Tuck's Treasure (4 page)

She rubbed it again, realizing that her bottom didn’t really hurt. The swats had been sharp, and had definitely hurt when being delivered, but the after effects were not that bad.

“Asshole!” She screamed the words up the stairs, her anger increasing as his laughter drifted down. The words that had come out of her mouth had shocked her. As a teacher she was always careful about what she said. For those downright filthy words to come out of her mouth was not good.

Obviously she needed to watch that in the future, and she needed to watch her new “captain.” If he was capable of spanking her when he barely knew her who knew what else he was capable of doing?

“Jerk!” She yelled it up the stairs, knowing it made her seem like a petty child who was angry because she’d been punished. The sound of the engine starting reached her ears. He was just going to go on as if nothing had happened. What the hell? Then the situation got the better of her. She stormed up the stairs and turned to find him standing at the wheel.

“What makes you think you have the right to—?”

“You lied to me.” He gave her a look that made her even angrier than she’d been before. “What else have you lied to me about?”

“I didn’t lie to you.” She knew her voice was shaky but she couldn’t help it.

“Lying by omission is the same thing.” He had transferred his gaze back out to the ocean and she swallowed hard, trying to keep from exploding.

“What haven’t you told me? Do I get to spank you for what you’ve left out?”

He snorted out a laugh. “Left out about what? You’re the one who came looking for me, remember? How could I be the one to leave something out?”

“Don’t ever spank me again.”

“Humph. Don’t ever lie to me again and I won’t have to, will I?”

“You have no right. As far as I’m concerned, I’m your employer and…”

He shut off the engine and the boat jerked. “Whoa, let’s stop right there. You’re not paying me for this. I’m doing this for Tuck, not for you, so you’re not the boss here, I am. I thought I made that perfectly clear earlier.”

There was a long silence while she tried to keep from calling him names again. When her anger was back under control she licked her lips. “You wouldn’t be out here if it wasn’t for me. I could have gone to someone else.”

“Tuck suggested me, remember? In your dream?”

Oh yes, she remembered. And she thought it strange that she hadn’t had a dream about her uncle since she’d made contract with Dylan Cray. Was it some sort of trick that the young sailor had pulled? She dismissed the idea as ridiculous. There was no way he could have done it. Dreams were not something that could be faked.

“Still, I could have ignored it. As far as I’m concerned I’m the boss. Spank me again and I’ll—”

“You’ll what? Swim back to Florida? It’s quite a ways, and I’m sure the large creatures in the ocean will be happy to have dinner provided for them.”

“You are an asshole, just like Ma…” Charlene clamped her mouth shut before she could complete the sentence.

Dylan didn’t take a step toward her, but she could tell that he was mad. Before he’d seen it as sort of a joke, and hadn’t seemed angry. But now his anger seeped through his pores, making the air around him seem dark and dangerous.

“Finish your sentence. What were you going to say?”

Charlene shook her head and he took a step toward her. She could tell that she’d said something that was very, very bad. Of course she’d known it would be bad before she’d said it. That was why she’d tried to stop before completing her words. That was why she’d prayed he hadn’t understood what she was going to say. But it was obvious that he had.

“Were you going to say like Max Ives? Is that what you were going to say?”

“Yes.” As soon as the word was out of her mouth she wished she could pull it back in. Rage took over Dylan’s features and he stepped right up next to her. She refused to back down, and was thankful when he didn’t put his hands on her, for spanking or anything else.

“Do you know Max Ives?”

“Not really.”

“What does that mean, Charlene?”

She tried to marshal her thoughts, put them in order so that he didn’t get angry when she told him about her morning visitor. But she supposed it was too late for that. Dylan was already angry and anything she had to say was sure to just push him more. Why hadn’t she kept her big mouth shut? Why had she let her anger get the best of her?

“Tell me exactly what you know about Max Ives, right now. If you don’t, I promise the spanking you just got will seem like I was doing nothing more than swatting at a fly.”

“All I know is that he came to my hotel room this morning.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth Charlene winced. That didn’t come out the way she’d planned.

“Oh really? Well, it would seem that you know him pretty well, then. No wonder you were late getting to the boat.”

Charlene took a deep breath, trying to gather her thoughts so that her next words came out better than the last ones. “That’s not what I mean. I met him for the first time yesterday when I left the lawyer’s office. He offered to buy the map from me. Then, this morning, he came to me as I was leaving my hotel room. He really wants that map.”

“I’m sure he does.” The tone of Dylan’s voice made Charlene relax just a little. He no longer sounded as if he were a string being pulled tightly in two different directions. Now he just sounded pissed. Very pissed. “Son of a bitch. He’d do anything to get his hands on Tuck’s business, and now he wants his treasure, too.”

“I didn’t say anything to him about where we were going, or about the map.”

Dylan’s laugh was soft. “That he knows about the map doesn’t surprise me. Tuck talked about that treasure all the time and it was obvious he had a map. I just never expected Ives to be so well informed that he’d know you were here, and that we were going after the treasure.”

He got up and moved around the boat, his gaze drifting over the horizon in different directions.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for other boats, seeing if anyone has followed us.”

“We’re in a boat,” she said, hoping the tone of her voice didn’t give the “duh,” feeling she had. “How would someone follow us?”

“The same way they follow in a car,” Dylan said. “They’d just hold back more, since there’s no traffic. They could be sitting fairly close by. Assholes.”

Nerves ratcheted up Charlene’s spine as she thought about pirate movies. Would Ives and his men be the type of adversaries to try and take the treasure by force, if necessary?

“Maybe we should go back.”

“Like hell,” Dylan replied, moving toward a chest. “If he’s followed us, and I have no doubt someone is out there, somewhere, then he knows the general direction we’ve come in. If we go back he keeps searching. Trust me on that.”

He opened the chest and started to rummage around, coming out with a pair of binoculars. He went to the other side of the boat; Charlene wasn’t sure which it was. She was always getting them mixed up.

Then he lifted the glasses to his eyes and started to scan. After a few minutes he muttered a few unintelligible words and turned to her. “He’s out there all right, or one of his minions is. They’re not close enough for us to see with the naked eye. We might think it was another pleasure boat out for a tour, but I know Ives’ stock, and that’s one of his boats.”

“You can tell that it’s him, even when he’s that far off?” Charlene shook her head in disbelief. “That’s a little farfetched if you ask me.”

“Ives has a very distinctive paint job on all his boats, and, while he’s smart, he doesn’t give me any credit for being smart. I’m sure he thought I’d never notice they were there and he didn’t bother to use something besides one of the boats in his fleet.”

“Fleet? How many boats does he own?”

“Five,” Dylan said, putting the binoculars back up to his eyes to gaze out at the water again. “He’s the biggie here, but it always pissed him off that Tuck’s one little boat gave him competition. It always surprised me, and I wondered; if you want to know the truth, if there was something more to their hatred of each other than just the business.”

“Tuck didn’t tell you?”

“Nope. It was the one thing he would never talk about.” Dylan put the glasses down on a padded chair, then stripped off his shirt. “Let’s go for a swim.”

“Excuse me?” She watched him walk to the edge of the boat, then yelled out for him to stop before he could dive in. “What are you doing? We need to find the island and search for the treasure.”

“Not yet.” He turned to her and grinned, something that made her toes tingle. His hands were on the button of his jeans and her heart beat just a little faster. He really was a handsome man, and if he took his clothes off, well then…she shook her head, trying to clear it of the impression of him, naked.

This was a man who had just spanked her, as if he’d had the right. She didn’t need to think about him naked.

“Dylan, we have things to do.”

“I’m in no hurry,” he replied, undoing his jeans and stepping out of them. She was almost disappointed to see the swim trunks that were under them. She’d expected to see tighty-whities, revealing all. “Sometime tells me if we stay here all night they’re not going to keep up company. As it gets closer to dark they’ll head back to the Keys, and then we’ll go on with our hunt.”

“In the dark?”

“You afraid of the dark?” He put his fingers inside the waistband of his shorts and her excitement inched up even more, even as she mentally chastised herself for being attracted to him. He’s a spanker, she screamed to herself. He spanked you. Spanked you! Don’t you dare like him. Don’t you dare!

“No, I’m not afraid of the dark, but how will we find the island in the dark?”

“By using the stars,” he said with a wink. “I’m a good, old-fashioned sailor. Now, are you coming in?”

“No.” Her response was greeted with a splash and she shook her head in disgust. They were here to look for treasure, not to go for a swim. But then again, if someone was after them…

She took up the binoculars and walked to where he’d been standing. It took her a few minutes to find it but sure enough there was a boat out there, and it wasn’t moving. It had a very distinctive paint job, cream with purple stripes that crisscrossed each other. If all Ives’ boats had that same pattern than it was obvious why Dylan knew it belonged to the man who’d dogged her the last few days.

“He uses different colors.” She jumped as Dylan’s voice sounded in her ear. Only a quick grasp kept her from dropping the binoculars.

“What? When did you…?”

“I’m quite as a church mouse.” He was wiping his face with a towel with one hand while the other pointed to the boat. “Ives’ boats use different colors, but all have the same paint job, the cream with the crisscrossed stripes.”

“Oh.” She glanced back at their tail. “Do you really think he’ll leave when it starts to get dark? Have you got a crystal ball? Or do you get visions?”

“You never know what I get.” He wiped the towel over his face again. “But then again, I’m the captain, remember? We do what I say on this boat.”

“I still think we should go to the island now. What’s the worst that could happen?” She shrugged her shoulders then inched past Dylan. He was standing much too close for her liking.

“Why, you got a boyfriend waiting for you back on shore?” Before she could answer, though, he said, “No, that’s not it.”

“Excuse me?” She put down the glasses and put her hands on her hips. “What makes you think I don’t have a boyfriend?”

“Not your looks,” he said, grinning. “You’re very pretty. But, I wouldn’t have had to spank you for lying to me if you’d had a boyfriend who spanked you as often as I think you need it.”

“Excuse me?” He really was insufferable. Much too cocky for her liking. Maybe he was the one who needed a spanking.

“Is there a parrot around here? I think those words just left your mouth.”

“Dylan Cray you are a…a…jerk!”

He nodded. “Some people say so. That doesn’t change the fact you need a spanking, and a much harder one than I gave you earlier. You need a good old fashioned bare-butt over the knee spanking, on that will really get your attention.”

His words shocked her. Sure she’d lied to him—well, not lied. She’d left things out that was all. But that didn’t mean she needed to be spanked. “What have I done this time? Refused to go swimming with you? Talked back? Or are we back on the fact that I left out information?”

“Not telling me about Ives coming to your hotel room is reason enough for me. You’re luck you’re not over my knee right now.”

She took step backward, wishing there were more places to go on this boat. There were berths below deck, she knew. Maybe she should go down there and stay away from this man. He was much too strange for her.

“Take me back to shore. I’m done with this little excursion.”

“Don’t think so.” He winked at her, which only made her angrier. “I can make hamburgers for dinner.”

The abrupt change in conversation floored her. First she was talking about ending the tour, and now he was talking about dinner?