Treasures Lost, Treasures Found

morning drifted through the screen to run over her hair and face, through the thin material of her nightshirt, cool and promising. While she stood, Kate absorbed the colors, the light and the silent thunder of day breaking over water.
    The lazy contemplation was far different from her structured routine of the past months and years. Mornings had been a time to dress, a time to run over her schedule andnotes for the day’s classes over two cups of coffee and a quick breakfast. She never had time to give herself the dawn, so she took it now.
    She slept better than she’d expected, lulled by the quiet, exhausted by the days of traveling and the strain on her emotions. There’d been no dreams to haunt her from the time she’d turned back the sheets until the first light had fallen over her face. Then she rose quickly. There’d be no dreams now.
    Kate let the morning wash over her with all its new promises, its beginnings. Today was the start. Everything, from the moment she’d taken out her father’s papers until she’d seen Ky again, had been a prelude. Even the brief, torrid embrace of the night before had been no more than a ghost of the past. Today was the real beginning.
    She dressed and went out into the morning.
    Breakfast was impossible. The excitement she’d so meticulously held off was beginning to strain for freedom. The feeling that what she was doing was right was back with her. Whatever it took, whatever it cost her, she’d look for the gold her father had dreamed of. She’d follow his directions. If she found nothing, she’d have looked anyway.
    In looking, Kate had come to believe she’d lay all her personal ghosts to rest.
    Ky’s kiss. It had been aching, disturbing as it had always been. She’d been absorbed, just as she’d always been. Though she knew she had to face both Ky and the past, she hadn’t known it would be so frighteningly easyto go back—back to that dark, dreamy world where only he had taken her.
    Now that she knew, now that she’d faced even that, Kate had to prepare to fight the wind.
    He’d never forgiven her, she realized, for saying no. For bruising his pride. She’d gone back to her world when he’d asked her to stay in his. Asked her to stay, Kate remembered, without offering anything, not even a promise. If he’d given her that, no matter how casual or airy the promise might have been, she wouldn’t have gone. She wondered if he knew that.
    Perhaps he thought if he could make her lose herself to him again, the scales would be even. She wouldn’t lose. Kate stuck her hands into the pockets of her brief pleated shorts. No, she didn’t intend to lose. If he had pressed her last night, if he’d known just how weakened she’d been by that one kiss…
    But he wouldn’t know, she told herself. She wouldn’t weaken again. For the summer, she’d make the treasure her goal and her one ambition. She wouldn’t leave the island empty-handed this time.
    He was already on board the Vortex . Kate could see him stowing gear, his hair tousled by the breeze that flowed in from the sea. With only cut-offs and a sleeveless T-shirt between him and the sun she could see the muscles coil and relax, the skin gleam.
    Magnificent. She felt the dull ache deep in her stomach and tried to rationalize it away. After all, a well-honed masculine build should make a woman respond. It wasnatural. One could even call it impersonal, Kate decided. As she started down the dock she wished she could believe it.
    He didn’t see her. A fishing boat already well out on the water had caught his attention. For a moment, she stopped, just watching him. Why was it she could always sense the restlessness in him? There was movement in him even when he was still, sound even when he was silent. What was it he saw when he looked out over the sea? Challenge? Romance?
    He was a man who always seemed poised for action, for doing. Yet he could sit quietly and watch the waves as if there were nothing more important than that endless battle between earth and water.
    Just now he stood on the deck of his boat, hands on hips, watching the tubby fishing vessel putt toward the horizon. It was something he’d seen countless times, yet he stopped to take it in again. Kate looked where Ky looked and wished she could see what he was seeing.
    Quietly she went forward, her deck shoes making no sound, but he turned, eyes still intense. “You’re early,” he said, and with no more greeting reached out a hand to