With a wave, she headed out of the park, leaving all the pirate booths behind her. As she watched, she searched the crowds. Had she imagined them both?
Many a big tall man with dark hair might look like Carlos Roca.
And in the midst of would-be pirates, imagining another pirate…
Face it: she wasn’t getting enough sleep.
It was a long walk back to her room, but Vanessa was almost glad of it. She needed to walk, to stride, to burn more energy.
She needed to call Sean.
She wasn’t ready to do so.
Reaching Duval and starting toward the north end, she realized that she was looking in shops and bars. She couldn’t shake the belief that she had seen Carlos Roca.
But if Carlos was alive, then…
Did that mean he had murdered the others?
As she neared her inn, she glanced across the street at a group of “pirates” gathered in front of the Irish bar across the street.
One relaxed against the door frame, watching the band, listening to the music. He had dark hair. He was the man she had thought had to be Carlos Roca.
He looked at her. He looked straight at her.
It was Carlos Roca. It had to be Carlos Roca. It was his face.
He turned and disappeared into the bar.
11
“Carlos, no! Wait, stay! It’s me, Vanessa!” she cried. She raced across the street. It seemed that pirates had spread across the place, and she tried to excuse herself and wend her way through big frock coats, big hair and bigger hats. She made her way through the bar, searching faces to see Carlos’s once again.
But she walked all way through to the emergency exit, and he wasn’t there. She burst into the kitchen, only to be shown out. The place was ridiculously crowded, and she realized he might have walked out through the gift shop, slipped through another wall of pirates when she wasn’t looking.
At last she gave up and walked her way through the pirates once again to the street.
She walked across, and straight into Sean.
He was standing in front of her inn, leaning against the wall, as if he had been there for some time. He seemed curious that she had come from the Irish bar, and was probably impatient, as well.
“I’ve been calling you,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’d have thought that you might have been more interested in everything going on. Especially as far as getting ready to head out—with your friends all involved now.”
“Look, Sean, they’re my friends, but not my friends. Jay, yes, I’ve known forever. And I like the others, but I didn’t bring them here.”
“I’m not holding any of it against you,” he said.
“How magnanimous,” she murmured, looking away. She wanted to shout that she thought she had seen Carlos Roca. She might have been wrong. And if she’d seen Carlos, everyone would decide that, since he was alive, he was guilty. Until she saw him, really saw him, she couldn’t say anything.
What if he was guilty? What if he had seen her, and knew that she had seen him? What if? He had seen her, he had looked straight at her before disappearing.
“Is that all?” she asked him. “It’s been a long day, and I’d really like to take a shower, if you’ll excuse me. I’ll be ready to work whenever you need anything, but for now…”
She started to walk by him. He blocked her path. She looked up and was surprised to see that his golden eyes were opened wide and that everything about him was just slightly awkward. “Vanessa…I’m not good at this. And I’d like you to understand how things looked…. I’m sorry.”
She was startled by the apology. It was amazing, coming from him under the circumstances.
Maybe he just missed the sex. But then again, so did she.
And still…
“I don’t lie, Sean,” she said stiffly.
“I didn’t accuse you of lying.”
“Well, yes, actually you did.”
“I…I’m sorry. Okay, I’m not good at this…I don’t know what else to say,” he told her. “I’ll ask you again, see it from my side.”
She nodded and smiled slowly. “Just say that you know that I don’t lie, and that you’ll believe in me in the future. That will work.”
“I know that you don’t lie. I’ll believe you in the future,” he said, his smile broad.
“Thank you,” she said softly. They stood there for a moment, looking at one another, not quite touching, and yet…
“I played a pirate about to be hanged today,” she told him. “I really need a shower.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not moving.”
“You haven’t invited me up.”
“Come on up.”
Maybe showers were destined to be something special between them. And maybe there was something that was just right, amazing, or the intangible bit of animal magnetism, chemistry, or whatever it was that made one person choose another over others. There was nothing awkward in her room, and there was no pretense between either of them. When she walked into the shower, she knew he was behind her. She turned into his arms, euphoric with the feeling that he was there, hard-bodied, rock-solid, vibrant, hot and real. Thoughts and fears left her mind for excruciating moments as she simply lost herself in the beauty and urgency of touch, running her hands down the wet sleekness of his flesh, his sex, along his spine and buttocks, and feeling the deep thrust and hot persistence of his kiss, his tongue and his hands upon her.
They made love with the rush of the water and then, still enwrapped and absorbed in one another, they found towels and made their way to the bed. Once there, he started with a kiss again, hovering over her, golden eyes burning into hers, and then that kiss, his mouth on hers, and then moving to her throat, where he paused, feeling the thunder of her pulse, and moved on, sending a streak of lightning through her as he teased a breast and trailed his kisses onward again. His caresses were slow, a touch of agony in the midst of exhilaration and wonder. He touched and teased, drawing to a point of complete intimacy, and she twisted and writhed until her frantic energy and demand brought him back to her, and they locked together in a storm of frenetic energy that brought her to a point of climax after climax, shuddering in his arms.
He held her close then, murmuring, his kisses tender.
Eventually, their bodies cooled. Their hearts beat at normal rates, and the ragged sound of their breath was no longer a cacophony in the room.
He held her against him and then groaned softly. “Strange. I don’t want to get up. I’m starving, and there are things to do, and I don’t ever want to leave this bed.”
She laughed. “Of course you do. Eventually, you’d get bored here.”
“When the sun froze over,” he told her.
She stroked his face. “That was good. That makes up for your rather stilted apology.”
“Excuse me, that was real and heartfelt.”
“We could order food to be brought here,” she said.
He nodded and turned from her for a moment, staring at the ceiling. “We’re supposed to go over to Ted and Jaden’s workshop—the doctor of forensic anthropology arrived, and she’s been studying the trunk as we found it. She’ll give us what she can before she does all the tests on the body. Anything in the sea that long—even mummified, as the body appears—is very fragile.”
“Of course,” Vanessa said. She hesitated, wondering why she was so uneasy about the trunk.
Pandora’s box? If so, it was already open.
And yet, it hadn’t been something actually evil that she felt, just as if the chest was going to be a catalyst, and she wasn’t sure if she liked what it might cause to come about.
“Do you not want to come over there with me?” Sean asked.
“No, no, of course I want to come,” she said.
“Then I guess we have to get moving.” He stood, his back to her. “You know, I think you should get the tail end of your things out of here for good.”
She rose as well, coming around to look at him. “You want me to come over because I’ll be safer? Or because you want me there?”
“I’d say both, and that’s pretty obvious,” he said. She smiled.
She was glad to be invited.
Ecstatic, actually!
And it was true that she didn’t want to be here alone. She had horrendous nightmares, she saw figureheads in the water, and on top of that, she kept thinking that she saw Carlos Roca and an unknown pirate who looked at her—and then faded into the air.
Really. They were going to have to lock her up soon.
“It’s late,” he said huskily. “Let’s grab pizza downstairs and then get over to Ted and Jaden’s.”
Dr. Tara Aislinn was in her midfifties, an energetic and enthusiastic woman who greeted Sean and Vanessa with real warmth. Her colleague, Ned Latham, was more subdued but apparently just as eager to be there. They had studied the chest and the victim within but hadn’t taken the body from the chest. They had come down in their van and, with permission, of course, would be moving the chest and the body to the lab in Gainesville.
Liam and David had come and gone, Sean discovered. They were late, of course, really late, but in his mind, that was fine. He hadn’t been in a serious relationship in a long time; he didn’t think he’d ever been in a relationship where he’d felt so lost and empty when it seemed that it had ended. David and Liam were capable, as were Jaden and Ted, and he knew that he’d never understand half of what the scientists could learn from the body, so everything had gone in the right direction without him.
“David is calling the media and letting them know what it was you brought out of the water,” Jaden told him.
“What exactly is he telling them?” Sean asked.
Dr. Aislinn laughed softy. “Just that we have arrived and are taking the chest and the body, and that we believe that the chest is early eighteen hundreds, and that a unique set of circumstances have preserved the body of a woman who died in the early eighteen hundreds, as well. More details will follow after we have conducted out tests.”