Treasures Lost, Treasures Found

business, Ky, any more than your personal life is mine.”
    “I’ve had women,” he said easily. “But I haven’t had a lover since you left the island.”
    She felt the pain and the pleasure sweep up through her. It was dangerous to dwell on the sensation. As dangerous as it was to lose yourself deep under the ocean. “Don’t.” She lifted her hand to remove his from her shoulder. “This isn’t good for either of us.”
    “Why?” His fingers linked with hers. “We want each other. We both know the rules this time around.”
    Rules. No commitment, no promises. Yes, she understood them this time, but like mortality during a dive, they could easily be forgotten. Even now, with his eyes on hers, her fingers caught in his, the structure of those rules became dimmer and dimmer. He would hurt her again. There was never any question of that. Somehow, in the last twenty-four hours, it had become a matter of how she would deal with the pain, not if.
    “Ky, I’m not ready.” Her voice was low, not pleading, but plainly vulnerable. Though she wasn’t aware of it, there was no defense she could put to better use.
    He drew her up so that they were both standing, touching only hand to hand. Though she was tall, her slimness made her appear utterly fragile. It was that and the way she looked at him, with her head tilted back so their eyes could meet, that prevented him from taking what he was determined to have, without questions, without her willingness. Ruthlessly, that was how he told himself he wanted to take her, even though he knew he couldn’t.
    “I’m not a patient man.”
    “No.”
    He nodded, then released her hand while he still could. “Remember it,” he warned before he turned to go to the helm. “We’ll take the boat east, over the wreck and dive again.”
    An hour later they found a piece of rigging, broken and corroded, less than three yards from the cannon. By hand signals, Ky indicated that they’d start a stock-pile of the salvage. Later they’d come back with the means of bringing it up. There were more planks, some too big for a man to carry up, some small enough for Kate to hold in one hand.
    When she found a pottery bowl, miraculously unbroken, she realized just what an archaeologist must feel after hours of digging when he unearths a fragment of another era. Here it was, cupped in her hand, a simple bowl, covered with silt, covered with age. Someone had eaten from it once, a seaman, relaxing briefly below deck, perhaps on his first voyage across the Atlantic to the New World. His last journey in any event, Kate mused as she turned the bowl over in her hand.
    The rigging, the cannon, the planks equaled ship. The bowl equaled man.
    Though she put the bowl with the other pieces of their find, she intended to take it up with her on this dive. Whatever other artifacts they found could go to a museum, but the first, she’d keep.
    They found pieces of glass that might have come from bottles that held whiskey, chunks of crockery that hadn’t survived intact like the bowl. Bits of cups, bowls, plates littered the sea floor.
    The galley, she decided. They must have found the galley. Over the years, the water pressure would have simply disintegrated the ship until it was all pieces spread on and under the floor of the ocean. It would, in essence, have become part of the sea, a home for the creatures and plant life that dwelt there.
    But they’d found the galley. If they could find something, just one thing with the ship’s name inscribed on it, they’d be certain.
    Diligently, using her knife as a digging tool, Kate worked at the floor of the sea. It wasn’t a practical way to search, but she saw no harm in trying her luck. They’d found crockery, glass, the unbroken bowl. Even as she glanced up she saw Ky examining what might have been half a dinner plate.
    When she unearthed a long wooden ladle, Kate found that her excitement increased. They had found the galley, and in time, she’d prove to Ky that they’d found the Liberty .
    Engrossed in her find, she turned to signal to Ky and moved directly into the path of a stingray.
    He saw it. Ky was no more than a yard from Kate when the movement of the ray unearthing itself from its layerof sand and silt had caught his eye. His movement was pure reflex, done without thought or plan. He was quick. But even as he grabbed Kate’s hand to swing her back behind him, out of range, the wicked, saw-toothed tail lashed out.
    Her scream was