The Adventurer (v2.1)

  She turned to face him. “Yes, you’re probably right. I can finish thinking about this in my own room. No need to keep you awake while I go over all this information in detail. Good night, Gideon.”

  Anger surged through him. How dared she presume to analyze and dissect him like this? He made a grab for her as she glided past him on her way back to the bedroom.

  He heard her soft gasp of surprise as his fingers locked around her wrist. “You think you know it all, don’t you?” he muttered. He drew her inexorably toward him, playing seriously with the idea of dragging her down onto the bed. It would be so easy. She was so small and delicate.

  “Gideon?” Her eyes were very wide now.

  “Somebody ought to give you the lesson you need.”

  “You may be right,” she agreed tremulously. “But, please, not tonight. I’m not sure I could handle it.” She leaned down and gave him a quick, fleeting kiss on his cheek.

  Gideon jerked back as if he’d been burned. Unthinkingly he released her. Sarah instantly sailed on past him into the safety of her bedroom. Gideon rubbed his cheek and scowled into the darkness as her door closed softly behind her.

  Intent on inducing a little healthy fear in her, he had been expecting a struggle, not the small, gentle caress he had received. Her reaction had startled him and he’d let her go before he’d realized quite what he was doing, he told himself, thoroughly irritated.

  He lay there for a moment, aware that he was breathing a little heavily and feeling baffled. Then he rolled onto his back and stared at the shadows on the ceiling. This must have been how poor old Machu Picchu had felt in the first days after Ellora’s arrival.

  SARAH ROSE AT DAWN the next morning, feeling very much her normal cheerful, optimistic self again. After several intense hours of close thought during the night, her mind was clear and serene once more. She was back on track at last and she knew what had to be done. Hurrying over to the wooden chair in the corner, she grabbed her robe, slipped into it and opened the bedroom door.

  Gideon was still asleep, sprawled on the sofa bed, the sheets and blankets bunched at his waist. He was lying on his stomach and the sleek expanse of his well-muscled back was a riveting sight in the early light. Sarah longed to stroke him, the way she would have stroked one of his cats.

  But she knew that would be a mistake. He would only assume she was still trying to seduce him for her own nefarious purposes. Which she was, of course, she thought with a grin. She was determined to make him fall in love with her. But the seduction was going to take a slightly different form than originally planned. This was not the time to be obvious.

  She hurried through her morning routine in the bathroom, trying not to use up all the hot water. Gideon would not appreciate a cold shower. On the way back to her own room, she saw that he had not moved. She took one last, wistful look at his powerfully built shoulders and went to finish dressing.

  A few minutes later, wearing jeans and a shirt, her hair tied up out of the way at the back of her head, she made her way into the kitchen. It didn’t take long to locate the pans she needed. She opened the refrigerator.

  Within minutes she had filled the cabin with the inviting aroma of fresh-brewed coffee. The counters were cluttered with utensils, plates and a frying pan she had set out.

  She was humming to herself as she whisked pancake batter in a large bowl when she realized she was no longer alone in the kitchen. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Gideon standing in the doorway. He had put on his jeans and nothing else. He scanned the kitchen, rubbing absently at the dark shadow of his beard.

  “Do you always make this much of a racket in the morning?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh. Are you always this grouchy?” She put a pan of syrup on the stove to heat.

  “One of the things about cats is that they don’t complain about my mood in the mornings. What are you making? Pancakes?”

  “Yep. With real maple syrup. None of that caramel-colored sugar water for us. Run along and take your shower. Everything will be ready as soon as you get out of the bathroom.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why the fancy breakfast?”

  She debated briefly how much to tell him and then decided he might as well know what he was facing. “Because it’s the first step in the courtship, if you must know the truth.”

  “Courtship.” He looked dumbfounded. “What the devil are you talking about now?”

  She stopped whisking the pancake batter and turned around to face him. “I figure your problem is that I went too fast.”

  “My problem, huh?”

  “Right. Thanks to our conversation last night and all the thinking I did afterward, I have a much better idea of how to handle you now.”

  His eyes flashed with something that might have been amusement. “That’s certainly a relief to hear.”

  “Laugh if you must, but it’s true.” She pointed the dripping whisk straight at him. “I can see that when I arrived on your doorstep, I was already light-years ahead of you in terms of my position within our relationship.”

  “Hell. Are you still on that kick?”

  “Of course. What we need to do is let you catch up with me. Your progress has been severely retarded by the fact that you’ve got a few unpleasant events in your past that have made you gun-shy when it comes to relationships. In short, you’re afraid I might be as foolish and as uncertain of what I really want as your ex-wife was. You don’t trust my judgment.”

  “I didn’t say Leanna was foolish or uncertain.”

  “No, but it’s obvious she was if she actually thought she wanted someone else instead of you.”

  “I don’t know what makes you think I’m such a hell of a catch, but—”

  “On top of having your wife desert you, you also had the traumatic experience of being betrayed by a close male friend. In short, you’ve got a legitimate fear of being betrayed by people you trust. You’re carrying some serious scars. You’ve obviously learned to keep yourself aloof from people who try to get too close to you. You’ve gotten in the habit of questioning everyone’s motives. It’s entirely understandable.”

  Gideon stared at her. “No kidding?”

  “Don’t act so insulted. We’re all shaped emotionally by our pasts even when our rational mind tells us we don’t have to repeat our mistakes. If we’re reasonably intelligent, we’re afraid we might repeat those mistakes. If we’re not too intelligent or self-aware we go on repeating them. Either way, it’s hard to break the cycle.”

  Gideon propped one shoulder against the doorjamb. He looked fascinated. “What hang-ups have you got from your traumatic experience of being left at the altar?”

  “Well, for one thing, you’d never find me waiting in a wedding dress in front of a church full of people again, that’s for sure.”

  “You don’t plan to marry?” he asked slowly.

  “I didn’t say that. I just wouldn’t risk a big wedding with all the trimmings. Believe me, if I ever decide to try it again, it’ll be a quick trip to Vegas or Reno.” She grinned. “See? We all have our scars. Rationally I tell myself that I wouldn’t screw up and make such a major error in judgment again. I’ll be sure of what I’m doing the next time and it will be perfectly safe to plan a big wedding if that’s what I wanted.”

  “But you won’t plan one?”

  She shook her head swiftly. “No, I won’t. Emotionally I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t bear to risk that sort of humiliation again, no matter how sure I was of the man I was marrying. Just the prospect of addressing invitations to all the people who witnessed the first fiasco is enough to make me cringe.” She shook off the old pain and smiled reassuringly. “You see? That’s how our mistakes affect us. We try to learn from them, to protect ourselves and in doing so we sometimes err on the side of caution.”

  He watched her intently. “If I’d have been there, I’d have nailed the bastard’s hide to the wall.”

  Sarah was instantly warmed by th
e unexpected words. She smiled mistily. “Gideon, that’s about the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Thank you.”

  “Forget it.” He came toward her.

  Sarah felt the immediate tingle of sensual awareness ripple through her. She wasn’t sure what the determination in Gideon’s eyes meant, however. Instinctively she stepped back and found herself up against the kitchen counter. “Gideon?”

  He didn’t halt, just kept coming toward her until he was looming over her, crowding her against the counter. He was overwhelming when he was this close. Sarah was mesmerized by the pattern of crisp, curling hair on his broad chest. She gripped the whisk handle as if it were a lifeline to sanity.

  Deliberately he reached out and removed the bowl of pancake batter and the whisk from her frozen fingers.

  “Gideon, I don’t think…”

  “Sarah,” he muttered, his voice lower and grittier than usual as his hands slid up her arms to her shoulders, “let’s get something understood here. You don’t have to go through a lot of crazy rationalization or try to see me through rose-colored glasses if all you really want is for me to take you to bed. I’ll be glad to lay you down on that sofa over there right now.”

  Sarah panicked. “Don’t you dare do this to me, Gideon Trace. This is a relationship we’re building here. I’m not about to let you reduce it to nothing more than a roll in the hay.”

  “I wasn’t going to do that.”

  “Yes, you were. That’s exactly what you were going to do and I won’t have it, do you hear me?”

  He winced as her voice rose hysterically. “Believe me, I hear you.”

  “I mean it. Every word. This is very important to me. I gave it hours of thought last night and I know how I’m going to handle everything. Things are back on track now and I won’t let you mess it all up with sex.”

  He smiled faintly, his mouth very close to hers. “I kind of like the thought of messing it up with sex. I’m not the knight in shining armor you seem to think I am, but I’ll certainly do my best to give you what you want in bed.”

  “No.”

  He kissed her before she could find a way to deflect him. Sarah struggled furiously for a moment and then capitulated with a small, trembling sigh as his mouth moved on hers. He was so real, this man who had filled her thoughts and her heart for the past four months. How could she resist his kiss?

  It was no wonder she was vulnerable on this front, she thought fleetingly. Everything felt so right when he kissed her. She flexed her nails experimentally on his shoulders and he responded with a heavy groan.

  She could feel his strong thighs pushing against her and there was no mistaking the solid evidence of his early morning desire. His beard scraped along her cheek in a way that was unbelievably sexy.

  “Gideon.” His name was torn from her in a breathless gasp. She could feel his teeth on her earlobe now. The sensation was driving her wild. Frantically she fought to hold on to her common sense. “Gideon, no. Not like this. Not until you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready. Believe me, I’m ready.”

  “No, damn it, not yet. Please.”

  He broke the kiss at last, but he didn’t release her. His eyes were as green as emeralds as he looked down into her upturned face. She knew she was trembling and she also knew the heat she felt was probably evident on her flushed cheeks.

  “You really want me, don’t you?” Beneath the blatant, masculine desire in his gaze was an odd, bemused look. “You really do want me. I’ve never had a woman look at me quite the way you’re looking at me now.”

  “Of course, I want you.” She glowered at him, trying to hide her flustered emotions. “I’ve never made any secret of that. But that’s got nothing to do with it. You need time to realize you want me, too.”

  “I do want you.”

  “I mean, really want me.”

  “I really want you.” Sexy amusement lit his eyes again.

  Sarah grabbed the dripping whisk and threatened him with it. “Stop teasing me and go take a shower, you beast. And when you come back into this kitchen, you are going to behave yourself, is that clear?”

  He grinned slowly, his eyes alight with a sensual promise that made her ache to throw herself back into his arms. “Real clear. Be interesting to see how you enforce your own rules.” He turned and sauntered out of the kitchen.

  5

  TWO DAYS LATER, Sarah again succumbed to serious self-doubts. Conducting the courtship of a man might be a feasible notion if the object of the effort was shy and retiring by nature but Gideon was definitely not shy or retiring.

  What he was, was difficult and maddeningly unpredictable. He was also proving dangerous on a sensual level.

  Having discovered just how vulnerable she was to his kisses, he tormented her with them. He seemed to delight in catching her off guard and pulling her into his arms for a quick, stolen caress that inevitably left her feeling giddy and breathless.

  But whenever she tried to introduce a serious, personal topic or questioned him about his past, he became as silent and uncommunicative as a mountain.

  She could not tell if she was making any progress at all.

  And the courtship wasn’t the only area that wasn’t progressing with satisfying rapidity. They had not broken the code on the map and Sarah was getting frustrated. She had expected the actual treasure hunt to go smoothly.

  “You’re too impatient,” Gideon remarked as they tromped back and forth across the heavily wooded acreage that had once been owned by Emelina Fleetwood.

  There was very little left of Emelina Fleetwood’s home, just a tumbledown cabin that was completely bare inside. Some distance away from where the house stood was the collapsed wall of what might have been the barn. A few feet from the back door of the cabin itself were several boards left from what might have been an outhouse. Rusty nails and a couple of pieces of metal from some old farm equipment were scattered around the ruins.

  Almost everything had long since been reclaimed by the forest. The multitude of owners who had tried to farm the place since Emelina’s time had not made any noticeable improvements.

  “Two whole days, Gideon, and we’ve gotten nowhere.”

  “People spent most of the century looking for the Titanic, They’re still looking for Kidd’s and Laffite’s gold. And they still haven’t found Amelia Earhart’s plane. Treasure hunting requires time and effort and plenty of patience.”

  “But we’ve got a map.”

  “You keep saying that. Your precious map isn’t a magic talisman, you know. It’s just a crude sketch that could have been made by almost anyone at any time and mean almost anything.”

  “I’m sure the map is genuine. It’s a family heirloom.”

  “You got any idea of how many family heirlooms are nothing but junk?”

  “This isn’t junk. There shouldn’t be any problem. Darn it, this is your area of expertise. Why can’t you figure out what this code means?” She scanned the odd notes in front of her. “Sixty, ninety and a straight line connecting two dots with the number twenty-five beside it. Then the phrase, ‘White rock at intersection of B and C. Ten paces due north.’ I tell you, Gideon, we’re overlooking something obvious here.”

  “Yeah. A white boulder.”

  “That, too. Where do you suppose it is?” She looked around as she had countless times during the past two days and saw nothing of a white rock.

  “It probably got washed away or covered up with mud and debris years ago. People who bury treasure expect to dig it up again within a few months or years at the most. They often use transient points of reference like an outhouse or a tree or something else that could easily be gone by the time the next generation comes looking for grandpa’s gold.”

  Sarah wrinkled her nose. “An outhouse?”

  “Sure. That was a favorite place to bank the retirement funds in the old days. Who would go looking for gold in an outhouse?”

  “You, obviously.” She laughed up at him. “Ever find any that way??
??

  “I refuse to respond to that on the grounds that it may make me look like an idiot.”

  Sarah giggled. “You did, didn’t you?”

  “It was a long time ago.” Gideon came to a halt. “Isn’t it time for lunch, yet?”

  “You know, Gideon, there are times when I get the feeling you’re only in this for the food. You’ve been showing an uncommon interest in mealtimes since I cooked that first dinner for you.”

  “Hey, how was I to know you could cook? And what are you complaining about, anyway? The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

  Sarah slid him a sidelong glance. “Is that true? Am I getting closer?”

  He threw a heavy arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his side for a moment. His lips moved sensually in her sun-warmed hair. “You’re welcome to get as close as you want, Sarah.”

  “Unfortunately your idea of close is not the same as mine. Not yet, at any rate.”

  “Are you sure of that?” He boldly let his hand glide over the curve of her breast.

  “Positive.” She pushed free of the tempting embrace and stalked across the small clearing in back of the old cabin to where she had left the picnic basket.

  Gideon followed more slowly, his eyes thoughtful. “What happens if we find the earrings, Sarah?”

  “When, not if, we find them.” She knelt on the ground and spread out the red and white checked cloth she had brought along in the basket. “And what happens is that you get one pair and I get the other four. Just like we agreed.”

  “And then you go back to Seattle and I go home to my place on the coast?” He settled down on the ground, one leg drawn up.

  She thought about that as she unwrapped tuna fish sandwiches. “No, of course not. This is a long-term plan I’m working on here. But I haven’t made all the decisions. I’m not exactly sure how to handle our relationship after we find the earrings. I can’t just move in with you, yet. You’re not ready for that.”

  “I’m not?” He took a big bite out of his sandwich.