The Treasure Man. Pamela Browning
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