The Adventurer

her head down on his shoulder, nestling close. "I figured you must or you wouldn't be putting the Fleetwood Flowers back into that strongbox for me to find in the morning. When did you dig them up?"
    "About four years ago. I needed the money to expand
Cache
and since I was now supposed to be an expert in treasure hunting I decided to do some. I went through a file I had put together on old treasure stories that sounded promising—the real stuff, you understand, the kind of tales I never print in
Cache
."
    "The kind you pursue yourself when you go on vacation?"
    Gideon nodded. "The Flowers was a story that had possibilities and it was fairly close to my home here on the coast. So I did a little research, scraped together enough for a down payment on the land and bought the old Fleetwood property for a few months. As soon as I found the Flowers, I sold the land again."
    "Just the way I had planned to do it. I guess this proves that great minds really do run in the same track, doesn't it? Why didn't you sell the earrings if you needed the money?"
    "Believe me, I was going to sell them. It was the reason I'd dug them up in the first place. They'd definitely bring a nice chunk of change. Take a look."
    Gideon unwrapped one of the black velvet packages. A pair of glittering sapphire earrings set in an old-fashioned design tumbled out onto the desk. They lay there like brilliant blue flowers. He opened another velvet bundle and a set of beautifully matched pearl earrings cascaded onto the desk. Then he unwrapped the next three sets of Flowers. Rubies, opals and diamonds winked in the light.
    "Emelina Fleetwood's buried treasure," Sarah breathed. "They're beautiful."
    Gideon gazed down as the small fortune lying in front of him. "I intended to sell them off quietly, a stone at a time, but I kept making excuses not to do it. Then one day I realized I wasn't going to be able to ever sell them at all. For some insane reason, I felt I had to hang on to them."
    "Of course you did. You were waiting for me to come and claim them. It all fits together now. I always knew the Flowers were linked to you. I just didn't understand quite how. But now it's perfectly clear. You were holding them, waiting for me to show up in your life, weren't you? You just didn't know it. You've got intuition, too, Gideon."
    "You think so?" Gideon wrapped his arm around her waist, holding her tightly to him.
    "Definitely. Why do you think you were the one who made Savage and Company a legend? Why did you sense that ambush five years ago? Why do you think you found the Fleetwood Flowers without even a map?"
    He gave her a wry look. "Why did I marry the wrong woman the first time around? Why did I trust Jake Savage to be my partner and friend?"
    Sarah waved that aside. "I guess your intuition works better with treasure and danger and that sort of thing. Mine seems to work mostly with people. We'll make a great team."
    "I think we will." He kissed her throat.
    "You let me go through the whole treasure hunt from start to finish so I'd have the thrill of actually finding the Flowers on my own, didn't you?"
    "I don't know if that was my initial plan," Gideon said. "I wasn't thinking that clearly in the beginning. I just knew I had to keep you around for a while and hiring on as your consultant and partner was a way to do that."
    "And naturally you stipulated that you'd get to keep at least one pair of the earrings. After all, you'd already found the whole bunch. You had some rights in the matter."
    "That's very understanding of you. It's also exactly what I told myself at the start."
    Sarah giggled. "When I think of how you let me tramp all over the Fleetwood property and struggle with that darned map…Oh, Gideon, it's too much. You must have been laughing yourself silly."
    "Treasure hunting is fun. I wanted you to have the thrill." Gideon's eyes turned serious. "And I didn't want the adventure to end too soon. I wanted time with you. I couldn't figure out what was going on between us, but I didn't want to let you go out of my life too quickly. The treasure hunt was a way of stalling you for a while."
    "What about arranging for us to have to share that cabin? That was a deliberate ploy to try to get me into bed, wasn't it?"
    "I guess it could be viewed in that light," Gideon said modestly.
    "And virtually kidnapping me and forcing me to come back here instead of going home to Seattle? That was a ploy to try to keep me around, too, right? Protecting me from