Treasures Lost, Treasures Found

hadn’t heard in four years. But he remembered it exactly.
    “You looked like you wanted to play more than you wanted to look for sunken ships.” He grinned at her, enjoying her pleasure and the ease of a smile he’d never expected to see again.
    “I did.” Almost reluctant, she reached out for the ladder to climb on board. “I never expected to find anything the first time down, and it was so wonderful just to dive again.” She stripped off her tanks then checked the valves herself before she set them down. “Whenever I go down I begin to believe I don’t need the sun anymore. Then when I come up it’s warmer and brighter than I remember.”
    With the adrenaline still flowing, she peeled off her flippers, then her mask, to stand, face lifted toward the sun.
    “There’s nothing else exactly like it.”
    “Skin diving.” Ky tugged down the zipper of his wet suit. “I tried some in Tahiti last year. It’s incredible being in that clear water with no equipment but a mask and flippers, and your own lungs.”
    “Tahiti?” Surprised and interested, Kate looked back as Ky stripped off the wet suit. “You went there?”
    “Couple of weeks late last year.” He dropped the wet suit in the big plastic can he used for storing equipment before rinsing.
    “Because of your affection for islands?”
    “And grass skirts.”
    The laughter bubbled out again. “I’m sure you’d look great in one.”
    He’d forgotten just how quick she could be when she relaxed. Because the gesture appealed, Ky reached overand gave her hair a quick tug. “I wish I’d taken snapshots.” Turning, he jogged down the steps into the cabin.
    “Too busy ogling the natives to put them on film for posterity?” Kate called out as she dropped down on the narrow bench on the starboard side.
    “Something like that. And of course trying to pretend I didn’t notice the natives ogling me.”
    She grinned. “People in grass skirts,” she began then let out a muffled shout as he tossed a peach in her direction. Catching it cleanly, Kate smiled at him before she bit into the fruit.
    “Still have good reflexes,” Ky commented as he came up the last step.
    “Especially when I’m hungry.” She touched her tongue to her palm where juice dribbled. “I couldn’t eat this morning, I was too keyed up.”
    He held out one of two bottles of cold soda he’d taken from the refrigerator. “About the dive?”
    “That and…” Kate broke off, surprised that she was talking to him as if it had been four years before.
    “And?” Ky prompted. Though his tone was casual, his gaze had sharpened.
    Aware of it, Kate rose, turning away to look back over the stern. She saw nothing there but sky and water. “It was the morning,” she murmured. “The way the sun came up over the water. All that color.” She shook her head and water dripped from the ends of her hair onto the deck. “I haven’t watched a sunrise in a very long time.”
    Making himself relax again, Ky leaned back, biting into his own peach as he watched her. “Why?”
    “No time. No need.”
    “Do they both mean the same thing to you?”
    Restless, she moved her shoulders. “When your life revolves around schedules and classes, I suppose one equals the other.”
    “That’s what you want? A daily timetable?”
    Kate looked back over her shoulder, meeting his eyes levelly. How could they ever understand each other, she wondered. Her world was as foreign to him as his to her. “It’s what I’ve chosen.”
    “One of your multiple choices of life?” Ky countered, giving a short laugh before he tilted his bottle back again.
    “Maybe, or maybe some parts of life only have one choice.” She turned completely around, determined not to lose the euphoria that had come to her with the dive. “Tell me about Tahiti, Ky. What’s it like?”
    “Soft air, soft water. Blue, green, white. Those are the colors that come to mind, then outrageous splashes of red and orange and yellow.”
    “Like a Gauguin painting.”
    The length of the deck separated them. Perhaps that made it easier for him to smile. “I suppose, but I don’t think he’d have appreciated all the hotels and resorts. It isn’t an island that’s been left to itself.”
    “Things rarely are.”
    “Whether they should be or not.”
    Something in the way he said it, in the way he lookedat her, made Kate think he wasn’t speaking of an island now, but of something more personal. She drank, cooling her throat,