Don't Tempt Me Read Free Page B

author had started out asking if she were, by any chance, descended from Jack Kingsley. She'd tried to deny it, knowing that the instant the truth came out, he'd start asking about the treasure, and he had.
    In a moment of sheer frustration, she'd told him about the letter she'd inherited. It had been written by the first mate of the Freedom , Jack Kingsley's ship, to Kingsley's illegitimate son, describing the incident that had taken the captain's life. The letter, combined with stories handed down through the years, painted a fairly detailed picture of what had happened that stormy night during the Civil War. The stories had grown into the Legend of Pearl Island: a tale of ill-fated love between Captain Kingsley and Marguerite Bouchard LeRoche, the beautiful wife of a Galveston shipping baron.
    Jackie sat forward, lacing her fingers. "Like I told Scott Lawrence, the crew members who overheard Jack Kingsley shouting that he wouldn't leave the ship without the treasure assumed it was something valuable. They didn't know its only value was sentimental."
    "Because it reminded Jack of all the things he didn't want to be," Adrian said, surprising her. "All the reasons he wanted to be an honorable man rather than to follow in his father's and grandfather's footsteps and be a pirate."
    She stared at him in shock. "How in the world do you know that?"
    "Because my ancestor Marguerite wrote about it in her diaries." He shrugged as if his knowing her family secrets were nothing. "She asked him once if the rumors were true, that he'd inherited Lafitte's missing treasure from his grandfather. He laughed as if it were an inside joke ---which I guess it was ---and said that yes he had it and he kept it in his cabin as a reminder of his goal to give up smuggling. Unfortunately, he never told her what the treasure was, so there's no mention of the powder horn in her diaries. That's the link we're missing in our research, and the reason we need your letter. The Historical Commission won't grant the permits we need to hire an archeologist unless we have compelling evidence that the powder horn was on board when the ship went down."
    "Marguerite wrote about Jack Kingsley?"
    "Extensively."
    Jackie's skin tingled at the thought that someone had written about her legendary ancestor. Her namesake. Not word-of-mouth stories that grew with every telling, but firsthand accounts. What was he like, really? Brave and valiant as his first mate claimed? Or another charming opportunist like so many men in her family, including her own father?
    "I need to know one thing," Adrian said. "What exactly did the first mate say about the powder horn?"
    She hesitated, too used to avoiding all talk of the letter to discuss it openly. But as Marguerite's descendants, Adrian and his family were a part of the tale. And they held the answers to questions she'd kept locked in her heart all her life. "He, uh, he said Jack had always wanted to pass the treasure on to Andrew, his son, to help him remember why a man should strive for honor rather than easy riches."
    "We need specifics, though." Adrian leaned closer, his expression intent. "On the phone with Scott, you said the letter states very clearly that the 'treasure' was a powder horn that Lafitte gave Kingsley's grandfather."
    "It does."
    "Perfect." He relaxed visibly. "That's exactly what we need in order to plead our case to the Historical Commission."
    She nearly pulled away at the mere mention of the government agency that so hated scavengers like her and her father, but the lure of Jack Kingsley held her in place.
    "Okay, now it's your turn for show-and-tell. Why is the horn so valuable?"
    "After Scott got off the phone with you, he did some research about the powder horn and found out it has quite a history. And I mean quite a history." His brows rose as if he had to struggle to take it all in. "Did you know it originally belonged to George Washington? And that he carved his initials into it?"
    Her head dropped