Chapter Two
Impossible, but it certainly explained why Adrian had left the States without signing the divorce papers. He’d been too eager to get back on the job. Since the dig in Tunisia, this legend had a hold on him. “What on earth makes him think that? On the other side of the world? How can he still be obsessed with this after three years?”
Dr. Vigil folded his hands over his stomach, eyes twinkling. “My dear, if anyone should know about obsession, you would.”
She inclined her head in acknowledgement. Her father had been obsessed with pre-Columbian history in the Andes. She’d spent most of her life in camps in the mountains of Peru and Ecuador. Learning Spanish and English at the same time, then learning how to interpret glyphs led to her proclivity for symbology.
And life in tents had led to her longing for a home of her own.
Then she’d married Adrian and pushed aside that longing because she loved him.
“What makes him think he’s found one?”
“Perhaps you should ask him that.”
“I don’t think he’d tell me.”
“You underestimate his feelings for you. You’ll probably find him out by the dunes.”
Mallory folded her arms under her breasts and watched Adrian’s silhouette as he sat on the beach in the moonlight, looking out over the ocean, arms looped around his raised knees. Curiosity brought her to the water, a curiosity she’d tried to bury along with her feelings for this man.
That thought had her taking a step toward camp, but he turned and saw her. Now she couldn’t retreat without looking foolish.
And she did want to know the story.
She headed down over the dunes and onto the beach, wishing she’d removed her boots so she could feel the sand between her toes. The last time she’d been to the ocean was in Pensacola, before she moved. She’d forgotten how soothing the waves could be. Even Adrian’s expectant gaze didn’t make her as anxious as it might have.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked when she got closer.
She looked at his boat bobbing at the end of a long portable dock and squinted to make out the name. The Mysterious Miss M. Who was Miss M? Probably the Constantinople witch he’d become obsessed with three years ago. “I want to know what you’re looking for.”
“So you can go tell Valentine?”
She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t have a clue how to find him.”
“Really. He wasn’t too far from your side last time I saw him.” He reached into his breast pocket for his beef jerky.
“I haven’t seen him in months.” She lowered herself a careful distance from him. “What’s out there, Adrian?”
He kept his attention on the surf. “Robert already told you.”
“He said you found a second casket. How can that be, all the way over here?”
“Don’t know for sure. We haven’t gotten that deep.”
She pushed her windblown hair out of her face. “Then what makes you think you’ve found another?”
He braced his arms behind him. “Do you know the legend?”
As if she’d had a choice. Adrian had immersed himself in the legend after he’d discovered the casket. The research left a lot of holes, however, including details of the symbols.
“You told me about the witch Mavaris who lived in Constantinople nine hundred years ago, that people believed she could control the weather and the sea after her lover was killed at sea. I remember something about necromancy too. Have you learned more?”
“Not really. The legend’s pretty obscure.” He sat forward, dragging one hand over his hair. “When she couldn’t raise her lover, she turned to the elements. Apparently she thought she was getting revenge on the gods of the sea or something, taking their power from them. This priest Theophilius had occult leanings, I guess. I don’t know how he figured someone was controlling the weather, how he figured it was her, but he managed to kill her, and then he cut her apart and burned her.”
“Lovely.”
“Yeah, well, she was a witch and it was nine hundred years ago. So he took her ashes and sealed them in ivory caskets. And he sent the four boxes on four ships out of Constantinople.”
“And you found one in Tunisia. How could the other one be here?”
He turned to her, the first time since she’d joined him. “So you really haven’t been in touch with Smoller.”
She blinked. “I told you I haven’t.”
“He found another ship off the coast of Florida. He has three of the caskets already.”
“Three?” Surprise kicked up her pulse. “How?”
“The other casket had been found over a hundred years ago off the coast of Africa. Smoller tracked it down and bought it.” He shifted toward her, his eyes glinting with that passion she remembered so well. “He knew what we were going to find in Tunisia before we found it. He went there for that casket.”
“How did he know where to find it? How did you find this one? More importantly, how do you know this is the fourth ship?”
His teeth flashed in a brief grin. “I don’t. But all evidence points to the fact that it’s a Mediterranean ship in the Caribbean, and it appears to be the correct age.”
“You said the caskets were cursed, that whoever discovered them faced the consequences.”
He chuckled. “And who better to know than me? Didn’t I lose everything after bringing up that damned thing?”
And yet he was searching for another. Perhaps one cursed object would invalidate another, if one believed those things.
He rolled onto his hip and popped to his feet. He gave the ocean one last glance before he reached a hand to her. “I’m heading back. You coming?”
She thought about taking his hand, sliding her hand along those calluses. No, he didn’t trust her with his secrets and she didn’t trust him with her emotions. “I think I’ll stay out here awhile.”
Another look at the ocean, then at her. “You’ll be okay?”
“You never worried about me before. I’m not that different, Adrian.”
The inclination of his head told her he thought otherwise.
“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning. Good night, Mal.”
Adrian pushed open the flap of the tent his brother and Jacob, the fifth member of their crew, shared. The two younger men each sat on a cot, a poker game in full swing, dollar bills in piles on the little folding table between them.
“Too late to get in now,” Toney said, his attention on his cards.
“Yeah, don’t let Robert see you,” Adrian warned. “He’ll clean you out.”
“Why do you think we’re playing in here?” Toney tossed a card in, accepted another from Jacob. “He looks like a nice old man, but he’s a shark when it comes to gambling,” he told the student.
“And he’ll play until he wipes you out or until he’s wiped out.” Adrian sat on the edge of his brother’s cot. “Can you drive Mallory to the city tomorrow?”
Toney lowered his hand and sat back on the cot. “Jesus, Adrian, can’t someone else go?”
“Who? I don’t want Robert on the road, Linda gets lost the minute she leaves camp and Jacob here can’t drive stick.” He rolled his eyes at his student. “Or I could take her.”
Toney’s lips thinned. “Christ, she doesn’t know when to stop causing trouble, does she? Right, fine, I’ll take her.”
Adrian hesitated. Not exactly the answer he wanted, though he didn’t want to stop everything to take her himself. Okay, he did, but he couldn’t. Even if he missed her. For ten years, he’d had her to talk to on digs, to bounce ideas off of and God, he missed that.
What he wanted was for her to stay, to be curious about the dive, to want to be with him.
“You need to be nice to her,” he said to his brother.
“Like she was nice to you?”
“Toney,” he warned.
“No!” Toney shoved the table aside and pushed to his feet. “She comes here like nothing ever happened. She’s all high and mighty, waving her ring in your face like you were nothing to her and you just smile and take it. Where she’s concerned, you have no balls.”
Adrian cut a glance to Jacob, who was concentrating really hard on his cards. Scowling, Adrian blew out a breath and took a step back to look outside the tent and see if anyone had heard. No one was around.
“She was my wife for eight years.”
“And she walked away.” Toney swung on Jacob. “Do you know what she did?”
Jacob shook his head, curls bouncing.
“First of all, she wasn’t on the dive that day, okay, she said she had food poisoning. Still seems weird to me. So she wasn’t on the ship when we surfaced with the box. When he told her about the box, about the symbols on it, symbols she should have known and understood, she didn’t believe him. When Adrian was accused of stealing it and put in prison by his so-called partner, she was hanging out with the enemy. You tell me that’s what a wife does.”
“You’re blowing it out of proportion.” Adrian struggled to keep his voice calm as those memories, the ones he’d worked so hard to bury, stabbed through him again. Truthfully, Toney wasn’t exaggerating much, not from his own perspective. He hadn’t been privy to the more personal, painful episodes.
Mallory had claimed she and Valentine had been working together to get him out of the Tunisian jail. But the pitying look in Mal’s eyes, the smug look in Smoller’s, on top of the fact that Mallory didn’t believe he’d found a casket that was now missing, had been the worst betrayal, the straw collapsing their already strained marriage.
“You know I’m not. Why are you bending over so she can screw you again?”
Adrian squared his shoulders, dragging in every ounce of self-control, which was in short supply these days. “She’ll be leaving tomorrow. You’ll take her and you won’t give her a bad time, right?”
Toney dragged a hand through his too-long hair and eased away. “Yeah, all right. I won’t give her a bad time. As long as she’s getting out of here. But I won’t go out of my way to be nice.”
Mallory rolled onto her side in the empty tent, unable to sleep, despite the sound of the rolling ocean, the scent of it. The light from the dying campfire flickered through the nylon wall, at once familiar and spooky.
She looked toward the duffel bag with the divorce papers. Now Adrian had what he wanted, and so did she. She hoped they both lived happily ever after.
Still, how could she leave without seeing the ship? It was only dozens of feet away—okay, straight down, but not out of reach. Beneath the surface, she could touch the past, could touch history.
After she married Jonathan, she’d probably never dive again.
She had to see this ship. It would be asking a lot of Adrian, but he knew her better than anyone. He’d know why she was asking.
She reached for her watch, peered at it before realizing she hadn’t changed the time. Nearly half an hour had passed since Linda had left the tent they shared. In Mallory’s camping experiences, it meant it must be nearly dawn. Adrian liked his camp up and running early.
Working up the nerve to ask him to take her out on the boat, she pushed out of the tent to see the sun breaking against the purpled Maya Mountains above the camp, though the camp itself was still in dawn grayness. She savored the sight, the newness of the day, the peace of being alone.
Until Adrian emerged from a tent across the camp, shirtless. Mallory wanted to whimper at the perfection of his shoulders and arms, the strength of his chest, that scattering of dark auburn hair there that she’d rubbed her cheek against so many nights.
Since he was looking toward the mountain, he didn’t see her. He dragged a hand over his head and tugged on a dark sweatshirt against the cool air.
Movement from inside the tent drew her attention. A tent mate? His brother, maybe. The only person he’d ever shared a tent with before was her.
The question died before it could be completely formed as Linda straightened, tossing her dark hair back. She smiled at Adrian, brushed her hands over his shoulders and walked away in the direction of the mess tent.
Mallory staggered under the unexpected pain of jealousy, willing herself to breathe, falling back into the shadows before Adrian saw her, saw the devastation he’d caused.
A calming breath focused her. She was marrying someone else in a little more than a month. Her jealousy toward Linda, or anyone else who wanted Adrian, was unreasonable. He was a free man now. She had no hold over him.
But she couldn’t say he no longer had a hold over her.
“Still want to leave today?” Adrian walked up behind Mallory as she ate her oatmeal on the same bench where she’d had her chili last night. “Toney will take you when you’re ready, and he’s in a particularly cheerful mood.” He rolled his eyes and she laughed. “Unless you want to look at the ship.”
Startled, she nearly launched her bowl through the air. When her heart returned to her chest, she set the bowl aside. He was offering her what she’d wanted—at least what she’d wanted until she’d seen Linda come out of his tent. That should have brought up the barrier she needed to be around him. Why it didn’t worried her.
“Why would I?”
He dropped to the bench beside her. Too close, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of moving away. “You’ll never get another chance like this.”
He spoke the words that had played through her mind all night. Scary how well he knew her. “I’m not an archaeologist anymore.” Maybe if she said it often enough, she could squash the desire to stay.
He regarded her strangely, as if she’d declared she was no longer a woman. “Once a digger…”
She shook her head. It hadn’t taken much to get her to turn from the life she’d always known.
Not much. Just Adrian.
“Not me.”
He arched a brow. “You still have your clothes.”
That threw her off balance for a second. When she’d pulled them out of the closet, Jonathan had the same reaction. She hadn’t let herself think about why she’d kept them when she’d given up every other aspect of her life with Adrian.
He drew away, linking his fingers in front of him. “The woman I used to know would be chomping at the regulator to get down there.”
She wanted to see the ship so bad she twitched. “I need to get home.”
He reached into the front pocket of his cotton shirt, dragged out more beef jerky. He didn’t look at her as he said, “Going out won’t take long.”
All the yearnings she’d fought the past few years as she’d adjusted to the corporate world reared up, prodding her to take the plunge. For heaven’s sake, they’d discovered what might be a Mediterranean ship, thousands of miles from where it should be. She couldn’t just walk away.
She eased back, as if her surrender wouldn’t mean as much if she acted casual. “I haven’t dived since Mexico. And if I dive, I won’t be able to fly for twenty-four hours.”
A light of triumph glinted in his eyes. Damn. He knew her too well.
“That’s okay. You can see it without diving. You got here just in time to try out my new toy.” He reached out and waited. Her engagement ring weighed heavy on her finger as she considered the consequences of touching him. Hesitantly, she slid her hand into his.
The shock of his strong, warm hand beneath hers, the current that ran from his skin into hers, made her want to pull away. Sensing it, he tightened his grip and smoothed his thumb over her knuckles. He stopped when he reached her ring. Instead of dropping her hand as she expected, he lifted it for closer inspection. Her heart squeezing, she wanted to cover the ring. This was too hard.
Adrian looked up. “He does well, your linguist.”
She didn’t respond, couldn’t catch her breath enough to speak. It took everything in her to meet the power of those eyes.
“Does he love you?”
God. She pulled back then, missed the warmth of his touch immediately. She didn’t want to talk about Jonathan now. “Of course he loves me.”
“And you love him.”
“Adrian.” She looked away, but he crooked a finger under her chin and pulled her attention back. So close. Too close. She felt his breath on her lips, almost tasted the tang of the jerky.
“Answer me.”
Why was it so hard to say while she looked into Adrian’s eyes? It was true, wasn’t it? She swallowed. “I love him.”
Pain flashed over his face but he pushed it aside before a responding emotion could rise in her. He dropped her hand and withdrew.
“We’re going out on the boat in half an hour. Be ready.”
Adrian’s heart lurched when he saw Mallory walking down to the dock. Behind him, Toney slammed the ropes against the deck with more force than necessary, making his feelings known, but Adrian didn’t turn to look. He continued to stow gear into the boat. He wasn’t surprised she’d come—he knew her too well to disregard her natural curiosity—but the effect of seeing her surprised him, like a punch in the gut. She didn’t belong to him anymore.
He still considered himself married. The marriage had been over when he had walked out of their house three years ago, but he’d never thought of himself as free. He never thought he’d have to move on.
She’d moved on without him. Why had he hoped she’d wait for him?
He straightened and approached to help her on board, bracing himself for the shock of her soft hand, her bold ring. He reacted as if someone had reached down his throat and squeezed the breath out of him. Bad enough she’d shown up on the first dig he’d led since Tunisia, in a camp where everything reminded him of her and their past. But the sight of another man’s ring on her manicured hand ripped his heart out.
She wasn’t wearing the ring now. He touched the spot where it had been and looked up at her questioningly.
“I didn’t want to drop it in the ocean.”
“Of course not.” It was a treasure, after all. He gritted his teeth against the resentment of the damn thing, something he’d never even thought she would want or expect.
She tightened her grip on his wrist, just a bit, as she stretched her leg from the dock to the boat, and released him once both feet were on the deck. She was too much of a pro to sway into him with the resulting roll of the boat.
Damn it.
“We’re not going out alone, are we?”
He moved away to deal with the ropes, not caring for the skepticism in her tone. “The prof’s already on board.” He motioned to the pilothouse where the elderly doctor sat in the shade, under his trademark straw hat. “And Jacob and Toney are running the electronics. Linda will stay in camp.”
“Are you diving?” She walked over to check the tanks strapped securely to the pilothouse.
“Not this trip.”
“How long have you been out here?”
“A little less than a month.” He readied himself for accusations, for questions, but they didn’t come.
Leaning on the railing, she looked out over the ocean. “Have you found anything?”
He stopped to dig his beef jerky out of his pocket. He pulled a chunk out of the cellophane package and offered her some. She considered it warily but shook her head.
“Nothing we can get our hands on till we get the hull uncovered,” he told her.
“So how did they wreck? Can you tell?”
“Not yet.” He shook some more jerky out of the pack. “High winds could have knocked them against the cliff, there may have been a sandbar or coral under there at some point. They may have already been at anchor and on land when it went down. We’re sending the robot down today.”
She stepped close to help him stow the ropes under the benches. The ease with which they fell into the rhythm of the task alarmed him. All his senses went on alert. She must have realized it too, because once the chore was completed, she darted to the far side of the Miss M, considered him a minute, then ducked into the pilothouse with Robert.
Damn, the Mallory he’d loved wouldn’t have bolted so easily.
They set off, out of the cove, hugging the shoreline, wind whipping the scent of the sea over the deck. Six hundred yards beyond, beneath the cliffs, an equipment-laden barge was anchored over the site.
The barge had taken the bulk of their money but would be necessary once they started bringing up artifacts. Locating the site itself had taken another huge chunk. Now he was short on divers until he could drum up more funding. Ordinarily he was patient with his finds, but this—this was too big. He was anxious to get it logged, get it up and prove himself to Mallory, and beyond that, to the archaeological community.
They pulled up to the barge with a gentle bump. Jacob and Adrian unloaded the submersible camera as Robert and Toney stacked the equipment near the rail. Mallory joined them, looking uncomfortable with nothing to do. Adrian wondered if that was why she’d helped him earlier, to feel like she fit in. Did it still matter to her?
“Come on, Mal, have a look at my new toy.”
He unpacked his newest purchase, the package Toney had picked up at the same time he collected Mallory, a submersible remote-controlled camera.
Mallory traced a finger over a scratch on the casing. “Used?”
“Yeah, but in perfect condition. It’ll help us map the area faster, so we can lay the grid and start bringing up the artifacts.” He gently plopped the camera in the water.
“Now we watch.” He motioned for her to precede him under the roof of the barge, where the professor was already seated in front of the laptop. Jacob and Toney had set up two other laptops and were plugging them in. The area would have been cramped if not for the open walls. Adrian was going to have to close them in soon, before they got hit with a storm. As soon as he got more money.
Adrian edged in beside the prof and picked up the joystick controller to guide the submersible down through the clear water, past darting fish, swaying fan coral. It skimmed above waving seaweed as if it knew just where it was going.
Mallory leaned on his shoulder to see the monitor, her breath rushing against the side of his neck, coming faster in her excitement. With each movement of the camera, she edged closer, as if that would urge the camera deeper. The occasional wave rolling beneath the barge had her breast bumping against his arm. His control slipped another notch.
“There!” She jabbed a finger at the monitor. “Is that something? Go that way.”
Her breasts pressed against his shoulder and her hair fell against his ear. Her hand rested on his arm. Every nerve in his body was at attention. He damn near couldn’t operate the controller, and not only because she inhibited the movement of his arm.
He turned his head, covering his ear with his hand mockingly. “You want to do this?”
Her eyes brightened despite his sarcasm. “You mean it?”
He pushed back the folding chair, the legs scraping over the rough wood. “Go ahead. Just remember there’s several thousand dollars’ worth of equipment down there.”
He eased around her in the close space, holding his breath so not to graze against her, to no avail. His body came to swift attention as her bottom brushed his groin, and he hung suspended after she took his place in the chair. He stepped behind her, trying not to breathe in the scent of sunscreen and fruity shampoo, resisting the urge to lower his nose to her hair.
“Adrian,” she murmured after a few moments of trying to maneuver the camera where she wanted it to go. “How do I—?”
He leaned forward, unable to avoid contact. Effectively embracing her, he folded his hands around hers on the controller, his chest against her back, where he felt the catch of her breath. He wouldn’t think about how soft and fragile her hands felt beneath his as he guided them on the control. He wouldn’t think about how her hands had once glided over his body.
He couldn’t think of anything else.
Did he have to be so close, so warm, so male? Every breath he took, labored though it was, rushed past Mallory’s ear, sending goose bumps over her skin. A wave rolled under the barge and he gripped her shoulder a minute for balance. He smelled of coffee and his own scent, his own flavor that she could taste without even trying, though their last kiss had been over three years ago. If she turned her head…
But she couldn’t. Whatever heat remained between them had to be buried. That was why she’d been so eager to get out of here.
Damn her curiosity.
“Look!” Dr. Vigil’s voice made them both jump. He leaned into the space that had just been the two of them.
Adrian drew away. Mallory was swamped with a sense of loss that had her wanting to shove away from the computer and jump into the water. Maybe she’d find her wits down there.
She focused on the screen, at what Dr. Vigil had pointed out. Adrian edged closer to make room for the older man. He pressed a button to zoom the camera in. The unmistakable glint of metal showed through the silt and seaweed, and as Mallory maneuvered the camera closer, she could see the curve of a portal.
Ship window? Or oar bank?
The familiar old zing of discovery went through her. This camera wasn’t doing it for her. She had to get a closer look. She looked at Adrian, pushing her hair out of her face.
“So,” she asked, excitement trembling in her voice. “When are we going in?”