by Rosie Vanyon
“You ought to be careful,” she warned her disheveled reflection. “A girl could get addicted.”
As if she wasn’t already, she thought, loosening the front of the scarlet floral kimono to deepen the vee at her cleavage. “Scarlet the harlot,” she murmured delightedly under her breath, and winked at herself in the mirror. Then, she sashayed back to the bedroom to see if she couldn’t coax a morning fix of her new favorite drug.
“Mmmm... Breakfast.” He leered as she paused in the doorway.
“So gorgeous and yet so insatiable,” she replied. “Not that I’m complaining.”
“I certainly have no grumbles.” He grinned as she sauntered over to his side of the bed. “Except, perhaps, that you have way too many clothes on.”
“One incy-wincy kimono?” she asked, leaning over to stroke his cheek while affording him a tantalizing view of her décolletage.
“Red is your color. And the idea of you being my own personal geisha girl is quite erotic.” He reached up and his knuckles grazed her cheek, then his fingers cruised leisurely down her exposed neck and downward still between her breasts. “But given the choice...” He eased his hand beneath the lapel of the robe and smoothed his palm over her breast. Her nipple instantly sprang to attention beneath his touch, tingling like soda. “I would prefer you naked.”
Suddenly, he grabbed her around the waist and hauled her down toward him. She squealed as he turned sideways and used the movement to roll her onto the bed beside him, then followed through to flip himself on top of her. He smirked, propped above her, his legs spread, his weight on his toes and elbows. She could feel the simmering heat of his body, but not the touch of his skin.
“No fair.” She pouted.
“A little jujitsu seemed to fit the whole Japanese theme—you know, rice paper, kimono, cherry blossom, geisha...” He smiled.
“Did you know, geisha are not”—she waved her hand at his prone body above her—“submissive or subservient. In fact, they are dominant and always remain in control.”
At her words, she felt the faintest quivering reaction suffuse his body.
Interesting...
From her position underneath him, she deliberately placed her finger on her mouth then sucked it slowly between her lips. His smile froze on his face as she withdrew the slick digit and methodically circled one of his nipples and then the other. Emboldened by his puckering flesh, she continued to trace patterns over his chest, sketching back to his nipples from time to time, straying lower over his flat belly and drifting over his upper arms.
“Geisha are expert at caring for and entertaining men,” she purred, looping her arms around his neck and hoisting her torso upwards to kiss him tauntingly before lowering herself back to the mattress.
“Temptress,” he accused, dropping his weight from his toes to his knees and lowering his hips over hers so her thighs were trapped between his own and their pelvises were pressed together. There was no mistaking the rigid flesh at his groin. She let out a mew of pique and he chuckled. “Let’s see how dominant you are now.”
As his chest pressed down toward her own, she tried to maintain her studied sulk, but her giggles, as she began to wriggle away, ruined the effect.
“Stay still, wench,” he ordered, laughing as she squirmed up the bed. He was all arms and legs, trying to pin her down as she twisted and writhed playfully.
She turned over and crawled away from him on her hands and knees. “Catch me if you can,” she taunted, laughing and breathless.
“Keep waggling that tush in my face and you’ll be in big trouble when I do,” he warned mischievously as he grasped her ankle and dragged her back toward him.
Flat on her stomach, she tried to shake off his grip, but he held her fast. “Let me go, you brute!” She chuckled, turning over and trying to inch away on her elbows. Her leg was twisted at an awkward angle and the second he let go to readjust his hold so as not to hurt her, she seized the opportunity to snatch her leg out of his reach and shimmy away on her backside.
Unfortunately, the slinky satin kimono against the slippery silk sheets combined in the worst way with her rapid backward momentum, and in the next breath, Cara hurtled clean off the bed and her butt thudded on to the bamboo floor, dragging a sheet-tangled Levi behind her.
For a moment, they just blinked, dazed. And then as they realized the hilarity of the situation, their laughter erupted. The gasped and giggled, giddy and out of control until their stomachs hurt and tears streamed down their faces.
****
Cara leaned over and placed her plate on the linoleum for the cat skulking in the doorway. She’d cooked enough scrambled eggs and bacon to feed half of Ocean Ridge instead of just the two of them. “My eyes were bigger than my stomach,” she moaned, smiling as the feline tentatively approached.
“I should have passed on the extra toast,” Levi groaned, patting his flat belly.
“You deserved it. You sure worked up an appetite.”
“Now I need to work off the extra food.”
“I can think of just the exercise to take care of that.” She grinned, her eyes alight with invitation.
“Your constant enthusiasm is one of your finer qualities, Ms. Kelly,” he said, taking her hand and rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. “But I need to let that humongous breakfast settle before I take you up on your very appealing insinuation. I was thinking that before Otto and Selena show up, we should maybe take some time to go over our changes to your script,” Levi said, stirring sugar into his coffee.
“Our changes?”
“Otto and I had some thoughts. Come on, we can look them over in the study.”
“Sure. Good idea. I did actually come to Flinders’ Keep to work, not just to romp around naked with the gorgeous producer.”
While she had been cooking breakfast, Levi had built a fire in the den. The weather wasn’t particularly cold, but the cheery blaze was a pleasant antidote to the rain, which had not eased in the last twelve hours.
The room was cozy and the papers strewn across the oak desk suggested Levi had been using it as an office. Like the back kitchen, this room showed no signs of demolition or reconstruction.
The den had been pretty much off limits to Cara and her sister as they were growing up. The door had generally been locked, though their mother occasionally spent an afternoon in there reconciling accounts or catching up on correspondence. It felt vaguely inappropriate to be in here, especially in her very disheveled and totally loved-up state.
She glanced around. The decor was masculine. Mocha walls were highlighted by a bold chocolate-striped frieze, three wingback leather chairs clustered around a heavy glass-topped coffee table, and the sideboard matched the imposing oak desk. All it needed was brandy balloons and cigars, she thought, and the mob would be right at home here.
Cara moved to the hearth and took in the enormous watercolor of the house over the fireplace. In some ways, the painting seemed too feminine, too light and delicate for this room, but its sheer size made it work, somehow, the house’s fine Victorian lines and graceful gardens captured for posterity in a polished rosewood frame.
“She bought the house because of its name, you know.”
“Your mom?”
“Yeah. The first time she came here, she saw the brass plaque with the name in fancy script by the front door. But she misread it. Thought is said ‘Finders Keep’ and decided it suited a treasure hunter perfectly. By the time she realized her mistake, the ink was dry on the contract and she was in love with the place anyway.”
She valued the way Levi listened to her, as though she was the most riveting human being on the planet. He was so attentive, she thought. As if they were the only two people in the world and there was nowhere else he needed to be, nothing else he’d rather be doing than conversing with her.
He’d showered—she’d have to do the same soon, but silly as it sounded, she was loathe to wash away the musky, earthy scent of him on her skin. Fresh from the bathroom, though,
he smelled like dark flowers and citrus. The buttery color of his polo shirt picked up the highlights in his hair and contrasted with his caramel skin. He leaned back in his plush desk chair and sipped the coffee he’d carried with him, all easy grace and casual elegance. He should be in front of the camera, she found herself thinking. He was gorgeous enough.
“You ever think about acting?” she asked him as she took a seat on the soft, cream hearth rug, wincing slightly as her bruised behind settled on the floor.
“Nope. I did some modeling a few years back, but I was too impatient. It was boring. I felt like a blob of modeling clay and the results were PhotoShopped so heavily my own mother wouldn’t have recognized me. You?”
“No way. Mother like mine, I’ve spent my life trying to stay out of the limelight.”
“Funny. Many people would have tried to capitalize on their parent’s notoriety, but, until now, it’s almost like you’ve shied away from it. What changed?”
“Well, for a start, I’m not ‘capitalizing’ on my mother’s fame—”
“Hey, I didn’t mean it like that...”
“Sorry. Defensive. Mia has that effect on me.”
“You don’t have to answer. I was just curious.”
She patted the space beside her. From the desk, he swept up a pile of typed pages that she recognized as her screenplay, with scrawls and scribbles in the margins and between the lines, and took a seat on the rug beside her. She was at once thrilled that he had gone over her script so closely and nervous that he may have found her work wanting.
She felt a tremor of anxiety shiver through her body. She reminded herself that under their contract, he couldn’t make wholesale changes without her agreement. But surely this conversation wouldn’t come to legal clauses and fine print?
She assured herself that Levi understood the importance to her of getting Alessandra’s story out into to the world, complete and intact. He knew how close to her heart this screenplay was. He knew what it meant to her. He was totally aware of the importance she placed on authenticity. There was no way he would even want to make substantial changes, she told herself.
It suddenly became imperative that he comprehend her impetus for telling her mother’s story. And she found that, at some level, she wanted to tell him. At least part of the truth. Where Mia had written off Cara’s actions as selfish and fickle, there was a chance that Levi might understand. And while she didn’t need anyone’s endorsement to follow through on her plans, the path to the big screen was getting kind of lonely. It would be a relief to have somebody at least acknowledge her rationale as valid. Cara took a deep breath, fixed her eyes on the fire, and forced herself to begin.
“When Mom decided to go after the treasure, it was pretty traumatic. It was one thing sitting around the dinner table and her telling us that she wanted to set a good example, that she wanted us to know we could follow our dreams and that being a mom didn’t mean you had to stop being a person. It was a whole other thing to watch her drive away. And then a fortnight later, we got the phone call. She was dead. I was fifteen.
“Mia and I told each other she died doing what she loved. That it was better to live a short fulfilling life than a long, empty existence, pining away, regretting choices. But she was our mom. And she’d chosen some stupid treasure over her own daughters. And got herself killed in the process! If she had just waited a couple more years, Mia and I could have gone with her. She didn’t have to choose. Just wait. And if we had gone with her, maybe we could have saved her.”
For a second, Cara dared to take her eyes off the blaze and chanced a glance at him. She saw only compassion in his face. Not pity, not disgust. Reassured, she turned her eyes back to the safety of the flames.
“It must have been hard for you,” Levi said. As though he sensed her resistance to sharing, he remained close enough to indicate his support, but didn’t crowd her or even touch her.
In the firelight, he looked so solid, she thought, catching him in her peripheral vision. The play of light and shadow over his strong features lent him an air of sturdiness and strength. He was thoughtful, intent, focused. Like a statue, carved to fit this moment.
But he was no sculpture, she reminded herself, reaching to stroke his cheek. He was warm flesh, not cool marble. He was living muscle and breathing humanity. He captured her hand and pressed a soft kiss against the back of it, holding her fingers to his mouth for a moment so she could feel his steady breath against her skin.
“To rub salt into the wound, the fortune she left you in her will was nowhere to be found. There was the house and what was in it. But no money,” he said, as she drew her hand away.
For a split second, panic flickered. He wouldn’t be the first man to use the guise of romance to dig for information on the missing fortune. But in the still, centered place inside her, she knew he was not that kind of man. He was secure and self-sufficient, he was honest and honorable, and, she conceded, nobody on earth could fake the kind of passion they had shared over the last couple of days. She only had to look in his eyes to know that whatever it was that flared and flashed between them was something raw and rich and real.
She let out a breath. Focused on the strength of her intuition. Surrendered to her faith in him.
“Yes. When I started this project, I researched her missing fortune. I couldn’t believe she would leave us penniless when she had always promised we’d be taken care of. I was angry. I wanted to find it. It was like I wanted compensation for having lost my mother. But the more I read her papers and diaries, the more my journey veered into the world of story. I found myself making connections between the facts, linking events, making sense of her words, attributing emotions and motivations to her. The film practically wrote itself. I was...”
She swallowed hard. He didn’t move. Didn’t press. Just waited with utter patience for her to reassemble her feelings.
“I was struggling with some, uh, personal issues, and the writing felt like catharsis. For the first time, it was like I could see inside her head. I could understand how hard it must have been for her to bring up two little girls all alone when her heart belonged elsewhere. But also, I could see how gut-wrenching it must have been to leave her children. I can’t say I support her actions—who chooses jewels or scrolls or bones over living, breathing, loving people? But I got to see how her thought process went. I found the triggers and the turning points. I identified the things that tethered her to us and hints of those that pulled her away.
“I never did find the fortune. I guess Alessandra didn’t pass on the treasure hunting gene, but I did begin to accept the fact that there was something she loved more than me, more than Mia—even if I hated that knowledge more than anyone could imagine. But I never hated Alessandra. I was angry, but I never hated my mom.”
“So, you want to tell the world you’re not angry anymore?” he asked quietly.
“Sometimes, I’m still angry. I’m human. I want to stop the speculation. I want to silence the gossip. I want to tell the truth.” Cara’s voice was low with conviction, firm with sincerity. “They say she was a greedy and shallow thrill-seeker. If they must judge her, let them do it with the facts in front of them. But who are we to judge others? How can we ever know what is truly in another’s’ heart?”
He touched her then. Reached around her shoulders and drew her to him. When she did not resist, when she leaned into his embrace without a struggle, he eased them both down to lie together on the rug. She rested her head on his arm, breathing in the sweet forest scent of his shirt, drinking in the rhythm of his heartbeat. She felt warm and sheltered from the teeming elements outside and protected from the haunting demons inside. Right now, Levi was keeping her safe. And right now, she was letting him.
It was strange, she thought, that her whole adult life had been bracketed by twin riches—there was the mysterious treasure that had led her mother away to her death, and there was the fabled fortune her mother had promised to leave her children, which had never mater
ialized.
“You sound so firm in what you say,” he murmured. He took a slow breath, as though carefully measuring his next words. “But I can hear a hesitation.”
She sighed softly. He was right. There was still a hesitation. Some small part of herself—the child in her heart, the romantic in her soul—still wanted to be wrong. She wanted to discover that her mother had not, after all, abandoned her in favor of a mythical treasure. That her mother had loved her and Mia more than life itself, the way, she thought, a mother should.
Over the past two years, she had tried to squash that wisp of hope. She had rationalized her wishes to pieces, trampled all over her dreams with brutal facts, and she had swamped her optimism in so much icy reality that there shouldn’t have been so much as a breath of doubt left in her. But hope was a stubborn sentiment, she was discovering, and belief was not easily obliterated. Once the film was done, once she saw for herself the story of her mother’s cold ambition inexorably play itself out on the big screen, then her faith would be crushed to a pulp. Then she would be free of her childish longings and feeble questions. Once the truth was staring her in the face, she could move on.
Cara flashed back to that night, maybe two years ago. The night the Lost Treasure project was born. She had been riding in the dark and the rain, dazed and aimless and empty. She’d staggered out of the hospital and ridden away with nothing but her bike, some fledgling credibility in film, and a half-share in a big white elephant of a house. Nothing to lose. She’d already lost everything that mattered. The blood-soaked pad between her legs attested to that.
She hadn’t planned to fall pregnant. Had never seriously considered bearing a child. And certainly not with Shay, a fun but flaky bass player she’d met on set. But when her period had been late and the blue strip had confirmed her suspicions, she had literally jumped for joy, clapping her hands like a kindergartener and singing and humming her way through the rest of her day. She’d treated herself to a French manicure and bought herself pink gerberas in celebration.