Treasures Lost, Treasures Found

necessary to take his place. For reasons which I’d rather explain in person, I need your help. You have my father’s deposit. When I arrive in Ocracoke on the fifteenth, we can discuss terms.
    If possible, contact me at the hotel, or leave a message. I hope we’ll be able to come to a mutually agreeable arrangement. Please give my best to Marsh. Perhaps I’ll see him during my stay.
    Best,
Kathleen Hardesty
    So the old man was dead. Ky set down the letter and lifted his beer again. He couldn’t say he’d had any liking for Edwin Hardesty. Kate’s father had been a stringent, humorless man. Still, he hadn’t disliked him. Ky had, in an odd way, gotten used to his company over the last few summers. But this summer, it would be Kate.
    Ky glanced at the letter again, then jogged his memory until he remembered the date. Two days, he mused. She’d be there in two days…to discuss terms. A smile played around the corners of his mouth but it didn’t have anything to do with humor. They’d discuss terms, he agreed silently as he scanned Kate’s letter again.
    She wanted to take her father’s place. Ky wondered if she’d realized, when she wrote that, just how ironic it was. Kathleen Hardesty had been obediently dogging her father’s footsteps all her life. Why should that change after his death?
    Had she changed? Ky wondered briefly. Would that fascinating aura of innocence and aloofness still cling to her? Or perhaps that had faded with the years. Would that rather sweet primness have developed into a rigidity? He’d see for himself in a couple of days, he realized, but tossed the letter onto the counter rather than into the trash.
    So, she wanted to engage his services, he mused. Leaning both hands on either side of the sink, he looked out the window in the direction of the water he could smell, but not quite see. She wanted a business arrangement—the rental of his boat, his gear and his time. He felt the bitterness well up and swallowed it as cleanly as he hadthe beer. She’d have her business arrangement. And she’d pay. He’d see to that.
    Ky left the kitchen with his catch still in the cooler. The appetite he’d worked up with salt spray and speed had vanished.
     
    Kate pulled her car onto the ferry to Ocracoke and set the brake. The morning was cool and very clear. Even so, she was tempted to simply lean her head back and close her eyes. She wasn’t certain what impulse had pushed her to drive from Connecticut rather than fly, but now that she’d all but reached her destination, she was too weary to analyze.
    In the bucket seat beside her was her briefcase, and inside, all the papers she’d collected from her father’s desk. Perhaps once she was in the hotel on the island, she could go through them again, understand them better. Perhaps the feeling that she was doing the right thing would come back. Over the last few days she’d lost that sense.
    The closer she came to the island, the more she began to think she was making a mistake. Not to the island, Kate corrected ruthlessly—the closer she came to Ky. It was a fact, and Kate knew it was imperative to face facts so that they could be dealt with logically.
    She had a little time left, a little time to calm the feelings that had somehow gotten stirred up during the drive south. It was foolish, and somehow it helped Kate to remind herself of that. She wasn’t a woman returning to a lover, but a woman hoping to engage a diver in a veryspecific venture. Past personal feelings wouldn’t enter into it because they were just that. Past.
    The Kate Hardesty who’d arrived on Ocracoke four years ago had little to do with the Doctor Kathleen Hardesty who was going there now. She wasn’t young, inexperienced or impressionable. Those reckless, wild traits of Ky’s wouldn’t appeal to her now. They wouldn’t frighten her. They would be, if Ky agreed to her terms, business partners.
    Kate felt the ferry move beneath her as she stared through the windshield. Yes, she thought, unless Ky had changed a great deal, the prospect of diving for treasure would appeal to his sense of adventure.
    She knew enough about diving in the technical sense to be sure she’d find no one better equipped for the job. It was always advisable to have the best. More relaxed and less weary, Kate stepped out of her car to stand at the rail. From there she could watch the gulls swoop and the tiny uninhabited islands pass by. She felt a sense of homecoming, but pushed it