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He looked at her as though trying to decide something. Finally, he reached out, cupping her chin in his large hand, as though he meant to study her face, and she let him, though her heart was fluttering in her chest like a lost bird. When he finally finished his thorough observation, she sighed as he drew away again.
“You trust Carl to bring you here, even though he’s probably a crook,” he said quietly. “You trust things people tell you as long as they’re nice about it.” His mouth curled in a wistful smile. “Worst of all, you trust me.”
“I do not,” she said stoutly.
He grinned. “Yes you do.”
She blinked rapidly. “Well, at least I give people a chance. You don’t give anyone the benefit of the doubt. You don’t trust anyone, do you?”
His eyes narrowed. “Trust is for suckers.”
She drew back, frowning. “That’s a horrible attitude.”
He shook his head as though she just didn’t understand, and he took her hand in his.
“Let me tell you a little story. Something short and sweet. Something that will give you the picture of the world I live in, and why I think trust is overrated.”
She smiled, her fingers curling around his. For some reason what he’d just said seemed so very amusing. “Lay it on me, baby,” she said, leaning toward him.
A look of alarm came over his handsome face. “Hey. How much have you had of that stuff?”
She giggled. “Sorry. I was just trying to get in the mood.”
Moving with calm deliberation, he took the glass from her hand and put it out of reach.
“See, this is what I mean. If you were smart, you would be very wary of what I might do if you get a little tipsy.”
“Don’t worry,” she said bravely. “I’ve got all my wits about me. Such as they are.” She laughed out loud.
He gave her a baleful look, but he settled back and continued his cautionary tale. “Okay. This happened years ago, when I was young and still a nice guy.”
“Unlike today.” She nodded wisely.
He frowned his disapproval of her chattiness. “Unlike today,” he allowed. “I was in South East Asia. The country doesn’t matter. But I was on a mission. A pretty dangerous situation. And I fell in love.”
Now he had her complete attention.
“Oh,” she said softly.
“The area was beautiful. White-sand beaches. Sweet, friendly people. My mission was to extract something important from the desk of a local plantation owner. My job was to get in and get out. Under no circumstances was I to interfere with local customs or get involved in local affairs. No roiling the waters.”
She nodded to show she understood completely. “And I’m sure you did a very good job of it, didn’t you?”
He stared at her for a moment, then laughed softly. He touched her cheek, looking at her as though he enjoyed the view. “Yes, darling. I always did a good job. But right now I’m talking about the girl I fell in love with.”
“Oh.” She felt so sad all of a sudden and she wasn’t sure why.
His face took on a faraway look.
“She was so beautiful, so tiny, so fragile, like a flower. I was pretty young and I fell like a ton of bricks. She enchanted me. She told me how her family had sold her to the plantation owner because they were desperately poor. They had eight other children to feed. She was one too many.”
“How terrible.”
“Yes. The plantation owner had promised to take good care of her, but he’d lied. She was so unhappy. She told me whispered tales of how cruel he was.”
He shook his head, remembering his naive reaction. “I was outraged. I burned to protect her. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. So I did something very stupid.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yes. Uh-oh. You see, when my mission was complete, I took her with me.”
She’d known he would end up being the hero. “Good for you.”
“No. Not really.” He grimaced. “We travelled for two days and finally reached the city and I got us a hotel room. I had so many plans in my head. I thought...” He stopped, looked at her and his mouth curved in a bitter smile. “Hell, what does it matter what I thought? I woke up at dawn the next day and she was gone. And so was all my money.”
She gasped. “Oops.”
He looked at her and started to laugh. “It’s like you’ve got an alter ego just waiting inside you,” he noted. “She can only come out to play when you drink. Is that how it is?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said very primly, sitting up straight like a good girl.
He laughed again, then shook his head. She looked like an angel, her blond hair flying like gold threads around her face, her green eyes sparkling, her eyelids heavy with the effects of the wine. The need to kiss her came over him like an urgent wave, choking him for a moment. He had to look away and breathe hard a few times to get himself back on track.
“Okay, I’ll wrap this story up. The beautiful girl I thought I was in love with not only stole all my money, she fingered me to the local crime gang. I got away from them, but I took a little memento with me.”
Pulling up his shirt, he showed her the scar.
“See?” he said as she gasped, wide-eyed, at the ugly wound that contorted his beautiful skin just below his rib cage. “That’s what you get when you trust someone.”
Reaching out, she put her warm hand over the damage. And then, without thinking, she leaned down and pressed her lips to it.
As he felt the heat radiating from her mouth, he sucked in his breath, then reached to pull her up.
“Torie, you’d better not...”
She ended up in his arms and all his determination not to touch her melted away like April snow. What had he been saying? It was gone. All he could think about was her warm, wonderful body against his and her hot, tempting mouth so close.
He kissed her. He felt a twinge of guilt. After all, she might not be doing this if it weren’t for the wine. But it was too late to use that as a reason to pull away. He was kissing her and she was the most delicious thing he’d ever had.
She sighed and bent back as though offering him something more than a gesture. Something in that move hit him directly in his natural male response center.
Desire bloomed in him like a small explosion. He wanted her. He wanted his mouth on hers and his tongue exploring her heat, and he was getting that. But he needed more, and the need was beginning to grow in a way he wasn’t going to be able to control. He had to hold her hard against him and he had to touch her breasts and make her cry out so that it would make him even more crazy and... and...
He had to stop. It was becoming obvious that she wasn’t going to stop him and he’d counted on that. He’d have to do it himself.
“Torie.” He tried to pull back.
She whimpered when his mouth left hers and she reached with her warm, provoking hands to slide against his skin and lure him back.
“Torie.”
“No,” she whispered, flattening against him. “No, don’t leave me.”
“Torie, we have to stop.”
“No.” She shook her head, her eyes tightly closed, as though that would make his common-sense thoughts go away.
“Yes, Torie. We have to stop.”
She still pressed against him, her face to his chest. Her sigh was deep and heartfelt and he began to stroke her hair. In moments, she was asleep.
He held her there, taking in her fresh scent and her soft feel. An emotion swept through him and he wasn’t sure he knew exactly what it was—but it touched his heart. He knew that. A part of it contained a tug on his sensual responses, but there was more. He felt the warmth of affection, the strength of protectiveness, and he couldn’t stop looking at her and how pretty she was.
Still, it was all crazy. He’d been in love and it never came to anything good. It usually meant a certain type of heartbreak. It had been a good five years since he’d even chanced it, and he’d vowed never to let it happen again. So he was okay. He was protected, inoculated against the disease. He wasn’t going to worry about it.
But he was going to enjoy this. This, he could handle.
So he sat there and held her and waited for her to wake up. And he thought about his situation.
Why was he here? What exactly did he want out of all this? He wanted to save Shangri-La. That was it. He wanted his home to stay in the family. And since he was the only real Huntington left, that meant he wanted to keep it himself.
He’d tried to talk to Marge about him becoming caretaker while she went off and did what she felt she had to do, but she didn’t want to hear about it. Marge wanted money. She wanted enough cash in hand to leave the country and live on for the rest of her life. If she could get that from any of these people she had gathered here, she would be gone like a flash. And he just didn’t have that kind of a bankroll.
So what were his options? Few and far between—not to mention, weak. If the fortune-hunter crowd was right and the Don Carlos Treasure was hiding on the estate somewhere, things would be different. But he didn’t believe that for a minute. His father’s suicide note had been stark and emphatic. He thought the treasure was cursed and he wanted it at the bottom of the sea. Marc had no doubt his father had done what he said he would do.
So why was he helping Torie? Why was he letting her dream? Maybe because her dreams connected with his own in an odd way. She wanted to prove her father didn’t steal the treasure. He wanted to know what had actually happened. She wanted to clear her father, he wanted to exonerate his own. And maybe help to fix something that had haunted his family—if it could be fixed.
And that was why he wanted to help her find the journal. Who knew? There might be something written in there that could clear up a lot of questions—and put some ghosts to rest.
But that was a pretty slim thread to put his hopes on and he didn’t really expect anything even if the journal was found.
He looked down at Torie’s pretty face, her lashes making long shadows on her cheeks as she slept. He had to smile. To think that chubby little girl throwing apple cores on his car had grown up to be something like this—and possibly his only hope at getting to the truth. That made his grin wider.
Still, he wasn’t sure about her. There was a huge element of distrust in his gnarled soul. He’d been lied to one too many times. He didn’t trust anyone and, if he was honest with himself, he had to admit she hadn’t proved herself at all. She’d just become so appealing to him that he was willing to give her a pass—for now.
Wasn’t that it?
CHAPTER NINE (#uce04502b-fed4-565b-a065-cf556c391e3e)
TORIE was somewhat surprised to wake up alone in the back seat of an ancient luxury car, but she stretched and yawned and smiled. She was still a little fuzzy in the head, but she knew that something good had happened. And then she remembered what it was and she sat up straighter and sighed happily. Now the only problem would be if Marc regretted it.
She wondered where he was, but then she heard someone rummaging around in the storage room at the end of the hall and she assumed it was him. She sighed. There wasn’t much point in sitting here waiting for him to come back as though she was hoping for a rerun. Something told her that wasn’t going to happen.
She ran her fingers over the leather seat and turned to look at the beautiful dashboard with its hand-rubbed mahogany trim. They just didn’t make them like this anymore. There was even a long shelf just under the dashboard, running the width of the car. Ladies probably stored their long kid gloves there after the party was over. She smiled at the thought, and then her gaze sharpened. There was something pushed far back into the shelf. You could hardly see it but when she bent low, she could just make it out. It looked like a small notebook of some kind. Maybe the sort of thing people wrote their mileage down in. Or...
Her heart began to beat like crazy and her breath choked in her throat. A journal? Her father’s journal? She pushed forward to the front seat and leaned to reach for it. And at just that moment, Marc came back into the room.
“Hey sleepyhead,” he said, carrying a couple of cans of car wax in and stowing them away on a shelf.
She jerked back, pulling her hand in and turning scarlet. “Oh, uh...hi.”
He grinned at her, probably thinking her pink cheeks were the result of her thinking about the snuggle they’d shared. But that was just as well, because she suddenly realized she wasn’t going to tell him what she’d just seen. If it turned out to be the journal, she wanted a little time to see what it had in it. Who knew what sorts of things her father might reveal in something like that?
“Find something?” he asked curiously.
“No. No.” She shook her head and tried to smile.
“I’ve been out looking through the shelves.” He gestured toward the storage room. “I didn’t find anything either.”
She gazed at him out the car window. “Thanks for letting me take a little nap,” she said cheerfully. “I hate to be a girl who can’t hold her liquor, but better to sleep than to do something crazy.”
He grinned again. “Oh, I don’t know. Crazy can be good too.”
She gave him a look and laughed, and he turned back to the storage room, disappearing in through the door.
She reached out quickly and grabbed the little notebook, and then her hands began to tremble.
Her father’s little leather journal. His name was embossed on the front cover in gold—Jarvis Sands. And inside was the handwriting she knew so well. She flipped through it quickly. There was someone else’s handwriting on the last few pages. She only had to read a couple of lines to realize it had to be Marc’s father who had added his thoughts.
But Marc was coming back. She could hear him approaching the doorway. Quickly, she closed the journal and jammed it down deep into the back pocket of her jeans.
She had the grace to flush again as he came out and smiled at her. The guilt made her look and feel nervous. But he would just think she was still shaky over what they had shared. She wasn’t going to show the journal to him until she knew for sure what it revealed. She just couldn’t see any way around it.
A few minutes later, they left the car barn and walked out to the cliff that overlooked the ocean. The sun was low in the sky. The people back at the house would be preparing for dinner about now. They were going to have to decide what they were going to do.
But not yet. For now, they found a fallen tree and sat on it while they watched the sun move toward a sunset. He made no move to get closer, and she knew instinctively that he wasn’t planning to kiss her again. Did he regret doing that earlier? Who knew? It made her a little sad to think that he might. Still, there was nothing she could do about it now.
“What a beautiful view,” she said softly.
He nodded. “Think of being a local Native American in the nineteenth century and watching Spanish galleons come sliding into the harbor,” he said. “We had an archeologist doing a paper on this area one year. He found evidence that lots of ships stopped along this part of the coast. Can’t you just picture how that would have been?”
Yes, she could picture it. She’d lived her Spanish-era fantasies on her own on the beaches and in the caves from early on. Such a great place for a child to grow in.
Tears filled her eyes and she blinked hard, angry with herself for letting it get to her again. She stared out at the ocean, throwing her head back to feel the wind in her hair. She was filled with sadness and a wave of nostalgia. She’d been so happy here as a child—despite any latent insecurities. The mood in the fresh ocean air was filled with peace and a sense of well-being. Life had been like that here—right up until the day her father had been accused of stealing.
That was the dividing line. Everything had begun to fall apart on that day and it had only gotten worse since.
She’d had good times with friends and success in her job. She couldn’t claim it had been all angst and torture since her fifteenth year. But her father’s agony had been a dark cloud over her family.
His eventual suicide and her mother’s breakdown had only made things worse. She felt as though her heart and soul were restless, looking for answers, aching for closure. Could she ever find happiness without knowing? It felt to her as though that would be impossible.
Rising, she rose and walked out to the edge of the cliff, looking down at the rocks below. Then she turned to watch Marc in the gathering gloom.
“So tell me this,” she said. “What was the official story? What did you hear at the time? What do most people around here believe happened?”
He looked back at her coolly. “About what?”
Her eyes narrowed. “About when my father was fired.”
