Hidden Treasures

by Judith Arnold

  “As if a show about an old box with a dirt-clogged lock is going to get high ratings,” she said.

  “If the box is filled with a million dollars, it is.”

  “It’s not,” Erica said with a certainty she didn’t feel. Actually, she didn’t feel certain about anything. The air seemed to fluctuate between mild and cool. Her wine tasted more tart than it had inside. Scattered clouds drifted across the sky, pale gray against dark blue like a Magritte painting. And Jed was so warm. He hadn’t bothered with a jacket, and he clearly didn’t need one. He radiated heat like someone with a fever; only, he was obviously healthy. Big and hot and healthy.

  She lowered her gaze to his left hand, which dwarfed his wineglass. She was used to eight-year-old hands, soft and small, with dirty nails or pencil smudges on them.

  “How do you know it’s not?”

  It took her a moment to remember what they’d been discussing: the estimated value of the box’s contents. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just hope it’s not filled with money.”

  “You don’t want a million dollars?”

  “Even if the box contained a million dollars, I couldn’t claim the money as mine.”

  He shifted slightly to look at her, and the swing rocked from his motion. She saw mischief in his eyes. When was the last time she’d sat alone at night with someone like him? “In other words, you admit half the money is mine?” he asked.

  That was why he was being nice to her, she realized—if jostling her on the swing so she had to keep flexing her wrist to keep the wine level in her glass, and giving her grins just a bit too tricky for her to interpret, constituted being nice. He wanted half of whatever was in the box. She hoped it was pebbles and pine needles. She’d gladly give him half of that, and it would serve him right for being so greedy.

  Then again, he might just be teasing her. She couldn’t tell.

  She straightened her back. For God’s sake, she wasn’t a ditz. She was a Harvard graduate in charge of her own life. She’d taken on fabulous-looking guys before. Maybe no one quite as fabulous-looking as Jed, but honestly. He was a junk dealer. A Rockwell native. She had the brains to handle him. “Tell me about your business,” she said.

  His gaze softened, his smile losing its taunting edge. “It’s a shop in New York,” he told her. “City Resale.”

  “You really buy junk and sell antiques?”

  He chuckled, shook his head and twisted back on the swing’s bench so he was facing the porch railing. He propped one foot up on it and used it to rock them. His foot was big, too, encased in a thick-soled work boot. Big feet, big hands. She wondered what else about him was big, then shut that thought down before it could get her into trouble.

  “I don’t buy junk,” he told her, “and I don’t sell antiques.”

  “I see.” Actually, she didn’t.

  “When I went to New York, I had nothing. A few bucks saved from summer jobs and working on my grandfather’s farm—” he gestured toward the fallow field that extended back from the house “—but that was it. I was fresh out of high school and I didn’t own a pot to…well…”

  “Piss in,” she said helpfully, so he’d know she wasn’t a prig.

  “Yeah. I got a job as a night janitor in a midtown office building, and when I’d leave work around six in the morning, I’d see all this stuff people would discard on the sidewalk. I guess the trash collectors were supposed to pick it up, but it was just out there—tables, lamps, rugs, all kinds of stuff. I couldn’t afford furniture, so I’d pick up whatever I could use and bring it home with me. I’d clean it, repair it—the lamps usually just needed rewiring or some other easy fix—and that was how I furnished my apartment. You wouldn’t believe what some people throw out. Really good stuff.”

  Erica nodded, remembering with a twinge all the really good stuff her family had thrown out over the years, simply because they could afford better stuff. When the old stuff was in decent shape, they donated it to Goodwill, but if it needed repair, they’d just pay their trash-removal service to haul it away.

  “When people came to visit they’d be blown away by some lamp I’d rewired, or a chest of drawers I’d refinished, and they’d tell me I could make money selling it. So I decided to give it a try.”

  “Just like that?”

  He nodded. “After a while, I was making enough money to quit the janitor job.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  “No, it’s not.” He bent his knee and straightened it, pushing the swing in a gentle rhythm. “Most people have no idea of the value of things. They want to get rid of something, so they toss it. They don’t stop to think about what they’ve got.” He drank some wine, then glanced at her. “I don’t scavenge on the street anymore. I’ve got my store and workshop downtown, in SoHo. People sell their old stuff to us. Or someone dies, and the survivors just want grandma’s apartment closed up fast, so they take a lump sum for everything in it. Then I figure out what’s worth working on. We’ve got a shop upstairs from the store, where we do the repairs and refinishing. And then these chic artsy customers come in and drop a bundle to buy the old tea cart or sling chair someone else thought was garbage.”

  It was Erica’s turn to shift in the swing, not to stare at him but just because she felt she needed a new position. There she was, an Ivy Leaguer who had grown up in affluence, seated next to a high school–educated almost-junk dealer who’d created a business successful enough to occupy two floors of a building in SoHo, where he catered to the frivolous tastes of chichi New York connoisseurs. Who would have thought Rockwell—and in particular, Jack Willetz—could have produced such a person?

  “You’re very enterprising,” she remarked, then cringed at the possibility that she sounded condescending.

  He only laughed. “Oh, yeah, that’s me. Mr. Enterprise.” He drained his glass and leaned forward to set it on the floorboards. The motion unbalanced her physically as much as his nearness unbalanced her mentally, and she pitched forward, then sideways into him to keep from tumbling off the swing.

  “Sorry,” he said, catching her and settling her back in the seat. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders to steady her and curved his fingers around her upper arm. The heat of his hand seeped through the sleeves of her jacket and sweater to spread through her arm. How could he be so warm? They were in central New Hampshire at night, just barely out of mud season. And he wasn’t even wearing a jacket.

  The swing stabilized, but he didn’t remove his hand. His arm was also warm, radiating heat down her spine. His chest was warm. The swing was too tiny, the air molecules surrounding her were in a hormone-fed frenzy and Jed Willetz, the guy every female classmate—and perhaps a few male classmates, too—had lusted after in high school was leaning in, drawing her closer, lowering his face until his strong, sturdy features blurred before her eyes. And then he kissed her.

  Jed Willetz. The heartthrob of Rockwell Regional. The junkyard owner’s son. The man who’d fled this town, which Erica was trying very hard to make her new home.

  Oh, God. She was in trouble.

  She tried to remember the last time she’d been kissed like this, and realized the answer was never. She’d dated a fellow from Manchester for a while, an insurance adjuster who’d moved his jaw too much when he talked, enunciating his words as if he were hoping to win an elocution contest. And when she’d been in Brookline during the school’s winter break, she’d run into an old boyfriend in the cheese aisle of Stop-and-Shop and learned that in the years since she’d last seen him he’d gotten married and divorced. They’d gone out for dinner, necked a little for old time’s sake, and then went their separate ways.

  This was different, even though Erica knew it would end with her and Jed going their separate ways. He’d turned his back on Rockwell. He’d rejected everything she’d longed for: the small-town charm, the coziness, the tight community. He was going to bury his grandfather’s ashes and disappear.

  But damn, he could kiss.

  It
occurred to her that most men did not know what to do with their tongues. Not that she’d kissed enough men in her life to make generalizations, but Jed…Jed definitely knew what to do. He didn’t poke at her teeth and jab inside her mouth. Instead, he used sweeping motions, licking motions, taking motions that sent her temperature soaring. Maybe that was why he was so warm: his tongue was a source of heat and he had it inside his mouth all the time. Now it was inside hers, and she was burning up.

  She felt cheap and silly, kissing this man for whom so many women in town would allegedly drop their panties. She didn’t love him, she hardly knew him, and she was behaving in a way her mother always told her nice girls did not behave. She was being kissed by a near stranger, being kissed hard, being kissed so wantonly that even though their mouths were the only parts of their bodies involved, it felt like the most erotic act she’d ever engaged in.

  She tried to kiss him back, but he was definitely the dominant one, determining the pressure, the speed, the depth. That felt strange to her, too, because she was by nature used to being on top of things. Jed was on top of things now, and when she closed her eyes her body shuddered at the thought of how heavenly it would be to have him on top of her.

  His arm was still around her, and he lifted his free hand to cup her cheek. His fingers dug into her hair, and his palm covered half her face. The warmth made her jaw go slack, giving him access to even more of her mouth. Either the swing was moving or his kiss was making her dizzy.

  After a minute—actually, it could have been two or ten minutes, or maybe just a few seconds—he pulled back and sighed. He let his hand slide down to the side of her neck where it rested, so hot it might be giving her a second-degree burn. She started breathing again, and when he rested his forehead against hers she felt, for reasons she couldn’t fathom, like crying.

  “We’d better stop,” she whispered. That must be why she was near tears. She didn’t want to stop, but the nice girl was wresting control back from the silly, cheap lady inside her.

  “Why?”

  She drew in a deep breath. The air had grown cooler. Her lungs felt colder than the side of her neck where his hand lingered. “I have no idea where we’re going with this,” she said.

  He laughed softly. “I think it’s pretty obvious where we’re going.” His thumb stroked the underside of her chin, sending ripples of heat down into her.

  She wished he’d move back a little so she could see him, but she couldn’t bring herself to push him away. “Maybe where we’re going is someplace we shouldn’t go.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…” Because she was a nice girl again, and he was going to leave, and while a little just-for-the-hell-of-it making out was fun, something told her that going any further with Jed was not going to be a just-for-the-hell-of-it experience. She’d likely wind up scorched inside and out. The man was just too…hot.

  “How do I know you’re not kissing me because you think there’s a million dollars in my box?” she asked when no better argument presented itself.

  He laughed again. “You figured me out,” he joked, his lips brushing hers with each word. “I’m just after your money.”

  “I haven’t got any money,” she warned, hearing her voice waver. Maybe he was after her money. Maybe he was a low-down creep. It didn’t seem fair that someone so vile should be able to kiss the way he did, but whoever said life was fair?

  “You haven’t opened the box yet. You don’t know what you have.”

  “You might be really wasting your time with me.”

  “Yeah. I might.” But he kissed her again, a brush of his lips, just enough to remind her of what an all-out kiss from him was like. “If I was smart—” kiss “—and enterprising—” kiss “—I’d set my sights on genuine millionaires. Heiresses—” kiss “—and rich divorcées, and gallery owners on Madison Avenue.” He gave her one final kiss, lightly sucking on her lower lip, and her hips twitched from the heat rushing through her. “Guess I’m not so enterprising after all.”

  “I guess you’re not,” she said. Her voice sounded choked and raspy. She was in big trouble here. She was about ten seconds away from begging him to go back to her house with her, to her bedroom, to do to the rest of her body what he was doing to her mouth.

  But how could she know this wasn’t about her box? He hadn’t denied it. He’d joked about it, but he hadn’t assured her that she was what mattered, her box and its contents were of no interest to him, he loved her and intended to remain in Rockwell forever and the hell with his New York City resale business.

  He wasn’t going to say any of that, because it wasn’t true.

  “I’d better go,” she said, pressing as far back into the swing as she could.

  With apparent reluctance he withdrew, letting his hand drop and sliding his arm out from behind her. At last she could see his face. He looked bemused but not devoid of hope. Even when he was no longer touching her he seemed to exude heat. She tried to guess its source. His eyes, maybe. They glowed in the dim light. “I’ll walk you back,” he offered, moving to stand.

  She nudged him down as she rose, and said, “No, that’s all right.” If he walked her to her house, he’d wind up at her door, and then it would be too easy for him to follow her inside, and then she’d be in big trouble again, much bigger trouble than she was in now.

  He peered up at her as she gathered their empty glasses and strode to the porch steps. Lifting his leg to the railing again, he pushed himself in a calm rhythm, his gaze remaining on her as she descended to the dead, scraggly lawn that extended out to the road. She was almost clear of his house when he called after her, “Say hi to Derrick Messinger for me.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AH, THE CITY.

  Through the soft haze that marked the halfway point between asleep and awake, Jed heard the rumble of a car engine, the distant honk of a horn, the tinny squawk of a man’s voice somewhere below his window. Pressing his head deeper into his pillow, he listened for the familiar clank of the radiator kicking on, the faint rumble of a subway passing beneath the street a block away.

  Thank God he was home, miles from his father and his smothering little hometown and that woman…that woman who…God, that woman.

  His legs kicked reflexively at the sheets. He heard a horn again and his eyes blinked open. He wasn’t in the city. He was in Rockwell, and that woman—the one who had hijacked his dreams and kept him aroused all night, who’d caused him to wake up as hard as a fresh-picked zucchini, damn it—was right next door.

  A schoolteacher, of all things. An overeducated teacher who seemed actually to like Rockwell, which proved that for all her intelligence and Ivy League pedigree, she had no sense. Why was he even thinking about her?

  So he’d made a move on her last night. Big deal. He’d enjoyed their dinner with Fern Bernard, and he’d enjoyed every other time he’d been with Erica—especially those times when she wasn’t pointing a knife at him—and the night had been balmy. The wine had been smooth and potent and Erica had been sitting so close to him, her big, dark eyes glowing with laughter and generosity and who the hell knew what else. Her eyes were amazing.

  He’d figured the worst that could happen was she’d shoot him down. He’d been shot down before and it hadn’t killed him. So he’d gone ahead and kissed her.

  He hadn’t expected her mouth to be like a ripe peach, all sweet, juicy texture. He’d wanted to devour it—to devour her. He’d wanted to haul her into his lap and feel her weight on him. He’d wanted to close his arms around her and open her legs around him and do all kinds of fun, dirty things with her.

  All night long he’d dreamed about her, about kissing her, the smooth, cool surface of her cheek, her hair sliding through his fingers and all the fun, dirty things he wanted to do with her. Now here he was, wide awake in the bedroom he used to use when he stayed with his grandfather, still thinking about her and feeling as horny as a fifteen-year-old locked in a bathroom with the latest edition of Penthouse.r />
  With Erica living in the house next door, he just might find remaining in Rockwell bearable, at least until he’d taken care of his grandfather’s ashes and figured out what to do with the house and its contents. Even if he never got further with Erica than he’d gotten last night, he’d like to stick around long enough to find out what was inside her box.

  The hell with her box. He wanted her. He hardly even knew her, but he wanted her the way a kid wants an ice-cream cone on a scorching August day. For a few creamy licks of that rich peach-flavored ice cream—sure, he could put up with Rockwell for a little while.

  He heard the drone of a car idling somewhere near his house. Traffic? On Old North Road? Then he heard the man’s voice again, scratchy and unintelligible as he shouted to someone. Jed sat up, pinched the bridge of his nose to squeeze his eyes into focus, swung out of bed and crossed to the window. He lifted the corner of the curtain and frowned.

  Two vans, a car and a pickup truck lined the road outside his and Erica’s houses. He didn’t recognize the vans or the car, but he knew the truck, dusty gray with scabs of rust and a funky dent twisting the rear bumper below the tailgate.

  Letting the curtain drop back across the window, he grabbed his jeans from the chair where he’d tossed them last night and yanked them on. He flung his arms through the sleeves of his flannel shirt and stormed out the bedroom and down the stairs, ignoring the cold floor against the soles of his feet. He kept on through the hall to the front door and out onto the porch, which was even colder, clammy from the layer of early-morning mist that hovered just above the ground. The sky was pearly; the sun, not yet up. What time was it, anyway? He’d forgotten to grab his watch before barreling down the stairs.

  He heard a muffled voice again, and then his father appeared from the far side of one of the vans. He must have spotted Jed on the porch, because he ambled over, more energetic than anyone deserved to be this early in the morning. Dressed in his plaid wool jacket and a pair of corduroy slacks that billowed around his skinny legs, he appeared uncharacteristically cheerful.