Treasures Lost, Treasures Found

her the first sandwich. “I’ll hold you to it.” He picked up his own sandwich and a quart of milk. “Let’s eat on deck.”
    He wasn’t certain if he wanted the sun or the space, but it wasn’t any easier to be with her in that tiny cabin than it had been the first time, or the last. Taking her assent forgranted, Ky went up the stairs again, without looking back. Kate followed.
    “It might be good for you,” Kate commented as she took the first bite, “but it still tastes like something you give five-year-olds when they scrape their knees.”
    “Five-year-olds require a lot of protein.”
    Giving up, Kate sat cross-legged on the deck. The sun was bright, the movement of the boat gentle. She wouldn’t let his digs get to her, nor would she dig back. They were in this together, she reminded herself. Tension and sniping wouldn’t help them find what they sought.
    “It’s the Liberty , Ky,” she murmured, looking at the plank again. “I know it is.”
    “It’s possible.” He stretched out with his back against the port side. “But there are a lot of wrecks, unidentified and otherwise, all through these waters. Diamond Shoals is a graveyard.”
    “Diamond Shoals is fifty miles north.”
    “And the entire coastline along these barrier islands is full of littoral currents, rip currents and shifting sand ridges. Two hundred years ago they didn’t have modern navigational devices. Hell, they didn’t even have the lighthouses until the nineteenth century. I couldn’t even give you an educated guess as to how many ships went down from the time Columbus set out until World War II.”
    Kate took another bite. “We’re only concerned with one ship.”
    “Finding one’s no big problem,” he returned. “Finding a specific one’s something else. Last year, after a coupleof hurricanes breezed through, they found wrecks uncovered on the beach on Hatteras. There are plenty of houses on the island that were built from pieces of wreckage like that.” He pointed to the plank with the remains of his sandwich.
    Kate frowned at the board again. “It could be the Liberty just as easily as it couldn’t.”
    “All right.” Appreciating her stubbornness, Ky grinned. “But whatever it is, there might be treasure. Anything lost for more than two hundred years is pretty much finders keepers.”
    She didn’t want to say that it wasn’t any treasure she wanted. Just the Liberty ’s. From what he said before, Kate was aware he already understood that. It was simply different for him. She took a long drink of cold milk. “What do you plan to do with your share?”
    With his eyes half closed, he shrugged. He could do as he pleased now, a cache of gold wouldn’t change that. “Buy another boat, I imagine.”
    “With what two-hundred-year-old gold would be worth today, you’d be able to buy a hell of a boat.”
    He grinned, but kept his eyes shaded. “I intend to. What about you?”
    “I’m not sure.” She wished she had some tangible goal for the money, something exciting, even fanciful. It just didn’t seem possible to think beyond the hunt yet. “I thought I might travel a bit.”
    “Where?”
    “Greece maybe. The islands.”
    “Alone?”
    The food and the motion of the boat lulled her. She made a neutral sound as she shut her eyes.
    “Isn’t there some dedicated teacher you’d take with you? Someone you could discuss the Trojan War with?”
    “Mmm, I don’t want to go to Greece with a dedicated teacher.”
    “Someone else?”
    “There’s no one.”
    Sitting on the deck with her face lifted, her hair blowing, she looked like a finely crafted piece of porcelain. Something a man might look at, admire, but not touch. When her eyes were open, hot, her skin flushed with passion, he burned for her. When she was like this, calm, distant, he ached. He let the needs run through him because he knew there was no stopping them.
    “Why?”
    “Hmm?”
    “Why isn’t there anyone?”
    Lazily she opened her eyes. “Anyone?”
    “Why don’t you have a lover?”
    The sleepy haze cleared from her eyes instantly. He saw her fingers tense on the dark blue material that stretched snugly over her knees. “It’s none of your business whether I do or not.”
    “You’ve just told me you don’t.”
    “I told you there’s no one I’d travel with,” she corrected, but when she started to rise, he put a hand on her shoulder.
    “It’s the same thing.”
    “No, it’s not, but it’s still none of your