Kara
I had two revelations on one island in one day. I had a small piece of gold that could mean something more was there on Ross Island.
And I had Stone. Even if it was just for one night.
Do all women feel enthralled with their first? I didn’t think so. My friends didn’t. They also didn’t describe the earth-shattering experience I shared with Stone Calder.
We waited out the storm in the shack. Some of the things he did to me I waited a lifetime to experience. Some of the things I did to him, well, I found out, with Stone at least, I wasn’t shy.
I’d never been drunk in my life, but it was what I felt like. I was drunk on the feelings I had when he touched me.
“Your body fits mine.” He’d said. I didn’t know how other women had fit with him, and I didn’t know what other men felt like. I didn’t want to
I also figured he was full of shit. He was experienced, older, sexier than anything I’d ever seen, and telling me I was special. And I told him so.
“Just because I am searching for pirate treasure in Florida doesn’t mean I’m a sucker enough to buy land in the Everglades.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I was sitting up, and he was behind me. He put his arm around me and pulled be firmly back in close to him.
“It means you don’t have to tell me a bunch of nice things because we did, we did uh, everything.”
He tilted my head back to capture my lips in his.
“Not everything, yet.” Every time he kissed me I felt my insides melt and at the same time my nerve endings charge up. Was this because I’d waited until 21? Or was it this way with Stone?
I’d texted Estelle and my brother to let them know not to worry that we were safe and waiting out the storm, and I would see them in the morning.
The storm didn’t subside until late into the night. Lucky me. I got a full night on my island with Stone. The shack was stocked with a few things, and it wasn’t the worst place to be for a night. I’d camped out there many nights growing up so I knew we’d be fine.
We’d also had good food packed. It was actually perfect.
Until questions interrupted the exploration of my new found sex life.
“Are we going to talk about your find?” He asked me.
“What find?”
“The little trinket and the map that led you there.”
“I don’t really want to.”
“You can trust me.”
“Can I? This was fantastic, and I think I do trust you or I wouldn’t have let this go the way it did. But what if I'm really stupid here? What if you’re here to take advantage of me. You already know I have a map and that I found something. What’s to stop you from stealing it? Hell, what’s to stop you from knocking me over the head with a rock?” I started to ramble as all my fears tumbled forward.
“Kara. Listen. I am not going to do a thing to hurt you. Let me make you two promises. If you’re with me, you’re safe. You can take that to the bank and put it in the safe deposit box. It’s guaranteed.”
“Okay so no rock to the head.” I gave him some side eye. But hurting me and stealing from me. Maybe he was a con-artist. Maybe getting my loot was the plan all along.
“The second thing. I don’t want or need whatever money you have or find. I didn’t look at you pedaling your bicycle around town and think, well clearly she’s a trust fund kid. Jackpot. I have my own money. I don’t want or need yours. And I’m not Kevin Potter. Money ain’t my thing.”
“What is your thing?”
“You, you are it. Right now. I may not be here for very long. If you want to talk to someone about your plans, I’m a safe bet.”
“Why?”
“I can’t really tell you.”
“Wait, you want me to share my secrets but can’t share yours?”
“I’ll tell you this, I have to travel light, and I have to keep rolling. There’s not a chance in hell I can steal a chest of gold or an island from you.”
“When do you have to keep rolling?”
“Not sure, I think I’ve got a week or so if I’m lucky.” I felt a sharp pain in my chest at the idea of Stone leaving in a week. On one hand I was scared to trust him and on the other hand, I was scared to lose him. I was about as consumed with contradictions as I’d ever been in my entire life.
“I do feel like I need a sounding board. Everyone I know will try to talk me out of this or take it away or write me off as nuts. That’s why I’ve kept it a secret.”
“I won’t do any of those things.”
We were tangled together, arms, legs, and for the moment, our lives were intersected. We seemed to both know this would be temporary.
I’d questioned why I trusted him and then the answer came to me. I really did know he wasn’t out to hurt me. The reverence he’d had for my body, my consent, and my pleasure, had me believing I could trust him with my history. This one piece of it. He’d won the trust of my heart because of the care he’d taken with the rest of me. It was that simple. And I was a recently deflowered virgin. Perhaps I wasn’t thinking straight, but there it was. I kept opening up to this man.
I recounted what my Dad told me growing up.
It was a bedtime tale when I was little, the challenge for a quest as I got older, and now that I was going to lose the island, the story of the Ross Island Pirates was my desperate grab for a miracle. Stone listened as I shared the stories I’d heard my whole life.
“So the story my father told me is, as I’ve learned after a lot of actual research, is partly made up, part legends strung together that have survived from his grandparents and great grandparents. And part of it is true.
The pirate founder of this family was named Henry Ross. Captain Henry Ross.
Ross made a name for himself before the War of 1812, he captained a ship under a much more famous pirate named Jean LaFitte. They say it was during his time working as a captain for LaFitte that he found this island and decided because it has this lagoon, that ships could come in and hide. It would also be a good place to set up a pirate colony. So he did.
He broke away from LaFitte and recruited pirates, adventurers, and rebels. They had three fast ships, and sailed for this island in between plunder, as far as everything I’ve read that was about 1817 or 1818.
They built shacks from old ships, they dug a well, they had a dock, a fort, and even two storehouses. But as you can see nothing here would indicate that anything of that survived.”
“I’d say it looks about as deserted as Gilligan’s Island around here,” Stone said as he listened attentively to my history lesson. He showed the same patience when he’d listened to me talking about indigenous species.
“Right. So my father says they had a thriving, if not totally illegal, community here, some even had families here. Ross and his fleet of three boats smuggled illegal goods, they stole from trade ships, and they moved plunder from other pirates as well. Pirating and privateering kept them very busy. And after each successful run, they’d come back here.”
“So how much of this is your dad talking and how much from your research?” Which was a good question.
“I’m going to go with fifty-fifty. My dad told romantic tales and had specifics of this raid or that near capture. None of which I could verify. But what I could verify is that complaints did eventually get to the Navy Department in Washington.
The U.S. Navy had an Anti-Piracy Squadron stationed at Key West, and they were ordered to stop Henry Ross and his gang. This is where my information gets much more solid. There are records. I know the names of the government ships, what kind they were, and all types of details.”
“I suppose the pirates didn’t keep records,” Stone said.
“Right. So my dad says that Great Great Great Great Grandpa Ross didn’t have a clue the Navy was coming for him and kept right on plundering everything they could.
They were in the middle of looting a supply ship when a naval vessel caught them in the act. Henry Ross got away, but the Navy ship chased him. He reached this island.
That record is clear, he hid in the lagoon, that’s what it was there for, and his ships were able to go into the shallow water. The Navy ships had a much deeper draft and had to stay out in the open water.”
“So you’ve got a standoff,” Stone said.
“Not really, while the Navy ships couldn’t go into the shallows they had brand new, new for the 1800-hundreds anyway, long ranged rifles. They got as close as they could and shot up Henry’s Ross’s pirate schooner. The government record says they scored several direct hits with their warships.
That’s when all hell breaks loose here on Ross Island. And where the records go back to being sketchy at best. Government accounts speculate on what happened when the pirate colony saw their commander’s boat get blown to bits, and a landing party of sailors manned long boats to finally get into the lagoon.
Daddy says the pirates and their families hid in the mangroves.”
“We were running through those the other day looking for your birds, I can see how it would be hard to find someone in there.” Stone mused.
“Yes. So the captain of the naval sloop says the government burned shacks, warehouses, and the fort. And that the pirates probably made it out with some of the loot but not with all of it.
The Navy searched the island that day, but it was brief. He said he didn’t have time for a thorough search. All the loot that had to have been stored here was either burned or buried, and none was recovered then. Or since.”
“So, what happened to Great Great Great Great? Four greats? Is that right?”
“Right, well no one knows. He never shows up again in any historical record.”
“But here you are, owner of Ross Island. How did that happen?”
“So with complete accuracy, I can trace my ancestry to Caroline Ross. She emerged with her son Louis in the 1820s. She had title to the island and paperwork to say she was Henry Ross’s widow.”
“Wow, so she was your Great Great Great Great Grandmother?”
“That I can tell you is true. The stories of what was on this island, it just can’t be proven. My Dad, David Ross, believed it all. Jason doesn’t believe a word of it.”
“But your family’s stayed here for 200 years. That’s pretty incredible, to say the least.”
“Yep, in one way or another a Ross has been in Gold Cross or nearby since then.”
“It was pretty easy for them to keep the island for the first 150 years or so. But since the late 1950s Florida has been all about develop, develop, develop. Gold Cross was a sleepy town. No one gave a damn about the one-mile of scrub off the coast. But now, as it gets crowded, developers like Kevin and others have been eyeing this place.”
“And your Dad put the mortgages on it.”
“Yep, he was old by the time he had Jason and I, in his forties, a dreamer, an alcoholic, but handsome as hell. My mom left us with him when she realized handsome didn’t pay the bills.”
“So here we are. In this shack. What makes you think you’re going to find something your dad didn’t or all those greats?” He asked me a question that I’d asked myself a million times.
“You already know that answer.”
“The map.” He had hit the nail on the head.
“Most people think my dad spent his life searching the island. That’s not true. What he spent his life doing was searching the world for this map. Caroline Ross emerged with her son Louis and family lore says, she also appeared on a map.”
“So why didn’t your dad use the map?”
“During the Civil War, the map disappeared into family legend. Daddy’s life was centered around tracking all these ancestors and where the map could have been. And he succeeded, he found it. But it was too late for him. He found it when he was too old and sick to do anything about it. After everyone but I stopped believing in his search. He also spent a fair amount of crazy time randomly roaming the sand thinking luck or fate could help.”
“So he gave the map and the island to you.”
“Yes, and I have less than one month to use it before the bank takes this island from me. I have no boat to get out here and no job for cover without the boat.”
“The job’s cover?”
“No one raises an eyebrow when I go out on the water to count animal populations.”
Stone, who had been reclining, listening and processing my crazy story, sat up.
“Let’s make a deal.” He said, and my heart sank. The word deal scared me. I already was in debt to Kevin. What was Stone going to try to get from me? Regret washed over me. Why had I let myself get wrapped up in him so quickly? I shouldn’t have trusted him. When I started my story, I was wrapped in his arm. And now I was wrapped in the wool blanket we kept in the shack. My subconscious attempt to put up a wall.
“So is this the part where you strangle the recently deflowered virgin and take her map? Estelle, Frank, and Jason all know I came out her with you. And Cutter’s Marina they saw me with you so if you think….” Though it sounded like a joke I wasn’t kidding.
Fear was building. I had slid away from Stone. My openness was going to get me killed. I should have listened to Daddy. Or Jason. Shit. Stone’s handsome face and rugged muscles had made me stupid.
“Relax. I don’t want your map or your island or whatever is buried in it.”
“What do you want?” I was feeling as vulnerable as when I was stuck with Kevin in the bank. I was cursing myself. The old thin blanket wasn’t the armor I needed. I needed to be more paranoid and street smart.
“I just want to help you. I’ll captain this boat, we’ll come out here as much as you want.”
“What do you want in return?” I had moved to the edge of the bed, slid away as far as I could without running away.
“Nothing. Nothing but you for the next month. I don’t need money or your island. I don’t want either.”
“So why help me. Surely you want half or more if I find something.”
“I am going to stay her for the full thirty days you have. I’m going to help you. You can have my boat when you need it. All I need is you.”
“Me?”
“For the next thirty days, you stay as open as you were today. You let me make love you anywhere and anytime I want. It’s all I need or want.”
The dim light in the shack cast shadows that highlighted his hard jaw, his chiseled stomach. He leaned back down and gave me a devilish look that produced a blush from my hair to my toes. I knew I’d only had a taste of what he meant.
My insides melted just thinking of what it was like with him inside me. And I answered, probably too damn quickly. But he’d seen me, he’d been inside of me, hiding my feelings seemed ridiculous now.
“Okay, yes.” He sat up and put his hands on both of my hips and slid me forward.
“Anytime, anywhere, anyway I want you.” His deep voice whispered into my ear.
“Yes.”
“Starting now.” Stone peeled down the wool blanket to expose me. The wool scratching against my already sensitive skin.
“Yes.” I’d made a deal that could help me save the island.
Stone had asked me to give myself to him for one month. He’d hold my secrets and on the practical side, he’d drive me out here.
Why did I feel like the first treasure I’d found on Ross Island was Stone Calder?
I’d let him think I was giving myself to him out of obligation when in my heart knew it wasn’t true.
I was giving myself to him because I wanted him just as much as he wanted me.
Maybe more.