The Pirate & The Adventurer & The Cowboy

hunt. You know how excited I was about opening that strongbox. And you couldn't bear for me to find it empty, could you? You wanted to give me a gift and letting me find the Fleetwood Flowers at the end of my big adventure was your present to me. Gideon, I am so thrilled, so incredibly touched.
You love me
."

    Gideon gazed down at the knight still in his hand. "You're amazing, you know that? Some women would look at a scene like this and assume right off the bat that they had been or were about to be robbed, cheated or otherwise swindled out of a fortune. You look at it and assume it's evidence that I'm in love with you."

    Sarah grinned. "It is and you are. Aren't you?"

    Gideon's answering smile was slow. His eyes lost their wariness. A deep, aching tenderness took its place. His hard face seemed to gentle in the lamplight. "I must be to have gotten myself into a situation like this."

    Sarah laughed, her delight bubbling up inside like champagne. She darted around the edge of the desk and threw herself into Gideon's lap. "Tell me," she demanded. "Say the words."

    He touched the side of her face wonderingly. "I love you, Sarah."

    "Since when?" she pressed.

    "I don't know. Does it matter?"

    "No." She put her fingertips on his lips. "It doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is that you're sure now."

    "I'm sure."

    She put 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