&nbs
p; She imagined kissing Nick, imagined him backing her up against a wall….
A little dip in the sand buckled her knee, and Nick’s hand closed around her elbow, startling her. She hadn’t known he was so close, but now her skin tingled at his nearness.
“Where are we going?” Nick asked, his deep voice nearly swallowed by the surf.
“Just past the cliffs I canvassed yesterday.”
“You’ve only made it a half-mile up the shore?”
“Yes.”
“I see. And…what exactly does the diary say about the location of this treasure?”
She glanced at him, then quickly away. The diary was her trump card, her only leverage in this struggle with Nick. If she told him the exact wording, he’d likely take over the search himself. And this was her search, damn it. Some small piece of her mess of a life that she could own.
So she muttered, “It’s vague,” and picked up her pace. The sand sucked at her feet until her muscles burned.
Nick seemed unimpeded. “Well, my God, Cyn. I’ve miles of coastline. This could take forever.”
“Mm.”
“There’s nothing more specific?”
“Not really.” Much to her relief, a distraction appeared ahead in the form of a thirty-foot wall of rock in her path. Cynthia smiled.
He cleared his throat. “Perhaps I should take a look at this diary and…What are you doing?”
As she was very obviously tucking her skirts up into the leather cord around her waist, Cyn ignored the question. Nick stared at her knees. He was still staring when she took off at a run for the jagged wall of rock.
“Cyn? What—?”
She leapt up two piles of rock that made halfway decent steps, then made the final four-foot leap across a crevice filled with roiling sea foam. Her feet skidded on the narrow ledge as she leaned in to hug the rock. A strangled yell followed her, then wheezed into silence.
“Don’t hesitate,” she called over her shoulder, “or you’ll end up very wet.”
“I…Holy…Don’t move.”
“It’s the only way around. Come on.” She scooted along the ledge until her heels hung over the sea. An occasional wave sent flecks of foam straight up the rock to speckle her legs and bunched skirts.
“This is sheer madness!” Nick shouted. “Damn it, Cyn. Stop right there!”
“If you can’t keep up, I understand. There’s no shame in that. You’ve been in the city for a long time. Stay here. I’ll be back in a few hours.” She didn’t have to look back to know that his face had gone red. She’d always been good at goading him.
“Mrs. Pell will have my scalp if you break an arm,” he’d said each time she’d proposed a race to the top of the great oak tree next to the churchyard. Cynthia would nod and assure him that the village boys would likely not consider his forfeit a genuine loss to a girl. They were too fair-minded for that, surely. And Nick would scowl and kick at dead leaves and refuse her challenge. Until she started up the branches.
Perhaps he hadn’t changed as much as she’d thought, because as soon as she’d worked her way around to the far side of the outcropping, the air echoed with the scrape of his shoes against stone. And with muffled cursing.
She hurried along the last few feet to the relative security of a crooked boulder, which provided a ramp down to the beach.
Nick materialized, a dangerous scowl marring his handsome features.
“It’s actually quite a challenge during high tide,” she called innocently. His face threatened to crack in two.
Making sure to hide her smile, Cyn turned and hurried on before he could catch her. But he’d gotten faster in the past ten years. And her skirts had gotten heavier. By the time she realized the thumps vibrating up the soles of her feet were actually Nick’s footsteps, it was too late. She only managed a few lurching steps before he was on her, cursing.
His hands grabbed at her, and Cynthia spun away, her heart exploding into pattering alarm. Fear mixed with something else. A startled laugh bubbled from her breathless lungs as she scrambled away, a nimble cat escaping a wolf. Except that this wolf’s claws had caught on something.