Treasures Lost, Treasures Found Read Free

don’t you tell me what else is on your mind?” Ky suggested. “I want to get back to the house and clean these.”
    “You had a letter. It was put in our box by mistake.”
    It was a common enough occurrence, but by his brother’s expression Ky knew there was more. His sense of an impending storm grew sharper. Saying nothing, he held out his hand.
    “Ky…” Marsh began. There was nothing he could say, just as there’d been nothing to say four years before. Reaching in his back pocket, he drew out the letter.
    The envelope was made from heavy cream-colored paper. Ky didn’t have to look at the return address. The handwriting and the memories it brought leaped out at him. For a moment, he felt his breath catch in his lungs as it might if someone had caught him with a blow to the solar plexus. Deliberately, he expelled it. “Thanks,” he said, as if it meant nothing. He stuck the letter in his pocket before he picked up his cooler and gear.
    “Ky—” Again Marsh broke off. His brother had turned his head, and the cool, half-impatient stare said very clearly—back off. “If you change your mind about dinner,” Marsh said.
    “I’ll let you know.” Ky went down the length of the dock without looking back.
    He was grateful he hadn’t bothered to bring his car down to the harbor. He needed to walk. He needed the fresh air and the exercise to keep his mind clear while he remembered what he didn’t want to remember. What he never really forgot.
    Kate. Four years ago she’d walked out of his life with the same sort of cool precision with which she’d walked into it. She had reminded him of a Victorian doll—a little prim, a little aloof. He’d never had much patience with neatly folded hands or haughty manners, yet almost from the first instant he’d wanted her.
    At first, he thought it was the fact that she was so different. A challenge—something for Ky Silver to conquer. He enjoyed teaching her to dive, and watching the precise step-by-step way she learned. It hadn’t been any hardship to look at her in a snug scuba suit, although she didn’t have voluptuous curves. She had a trim, neat, almost boy-like figure and what seemed like yards of thick, soft hair.
    He could still remember the first time she took it down from its pristine knot. It left him breathless, hurting, fascinated. Ky would have touched it—touched her then and there if her father hadn’t been standing beside her. But if a man was clever, if a man was determined, he could find a way to be alone with a woman.
    Ky had found ways. Kate had taken to diving as though she’d been born to it. While her father had buried himself in his books, Ky had taken Kate out on the water—underthe water, to the silent, dreamlike world that had attracted her just as it had always attracted him.
    He could remember the first time he kissed her. They had been wet and cool from a dive, standing on the deck of his boat. He was able to see the lighthouse behind her and the vague line of the coast. Her hair had flowed down her back, sleek from the water, dripping with it. He’d reached out and gathered it in his hand.
    “What are you doing?”
    Four years later, he could hear that low, cultured, eastern voice, the curiosity in it. It took no effort for him to see the curiosity that had been in her eyes.
    “I’m going to kiss you.”
    The curiosity had remained in her eyes, fascinating him. “Why?”
    “Because I want to.”
    It was as simple as that for him. He wanted to. Her body had stiffened as he’d drawn her against him. When her lips parted in protest, he closed his over them. In the time it takes a heart to beat, the rigidity had melted from her body. She’d kissed him with all the young, stored-up passion that had been in her—passion mixed with innocence. He was experienced enough to recognize her innocence, and that too had fascinated him. Ky had, foolishly, youthfully and completely, fallen in love.
    Kate had remained an enigma to him,