Treasures Lost, Treasures Found

before.”
    She would have protested, stating how dangerous it was, if she’d believed it would have done any good. Ky did a great deal alone because that was how he preferred it. Instead, Kate chose another route.
    “We’re looking for the Liberty together, Ky. It isn’t a one-man operation.”
    He sent her a long, quiet look before he picked up the coffee she hadn’t touched. “Afraid I’ll take off with the treasure?”
    “Of course not.” She wouldn’t allow her emotions to get in the way. “If I hadn’t trusted your integrity,” she said evenly, “I wouldn’t have shown you the chart in the first place.”
    “Fair enough,” he allowed with a nod. “So if I continue to dive while you’re recuperating, we won’t lose time.”
    “I don’t want to lose you either.” It was out before she could stop it. Swearing lightly, Kate looked toward the window again. The sky was the pale blue sometimes seen on summer mornings.
    Ky merely sat for a moment while the pleasure of her words rippled through him. “You’d worry about me?”
    Angry, Kate turned back. He looked so smug, so infuriatingly content. “No, I wouldn’t worry. God usually makes a point of looking after fools.”
    Grinning, he set the tray on the floor beside the bed. “Maybe I’d like you to worry, a little.”
    “Sorry I can’t oblige you.”
    “Your voice gets very prim when you’re annoyed,” he commented. “I like it.”
    “I’m not prim.”
    He ran a hand down her loosened hair. No, she looked anything but prim at the moment. Soft and feminine, but not prim. “Your voice is. Like one of those pretty, lacy ladies who used to sit in parlors eating finger sandwiches.”
    She pushed his hand aside. He wouldn’t get around her with charm. “Perhaps I should shout instead.”
    “Like that too, but more…” He kissed one cheek, then the other. “I like to see you smile at me. The way you smile at nobody else.”
    Her skin was already beginning to warm. No, he might not get around her with charm, but…he’d distract her from her point if she wasn’t careful. “I’d be bored, that’s all. If I have to sit here, hour after hour with nothing to do.”
    “I’ve got lots of books.” He slipped her nightshirt down her shoulder then kissed her bare skin with the lightest of touches. “Probably lay my hands on some crossword puzzles, too.”
    “Thanks a lot.”
    “There’s a copy of Byron downstairs.”
    Despite her determination not to, Kate looked toward him again. “Byron?”
    “I bought it after you left. The words are wonderful.” He had the three buttons undone with such quick expertise, she never noticed. “But I could always hear the way you’d say them. I remember one night on the beach, whenthe moon was full on the water. I don’t remember the name of the poem, but I remember how it started, and how it sounded when you said it. ‘It is the hour’,” he began, then smiled at her.
    “‘It is the hour’,” Kate continued, “‘when from the boughs the nightingale is heard/It is the hour when lovers’ vows seem sweet in every whisper’d word/And gentle winds, and waters near make music to the lonely ear’…” She trailed off, remembering even the scent of that night. “You were never very interested in Byron’s technique.”
    “No matter how hard you tried to explain it to me.”
    Yes, he was distracting her. Kate was already finding it difficult to remember what point she’d been trying to make. “He was one of the leading poets of his day.”
    “Hmm.” Ky caught the lobe of her ear between his teeth.
    “He had a fascination for war and conflict, and yet he had more love affairs in his poems than Shelley or Keats.”
    “How about out of his poems?”
    “There too.” She closed her eyes as his tongue began to do outrageous things to her nervous system. “He used humor, satire as well as a pure lyrical style. If he’d ever completed Don Juan …” She trailed off with a sigh that edged toward a moan.
    “Did I interrupt you?” Ky brushed his fingers down her thigh. “I really love to hear you lecture.”
    “Yes.”
    “Good.” He traced her lips with his tongue. “I just thought maybe I could give you something to do fora while.” He skimmed his hand over her hip then up to the side of her breast. “So you won’t be bored by staying in bed. Want to tell me more about Byron?”
    With a long quiet breath, she wound her arms around his neck. The point she’d been trying