The Pandora Box (18 page)

The directness startled her. She had expected him to make an advance, something smooth and flirtatious or a persuasive speech on the pleasures of romance. Nothing as serious as this. Long-term things like that resulted in the kind of entanglements men like him usually did their best to avoid. Now, what was he up to?

It didn’t fit in with her image of him.

But the thought suddenly occurred to her that it might fit his image of her. Hadn’t she told him how important a solemn oath was to her, and she was not one to take such things lightly? Maybe this was his way of appealing to her on her own terms. An honest, genuine marriage, even though he had no intentions for it to last. Something pleasant to indulge in simply because there was time.

They were sitting along the low port rail, the seat nearest the water, and she held a hand out to it as she settled against the cushion. “What we’ve got here, Hawkins…” She could feel an occasional spray against her palm that managed to separate itself from the sea, “is a romantic situation.”

“We sure do.”

She turned her face into the wind, more to avoid his gaze than to keep hair back. As if he might somehow catch sight of those sweeping feelings she was hoping not to show. “Like when two co-workers fall for each other during a project,” she went on, “or ―”

He took her face in his hands and turned it back to his, and knowing he was going to kiss her, Dee put both of her hands on his in an effort to slow him down. “Or two actors that work too many hours together on the same―picture―it’s just the situation, Hawk―it’s―”

She didn’t get any farther on her prepared speech. His mouth stopped the flow of words, gently at first, and then with an intensity that made her heart beat faster. Dee tried to pull back, surprised that he could convey such intimate messages without any words, before she could even ward them off. It was as if she were an instrument he already knew how to play.

“What’s wrong, sugar?” he whispered. “You can’t say my intentions aren’t honorable.”

“No relationship, that’s what we agreed, Hawkins.” She pulled his hands away from her face but didn’t let go of them in case he should catch and hold her again. “That’s what we agreed.”

“Dee, we have a relationship.” He closed his hands over hers as if she had meant for him to hold them.

“This isn’t a relationship, it’s purely physical.”

“You’ve been sending out some pretty strong signals, sweetheart. You’re not going to turn and run now, are you?”

“I’m not responsible for your uncanny ability to interpret feelings. You ought to be ashamed of yourself playing with people’s feelings the way you do. It’s...it’s an invasion of privacy.”

“You shared them with me.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Why hold out? Did it ever occur to you we might actually enjoy ourselves, here? Friendly’s better than bickering, and we might even turn out to be real friends.”

“You risked your life for mine, Hawkins. Friends don’t come any better than that. But you know something? I think if it had been Marion or Starr out there, you would have done the same thing for them just as quick. That’s a rare and amazing quality few people have and I’m…awed by it, Hawk…I…”

“So, why the no?”

She was startled by his directness, yet when he pulled her into an embrace, she had no inclination to resist, surprised at how easy it was to put her arms around his neck and give into the wonderful feeling. Suddenly, it was not hard to reveal her deepest feelings, and the discovery that he was as easy to talk to as he was to take shelter in, made her feel safe.

The simmering below the surface of her heart…that feeling she had been mulling over since this afternoon, was as much a revelation to herself when she replied, as it was to him.

“Because I don’t want to be left in bits and pieces when you go. I don’t want to love you, Hawkins! Because I’m a forever person, and losing someone I had given myself to would kill me. So if you care anything for me at all, don’t ask anymore. Please.”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t let go of her, either. Dee knew she struck a nerve and he was deciding.

“You don’t know what you’re passing up. How can you decide on something before you try it?”

“Because both of us already know who we are. My heart wouldn’t handle devastation very well. And I have a feeling yours wouldn’t, either.” Dee pulled away from him.

“You’re driving me crazy, Dee.”

“I’m just being honest.”

“Well, if you said anything else, I’d have had an answer for it.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I hope you’re good at saying, no, because it’s not one of my strong points.”

“I don’t have another ‘no’ left in me, Hawkins.”

“I knew that before you came up here.”

“So, where does it leave us?”

“You on one side of the boat and me on the other.” Then he smiled that beautiful smile. “Which I would trade in on a friend for life any day. You’re quite a woman, sugar.”

“You’re not so bad yourself.”

“Yeah, well, we’re going to need some serious rules if this arrangement’s going to work.” He stood up and unclipped his own safety line. “No more enjoying how sweet and cuddly you are before you wake up, that’s for sure.”

“Wayne Hawkins! You mean you…why if that isn’t the most underhanded way of taking advantage of a person, I don’t know what is!”

He laughed. “I couldn’t resist. But people only give what they want to, you know. Even in their sleep. Maybe if you’d trust me a little more you wouldn’t have to carry the weight of so many secrets.”

“I don’t have many left.”

“That’s an understatement. We’ve got the whole country knowing what we’re up to. What else could there be?”

He stopped the rhythmic motion of coiling the safety line up neatly and looked over at her. “There is something else, isn’t there? Come on, baby, let’s be straight with each other. You’ve got me wrapped around your finger, what else do you want?”

“There is something else, actually. One last thing before we can...oh, Hawk...” She sighed and looked away. “I’m afraid it’s going to knock you for a loop.”

“Then you better tell me straight out and get it over with.”

“It’s about the journal.”

“I knew it!” He shook his head and swore under his breath before placing the coiled line over one of the nearest stanchions. “It didn’t make sense keeping it to yourself this long. Has to be a hitch somewhere.”

Dee was surprised by her sudden dread of disappointing him.

“Well, come on, what is it?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it. I mean, didn’t you say we had to be far enough out so they couldn’t pick up our conversations?”

“It’s all right.” He sat down on the seat. “I took the camera apart last night. Turned out it’s only a small tracking device, not a bug.”

“You took my camera apart? Hawk, that’s a thousand dollar camera. I do all my work with that!”

“I put it back together.”

“You should have at least asked me. What if it doesn’t work right?”

“I’ll replace it. Now, what about the journal, sweets?”

“It’s…what it is…” She readjusted the clip in her hair, but even with the momentary delay, the right words still didn’t come. “Oh, I should probably just show you,” she finally conceded.

“How about right now? You know where the key is. Might as well get it out of the safe.”

“You mean, leave my watch? You said, if I ever…”

“The captain’s on the bridge,” he answered in a tone that sounded more ominous than permissive. “So go ahead.”

22

The Last Secret

“I found it a great relief to be again on the sweet, blue sea, out of sight of land, and free. Only on the bounding blue, is one rocked into a peaceful rest at noon of day, at dusk of night, feeling that one is drifting, drifting, not seeing, or knowing, or caring, about fool mortals striving for life.” ~ Nellie Bly

Even Marion’s laptop was quiet down below. The salon, bathed in its red glow of night lighting, looked like a crimson pen and ink drawing from an era gone by. The luxurious tufted seats and mahogany table, shining brass and glass fixtures, and even the small painting of an old schooner that hid the yacht’s safe, spoke to Dee of another time. In this dark and quiet hour she could almost picture the famous Hermann Goering sitting at this table, his face flushed with drink, cigar smoke wafting up toward the ceiling, running thick ring-clad fingers through his notorious hoard of jewels. It almost gave her a chill.

But she was avoiding...again.

By the time she returned to the deck, she had a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. The journal was her last hold over Hawk for keeping the upper hand in a contest that was rapidly slipping to his favor. A week ago, she would have held out to her last breath to keep the controlling factor. But it didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. What mattered to her now was not whether she could keep the reins on this whole expedition, but that Wayne Hawkins would not lose whatever respect he had somehow built up for her.

He was not in the cockpit when she came out, but adjusting a loose sail on the upper deck. She felt the slight increase in their slant as he pulled on a line, making the sail take more wind and pick up
Pandora’s
speed. When he returned, she was sitting at the lower rail again. Dee quietly held out the journal to him as he stepped lightly down from the walkway to join her. He took it over beneath the red glow of the cockpit light and, unable to sit still, she got up to stand near the wheel. It only took a few minutes.

“This isn’t Peterson’s writing.” And then a few moments later when the full realization struck him. “This is... it’s not even… why, the whole thing is in German! Do you speak German?”

“No,” she replied, “but Nels gave me a general idea of what was in it. And I brought a German/English dictionary.”

“A German/English dictionary—it would take weeks to figure this thing out with all the colloquialisms, slang, and conjugated verbs! You know where this puts us? It puts us right back in …” He stopped as the full impact of their situation dawned on him.

He shook his head slowly. “You are one cool manipulator.” He set the journal aside and looked at her in utter amazement. “You bluffed your way right into the middle of this thing. You don’t know any more than Starr and I do! If I’d have known this, last week, I would have left you in Oregon.”

Dee’s first inclination was to back off when he started toward her but she held her ground. He put a hand over one of hers, against the wheel, so she couldn’t move away even if she wanted to. Once again, she could see shadows of a temper only barely kept in check.

“You’re like the eye of a hurricane, you know that? All beautiful and peaceful to look at but deadly dangerous to get tangled up in.” He let go and moved back under the light to flip through the journal pages again as if he couldn’t believe it.

“You can still quit,” she offered.

“It’s too late to quit. You’ve got us in up to our necks with Eddington now. But you sure enough better quit keeping things to yourself, I’ll say that much. Start by telling me everything Peterson told you about this thing.”

“Well, the important stuff is in code. Beginning with pages thirty-seven, forty-eight, and ninety.”

“That sounds like location, latitude and longitude.”

“It is, how did you know that?”

“Sailing around the world twice, I’ve plotted a lot of courses. Mind if I take it down and work out the exact position on the chart? I’d like to look it over more anyway.”

“How could I say no?”

He tapped the journal thoughtlessly against his palm for a moment. “You can’t.” Then he bent down long enough to brush the side of her face with a kiss. “Goodnight, Dee Hawkins.”

“Shhh!” Now she looked toward the dark companionway as if one of the others might materialize at any moment.

“Don’t worry, sugar, your secrets are safe with me.” He tapped the top of her head with the journal before turning to leave. “All of them.”

Dee sank back onto the nearest seat cushion as if she had barely averted a catastrophe. What had just happened? Once again, he had surprised her by behaving totally opposite to the kind of person she thought he was. What’s more, that brief inkling of anger had rustled like a gust of blustery wind that was here one moment and gone the next. And, as if that wasn’t enough, she felt an incredible sense of relief that, not only had he kept his temper in check, their strong connection was still intact. She had confronted him with the one thing she had dreaded most to tell him, and they were still friends.

Still married.

Married!

Her lawfully wedded husband. The man she had just poured her innermost feelings out to, when she had never in her life been that open with anyone else. It happened so easily. As if there were no walls, at all, between them. That he had even gone so far as to say “her secrets were safe,” had actually intensified that odd sense of protection she felt in confiding them to him in the first place. Or even being physically next to him. The truth was, she felt safe standing next to Wayne Hawkins, no matter what they thought of each other. But that he had understood her so perfectly, and obliged her, was the last thing in the world she would have expected from someone like him.

Dee pulled a pair of black knit gloves out of the pocket of her jacket and put them on as she thought about all this. She actually felt relieved at not having to keep her guard up anymore or be so careful of what she did, or didn’t, reveal. And when a momentary drop in wind intensity came as
Pandora
glided down into the trough of a long, rolling swell and then snapped back into the sails with a sudden freshness and quickening speed as it rose up on the other side… a sense of thrill came over her. She was on the adventure of a lifetime. At this very moment. With the most dedicated, dearest (in spite of all their quirks), friends in the world. And she absolutely, loved sailing!

The very nature of it. The giant grandeur of the sea, and the power of the wind. And the amazing experience of being able to control those two things to such a degree that something as small as
Pandora
could ride between them and make her feel as safe and content as a baby in a cradle. She liked the rhythmic rocking sensation that soothed one’s nerves and had given her some of the deepest, most relaxing sleeps she had ever had in her life. Not since she was a kid anyway. Then there was the complete and exquisite order of this little man-made world as it glided through all that was unpredictable in the natural world around it.