Treasures Lost, Treasures Found: the classic story from the queen of romance that you won’t be able to put down

His brow lifted, whether in surprise or derision she couldn’t be sure. “Then it might be said we always had a problem.” He walked to her, so that the sun slanting through the small windows fell over him, then behind him. “But it didn’t always seem to matter.” To satisfy himself that he still could, Ky reached out and touched her face. She didn’t move, and her skin was as soft and cool as he remembered. “You look tired Kate.”

The muscles in her stomach quivered, but not her voice. “It was a long trip.”

His thumb brushed along her cheekbone. “You need some sun.”

This time she backed away. “I intend to get some.”

“So I gathered from your letter.” Pleased that she’d retreated first, Ky leaned against the open door. “You wrote that you wanted to talk to me in person. You’re here. Why don’t you tell me what you want?”

The cocky grin might have made her melt once. Now it stiffened her spine. “My father was researching a project. I intend to finish it.”

“So?”

“I need your help.”

Ky laughed and stepped past her into the sunlight. He needed the air, the distance. He needed to touch her again. “From your tone, there’s nothing you hate more than asking me for it.”

“No.” She stood firm, feeling suddenly strong and bitter. “Nothing.”

There was no humor in his eyes as he faced her again. The expression in them was cold and flat. She’d seen it before. “Then let’s understand each other before we start. You left the island and me, and took what I wanted.”

He couldn’t make her cringe now as he once had with only that look. “What happened four years ago has nothing to do with today.”

“The hell it doesn’t.” He came toward her again so that she took an involuntary step backward. “Still afraid of me?” he asked softly.

As it had a moment ago, the question turned the fear to anger. “No,” she told him, and meant it. “I’m not afraid of you, Ky. I’ve no intention of discussing the past, but I will agree that I left the island and you. I’m here now on business. I’d like you to hear me out. If you’re interested, we’ll discuss terms, nothing else.”

“I’m not one of your students, professor.” The drawl crept into his voice, as it did when he let it. “Don’t instruct.”

She curled her fingers tighter around the handle of her briefcase. “In business, there are always ground rules.”

“Nobody agreed to let you make them.”

“I made a mistake,” Kate said quietly as she fought for control. “I’ll find someone else.”

She’d taken only two steps away when Ky grabbed her arm. “No, you won’t.” The stormy look in his eyes made her throat dry. She knew what he meant. She’d never find anyone else that could make her feel as he made her feel, or want as he made her want. Deliberately, Kate removed his hand from her arm.

“I came here on business. I’ve no intention of fighting with you over something that doesn’t exist any longer.”

“We’ll see about that.” How long could he hold on? Ky wondered. It hurt just to look at her and to feel her withdrawing with every second that went by. “But for now, why don’t you tell me what you have in that businesslike briefcase, professor.”

Kate took a deep breath. She should have known it wouldn’t be easy. Nothing was ever easy with Ky. “Charts,” she said precisely. “Notebooks full of research, maps, carefully documented facts and precise theories. In my opinion, my father was very close to pinpointing the exact location of the Liberty, an English merchant vessel that sank, stores intact, off the North Carolina coast two hundred and fifty years ago.”

He listened without a comment or a change of expression from beginning to end. When she finished, Ky studied her face for one long moment. “Come inside,” he said and turned toward the house. “Show me what you’ve got.”

His arrogance made her want to turn away and go back to town exactly as she’d come. There were other divers, others who knew the coast and the waters as well as Ky did. Kate forced herself to calm down, forced herself to think. There were others, but if it was a choice between the devil she knew and the unknown, she had no choice. Kate followed him into the house.

This, too, had changed. The kitchen she remembered had had a paint splattered floor, with the only usable counter space being a tottering picnic table. The floor had been stripped and varnished, the cabinets redone, and scrubbed butcher block counters lined the sink. He had put in a skylight so that the sun spilled down over the picnic table, now re-worked and re-painted, with benches along either side.

“Did you do all of this yourself?”

“Yeah. Surprised?”

So he didn’t want to make polite conversation. Kate set her briefcase on the table. “Yes. You always seemed content that the walls were about to cave in on you.”

“I was content with a lot of things, once. Want a beer?”

“No.” Kate sat down and drew the first of her father’s notebooks out of her briefcase. “You’ll want to read these. It would be unnecessary and time-consuming for you to read every page, but if you’d look over the ones I’ve marked, I think you’ll have enough to go by.”

“All right.” Ky turned from the refrigerator, beer in hand. He sat, watching her over the rim as he took the first swallow, then he opened the notebook.

Edwin Hardesty’s handwriting was very clear and precise. He wrote down his facts in didactic, unromantic terms. What could have been exciting was as dry as a thesis, but it was accurate. Ky had no doubt of that.

The Liberty had been lost, with its stores of sugar, tea, silks, wine and other imports for the colonies. Hardesty had listed the manifest down to the last piece of hardtack. When it had left England, the ship had also been carrying gold. Twenty-five thousand in coins of the realm. Ky glanced up from the notebook to see Kate watching him.

“Interesting,” he said simply, and turned to the next page she marked.

There’d been only three survivors who’d washed up on the island. One of the crew had described the storm that had sunk the Liberty, giving details on the height of the waves, the splintering wood, the water gushing into the hole. It was a grim, grisly story which Hardesty had recounted in his pragmatic style, complete with footnotes. The crewman had also given the last known location of the ship before it had gone down. Ky didn’t require Hardesty’s calculations to figure the ship had sunk two-and-a-half miles off the coast of Ocracoke.

Going from one notebook to another, Ky read through Hardesty’s well-drafted theories, his clear to-the-point documentations, corroborated and recorroborated. He scanned the charts, then studied them with more care. He remembered the man’s avid interest in diving, which had always seemed inconsistent with his precise lifestyle.

So he’d been looking for gold, Ky mused. All these years the man had been digging in books and looking for gold. If it had been anyone else, Ky might have dismissed it as another fable. Little towns along the coast were full of stories about buried treasure. Edward Teach had used the shallow waters of the inlets to frustrate and outwit the crown until his last battle off the shores of Ocracoke. That alone kept the dreams of finding sunken treasures alive.

But it was Dr. Edwin J. Hardesty, Yale professor, an unimaginative, humorless man who didn’t believe there was time to be wasted on the frivolous, who’d written these notebooks.

Ky might still have dismissed it, but Kate was sitting across from him. He had enough adventurous blood in him to believe in destinies.

Setting the last notebook aside, he picked up his beer again. “So, you want to treasure hunt.”

She ignored the humor in his voice. With her hands folded on the table, she leaned forward. “I intend to follow through with what my father was working on.”

“Do you believe it?”

Did she? Kate opened her mouth and closed it again. She had no idea. “I don’t believe that all of my father’s time and research should go for nothing. I want to try. As it happens, I need you to help me do it. You’ll be compensated.”

“Will I?” He studied the liquid left in the beer bottle with a half smile. “Will I indeed?”

“I need you, your boat and your equipment for a month, maybe two. I can’t dive alone because I just don’t know the waters well enough to risk it, and I don’t have the time to waste. I have to be back in Connecticut by the end of August.”

“To get more chalk dust under your fingernails.”

She sat back slowly. “You have no right to criticize my profession.”

“I’m sure the chalk’s very exclusive at Yale,” Ky commented. “So you’re giving yourself six weeks or so to find a pot of gold.”

“If my father’s calculations are viable, it won’t take that long.”

“If,” Ky repeated. Setting down his bottle, he leaned forward. “I’ve got no timetable. You want six weeks of my time, you can have it. For a price.”