The Adventurer

good at dealing with women. If you want gallantry and charm and trust, you're going to have to look somewhere else."
    She huddled against him, aware of the tension that was tightening his whole body. Her fury evaporated. "You really are a beast, aren't you? Your first instinct is to bite that hand that's trying to feed you."
    "I said I'm sorry," he said again. His fingers moved in her hair.
    "I don't know if I can believe that."
    "It's the truth. I shouldn't have pushed you like that." He drew his head back to look down into her glistening eyes. "But I can't guarantee you it won't happen again."
    "You have a long way to go to catch up with me, don't you? A lot further than I thought at first."
    "So? Are you going to give up on me?"
    She shook her head slowly. "No."
    "Sarah…"
    She put her fingers over his lips. "And don't, I warn you, make any cracks about me not giving up on you until you've helped me find the Flowers. If you say anything even close to that, I swear I won't be responsible for my actions."
    He shut his mouth and squeezed her so tightly she thought her ribs would crack.
     
    T HE NEXT MORNING Sarah awoke with more doubts. The gentling of Gideon Trace was proving to be a formidable task.
    The man was like a wild animal that had once been wounded. The bleeding had stopped long ago and he had recovered physically, but the scars would forever make him cautious about trusting anyone.
    The coffee was brewing and the biscuits were in the oven. In a few minutes she and Gideon would sit down to breakfast just like two people who were involved in a real relationship.
    She was deliberately trying to give Gideon a taste of what living with her would be like but she couldn't tell yet if she was having any impact.
    Perhaps the treasure hunt had been a bad idea. She considered that thought very seriously as she slipped outside to taste the morning air while she waited for Gideon to finish shaving.
    It was beginning to dawn on her that she might have made a drastic mistake in using the treasure hunt as an opening for contacting Gideon Trace.
    Perhaps the truth was, she had only herself to blame for some of his wariness.
    How would she have felt if some stranger with whom she had conducted only a casual correspondence suddenly showed up on her doorstop and said he wanted to have a relationship while they searched for a fortune in jewels?
    Sarah grimaced and dug her toe into the ground. Perhaps she should call a halt to the treasure hunt for now and go back to square one. She had been convinced somehow that the Fleetwood Flowers and Gideon were linked and it had seemed natural to pursue the two of them together. But she might have been wrong about that part of things.
    Certainly her relationship with Gideon was the most important part of the equation. Perhaps she should give it her full attention for now.
    Equation.
    Sarah blinked in the morning light, inhaling the sweet scent of the evergreens.
Equation
.
    She stood staring a moment longer at the stand of trees that edged the clearing. Then, moving slowly, she turned and went back into the cabin.
    Gideon was just emerging from the bathroom, tucking his shirt into his jeans in an intimate, somehow very sexy gesture. But, then, Sarah reminded herself, everything about Gideon was sexy to her. He took one look at her face and his brows rose questioningly.
    "What's wrong?"
    "Nothing. I just thought of something."
    "What?"
    "Emelina Fleetwood was a schoolteacher."
    "So?"
    "So in those days a good schoolteacher emphasized the basics, reading, writing and arithmetic."
    "And?" He went into the kitchen to help himself to a cup of coffee.
    "Gideon, it just hit me that one very logical way for a retired schoolteacher to make the directions to her treasure was with a classic mathematical equation. One she was never likely to forget. The most likely sort of equation to choose for that kind of thing would be one from geometry. You know, triangles."
    "Triangles?"
    "You can make all sorts of measurements if you know just a little bit of information about a particular triangle. Heck, the Egyptians built whole pyramids based on stuff they knew about triangles."
    Gideon regarded her for a moment as he sipped his coffee. His eyes were very green. "It wouldn't be the first time someone used that technique. It requires that whoever hid the treasure be familiar with geometry, but you're right, a schoolteacher would have been."
    "We're sitting here with a map that's just loaded with info