A Pirate's Possession (19 page)

Nate grabbed his end of the second chest but Claire wasn't paying attention. Her eyes were on the inside of the cave. He grabbed her arm when she went to step in.

“What is it?”

“I simply can't believe that was all of it. The treasure should have filled this cave.”

“It may not be the same treasure or it may be that it was here, and for whatever reason, three chests were left behind.”

“Why?”

He sighed. “I don't know. Another ship was approaching and they didn't want what treasure they had found to be taken?”

“And so sacrificed the rest?”

“It's as believable as anything we've already heard about this treasure.”

“I'll grant you that,” she agreed.

“Come on, there's nothing else here.”

Claire rolled her shoulders. “There's something here. I can't explain it. But I feel . . . there,” she said and pointed to a spot inside the cave to the right. “Do you see that? Between the rocks, where the light is coming in? Something's shining.”

Nate leaned over her shoulder. “Likely just a piece of shell or coral.”

She angled her head toward him. “It won't be the first time we search for naught. I want to see what it is.”

They crept back into the cave, and sure enough, within a ribbon of light was the unmistakable glitter of gold. Claire tried to reach into the gap, but couldn't get in past her knuckles.

“It's too small to get my hand in. Maybe we can move some of these rocks.”

She curled her fingers around one and grunted as she pulled. Nate stepped beside her and grabbed the rocks on the other side of the opening. He felt them shift.

“It's moving,” he said.

Claire reached in again.

The wall gave way.

Before he could pull Claire out of the way, rocks tumbled down and knocked them both to the ground.

Fourteen

She had time only to throw up her arms and use them to shield her head as the wall she'd been touching crumbled. Rocks bombarded her and she knew the sharp edge of them when they pushed her hard and she lost her balance. She landed with a hard splash on the watery cave floor and struggled to sit upright as more rolled over her and tried to hold her down.

Noise rumbled through the cave like thunder caught in a bottle. The silence after the stones had tumbled and splashed to a stop was deafening.

For a moment, Claire didn't move. Stunned, she looked at the wall that had let go, at the rocks that were spilled around her. Though it had felt as though the whole of one wall had crumbled, it was, in fact, only part of one. Nevertheless she considered herself lucky to have her head intact.

“Claire!”

More rocks went flying and Claire hunched down, once again protecting her head.

“Claire, are you hurt?”

There was splashing behind her and Claire realized more of the wall hadn't let go. It was Nate. Turning, she lowered her arms and saw Nate flinging stones as he freed himself of their weight. He had a gash along his temple and blood ran down the side of his face. But he was alive and so was she. She didn't move any farther, needing a moment to steady herself, but she answered Nate because of the worry in his voice.

“I'm all right,” she answered.

He splashed to her side and his eyes scoured her face. He helped her move rocks, though most had landed beside her rather than on top of her, then he helped her up.

“Are you sure you're not hurt?”

His concern touched her, gave her the strength to lock her knees. “I'm sure.” She wiped away the blood from his temple but it only ran again. “You're bleeding.”

He looked down at her fingers that held his blood, then over to the wall. “Could have been worse.”

Because she knew it could have been, she slid her hand into his and wove her fingers through his. Nate's attention turned back to her, his eyes softened, and his mouth curved.

“Had enough of caves?”

“Oh my, have I ever.”

He leaned in and kissed her forehead. For a moment his lips held there, warm and sure. Claire wondered if he needed the connection just then as much as she did.

“Let's go.” With his hand still in hers, he stepped forward.

“Wait!” Claire pressed her other hand across his stomach. “There it is.”

Beneath the water something glinted. She dipped her hand into the warm water and closed her fingers over it. It slid smoothly into her palm. Pulling it from the water, she saw that whatever it was had a chain attached to it. The slim length of gold dangled from between her closed fingers.

She opened her hand.

Within her palm lay a simple gold cross. It wasn't enameled, and there was no shiny coat to make the gold glitter. There were no jewels that glinted from within it. Yet it stole Claire's breath and filled her throat with emotion. Slowly she turned it over.

She closed her hand over the cross and pressed her fist to her heart.
No, not like this. Not like this!
She rocked to and fro, aware, if only vaguely, that a mewing sound was coming from her lips.

Nate lifted her chin. “You know this piece?”

She pushed her hand harder against her chest and tightened her fist. The corners of the cross dug into her hand but the pain was nothing compared to the agony that pulsed in her heart.

“Whose is it?” he asked.

She didn't want to answer, because if she said the words aloud, then they'd be true, wouldn't they? And more than life itself, she didn't want them to be true.

“Claire?”

She forced herself to swallow the truth.

“It was my mother's,” she whispered.

Nate frowned. “How is that possible?”

Claire closed her eyes. “My father gave it to her when I was born and she wore it until the day she died. That day ...” Her breath caught and she had to wait a moment before she could continue. “The day she died, we were all together in her room and she took it off, placed it in his hands. She told him to wear it until they could be together again.”

Her voice broke as she remembered, as clearly as if it were yesterday. Her father had wept when he'd slipped the necklace around his neck. And Claire knew for a fact that he'd been wearing it the day he'd left her to seek the treasure.

Which meant . . .

“My father has to be here.”

With the cross secure in her palm, Claire splashed to where the wall had crumbled. “If the necklace was behind it, he must be as well.”

Another small slide of stones fell when she displaced a few of the larger rocks she could manage.

Nate's hand was firm on her shoulder. “Claire, there's nothing here.”

“Go, if you want. I'm not stopping you,” she growled. She grasped a rock and pulled. It didn't give. Bracing her foot on a boulder, she yanked hard. Nothing moved.

His sigh tripped down each ridge of her spine, and snapped her raw nerves.

“Either help or go away,” she grumbled.

“What are you hoping to find, Claire? He's not likely to be alive and hiding behind these rocks.”

She spun round. “I realize that! But I can't keep living with the thought that my father loved a treasure more than me.”

“You know that's not true,” he said.

“Do I? Then why, if he hasn't found it, hasn't he given up and come for me? And if he has found it, then why did he leave me in that orphanage? Why didn't he come back for his only child?” Tears ran now, fast and hot.

He wiped them from her cheeks. “There could be any number of reasons for that.”

“But I'll never know for certain, will I?” She shook the cross at him. “This is the closest I've come to him since he left me at the orphanage. If there are answers here, I won't leave without them!”

He sighed and looked away. Then his body went rigid. Instantly he stepped before her, his long arms spread wide.

The bottom fell out of her stomach.

“It's him, isn't it?”

The sympathy he emitted when his eyes met hers was answer enough.

“Don't look, Claire. I don't know if it's your father or not, but you don't need to see this.”

“ ‘This' could very well be the last of my family. Let me see.”

The frown that pulled at his mouth told her he wasn't happy, but he conceded and stepped aside, giving her an unobstructed view of a skull drifting on the water.

Nausea came fast, a blazing trail up her throat. There was no hair, no skin or features to prove who it was.

“Finding the necklace doesn't prove this was your father,” Nate whispered at her side.

It may not have, yet Claire knew it was.

She pressed the necklace to her lips, bent her head, and closed her eyes. There was no way of knowing how long her father had been there, if he'd died alone or if he'd been murdered. Had he found the real treasure only to have been killed for it? So many questions she'd never have answers to.

“There were times I hated him for leaving me, times my heart bled because I missed him so much. Times I worried myself sick over him. I alternated between anger and worry, but Nate, I never stopped loving him. Never.”

“I'm sure he knew that.”

She opened her eyes and looked into Nate's.

“There's no guessing or wondering any longer. He's not ever coming back.”

Nate drew her into his arms. His lips once again pressed against her forehead, and his hands splayed across her back. For a few moments they remained in the cave that had at first held so much promise. She'd never dreamed it would end in such hopelessness.

“Is this a sign, Nate? Are we to search endlessly without ever finding it as well? Will we also die for it? Is that the price we'll have to pay?”

He drew her back and looked deeply into her eyes.

“We've already paid, Claire.”

 

 

They laid the third chest next to the other two. Nate fell onto the sand, legs spread wide and an arm flung over his eyes to keep the sun out. Sweat trickled down his temples. The gash he'd received from the rock throbbed but he no longer felt the sticky oozing down his cheek.

“I wish I had a cask of water,” he mumbled through a throat that was gritty as the sand beneath his back and equally as hot.

“I'll get you some.”

Nate sat up. “I didn't say that so you'd serve me.”

“I know.” She shrugged, then looked off to the horizon. “I need some time alone.”

“I'm not that thirsty,” he said.

Her eyes shifted to his. He'd seen her eyes sleepy with desire, seen them flash with anger. He'd seen them turn to steel when she was determined. But he'd never seen them as stark as they were as she looked at him then.

“Stay.” Kneeling before the chests, he pulled out his knife. “Let's see what's inside.”

She shook her head. “I'll be at camp. You can tell me later what you found.”

She walked away, her head hung low and her shoulders defeated. Nate flung his knife into the sand.

Hell.

 

 

She'd never minded her own company and had, many times, sought only that. She'd left Nate on the beach thinking time to herself was what she wanted, but as she sat brooding into the cold, black coals of last night's fire, she realized she'd been wrong. She didn't want to think of her father, of how he'd come to be alone in that cave. Had he suffered? Had he drowned? How long had he been there? Had he thought of her in his last moments?

“Did you ever,” she asked aloud, “regret leaving me?”

Oh, how she wanted the answers to those questions. How she needed them.

Claire poked at the ashes with a stick she'd found nearby. Dust swirled from the charcoal remains. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

“Never to be seen again,” she said.

Dropping the stick, Claire wept for what had been lost and what had been sacrificed. As the tears flowed freely, she raked through the memories, good and bad. The first doll her father had given her, the walks the three of them had shared, the telling of stories while she lay warm and secure in her bed.

She thought of the sickness that had weakened her mother's body before it ultimately took her life. To the final words he'd said to Claire before setting out for the treasure, to finding the necklace today and what was left of her father's remains.

Claire wiped her cheeks and wished she could wipe away the ache in her heart as easily. There was grief now where before there had been anger. In the prayers she recited, asking that her father find peace alongside her mother, there was also finality.

And loneliness.

Claire shoved to her feet. “I am so bloody tired of being alone.”

While the birds sang from their perches, reminding Claire there was life around her, it wasn't the feathered kind she sought. She couldn't draw strength from the brightly colored parrots or the cooing doves. They couldn't hold her and, just for today when the world felt its emptiest, give her something vital and elemental to hold on to.

She looked down the trail they'd made that wove through tangled vines and swaying leaves and felt a sharp jolt low in her belly. Nate. It was dangerous ground to be treading, considering their past, but it was that same past that kept Claire from rejecting the thought outright. Circumstances had kept them apart, continued to keep them apart, but she knew for a fact that he desired her.

For the moment, that was all she needed.

The ruffling of leaves and the muted sound of footsteps approaching announced Nate's arrival before he rounded the last bend of the trail and strode into Claire's line of sight. His shirt, caught by the hook of a finger, hung down his back. His dark hair was dry and disheveled, as though he'd taken his hands to it in frustration. The gold skin on his face gleamed and the shine continued down the long expanse of his chest. Claire followed the color to the band of his pants that rode low on his hips.