Better Than Gold (8 page)

Melissa’s smile drooped but she tossed her red hair and sauntered away. He got the feeling people often acquiesced to what she wanted.

“Would it bother you if we closed the door?” Daniel asked, even though being closed in a room with Mia Parker might not be the best idea.

“She’ll find a reason to come back, you know, and she’ll probably tell everyone we’re down here. Fairly soon we can expect a parade of the curious.” Mia stepped around him, looked directly at him, a challenge he thought, as she closed the door and turned the lock.

Her expression made him suspect this woman was keeping her fires banked and waiting in case she needed to run ahead of a storm, whatever storm these records could bring. The chief seemed to know her well, to trust her.

She continued to study his face, as if trying to figure him out. He let his gaze wander. The way her wavy, light brown hair fell on her shoulders, it seemed to beg to be picked up by the handful and pushed back away from her face, so her jaw, her ear, her neck could be kissed.

“How much does the chief know about me by now?” he asked to make his mind go someplace besides kissing Mia Parker.

She nodded and smiled. “You’re very quick, Dr. MacCarey. You are right to think he knows. He knows everything from public sources, private sources and a few sources you won’t even think of. Scary, huh?”

“A bit intimidating.”

“He does what he needs to do to help keep the citizens of the town safe, like having us examine these records even though they are his and his alone.” She moved over to the table and chairs. “I suspect he chose you and me because we have a stake in not blabbing what we find to anyone who will listen.”

“I promise not to blab.”

She grinned with the tip of her pink tongue between her white teeth and he wondered if she knew what that did to him.

“Mock me if you must,” she said, “but the chief knows everything. Though, he won’t share his information—unless necessary.”

“I’m reassured.”

She made him want to smile. This made it even worse that he had to tell her his boss had ordered more limitations on the site. “Before we start, I need to say something.”

“Will it make me ecstatically happy?”

“No.”

“Do I need to know it right now?”

“Also no.”

“Would you be so kind as to tell me later?”

When he nodded, she asked, “Do you have any preferences on how we do these records?”

As she spoke, she removed her coat and placed it on the back of a chair. The dark blue, long-sleeved T-shirt she wore clung to her thin shoulders and small waist, and her jeans snugged against her hips. The gold chain lay against her neck and he had to force himself not to step forward and touch her where it lay.

Now he wondered if he needed to open the door no matter who might come snooping. No, all he had to do was remember the past or fear the future. “Sort them in chronological order as we go is the way I’d do them.”

She rubbed her hands together. “Let’s do it.”

The passion inside her glittered in her eyes. Her cheeks flushed, amplifying her clean, fresh beauty. He considered whether or not he could inspire her other passions, as well.

He cleared his throat. Clearing his head might well be hopeless, but he sure as hell needed to try. “You’d make a good anthropologist.”

“I’ll keep that in mind if being a restaurateur fails me.”

She stopped and put a hand on his arm as she locked her blue eyes to his. “Are we ready for this?”

“Are you?” He scooped up her hand and somehow found the strength not to kiss each fingertip.

“Well, you know. I told the chief I’d do this. If you want to go up and tell him you wimped out...” She shrugged and stepped away. “Please do.”

“You’re still trying to get rid of me.”

“Yes, though I’m starting to think you might not be so bad.” Her mouth curved as she put gloves on and picked up a box of files from one of the stacks. “Which means I need to try harder to get rid of you.”

“Anthropologists are difficult to get rid of.”

“And thorough, Chief Montcalm said.” She puffed out a quick breath and sat down on the tile floor, scooting the box between her legs. “What I should want is to burn these, all of them, in case they destroy the Roost’s chances, but I can’t think of them as anything but a colossal prize for the town.”

Her hair tumbled down into her face as she peered into the box and took out a file. When she opened the folder he wanted to move her hair out of the way so he could see her face. More than reading files, more than an anthropological find, he wanted to put his hands in that hair.

His colleagues at the university could be right. He might need a keeper, but not for the reasons they all thought.

She moved closer to the lamp and he grabbed a box of his own.

After they had been working for a while, Daniel opened his third box and found files from 1917 through 1920 written by a Chief Francis Reagan. The man seemed rather pleased to have seen the rest of the country finally come to its senses and pass prohibition laws because the State of Maine had been a leader in that social battle.

Getting lost in some of the files was irresistible and was going to make getting through them take a lot longer than it should. Mia didn’t seem to mind and neither did he. Though sometimes he found himself absorbed in watching her read files, like now.

She glanced up and smiled at him and it went right to his gut and places lower. “Nineteen twenties?” he asked indicating the box he had.

“Over here.” She pointed to a row near the table and when he got up, came over and slid a box in the line of ascension ahead of his. “You know, a museum might find these files very interesting.”

When she looked at him with big blue innocence, he chuffed instead of answering.

“You didn’t find our museum interesting?” Mischief played on her face.

“You could have warned me.”

“Ah-yuh, I could have, but what would have been the point? After all I’ve said about you getting in and getting out of town quickly, you’d have thought I was trying to hide something from you.”

“I would—”

“—have.” She grinned a dare at him.

“I would have doubted you.”

They studied each other with the smiles stuck on their faces. He realized he didn’t just like her smiles, he liked being the reason she smiled.

“So I saved you some time by letting you get the visit out of the way.” She sauntered over to him and emphasized her point by pressing the tip of her finger into his shoulder. Her eyes never left his. “We could have argued first and then you would have gone anyway.”

“All the same.” He retaliated with a shoulder prod of his own, a place he thought would be safe, but he was wrong. The attraction he had tried to squelch erupted and he had to step away. He grabbed a box and retreated.

“Wouldn’t you say Heather Loch and her museum need to be experienced at least once?” she asked as she casually bent over and retrieved another box.

“She’s certainly one of a kind.”

Heather Loch had demanded to know why he hadn’t delved more deeply into his own past, extolling the virtues of research and asking tough, frank questions. He hadn’t given her a reason.

“To be fair, if Heather’d just leave a person alone to browse, there are some facts in the museum,” she said, her head bent over the box of files. He wondered if she was being more deliberate than her casual manner indicated and forced himself not to watch.

“And the building is well kept,” he said. “That says something good about Bailey’s Cove that the church wasn’t torn down long before Ms. Loch took it over.”

“See you have been learning about our fine town. We are rooted deeply in history here.” She spoke the words lovingly. Her dedication to Bailey’s Cove made her even more attractive.

“She didn’t tell me anything about her being related to Liam Bailey, which surprised me.”

Mia looked at him and raised her eyebrows. “She doesn’t trust you yet.”

“I’m a good guy, really I am.”

“I’m sure that’s what pirates say about themselves, too.” She challenged him as she spoke and he wanted to cross the space between them and kiss her parted lips.

Work,
he reminded himself. He delved into his own box, but couldn’t help but wonder how much more there was to know. “Why did they change the name of the town from South Harbor to Bailey’s Cove when they did?”

“It’s never been clear exactly why the name was changed. But I was thinking, wouldn’t it be the biggest joke—” she held the file aloft her hair falling away from her face “—if they tore the town apart and the treasure of Bailey’s Cove turned out to be thirty-two boxes of paper?”

Her expression suddenly got more thoughtful, sad, and she looked away because either she wanted to retrieve another file or to keep him from seeing her face, he wasn’t really sure.

CHAPTER EIGHT

D
ANIEL
LOWERED
HIMSELF
to the floor next to Mia, facing her. “Mia, what we’re doing here could ruin things for you.”

She moved closer to him, close enough for her body heat to seep into his and she tried to smile. Her sadness shined through, a beacon of dread. “I just need to get the restaurant launched in time.”

He could see in her eyes she was not playing him. This was more than a business enterprise to her.

“I get that it’s important.” He pushed her hair behind her ear so he could see her face. The softness of her skin beneath his fingertip sent a demand through him. He wanted her, wrong as it was.

“The town’s historical significance is dying a slow death. We’re losing the folks who know the lore, the heart of South Harbor, of Bailey’s Cove.” She looked at him with too much trust. “I’d like to think finding a pirate’s treasure would sustain the town, but it’s easy to see in this world, it would be a flash flood leaving destruction in its wake and no genuine future for us. I wouldn’t want the entirety of Bailey’s Cove to be reduced to a hokey tourist attraction.”

Passion ran deep in her, hidden by the layers life had forced her to create. He found himself inhaling as much of her scent as he could, absorbing her. “Is there anything you can do in the meantime?”

“I can’t stop it. I don’t even know if I can slow it down.” She sat up suddenly and plucked a folder from the box. “I can’t think of a reasonable and rational way to steer the ship in this rising storm. And even if I had the power to keep everything under wraps, I can’t make that decision for the entire town and I’m afraid to mention anything to the Mayor or the town council. I’m afraid they might take up shovels themselves.” She stopped and looked up at him. “Daniel, what do I do?”

He could tell by the look on her face that she regretted the question as soon as she asked it, and that she didn’t ignore her misgivings said more about her strength than anything.

He took the folder from her hand and put it back in the box, and her blue eyes flashed at him.

She leaned into him, drawing him toward her until their lips were almost touching. The smell of her filled him and her blue eyes sparkled up at him. The sadness had lifted, replaced by smoke.

“Action...sometimes you just need to take action.” His words came out breathy as she shifted closer. Then her eager mouth moved over his, as his reservations silently imploded until he could barely remember them.

When he put a hand behind her head to deepen their kiss, she came to him, encircling his neck with her arms. He pulled her onto his lap, pressing her softness into him, his mouth testing, tasting. She met his tongue with hers and...

...she broke the kiss as suddenly as it had started and moved carefully off his lap and back onto the floor. “This is—um—wonderful, but the chief probably didn’t consider that we might get along
this
nicely.”

“I suppose not.” Cold reality came back swiftly when he realized he had lost control. “I’m—”

“Don’t you dare apologize.”

“I might be sorry—”

“No.” She covered her ears.

He felt the laughter rising easily inside him. “I might be sorry we met under these circumstances.” He spoke with his mouth very near her hand so she couldn’t help but hear him, nudging her fingers with his lips until she wiggled them in protest. “Or that I have to delay your project, but I’m not sorry I kissed you. You taste like a morning after a spring rain.”

“Oh, thank you.”

He smiled because that’s what she did to him, made him smile, and she managed to look sexy with her hands still pressed to her ears.

“Are you finished?” she asked.

“Yes.” He leaned in and took another taste, which she readily gave to him. Her mouth explored his as she moved her hands from her ears to his chest. When she curled her fingers under the hem of his sweater, he snatched them up in his.

It didn’t stop her. As her lips explored his face, her other hand reached under his sweater and found flesh. Her touch distorted reason like some crazy spell, stirring things inside him he’d never felt.

He placed a kiss on the soft skin where the gold chain lay on the nape of her neck and then raised her chin until she had to look into his eyes. “The last thing I want to do is to lead you to believe I have anything to offer you. I don’t and that’s not you, it’s me.”

She stared at him for a moment, any uncertainty completely gone from her clear expression. “Chivalry is not dead.” She resumed her exploration, taking inventory of the muscles in his abdomen, and then her expression changed to a dare as she flattened her palm against his belly and moved lower.

“In fact, chivalry might be dead and gone if you keep that up.” His voice was nearly a growl.

She slid her hand back up to safer territory. “It is alive and well in an anthropologist come to study my bones.”

He touched a fingertip to the angle of her jaw. “They are great bones.”

She leaned toward him again, and he stroked the soft skin of her neck. Then he reached into her thick, soft hair and luxuriated in the opulence as the silkiness slid and tumbled through his fingers—and he felt control begin to slip again.

“Hey, aren’t we supposed to be reading records to see what we might find about those old bones?” he said against her ear and then left a kiss.

She moved away. That was a shame because having her close enough to touch, smell and taste seemed right.

“You’re right.” She took her phone from her pocket and looked at the screen. “No signal. I’m—um—going upstairs to check for messages.”

With Mia gone, the room seemed dimmer, maybe even smaller. The light feeling in his heart receded, and the anger seeped back inside him.

Was he crazy?

He needed to think with a smarter part of his body...because his heart could get him in trouble, worse, it could get someone else’s into trouble if he let things go too far.

He pushed the boxes into their proper order. If he couldn’t fix himself, he for sure should not harm Mia any more than the consequences of that skeleton dictated.

A few minutes later, she hurried back into the room, tossed the room keys to him and grabbed her coat. “There’s a problem at the site.”

She ran out the door.

* * *

M
IA
RACED
HER
small SUV up Church Street. The sun hung much lower in the sky than she imagined it would. They had been in the records room longer than she thought, kissing, touching. And it had been wonderful. Full-on fantasy stuff.

But reality had returned quickly and succinctly.

A squad car sat out in front of Pirate’s Roost and when she got inside, two police officers stood in the doorway to the back room.

“Hello, Officer Gardner.” She greeted Lenny and then she turned to the other officer. “Hello, Officer Doyle.”

“Hello, Ms. Parker.” The older police officer turned away and stepped into the back room.

What was there? What did they find? Fear struck hard and she had to make her feet move forward.

Beyond the doorway, violent destruction had spread granite out across the floor.

“Oh, no.”

Chunks, pieces that hadn’t been there before, lay strewn about as if an explosion had taken place.

Her stomach twisted at the sight of the sledgehammer’s handle resting against the wall.

“Whoever did this was careful not to break through the plaster of the front wall so no passersby or patrol squads out on Church Street could see what they were doing,” Lenny said, looking at her less sternly than usual.

“How did you know anything happened?”

“The Sergeant told us to come by more often,” Officer Doyle added. “We checked in the back and the door was open, it might have been jimmied, but the thing is really old, so it’s hard to tell. Sorry, Ms. Parker.”

There was no mystery left in the burial chamber. If there had been anything hidden inside, it was gone. “It will be hard to undo this.”

“Do you think anything of value was taken?” Doyle asked as Lenny prowled, checking the other rooms and windows.

“Just the integrity of the crypt. They didn’t even take the stupid hammer.”

“We’ll ask around the neighborhood and find out if anyone saw anything. Do you know if the back door was left unlatched?”

“Are you kidding?” She made a conciliatory gesture toward Officer Doyle. “Sorry. Since the chief told me on that first day I needed to be vigilant, I have been.”

“We’ll take the hammer and dust it and the door for prints. There isn’t much else we can do,” Lenny said as he reentered the back room.

“I think we have to check with Dr. MacCarey also. He’s in town and should be here soon,” she said.

As she studied the debris, she noticed some of the granite pieces were streaked with brown. She wondered if the lines were random or purposeful. She sucked in a breath.

“Are you all right?” Lenny moved to her side.

“I’m fine. I’m fine.” She smiled to cover any alarm. Was the brown someone’s blood?

Lenny’s radio squawked something Mia couldn’t make out. He turned away and answered the call.

“Is he coming?”

It took Mia a moment to realize the other officer was speaking to her. “Who? Oh, Dr. MacCarey. I’m sure he is. I can have him call you, if you need to leave.”

“Are you all right here by yourself?” Lenny asked.

“I’m good.”

“Then we’ll be back to take your statements when we can,” Lenny said and then executed a crisp turn and was gone, Officer Doyle hurrying to catch up, carefully carrying the big hammer sheathed in plastic over his arm.

“No problem. I’ll let Dr. MacCarey know,” she said aloud with only herself as an audience. The officers had gone to deal with lawbreakers elsewhere, and Daniel would be here unless he ran away because he had been kissing the enemy.

Too bad on many accounts if he ran. She had been looking forward to reading the records with an anthropologist whose experience might offer insight—and she wanted him.

Hunkering down over a larger piece of stone, she looked more closely. Clearly demarcated brown wavy lines stretched across the gray. The lines could be random. They could also have been put there by someone. Maybe they were some kind of old paint, not blood.

What if it was blood?

She had seen no markings on the outside of the crypt.

What if the man had been alive when he was placed in the wall? What if he were trying to leave a last message? Even a dreaded pirate did not deserve that fate.

Horror washed over her until she began to tremble and almost fell back into the dust and rubble.

At the sound of footsteps she stood and moved away.

“What’s going on?” Daniel demanded and then quickly raised a conciliatory hand. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

When she didn’t answer, he took hold of her arm and turned her gently to face him. “What’s wrong, other than the obvious?”

She shrugged a shoulder, wondering where the prickly side of this man came from, but let it drop and pointed a finger toward the largest chunk of granite. The patterns in the discoloration seemed easier to see now. Even in the dim light of the dangling bulb the markings looked purposeful.

He bent down beside the debris and shined the beam of his flashlight across the stones until it landed on the large one. “The markings don’t look random.”

“There’s another one.” She pointed across the scattered pieces to a similarly large piece with more brown lines.

“Random or not, it makes a difference until we know for sure,” Daniel said as he continued to scrutinize the debris.

“I’m so sorry this happened, Daniel.”

He stepped over debris until he stood at her side. Then he tugged her chin up until he could see into her eyes. “Are you all right?”

“I’m good.”

He ran his thumb across her lips. “That response sounded automatic.”

All she could think now was,
Touch me, touch all of me.

“I’m afraid the instant answer is almost always the one I give these days.” She moved away before she stepped up and demanded he put his arms around her.

“Do you suppose the man was still alive when he was walled up?” she asked as another shiver of horror swept through her.

“I’ll have to take a closer look at all the pieces before I can make any sense of the discoloration.”

She heaved her shoulders and sighed. “I just wanted to sell great seafood and a passable hamburger to the tourists.”

He was already absorbed in the scene and might not have heard her sad lament. Just as well.

She left him to assess the damage and went to stand in the front window to be sad alone. Falling night brought out twinkling lights in the harbor and in the town.

It all looked so peaceful, so normal, and she loved every brick, boat and brown dog in the town.

As the reassuring thoughts filtered through her head, it occurred to her she should be rejoicing. Some of the questions the site had raised had been answered by several swipes of the big hammer. There was nothing else in the crypt. There was no treasure buried there.

Was it so terrible to want things to be normal?

She wasn’t even sure she knew what normal was supposed to look like. It certainly couldn’t be finding the man in her wall had been buried alive.

Normal certainly wasn’t being attracted to the man who had swooped in, helped trash her world and would sail out again as soon as he finished with Pirate’s Roost.

When she reentered the back room, Daniel was studying one of the pieces of granite. He looked up at her as if he had something he needed to tell her.

“Did you find answers?”

“No, but I still have something I need to tell you.”

Oh, that thing he tried to tell her in the records room.

“Okay. I’m ready. Tell me.”

“This morning I spoke with my boss.”

“That old fuddy-duddy of an interfering man?” Mia paused. “Sorry, I don’t know your boss.”

“He’s a medium fuddy-duddy of an interfering man.”

Nervous energy made her laugh at his response, but she was sure she was not going to like what the
duddy
had to say.