GHOST OF A CHANCE

by Nina Bruhns

  He darted her an appalled look. "Did you just take my photograph?"

  "There's a certain irony in that image, don't you think?"

  He grimaced. "Whatever. It doesn't matter. The photo won't come out anyway."

  "Why not?"

  "They never do."

  * * *

  That shut her up, Tyree thought with satisfaction, taking her by the hand and leading her away from the disquieting graveyard. She was hard-pressed to keep up with him, but he didn't slow his pace. They had too much to accomplish before tonight. And he didn't want her thinking about their earlier conversation at the cottage. Or freaking about why he couldn't be captured on film.

  "So, does this mean you're a vampire, too?" she asked when they stopped at the main thoroughfare to let traffic pass.

  "Don't be absurd," he muttered. So much for not freaking. "Vampires don't exist."

  "Neither do ghosts."

  "I told you, I'm not—" He snapped his mouth into a thin line. Ah. She was baiting him again. Anger was good. Anything was better than more tears.

  He gripped her hand and tugged her through a break in the traffic. Since their bodies were linked, he could probably just have towed her through the cars with no ill effect, but he didn't want to upset her. Or take any chances. He'd never experimented with just how much of a connection there needed to be for another body to take on all his unnatural physical powers.

  "Here we are," he said, then stopped in surprise when he saw a notice of demolition taped to a front door on the building he wanted to show her. "I don't believe it."

  "What is this place?" she asked, peering up at the narrow, timbered row house. "It looks ancient."

  "It is. It's where I used to live. In my privateering days."

  Her interest rose. "The place that's supposed to be haunted?"

  He rolled his eyes. "What can I say. I needed somewhere to live while I was looking for the treasure."

  "Makes perfect sense to me," she muttered.

  He pointed to the adjoining row house. "Sully lived next door." He glanced up and down the street. "Looks like they're tearing down the whole block. Guess damage from the last hurricane was worse than I thought."

  "What a shame. Haunted or no, it's an awfully pretty building." She lifted her camera and started shooting. "Better take some pictures while it's still standing."

  "Wait here. I'll be right back."

  Tyree wanted to see the inside one last time. He'd spent some good times here. And if they really were demolishing the house, there was something he definitely needed to do.

  Making his way around the alley, he glided through the back entry and went down the hall. Cracking open the front door, he motioned to Clara. "Hurry. Come in."

  "How did you—"

  He pulled her in and shut the door. "I always kept a spare key under the flower pot."

  "Sure you did." She looked around warily. "What are we doing in here?"

  He grinned. "Looking for treasure."

  She puffed out a breath. "Again? Hope we have better luck this time."

  "Something tells me we will."

  They meandered through the empty, darkened rooms, dank with disuse and sadly neglected. The house had never been light and bright, but it had once been cheerful, filled with an abundance of glowing candles and cozy furniture, silken throws and warm grog. An eighteenth-century bachelor pad, designed for comfort and indulgence on every level.

  How he wished he had known Clara then. She wouldn't have stood a chance against his seduction. And once he'd gotten her in his bed, he would never have let her go. Life would have been very different. He would have been a family man like Peel, with a wife to come home to at the end of a long voyage, and a waiting crew of his own unruly offspring, all towheads with bright Caribbean-blue eyes. And he would never have been in the pub that night…

  Upstairs she turned to him, her blue eyes sparkling. "Any sign of the treasure?"

  He gazed at her, wishing like hell… "Standing right in front of me. I'd trade all the treasure in the world for one more day with you."

  "Tyree, please don't," she said, the spark dimming. She slid away from him, running her finger along the paneled wall, leaving a track in the dust. "I'm trying very hard to keep my sanity here." She shot him a look. "Sorry."

  He smiled wryly. "No apology necessary."

  He wanted to laugh. She thought he was crazy. He wished to heaven he were. Crazy could be cured.

  "The treasure's in my bedroom," he said.

  Her brows hiked charily.

  Lord, she was cute.

  He resisted sweeping her into a kiss and turned instead to the room on their left, pushing open the dark wooden door. The bedroom was small, made even smaller by the late addition of a walk-in closet where the bed niche had been in his day. Rich paneling had also been installed throughout, covering the original rough tongue-and-groove wallboards.

  "Here," he said, opening the door to the closet. "This is where my bed used to be."

  "In the closet?" she asked, peering curiously into the dark space.

  "Nay, that's new. Originally it was one of those built-in beds."

  "That looks like a cupboard, you mean? With curtains?"

  "Aye." He rapped his knuckles against the closet's wood paneling. "Sully's bedroom was on the other side of this wall."

  "I can't see a thing in here."

  "Scared?"

  "Of what? That I'll run into a ghost?"

  He chuckled. "Don't suppose you brought a flashlight?"

  "Nope."

  He rapped again where the head of the bed used to be, and heard the hollow sound he was searching for. "Aha. Here it is. Stand back."

  With that he swung his boot up in his best imitation of a Bruce Lee kick. If Tyree'd been alive, no doubt he'd have fractured his leg in three places from the blow, but again his preternatural physical strength came in handy. The wood splintered.

  "What on earth are you doing?" Clara squeaked. "You can't do that!"

  With a few tugs, he had it down to the original wallboards. "Why not? It's my bedroom. And my treasure. Mine and Sully's."

  "What are you talking about?"

  She bumped into him just as he found by feel the hidden lever embedded in a timber joint. He yanked it and pulled her aside as the mechanism clicked. The secret door didn't budge.

  "Damnation."

  He gave the door a bang with his fist and it swung free with a whoosh, hitting him in the shoulder.

  "What's that?" she gasped, clinging to him in the pitch darkness.

  "This," he said, reaching into the yawning blackness of the small square space, trying not to think what manner of crawling creatures he might encounter inside, "is Sully's and my old hidey-hole. And this," he said, pulling out a long-absent but familiar solid weight, "is my box of personal treasures. Here, take it." He shoved the modest wooden chest into her arms.

  "I don't— Omigod. It's a strongbox."

  "Aye. And here—" he shoved his hand far back into the hole, back to Sully's side of the secret cupboard, and grasped the other box he'd known would be there— "is Sully's treasure chest."

  "You've got to be kidding me. Tyree, we can't take these, they don't belong to us!"

  "Sure they do." Suddenly, his hand brushed against something that felt like a rolled up parchment. "Wait. There's something else. That's odd…" Gingerly, he extracted the two-foot-long, tubular object. "Let's find some light."

  Bringing both chests and the mysterious tube, they exited the closet and went over to the window. The glass was covered with a thick layer of brown grime, but still let in a fair amount of light.

  "What is it?" Clara asked, juggling his box in her arms.

  He took it from her and set it on the floor along with Sully's. "I'm not sure. Let's take a look."

  Gingerly setting the rolled object in a patch of sunlight, they knelt down and examined it closely.

  "It looks like some kind of fabric."

  "Canvas," he supplied.
"It's a roll of painter's canvas."

  "Maybe we've discovered some unknown masterpiece," she suggested eagerly. "Wouldn't that be cool."

  "I can't imagine what Sully would be doing with an unknown masterpiece."

  "How do you know it was Sully's?"

  "It wasn't mine, and we were the only two who knew about the hidey-hole. We constructed it ourselves so it could be opened from either side."

  "And nobody found it in all these years?" she asked skeptically. "That seems too incredible."

  "I always meant to go back for the boxes," he mused. "I even sent Rosalind after them once. A wealthy solicitor bought the block after Sully and I were killed and leased out the flats. Rosalind pretended to be interested in renting one. But he'd put fancy paneling on all the walls, hoping to fetch higher rates, so she was unable to get to the secret cupboard from either room. When he passed on, I bought the building from his estate. So I knew our treasures would be safe enough until I went to fetch them." He sighed. "For some reason, I never got around to it."

  "Until now."

  "Aye." He smiled into her doubting eyes, anticipating her change of expression when he opened the chests. "Nothing like waiting until the last minute."

  "And you own the building?"

  "One of my holding companies does." For another few days, at any rate.

  "I thought you said you weren't a millionaire."

  "I thought you said you weren't interested in me for my money."

  "I'm not."

  "Then what does it matter? Let's go home. I need my keys to open the chest. And Mrs. Yates's advice as to how to unroll this canvas without destroying it."

  "Okay. But first I have to stop by the station to pick up the diary from Jake Santee," Clara said, jerking Tyree back to everything he didn't want to think about.

  Should he be a selfish bastard and forbid her? Or should he practice reining in his new and uncomely tendency to jealousy…

  "Nay," he ground out. "Do it tomorrow." Or better yet, never.

  "Tyree—" But something in his expression must have warned her off, for after a second's hesitation, she said, "All right. I guess it'll keep for a day."

  Picking up the two chests, he said, "Good. You carry the canvas."

  * * *

  "Well, that's interesting," Clara said, drawing the words out.

  Pencil drawings. That's what was on the canvas. Tyree stared down at the top half of the painting-sized rectangle which Mrs. Yates had managed to unfurl by suspending over a couple of pots of boiling water. Probably not the best method for preserving the integrity of the brittle fabric, but at this point he didn't care. He wanted to know what was on it.

  "We'll need more steam to see the rest," he said, wondering what the hell the misshapen pencil drawings depicted. To him they looked rather like blood spatter, but he'd probably just been watching too many reruns of The New Detectives.

  "Islands," Clara said, standing back. "It looks like a map of a bunch of islands."

  He furrowed his brow. "I'll be damned. It does kind of— Christ's Bones!" he exclaimed, suddenly recognizing the configuration. "It's a map to the treasure cache! Quick, unroll the rest!"

  Steaming was not a process that could be hurried. Tyree paced a rut into the kitchen floor as Clara and Mrs. Yates endeavored to relax the bottom half of the rectangle, which had been rolled much tighter than the top.

  "Didn't you say it took Sully and you both to find the island cache?" Clara asked, wiping condensation from her brow as they delicately spread the remaining inches of canvas open. A larger perspective drawing of an island was revealed, the very familiar lines of which left its identity unmistakable.

  "Aye."

  "Then how could Sully have a map to it?"

  Good question. He was loath to believe what he was thinking. Not of the man whom he had loved as a brother for half a lifetime, in spite of the unhappy ending to their friendship and resulting ignoble curse. But…

  "There is only one explanation that I can think of," he answered with a heavy heart.

  "What would that be?" Clara asked, glancing up at his bitter tone.

  "I suppose," he said slowly, "my good friend and partner, Sullivan Fouquet, had made plans to betray me."

  * * *

  Chapter 16

  « ^ »

  "I don't believe it," Clara stated categorically as she and Tyree walked through the flower garden toward the bungalow.

  She could tell he was hurting. Trying not to believe the hard evidence they'd left drying on Mrs. Yates's kitchen table. She knew there had to be another explanation.

  "Sully would never betray you."

  "And you know this how?" His voice was eerily quiet.

  "Through my research. I know him better than anyone. His blood flows in my veins, for Pete's sake. He loved you, Tyree."

  "His sister's blood flows in your veins," Tyree corrected. "And I knew him better than anyone. How could you possibly fathom whether he loved me?"

  She gazed up into his cheerless eyes. Because I love you.

  "How could he not?" she replied. "He was your best friend and would follow you to the ends of the earth. He wouldn't betray you. Especially not for money."

  Tyree opened the bungalow door then turned to her. "But would he betray me for love?"

  "Love? I don't understand."

  They went inside and he paced to the table where earlier they had dropped off the two chests. "I know the legend, that Sully and Elizabeth were the ideal couple, loving and true, their perfect romance cruelly and prematurely ended by a dastardly villain. Yours truly," he said with a little bow.

  "Are you saying they weren't?"

  "Sully was madly in love with her, that much is true. But toward the end, he'd started suspecting…"

  "What?"

  "That she was not as enamored as she pretended to be. He suspected she was seeing someone else."

  Clara stared at him, and suddenly it dawned on her what he was implying. "You?"

  "It wasn't me. I didn't like Elizabeth in that way, and even if I had, I would never— Sully was my friend."

  Unreasonably relieved, she pulled out a chair and dropped into it. "But you're saying he might have thought you had?"

  "It's possible. Something he said during the duel. He accused me of wanting her for myself. I thought he was just mad with grief. But perhaps…"

  Clara took Tyree's hand and pulled him into the chair next to hers. "No," she said resolutely. "I still don't buy it. He would have confronted you, not gone behind your back."

  He gave her a searching look. "I guess we'll never know." He leaned a little closer. "But I like how you're finally saying 'you' and not 'St. James.'"

  She blanched. "Did I? I didn't mean to."

  "You've done it before. When you were worried about me. Or my feelings."

  She shook her head in denial. "Don't be silly. Why would I worry about you?"

  All at once she realized she'd never let his hand go, because he started reeling her in by it. Pulling her closer, sliding her farther and farther off her chair so pretty soon she'd have no choice but to stand or end up on his knees.

  "Because you're in love with me," he said, and with one firm tug she was in his lap.

  "I'm not," she said, but even she could hear the lie.

  His hand slipped under her top and she wriggled in protest.

  "You're wearing one of my bras," he murmured. "Let me see."

  "Ty—" but before she could utter his name her top was off and across the room on the floor "—ree!"

  And then he touched her, caressing her breast with a loving reverence that choked off the objection that rose to her lips.

  "The jade-colored one. Beautiful."

  She gazed into the depths of his soulful indigo eyes and knew she was lost to reason.

  No use. Saying no to Tyree was impossible. It didn't matter that she would be terribly hurt. She was already in enough pain over this man to last a lifetime. This way, at least she'd have another nig
ht with him to remember.

  "I suppose you want another lesson?" she whispered.

  He brushed his fingers over the swell of her breasts. "Nay."

  "What then?"

  "I want to unlock my box of treasures. There's something in it I'd like you to have."

  "How do you know what's inside?" she asked, though she knew he wouldn't answer.

  He pulled a small ring of keys from his jeans pocket, all ornately old-fashioned, suspended from a silver watch chain she'd seen clipped to his pirate breeches. With a sense of unreality, she watched him select a squat key and insert it into the lock of the dusty, cobweb-covered chest he claimed had belonged to him two hundred years before. She wasn't even surprised when the catch snapped open.

  He lifted the lid.

  What did a man like him consider personal treasures, worthy of being secreted away, safe from prying eyes and the long arm of the law?

  First came a letter. "From my mother, when she was ill and I was sent to stay with a friend," he said, a tortured expression briefly flashing through his eyes. "This was her."

  He passed Clara a small, oval portrait painting of an elegantly fragile lady dressed in the style popular around the time of the American Revolution.

  "She's lovely," Clara said, noting the close resemblance between them. "You look like her."

  "So my father often reminded me."

  She glanced up but he'd moved on, extracting a cracked leather pouch spilling gold coins. There had to be at least fifty of them. "Oh, my God! They must be worth a fortune!"

  "No doubt."

  Her jaw dropped when he set them aside as though they had no more significance than a bag of popcorn, then plucked out a bundle of papers.

  "Ho. Receipts for the spoils of our last voyage." He leafed through them. "From the department of war for their share, and several from private parties who bought the bulk of the goods. It was a Spanish spice trader, as I recall." He tossed the packet of receipts at her. "Here. They'll help your case for proving we were privateers and not pirates."

  Her jaw fell even farther. "Tyree, do you have any idea— Do you realize— I couldn't—"

  "Sure you could. I have no use for them…"

  Where I'm going. He didn't say the words aloud, but they reverberated through her head as though he'd shouted them.