The Adventurer

have it, do you hear me?"
    He winced as her voice rose hysterically. "Believe me, I hear you."
    "I mean it. Every word. This is very important to me. I gave it hours of thought last night and I know how I'm going to handle everything. Things are back on track now and I won't let you mess it all up with sex."
    He smiled faintly, his mouth very close to hers. "I kind of like the thought of messing it up with sex. I'm not the knight in shining armor you seem to think I am, but I'll certainly do my best to give you what you want in bed."
    "No."
    He kissed her before she could find a way to deflect him. Sarah struggled furiously for a moment and then capitulated with a small, trembling sigh as his mouth moved on hers. He was so real, this man who had filled her thoughts and her heart for the past four months. How could she resist his kiss?
    It was no wonder she was vulnerable on this front, she thought fleetingly. Everything felt so
right
when he kissed her. She flexed her nails experimentally on his shoulders and he responded with a heavy groan.
    She could feel his strong thighs pushing against her and there was no mistaking the solid evidence of his early morning desire. His beard scraped along her cheek in a way that was unbelievably sexy.
    "Gideon." His name was torn from her in a breathless gasp. She could feel his teeth on her earlobe now. The sensation was driving her wild. Frantically she fought to hold on to her common sense. "Gideon, no. Not like this. Not until you're ready."
    "I'm ready. Believe me, I'm ready."
    "No, damn it, not yet. Please."
    He broke the kiss at last, but he didn't release her. His eyes were as green as emeralds as he looked down into her upturned face. She knew she was trembling and she also knew the heat she felt was probably evident on her flushed cheeks.
    "You really want me, don't you?" Beneath the blatant, masculine desire in his gaze was an odd, bemused look. "You really do want me. I've never had a woman look at me quite the way you're looking at me now."
    "Of course, I want you." She glowered at him, trying to hide her flustered emotions. "I've never made any secret of that. But that's got nothing to do with it. You need time to realize you want me, too."
    "I do want you."
    "I mean, really want me."
    "I really want you." Sexy amusement lit his eyes again.
    Sarah grabbed the dripping whisk and threatened him with it. "Stop teasing me and go take a shower, you beast. And when you come back into this kitchen, you are going to behave yourself, is that clear?"
    He grinned slowly, his eyes alight with a sensual promise that made her ache to throw herself back into his arms. "Real clear. Be interesting to see how you enforce your own rules." He turned and sauntered out of the kitchen.

5
    « ^ »
    T WO DAYS LATER , Sarah again succumbed to serious self-doubts. Conducting the courtship of a man might be a feasible notion if the object of the effort was shy and retiring by nature but Gideon was definitely not shy or retiring.
    What he was, was difficult and maddeningly unpredictable. He was also proving dangerous on a sensual level.
    Having discovered just how vulnerable she was to his kisses, he tormented her with them. He seemed to delight in catching her off guard and pulling her into his arms for a quick, stolen caress that inevitably left her feeling giddy and breathless.
    But whenever she tried to introduce a serious, personal topic or questioned him about his past, he became as silent and uncommunicative as a mountain.
    She could not tell if she was making any progress at all.
    And the courtship wasn't the only area that wasn't progressing with satisfying rapidity. They had not broken the code on the map and Sarah was getting frustrated. She had expected the actual treasure hunt to go smoothly.
    "You're too impatient," Gideon remarked as they tromped back and forth across the heavily wooded acreage that had once been owned by Emelina Fleetwood.
    There was very little left of Emelina Fleetwood's home, just a tumbledown cabin that was completely bare inside. Some distance away from where the house stood was the collapsed wall of what might have been the barn. A few feet from the back door of the cabin itself were several boards left from what might have been an outhouse. Rusty nails and a couple of pieces of metal from some old farm equipment were scattered around the ruins.
    Almost everything had long since been reclaimed by the forest. The multitude of owners who had tried to farm