“There’s no need, lass.”
“No, really. There is. And I want to thank you for what you’re doing for Philippe and Rhona. They’re such good people.”
“So are ye, Wilhelmina.”
The way he said her name sounded so much like the way Jean said it—except instead of a French accent, it was Scottish—but it had the same tone, and her breath caught in her throat. “Thanks.”
She placed a loaf of French bread on a cooking sheet while Elliott poured a glass of whisky. “Ye want some?”
“No, I think I’ll have a glass of red wine. Would you mind pouring it?”
Elliott found a goblet and filled the glass with the Montgomery Winery Red Wine Blend she’d already opened. “Slàinte.”
She lifted the goblet. “Slàinte.” Then she sniffed, swirled, and sipped, tasting flavors of raspberry jam, dark chocolate, black cherry, and pomegranate. Delicious. “So, how’d it go out there today?”
He leaned against the counter and crossed his ankles. “David drew a grid before we went out there, so we spent most of the day marking it off.”
Penny checked her list and the time. She was on schedule. The appetizers the guys inhaled should hold them for another thirty to forty-five minutes. “What do the professors think you’re doing?”
“They won’t be there until Tuesday. I’m hoping we can get in, find the treasure, and get out before they arrive.”
Rick sauntered into the kitchen with a big smile and wet hair. He went straight to her as if he was the north pole of a magnet, and she was the south.
“Damn. It’s good to see you.” He wrapped his arms around her. If he’d wanted her to react to him physically, she did, and she gave a small sigh of pleasure as his lips brushed hers. Heat danced over her, belly and breasts, neck and face, and even her scalp.
Elliott cleared his throat. “Rick, do ye mind? Wilhelmina and I were having a conversation.”
Rick broke the contact. “I haven’t seen her in weeks. Do you mind?”
“Aye. Save it for later.”
Penny put her hands on Rick’s chest and gazed up at him. “Would you start the grill?”
“Sure, but Remy’s our go-to-guy when it comes to grilling. He adds a special Cajun spice to everything he cooks.”
“I’ve already added the spices. So if you’ll start the grill, I’ll let Remy cook the steaks.”
Rick snuck a kiss before he went outside.
Elliott stared at the closed door. “I’ve seen Rick with lots of women over the years. I’ve even seen him in love, but I’ve never seen him like he is with ye.”
“I know he has a reputation with women, and I have trust issues, so—”
“He’ll never lie to ye, lass. He’s been waiting for ye. The other women were only hanging on his arm until ye came along.”
She screeched, and it sounded just like a dull needle over one of those old phonograph records. She slapped her hands over her mouth. “Shit. I didn’t mean to do that.”
Elliott laughed. “What caused it? The waiting for ye part? Or the women hanging on his arm?”
“Both, I guess. But I’ll never hang onto Rick’s arm.” She opened the refrigerator and removed the cut-up vegetables to roast. “How’d you meet him?”
“His sister, JL, is married to my son, Kevin. Didn’t ye meet them at the gala? Oh, wait. Ye wouldn’t have. They had a preemie in the NICU at the time.”
“How’s the baby now?”
Elliott picked up his phone and scrolled through his pictures. “This is Blane, and the little guy is Lance, the preemie, and he’s almost five now.”
Penny took the phone and looked closely at the two boys. “They’re beautiful. I know you’re proud of them.”
“They keep me young.”
“So that’s your secret.”
“One of them,” he said with a smile.
“Why was the baby in the NICU at a hospital in Richmond and not Lexington?”
“Kevin flew his Cessna into Richmond for a family get-together, and the plane crashed on landing. JL had an abrupted placenta and delivered Lawrence early. It was touch and go for a few weeks.”
“So, the hospital got to know you then.”
“No, that was a few years earlier, when Charlotte rescued Braham from a Confederate hospital in 1864 and brought him home to save his life. Then a few years later, my goddaughter and her husband came forward from 1881. Kit had a brain tumor, and Cullen had a heart attack. Then Rick brought Amber Kelly home from 1878. She needed a valve replacement. That hospital has seen a lot of me.”
Remy wandered into the room. “Elliott left out that he had a stroke at the same time Kit had a brain tumor, and Cullen had a heart attack.”
“It wasn’t a stroke,” Elliott said. “It was a transient ischemic attack.”
“There’s not much difference.”
Elliott glared at him. “That’s enough.”
Remy wrapped his big hand around Elliott’s neck and massaged the base of his skull. “Sure thing, Boss.”
The word hit Penny like a sledgehammer. She knew all the classic signs of a panic attack—her racing pulse, the lockdown in her chest, and the clammy sweat between her breasts. And she couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
“Penny! Penny!” Remy took hold of her biceps and pushed her toward a barstool. “Sit.” He lowered her head between her legs. “Breathe in through your nose. Out through your mouth. In. Out. In. Out.”
She focused on the cadence of Remy’s voice, the rise and fall of the syllables. He seemed so far away…like he was at the end of a long tunnel.
“Keep breathing in and out. Good. Keep going,” Remy said.
The door opened and closed. “What’s wrong?” Rick demanded. He put his hand on her back. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
“She lost all color in her face, and her eyes rolled back in her head,” Remy said.
She tried to shake her head, but it wouldn’t move. Her entire body felt weighed down. Even her arms were too heavy to lift.
Rick put one arm under her legs, the other behind her back, and picked her up. “Let’s go lie down.”
“No, no. I’m okay.” He cradled her head with the kind of tenderness and care she didn’t believe she deserved, but Christ, it felt as vital and necessary as breathing. Then she remembered what she’d been doing. “Dinner. I’ve got to finish…dinner. Let me…go.” Her voice was so ragged she barely recognized it as her own.
“Remy will finish it.”
“He doesn’t know what to do.” Her shoulders eased as she looked up at Rick.
“He’s a smart Cajun. He’ll figure it out.” Rick carried her into the den. “Anybody know what happened?”
Elliott picked up the newspapers spread out across the sofa cushions. “Remy called me Boss, and Penny went white-faced.”
“That’s what she called Lafitte,” Rick said.
Penny took another deep breath. “It was the combination of the name and Remy’s accent. It just got to me. I expected Jean to walk into the room, even though I know he never will.”
Elliott eased down onto the leather coffee table/ottoman and leaned toward her. “Life goes on, lass. Days will roll into nights, and eventually, it’ll become clear that ye’ll never stop missing yer pirate, but ye’ll learn to live around the gaping hole left by his absence.”
“I’ve lost people I love, Elliott. I know I’ll never forget them, and my heart will never fully heal.”
“If ye know that much, then ye don’t need advice from me.” He squeezed her hand. “When I was little, I lost my mother. A friend of the family told me loss was like breaking yer foot. It didn’t make any sense to me, but the friend said, ‘The broken foot never heals right, and it hurts when ye dance, but ye dance anyway because that’s who ye are.’ So remember yer pirate and cherish the time ye had with him.”
Her gaze fell on Rick standing behind Elliott.
Elliott pointed with his chin. “Don’t hide yer grief from him. He gr
ieves for his mother every day, but it’s never stopped him from dancing.” Then Elliot shocked her when his warm lips kissed her forehead. “Stay here. We’ll finish putting dinner together.” He smiled, his eyes glistening, then he left her.
Rick took his place on the ottoman. “I didn’t like when he kissed you—”
“Elliott?”
The question seemed to surprise Rick, his brows edged up slightly, and his gaze glittered in the dusky light spilling in through the windows. Emotions seemed to roll out of him in waves. “No. Lafitte.”
Her heart beat a fast tattoo in her ears, at her throat, and, oh God, deep between her legs as he gazed at her. Tears formed, hot and hell-bent, an indicator of how big a deal this moment was.
“I was so confused, sitting inside the carriage looking at him while you sat across from me. If anyone was going to kiss me, I wanted it to be you. But I saw such longing in Jean’s eyes, and the kiss was so sweet, I didn’t want it to end.”
“I knew that,” Rick said.
“You did?”
He pushed her hair behind her ear, letting his touch drift over her cheeks. Her breathing was heavy now, as though oxygen was in short supply. He rested his hand on the side of her neck, tilting her head back with his thumb, and silenced her with his lips. The kiss was greedy and graceless…but damn…she didn’t care, because she felt safe and warm and loved, and her heart pushed words right past her lips. “I need you.”
“You have me.”
Every taste of him made her want the next one more, each slide of her tongue over his dared him to go faster, hotter, deeper. She took it all and returned the kiss with equal intensity.
Kenzie cleared her throat. “Sorry to interrupt, but what did you plan for the vegetables?”
“Toss them in a little olive oil, Italian seasoning, garlic, salt, and pepper and roast for fifteen minutes.”
“Got it. Go on back to what you were doing.”
“We’re done,” Penny said.
“We are?” Rick asked. “But—” He let the rest of his sentence, packed with frustration, hang there.
No, we’re not done. I want you fully and forever. But she managed to say, “For now.”
He helped her up. “Is that a for-sure thing? Like later tonight?” When she didn’t answer, he pulled her close and kissed her again, and this one was lazy, unhurried, and delicious. “I’m pressuring you, and I promised I wouldn’t do that. But I want you naked in my arms, and it’s driving me nuts.”
Remy interrupted them too. “How do you want your steak, Penny? Rick eats his rare.”
“I’m not surprised. Cook mine medium-rare.” She pulled away from Rick. “I need to finish dinner. Come to the kitchen and tell me what else happened at the tree park. Elliott said David mapped a grid, and today you staked it. So what happens tomorrow?”
Rick opened another beer and took a long pull. “We’ll divide the sections up and start sweeping the area with metal detectors.”
She sliced the bread while she listened. “I’ve seen people at the beach using metal detectors. Is that what you’re using?”
“Similar, but ours are more advanced.”
“And more expensive,” she said.
“We want reliable detectors that will give us the most accurate data. These detectors have 3D system boxes that show real-time, full-color image scans of targets, and identify whether objects in the ground are metals, minerals, caves, or cavities.”
“With equipment that sophisticated, if it’s there, we should find it,” Penny said. “So, the improvements to the elevation won’t matter?”
“Not with this equipment.”
“Our previous treasure hunt is a great story,” Kenzie said. “I’ll tell you all about it later. So what’s left to do? The vegetables and salad are ready, and as soon as Remy finishes cooking our steaks, it’ll be time to eat.”
“Just the bread.” Penny grabbed oven mitts, removed the baking sheet from the oven, and dumped the bread into a basket.
“Rick, you can light the candles. Kenzie, you can put the veggies and salad on the table, and as soon as the steaks are ready, we can eat.”
David filled water glasses and took drink orders, and by the time Remy came in, they were ready to take their seats. Then dishes were passed, and the rare and medium-rare steaks made it to the right plates.
For the next hour, they told jokes and shared old family stories while gobbling up every bite of food. When there was nothing else to eat, Remy and Rick cleared the table, refilled wine glasses, and poured whisky for those who wanted it.
Penny collected small items on the table to return to the cabinets, and while she drank another glass of wine, she fiddled with the salt and pepper shakers and napkin rings, arranging them in the shape of the constellation Orion. She chuckled. “When I returned to Jean’s house after escaping the brothel, he’d gone through my purse and arranged items in the shape of Orion. The hand sanitizer was the star Betelgeuse, a tin of mints—Meissa, lip balm—Ainitak, a piece of gum—Salph…”
Elliott picked up his glass and held it aloft. “‘Under the wide and starry sky, dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, and I laid me down with a will.’”
Elliott reciting poetry took Penny by surprise, but she quickly made the connection between the sailor and the starry night in Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Requiem,” and recited the next lines of verse. “This be the verse you ’grave for me, ’here he lies where he longed to be…’”
And together they recited, “‘Here he lies where he longed to be, home is the sailor, home from sea.’”
And that was the moment Penny’s understanding of Elliott Fraser was complete—he was sentimental, loving, intelligent, and mysterious, and she found it interesting that he chose to reveal himself to her by sharing loss and the loneliness of the sea.
She lifted her glass, “‘And the hunter home from the hill.’”
Elliott nodded, then emptied his glass. “Welcome home, Wilhelmina.”
Penny pushed her chair away from the table and went to Elliott, who also stood, and they hugged.
“I’ll always have yer back, soldier,” he said.
“And I’ll have yours.” There was power in his arms, but something else as well, something she hadn’t experienced since she lost her grandmothers—absolute trust—a cementing of a relationship that would last a lifetime, however long. And it was magical.
Rick took her hand, and energy flowed from Elliott through her to Rick, creating an otherworldly bond. She squeezed her eyes shut, and didn’t move for the longest time. When she eventually felt the air shift, she opened her eyes and was astonished to see they were all holding hands, forming a complete circle.
Then they eased their hands apart, and Penny sat down again. “What just happened?”
No one said anything right away, and then Kenzie said, “It was sort of like Mr. Spock’s mind meld. We may not know the full meaning for a while.”
“Are you okay?” Rick’s pupils flared, turning his soft brown stare nearly black, and his shoulders squared beneath his T-shirt.
She leaned close to him, to the warmth of his body, and the comfort of his arm around her shoulder. “For the first time since my mother got sick, I feel…at peace.”
He whispered, “If it wouldn’t embarrass you, I’d kiss you.”
“It takes a lot to embarrass me.”
“Really?” Remy asked. “Then answer this question. What do you get when you put four naked men—two Scotsmen, a Cajun, and an Irishman—on a back porch with a platter of pigs in spicy blankets and a six-pack of beer?”
She straightened in her chair. “I don’t know.”
“A red-faced caterer.”
Remy, David, and Elliott roared, but Rick sucked in his cheeks. Penny kicked Remy under the table, but his damn shin was so hard it almost broke her toes. “Ouch!”
Kenzie smirked. “See? What’d I tell ya?”
Rick stroked the side of Penny’s face. �
��We’re just teasing ya, babe. You went above and beyond today, and we’re all very grateful for the food and beer.”
“Rick’s favorite part was the icy washcloth,” Remy said. “When he washed his face, he moaned so loud we thought he was doing the five-finger knuckle shuffle.”
Rick buried his face in his hands. “I’ll get ya for that.”
Remy angled his beer bottle and clinked it against David’s. “Ya owe me five.”
“What’d you bet on?” Kenzie asked.
“I bet Remy he couldn’t work that into our dinner conversation.”
“So that was a five-dollar joke?” Kenzie asked.
“Five hundred,” Remy said.
Kenzie rolled her eyes. “You guys are insane.” Then she looked at Penny. “Forget them. They’re children. I have a question, though—a legitimate one. Did you and Jean ever talk about the constellation Orion?”
“The first night we camped, I commented on Orion’s Belt. Why?”
“Just wondering.” Kenzie pulled a daisy out of the centerpiece, removed all the petal-like white ray florets, and spread them out on the table in the shape of Orion.
David put his arm around the back of her chair and leaned close. “What are ye doing, Kenz?”
“Waaaaaaait for it…” Kenzie adjusted the petals and turned the constellation on its side, the way it appeared in the sky in the Northern Hemisphere.
Rick got up, rounded the table, and stood over her shoulder.
“What’s she doing?” Remy asked, joining Rick.
“Solving a puzzle, her specialty,” Elliott said. “Making sense out of randomness.”
After about ten minutes of Kenzie moving petals here and there, measuring distances with the daisy’s hollow stem, her voice sliced through the uneasiness in the room like garden scissors, sharp and precise.
“I know where the treasure is, and there may be more than one.”
61
New Orleans—Penny
After Kenzie discovered the possible location of the treasure, the group abandoned the dinner table and adjourned to the den. Penny sat on the sofa and tucked her legs under her hip, and Rick nestled in beside her. He stretched his legs out on the ottoman, crossing his bare feet at the ankles. One long, narrow foot—with manicured toenails—started swinging in slow-moving circles. Like most runners, Rick took care of his feet. Nothing was more unsightly than black toenails from pounding out the miles.
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