’d collide. Ben kicked lazily with one foot until he’d turned around where he could see her. “A lot of people ask that. After we bring the treasure up, it’s all kept in one big pile, so to speak. At the end of the season, the state of Florida takes its percentage due under the law. The rest is parceled out equally among the group.”
“Have you ever found anything really valuable?”
“One year I found a chunk of coral that broke away to reveal a beautiful gold crucifix. I sold it to a collector for sixty thousand dollars.”
“No kidding!” Chloe raised her head. Her earrings, all three pairs, glinted in the sun.
“There’s a lot more out there,” he said. “That’s why I’ve got gold fever.”
“And sea water in your veins,” Chloe added.
“Right,” he said, amused.
They floated silently for a while, listening to the soothing sound of waves breaking nearby. Every so often, a flock of gulls circled, soon soaring away in search of something more interesting. After a couple with two children and a dog ambled past, Chloe flipped over onto her stomach, the motion sending a wake across the pool.
“I’m going to the store later,” she announced suddenly. “We could cook steaks for dinner if you’d like to join me.”
“Steak sounds good,” he heard himself saying, though he’d figured he could grab something at the Sand Bar.
“Great. Seven o’clock, and I’ll provide a salad, too.”
“I’ll bring a couple of baking potatoes,” he offered.
Chloe levered herself off her raft into the water and submerged for a moment. When she came up, her hair was plastered to her head and her skin glistened with water. Tiny drops beaded her eyelashes, shimmering in the sun. The effect was enchanting.
Ben found it impossible to pull his eyes away as Chloe towed her raft toward the edge of the pool. Her wet bikini clung to her form, delineating every curve. When she half turned toward him, he swallowed, wishing that he didn’t have such a ready response to this woman. For her part, she seemed totally unaware of her electrifying effect on him as she bent to pluck something from the water.
“This is a wonderful example of sea glass,” she said, holding it toward him. The breeze blew a few drops of dripping water onto his warm forearm. In the palm of her hand was a slim half-moon shape, slightly curved, its color as delicate as a lilac petal.
“It’s almost the same shade as your eyes,” he blurted, and the look she gave him indicated an awareness that hadn’t been there before. An awareness of—what?
Her fingers closed over the shard, and he stared at her from behind his sunglasses, overcome with regret that they had become so sexually aware of each other in such a short time. He needed someone he could talk with, hang out with, maybe who would like to take in a movie occasionally. He most certainly didn’t need the complication of a woman and all the accompanying hassles.
“Dinner,” she said, aiming a coquettish grin at him. He was convinced that she didn’t mean to flirt. Those glances, the sparkle in her eyes, that sinuous walk meant nothing.
“Right,” he replied.
She waded out of the water, and Ben was relieved when she disappeared beyond the dunes. She might not realize her effect on him, but he certainly did, and he was wary of starting anything with her.
On the other hand, why not go for it?
Because you can’t care about her in any meaningful way, he told himself. That should have been sufficient reason, but as he watched her progress toward the inn, it wasn’t at all.
CHLOE WAS GLAD Ben had accepted her dinner invitation, which she had half expected him to refuse. He had a way of keeping a his distance, like a lot of loners, and the loner species of male wasn’t one that she wanted to cultivate. Certainly he was polite enough, and today they’d established a personal connection when he’d revealed something about his troubled youth.
“I wouldn’t be alone, even without him,” she said to Butch, who bounded out of the nearby stand of Australian pines and met her at the spigot near the bottom of the porch stairs, where she’d stopped to wash the sand off her feet. “I’d have you, wouldn’t I?” She shook the water off and dried her feet on a towel.
Butch, after allowing himself to be petted, led her into the house, tail high. He jockeyed into position near his food dish for a handout, so she relented and gave him the leftover tuna that she’d saved from last night.
“I can’t figure out how you manage in that fur coat of yours,” she said to Butch. “This weather is so hot, even for me.” She headed for the shower, her second of the day.
Afterward, she slipped into a clean sleeveless blouse and comfortable khaki shorts, and went to put the barbecue together. She’d noticed the pieces strewn around the back porch earlier. With a good deal of effort, she managed to insert the legs into their slots on the bottom of the grill pan but couldn’t figure out how to get the rack to fit evenly on top.
Butch sat on the back porch railing, all but rolling his eyes at her clumsiness. “I’ve already broken a fingernail, not that it matters, and this stupid thing doesn’t fit,” she fumed as she fussed this way and that with the rack.
“Can I help?”
Ben strolled with unhurried ease out of the long shadows bordering the house. He wore pale blue jeans with a white shirt open at the throat, Top-Siders with no socks, and his hair was freshly washed and blown dry. He’d shaved off the beard stubble, which revealed his strong jaw and made him look five years younger. This put her in mind of the night she’d first met him all those years ago. She’d found him incredibly handsome, and he’d been completely uninterested in a gangly teenager with a Texas accent.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d check it out,” Chloe said matter-of-factly, gesturing toward the barbecue. “I need to wash my hands.”
“Here, you can take these into the kitchen when you go,” he said, thrusting a dish in her direction. It held two Idaho potatoes, already baked.
“They’re cooked,” Chloe said in surprise.
“They’ll be even more so before we eat them. What’s the matter with the grill?”
“The thing that holds the meat doesn’t fit on top,” she said. She was on her way through the door to the kitchen when her cell phone rang. She balanced the dish with the potatoes in one hand as she yanked it out of her pocket, hoping the call would be good news about Tara.
“This is Patrice DesJardin calling,” said a pleasant voice. “Is this Chloe?”
“Yes, it is,” Chloe said, setting the potatoes on the wicker porch table before sinking onto the swing. It gave a disconcerting wobble, and she stood up quickly. The grommet, or whatever it was that held the chain on the back of the swing, was loose, threatening to dump anyone who sat on it.
Ben turned at the sound of the swing smacking against the railing and frowned.
Patrice said, “I remember meeting you at the Frangipani Inn a couple of years ago. We had a delightful time.”
Chloe recalled that day well. Tayloe had made orangeade and egg salad sandwiches for lunch, and they’d listened long into the night as Patrice and Tayloe reminisced about their college days when they’d been roommates.
“It was fun,” Chloe said, unsure how to segue into a sales spiel about her jewelry. Patrice could be a great help to her, since her boutique on Palm Beach’s famed Worth Avenue was patronized by the rich and famous whose interest or lack of interest in Chloe’s designs could either make or break her budding venture.
“Tell me about this exciting new direction of yours,” Patrice said warmly, and that made it easy.
With the phone to her ear, Chloe wandered into the house, followed by Ben, who disappeared down the hall to the annex. “It all started right here on this beach,” Chloe told Patrice, going on to relate how the lovely colors of sea glass had always fascinated her. “After I made my first pendant, so many people complimented me that I designed more and more, realizing in the process that I didn’t want to do anything else.”
“I’d love to see what you do,” Patrice said. “The jewelry sounds like something that my customers might really like.” Before they hung up, they agreed on a day and a time when Chloe would drive to Palm Beach.
Ben emerged from the annex as Chloe clicked off her phone.
“You seem much more cheerful than you did a few minutes ago,” he observed as Chloe followed him outside.
She leaned back against the railing, watching as, with a variety of tools, he attacked the swing and the chain that held it. “That was Gwynne’s godmother. She invited me to show her my designs. Patrice is key to my plan, so I’m very happy about it.” And relieved, though she didn’t add that.
“Good for you.” Ben finished his work with the swing and gave it an experimental push before chucking the tools into a corner. “I brought a different rack that should fit. That one—” he nodded toward the rack responsible for Chloe’s broken fingernail “—belongs to another barbecue that got thrown away. I recall something about it.”
Chloe lowered herself to the top step as Ben dumped charcoal into the barbecue and doused it with charcoal lighter. “You must have lived at Frangipani Inn for quite a while,” she observed.
“In spells, every now and then,” he said.
She digested this, wondering if he was being intentionally vague. She well remembered how suddenly, that year she’d fallen in love with him, he’d disappeared from the inn. She’d heard rumors that Ben was still working at Sea Search. Someone ran into him on the beach but learned nothing about where he was living. In the fall, when Chloe was back in Farish, Gwynne had written that Ben was married. The news had devastated Chloe.
“You haven’t been here much as an adult yourself, have you?” Ben, unaware of her thoughts, accompanied his question with a curious glance.
“Only once in the past five years, since I didn’t like to leave Grandma Nell alone. Last summer, Gwynne was still at the inn, but Tayloe had gone to live with her new husband in Mexico.” Chloe brushed away a grasshopper who wouldn’t survive long if Butch caught a glimpse of him.
“Tayloe’s gone from the inn for good, I take it.”
“I think so. Gwynne, too. Once she gets her master’s degree, she’ll have the credentials to work with kids who have serious speech problems. I wouldn’t be surprised if she wanted to live in a larger city.”
“Good for her.” Ben touched a match to the charcoal and stood back while it caught fire. “Now that we’ve got this going, I’ll finish cooking the potatoes,” he said.
Ben started up the steps, and she trailed him into the kitchen, where he asked for milk, butter and salt. From his pocket he produced a packet of cheese. Before scooping the potatoes out of their shells, he dumped all these ingredients into a bowl.
Chloe watched, fascinated by his kitchen skills. She wondered if he’d cooked for his wife when he’d been married. She wondered how long the marriage had lasted.
“We’re making twice-baked potatoes,” Ben said. “You can help me put the filling back in the shells.” He handed her a spoon.
She wasn’t much of a cook herself, though Tara had often said that she made the best fajitas in the world. Ben’s delegation of duties took her by surprise.
“I’m not sure I—”
“Of course you can,” he said, demonstrating how to spoon the filling out of the bowl and smooth it into the potato skin.
“I’ve always been such a klutz at things like this,” Chloe said apologetically.
“You must be manually dexterous, or you wouldn’t be good at making jewelry,” Ben pointed out, looking over her shoulder. “You’re doing fine.”
Chloe decided that she liked the job after all, and when she set her stuffed potatoes beside Ben’s, no one could have told the difference.
“High five,” he said, holding up his hand, and she slapped him one in exuberance. She was beginning to feel really comfortable around him, as if they’d known each other for a long time. Which they had, of course, but now they related as adult to adult.
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Pamela Browning
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: Finders, Keepers?When Chloe Timberlake agrees to look after the Frangipani Inn, her cousin′s bed-and-breakfast, she expects to find the fabulous Florida inn of her youth–not a derelict mansion that could collapse around her if she so much as slammed a door. Soon-to-be live-in handyman Ben Derrick is also a shock. The golden boy of her teenage fantasies appears tarnished beyond repair.Tragedy, as Chloe soon learns, hit Ben Derrick so hard that he spent years drowning the pain. Unable to work as a salvage diver, he gave up hope of ever finding a pot of gold.Unexpectedly, Chloe gives him a second chance. Maybe this time he′ll be able to keep the treasure he′s found.