Page 99 of Her Reluctant Hero
“And you found one in Tunisia. How could the other one be here?”
He turned to her, the first time since she’d joined him. “So you really haven’t been in touch with Smoller.”
She blinked. “I told you I haven’t.”
“He found another ship off the coast of Florida. He has three of the caskets already.”
“Three?” Surprise kicked up her pulse. “How?”
“The other casket had been found over a hundred years ago off the coast of Africa. Smoller tracked it down and bought it.” He shifted toward her, his eyes glinting with that passion she remembered so well. “He knew what we were going to find in Tunisia before we found it. He went there for that casket.”
“How did he know where to find it? How did you find this one? More importantly, how do you know this is the fourth ship?”
His teeth flashed in a brief grin. “I don’t. But all evidence points to the fact that it’s a Mediterranean ship in the Caribbean, and it appears to be the correct age.”
“You said the caskets were cursed, that whoever discovered them faced the consequences.”
He chuckled. “And who better to know than me? Didn’t I lose everything after bringing up that damned thing?”
And yet he was searching for another. Perhaps one cursed object would invalidate another, if one believed those things.
He rolled onto his hip and popped to his feet. He gave the ocean one last glance before he reached a hand to her. “I’m heading back. You coming?”
She thought about taking his hand, sliding her hand along those calluses. No, he didn’t trust her with his secrets and she didn’t trust him with her emotions. “I think I’ll stay out here awhile.”
Another look at the ocean, then at her. “You’ll be okay?”
“You never worried about me before. I’m not that different, Adrian.”
The inclination of his head told her he thought otherwise.
“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning. Good night, Mal.”
Adrian pushed open the flap of the tent his brother and Jacob, the fifth member of their crew, shared. The two younger men each sat on a cot, a poker game in full swing, dollar bills in piles on the little folding table between them.
“Too late to get in now,” Toney said, his attention on his cards.
“Yeah, don’t let Robert see you,” Adrian warned. “He’ll clean you out.”
“Why do you think we’re playing in here?” Toney tossed a card in, accepted another from Jacob. “He looks like a nice old man, but he’s a shark when it comes to gambling,” he told the student.
“And he’ll play until he wipes you out or until he’s wiped out.” Adrian sat on the edge of his brother’s cot. “Can you drive Mallory to the city tomorrow?”
Toney lowered his hand and sat back on the cot. “Jesus, Adrian, can’t someone else go?”
“Who? I don’t want Robert on the road, Linda gets lost the minute she leaves camp and Jacob here can’t drive stick.” He rolled his eyes at his student. “Or I could take her.”
Toney’s lips thinned. “Christ, she doesn’t know when to stop causing trouble, does she? Right, fine, I’ll take her.”
Adrian hesitated. Not exactly the answer he wanted, though he didn’t want to stop everything to take her himself. Okay, he did, but he couldn’t. Even if he missed her. For ten years, he’d had her to talk to on digs, to bounce ideas off of and God, he missed that.
What he wanted was for her to stay, to be curious about the dive, to want to be with him.
“You need to be nice to her,” he said to his brother.
“Like she was nice to you?”
“Toney,” he warned.
