by Jan Hudson
Her smile faded. “I don’t understand. Do you hate me so much?”
His eyes shot up. “Hate you?” His laugh had a hollow ring. “I don’t hate you, Tess. Far from it. How could I hate the saint of Galveston? Give Mother Teresa a gorgeous body, a slightly crazy family, and a set of bagpipes, and the two of you could pass for twins.”
Tess frowned. “Dan, what are you talking about? I’m no saint.”
“You’re not? Hook told me that Becky was an unwed mother on welfare until you helped her open the Mermaid. He also said that one of your boutiques is managed by a good-looking Iraq veteran named Hank who’s a recovering alcoholic and the other by a woman who’s a paraplegic. And then there’s Nancy at the gallery, and Luis.”
“So? They’re all very competent people.” She searched his face, trying to fathom his line of reasoning. “You’re not making a lick of sense. How is all that related to your touching me?”
Shifting his position so that he lay on one hip and was propped up by his elbow, he scooped up a handful of sand and watched it slowly sift through his fingers.
“My self-respect has taken enough of a beating in the past few weeks. You’ve helped me through a rough time, and I sincerely appreciate it. But I don’t want to be just another stray you’ve brought home. Tess, leave me with some pride.”
As the light slowly dawned, Tess had the strangest urge to strangle him.
“So you think I consider you a humanitarian project in need of a little tea and sympathy?” she asked.
He looked pained.
“I see.” She stretched out beside Dan, reclining on her elbow, mirroring his pose. With one finger she traced a lazy pattern through the curls of hair on his chest, and his pectorals flexed when she circled a nipple with her fingernail.
Her finger trailed up his throat, over his chin, and to the little freckle at the corner of his mouth. “It might interest you to know,” she said in her most seductive tone, “that I’ve never had any desire to nibble Luis’s toes.” She ran her finger back and forth along the crease of his lips, nudging them until they parted and she touched the tip of his tongue. “I’ve never conjured up an image of Hank’s kissing me.” She leaned over and dropped a feather-light peck on his lower lip. “And I’ve never”—she circled his mouth with the tip of her tongue as her foot slid up his leg—”never fallen in love with a single one of them.”
Dan groaned. “Tess . . .”
She laughed a low, husky invitation. “Friday, you’re such an idiot.”
His arms went around her, and he rolled her onto her back. His mouth covered hers with a low growl, and his tongue thrust between her lips. Tess held him close, feeling as if she were drowning in sensation. His hand stroked upward over the curve of her hip, her rib cage, and his palm paused at the outer swell of her breast. She strained toward it.
Dan was sure he was in heaven as he trailed his tongue along the soft hollow of her throat, tasting her sweet skin. The heady fragrance of her coiled around his brain and left him mindless. To hell with self-respect. He couldn’t have resisted her now for a truckload of it.
Something whacked him in the back and he grunted. “What the—”
He raised himself up and looked directly into the big brown eyes of a little girl squatting beside him. About four or five years old, she was dressed in a ruffled green sunsuit and holding a big rubber ball. Behind her were two other children and a dog.
“Hi, mister. Whatcha doin’?”
Dan growled and the mutt behind the child growled back.
Tess shook with silent laughter.
“It’s not funny,” Dan muttered as he looked down at her. “I can’t believe you have me so crazy that I was about to make love to you on a public beach in broad daylight.”
“You wanna play ball with us?” the little girl asked.
“No, thank you.” Dan tried to smile.
Tess exploded with laughter.
“Wait till I get you home,” Dan said. “You have some explaining to do.”
Chapter 6
Tess didn’t want to explain. She hadn’t meant to tell Dan that she was in love with him. It was far too soon for such declarations, and she didn’t want to scare him off. But neither did she want him to believe that he was no more to her than some new altruistic endeavor. Since she didn’t want to discuss either issue, she chattered all the way home, not allowing him to question her.
She gave a running commentary of the history of every house and building they passed. What she didn’t know, she made up. She suspected that he was on to her game for once or twice he raised his eyebrow and gave her an odd look.
“The reason Galveston has so many oleanders is an interesting story,” she said as they got out of Buttercup and walked to the front porch. “There was a sea captain—or maybe he was a merchant— and I forget his name, but he brought some cuttings to his sister who lived on the island. It was about—”
“Tess.”
“Yes, Dan?”
“It won’t work.”
She affected a look of wide-eyed innocence as she opened the front door. “What won’t work?”
“Sooner or later you’re bound to run down. Then we’ll talk.”
She received a temporary reprieve when a “yoo-hoo” rang out from the dining room. Martha Craven, her white curls scraped back from her face with a strip of cotton, poked her head around the door.
“I thought I heard you two.” The older woman beckoned them. “Come in and say hello to the girls. I’ve told them all about my handsome grandson and they’re just dying to meet you, Danny.” Martha bustled toward Dan, hooked her arm through his, and propelled him along with her. “We’re having a Mary Kay party—that’s makeup you know—and we’re almost finished.”
Grinning, Tess trailed along behind the pair. Her grin widened when they entered the dining room. The five elderly ladies sitting around the table immediately snatched off their cotton headbands and began fluffing their hair and preening for the newly arrived male. It didn’t matter that he was forty or fifty years younger than everyone except the middle-aged blond who was the beauty consultant.
Dan was gallant as he was introduced to the women, complimenting each of the wrinkled ladies as if she were a beauty queen. Tess felt her admiration for him grow as she watched him. He could be such a sweetheart.
One blue-haired matron examined herself in a hand mirror. “I’m trying to decide on a lipstick. Do you think this shade is flattering, Mr. Friday?”
Olivia leaned forward. “Mary Ella Hartman, you know very well it doesn’t make a dime’s worth of difference which one you pick.”
“Oh, I know it, Olivia. I think that’s the worse thing about being old. You wake up one morning and find you don’t have any lips left.”
“What did she say?” Lela Spillman asked Olivia.
“You need a hearing aid, Lela. You’re getting as deaf as a doorpost,” Olivia said loudly.
“That shade of lipstick reminds me of the color you wore in the beauty contest, Mary Ella,” Irene Reynolds interrupted. “It was the same year they tore down the old Tremont Hotel—or was it the year before?” Irene Reynolds raised her eyebrows and peered over her glasses. “When your daddy saw you in that bathing costume, he marched you home and locked you in your room for three months.”
The group of childhood friends launched into spirited reminiscences, and Tess and Dan winked at each other. Both were trying to suppress grins. It was obvious how much the ladies were enjoying themselves and how much such activities kept their spirits alive. Tess was sure that Dan, after spending over three weeks in Galveston, could see how happy his grandmother was and how groundless his concerns had been. Living with Aunt Olivia had brought a new sparkle to Martha Craven’s face and new energy to her step.
Still smiling with indulgent amusement, Dan motioned with his head toward the exit. As they turned to sneak away, Olivia called out.
“Tess, I think that letter you’ve been waiting for came today.”
>
“The one from Dr. Staats at Stanford?”
“It’s on the hall table.”
Her heart pounding, Tess hurried to the hallway and snatched up the letter. She ripped it open and quickly scanned the contents. “Yippee!” she screamed, throwing both arms in the air. She grabbed Dan in a bear hug and started dancing around.
“Good news, I take it?” Dan said, unable to keep from smiling as Tess laughed and planted kisses all over his face.
Olivia and Martha scurried in from the dining room, with the beauty consultant and other ladies close on their heels.
“Is everything all right, dear?” Olivia asked.
“Everything is fabulous! Dr. Staats confirmed it.”
“Oh, wonderful!” Martha Craven clapped her hands together and laughed. “Now Tess can have her house and we can—”
Olivia poked Martha in the ribs and rolled her eyes to the ladies who all had their ears tuned for a new topic of gossip. She winked at Tess and turned to the waiting women. “Come along, girls. We need to make out our order blanks.” She began shooing them back to the dining room.
“But, Olivia, what in the world is going on?”
“Nothing for you to worry about, Mary Ella. Tess just had some good news from an investment, that’s all. She’s always been the excitable type you know. I think you should order the pink lipstick and the lipliner. It’s totally awesome. Don’t you agree, Martha?”
When the women were gone, Dan said, “Why do I suspect that your letter has nothing to do with an investment?”
Tess looked at the crumpled paper in her hand, then back up at Dan and laughed. “Because you’re remarkably astute?”
“Well?” After a long pause, he said, “Are you going to tell me or not?”
She gave him a sassy grin and a little bob of her head. “Not.”
His eyes narrowed. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with that buried treasure nonsense, would it?”
Tess dress herself up to her full five-feet nine-and-one-quarter inches and tilted her nose in the air. “It’s not nonsense.” She waved the letter in his face. “This proves it. Dr. Lawrence Staats is a professor at Stanford University and the country’s leading handwriting expert. Authenticating historical documents is his specialty.”
Realizing that she was talking loudly enough to be overheard, she lowered her voice. “I sent him a sample of handwriting from the map and letter we found, along with a small corner of the paper it’s written on. He compared it to other documented samples in his possession, and he thinks that it’s authentic. Our map as written by Jean Laffite.”
When he looked skeptical, she thrust the letter at him. “Here, read it yourself if you don’t believe me.”
Dan read the single page quickly. “I notice that he leaves himself an out. He writes that the paper is ‘consistent with samples manufactured in the early-to mid-eighteen hundreds’ and based on his preliminary study, there is ‘strong indication’ that the handwriting sample you sent matches other documents known to have been written by Laffite.”
“Friday, you’re such a hard-nose.” She grabbed him by the hand. “Come upstairs with me.”
When they entered the second-floor sitting room that Olivia and Martha shared, Tess sat him down in an easy chair and went to a large trunk in the corner. She took several items from the humpbacked chest, which smelled of camphor and age, and settled herself on the ottoman at Dan’s feet.
“Here is the Bible Laffite gave to his daughter Violet.” She opened a wooden case that was about ten by twelve inches. Inside the worn, velvet lining was a remarkably well-preserved Bible. She opened it carefully. “This is the date of Violet’s wedding. And here are the names of her parents.”
“But it says her father was named Theodore Lucas.”
“I’ll explain that later. Look at all these dates that are recorded.” She pointed out the birth of twin daughters, Electra and Amelia, born to Violet the year after her wedding. Also listed were various births and deaths and marriages of the generations up to the birth of Tess’s mother Anna, the death of Anna’s father in the early days of Viet Nam, and Anna’s marriage to Robert Thomas Cameron.
“Aunt Olivia told me her grandmother Casey Prophet, the one who was married to the Texas Ranger, died several years before I was born. She must have recorded the last entries, and then the Bible was packed away with her things.”
“I still don’t understand what this has to do with the pirate.”
“Privateer,” Tess corrected. “Be patient and I’ll show you. Notice the front of the Bible case.”
Dan closed the wooden box and looked at the crazed surface with seven multicolored stones embedded in a meandering rainbow trail. “What am I supposed to see?”
“I’m coming to that.” She handed him two sheets of yellowed, worn paper encased in plastic. A corner of one—the sample she’d sent to Dr. Staats—was missing. “This is the letter that was in the Bible.”
Dan looked exasperated. “It’s in French.”
“I know that! Laffite was French.”
“What does it say? In English, please.”
Tess laughed. “In essence, it’s written to ‘My darling daughter’ and says that he had left her because he had many enemies intent on doing him harm. Her mother’s family had told Violet that Theodore Lucas, her father, was dead, because they didn’t approve of his privateering. Although he assures her that it was an honorable endeavor and he always secured the appropriate letters of marque. He says that he had thought of Violet often and that now on the occasion of her marriage, he wanted her to have this Bible, that would provide for the spiritual and material benefit of herself, her children, and her children’s children. Each time she looked at the stones on the case she was to remember the wealth of love that her father felt for her.”
Dan frowned. “It’s a very nice story, Tess. But I haven’t heard anything that convinces me her father was really Jean Laffite. During that period there were lots of privateers.”
Tess handed him a photocopied sheet of paper. “This is a page from a translation of Laffite’s memoirs which were written between 1845 and 1850. The original journal, in French, is in a museum near here. Don’t raise your eyebrows at me, Daniel Friday. I’ll admit that there is some controversy about its authenticity, but several prominent historians, including Dr. Staats, believe that it’s genuine. Notice the highlighted area. He says that he gave his name as Theodore Lucas to some English captain. It was one of the many aliases Laffite used.” She smiled smugly.
“Does the journal mention Violet or Contessa?”
Her face fell. “Well, no. But I’m sure there’s some plausible explanation.”
He took her hand and brought it to his lips. His eyes were gentle and his expression tender. “Honey, I’ll admit there are some strong coincidences, but don’t pin your hopes on something so flimsy. I don’t want you to be hurt.”
Tess should have felt warmed by his concern, but she didn’t. His condescending attitude irritated her to no end. “Give me credit for some brains!” She snatched her hand away. “I never realized just how stubborn you are, Friday. When you make up your mind about something, an act of Congress wouldn’t change it.”
“Are you insinuating that I’m closed-minded?”
“I’m not insinuating anything. I’m telling you flat out. You’re closed-minded. You haven’t even heard all the evidence and already you’ve decided that I’m suffering from some sort of nutty delusion. What is it with you? I thought you were getting over your stick-in-the-mud attitudes, but they’ve just been lurking in a dark corner waiting to reappear, haven’t they? You’re quick to claim that you don’t jump to conclusions, but let me tell you, up until now I haven’t seen any evidence that would convince me of it.”
Dan started to say something, then paused and took a breath. “I’m sorry, Tess. Perhaps you’re right. I know this is important to you. Why don’t you show me the rest of the things?”
“No!”
&n
bsp; “Now who’s being stubborn?”
Tess shot to her feet and planted her hands on her hips. Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t have to prove anything to you. None of this is any of your business anyway.”
“Children, children,” Olivia said as she came into the room with Martha close on her heels. “What’s going on? We could hear you all the way downstairs.”
“Your grandson,” Tess said to Martha, “is undoubtedly the most pig-headed man I’ve ever met!”
Martha cocked her head. “Danny always has been a wee bit stubborn.”
“Gram!”
Tess crossed her arms and gave Dan a smug, I-told-you-so look. “He doesn’t believe that we know where Laffite’s treasure is buried.”
“But, Danny, the map shows exactly where it is.”
“What map?”
“This map,” Tess said, whipping out another sheet of tattered parchment encased in plastic. “The one that marks seven areas and gives explicit directions to where treasure was stashed. The one that says: ‘Some of these I buried myself during the time my commune at Campeche was flourishing, and others were hidden for me by my good and trusted friends, the Bowie brothers.’“
Dan looked stunned. “Let me see that.” He reached toward the map.
She held the map away from him and tilted her nose in the air. “Oh, I think not. If you will excuse me, I’m going to take a shower.”
Tess fluttered her fingers in a farewell gesture and strolled from the room, taking the map with her.
“Tess, come back here!” Dan roared. But she ignored him and hurried upstairs to her spacious third floor bedroom.
She’d barely locked the door behind her when Dan started rapping on it, demanding to talk to her. Stifling a giggle, she sauntered to her desk and laid the map beside Casey Prophet’s journal and the other material she’d been collecting. Serves him right for being such a spoilsport, she thought, listening to him knock and call to her. It would do him good to stew for a while. Daniel Friday might as well begin learning right now that he should never ever underestimate her.