Bear In The Rough: Book 1: Treasure Hunt (BBW Bear Shifter Romance) (6 page)

              “Seriously?” I asked. “Are you really suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

              “Why not? Wouldn’t you like to be enormously wealthy?”

              I shook my head. “And do what, exactly? But I think I am up for an adventure.”

Chapter 6—Henry

              It was my good fortune to find myself with nothing to do that afternoon except explore the island, and a beautiful woman eager to accompany me. Yet even as we were setting out, doubts began to set in.

              The thing about shifters is, we have a split nature. The human part of us is rational, elevated, reasoned, seeking the good of others. The human part of me was quick to remind me that Liv was just a friend, that I was her guide across the island and that as her guide it was my obligation to protect her. She could have trusted that part of me, if she had had any inkling of the war raging inside of me.

              Unfortunately for both of us, there was more to me than that. There was something in me that defied human language, that could only truly be expressed in grunts and moans, something that delighted in the shattering of bones and the grinding of flesh against rock. Something so bestial.

              And that part of me didn’t necessarily will the good of Olivia. It wanted to possess her, consume her, until we were one in blood and bone. My longings were so powerful, she would never be able to contain them. My strength was so great that the first taste of desire satisfied would destroy her. But the scent of her hair, the warmth of her body next to mine was setting me off, was turning me into that thing I could never be. It was making me relentless and omnipotent, was leading her into greater danger than she knew.

              “Before we get going,” I said, as we paused beside a brook to fill up our blue plastic water bottles, “there’s something I have to talk to you about.”

              Liv gave me a look of annoyance that slowly settled into resignation. “What’s up?”

              I strode forward, looming over her until I seemed to fill the clearing. Her eyes grew wide. “I’m not sure going on this expedition with me is such a good idea.”

              “Not sure what you’re getting at,” said Liv, looking slightly rattled.

              “What I mean to say is, I’m not sure I’m safe.”

              To my surprise, she laughed. “What are you planning to do, rob me? Henry, I know the cave you live in. I’ll send the police
straight there
.”

              “This isn’t a joke!” I said earnestly, shaking her slightly. Her tiny frame swayed like a bamboo tree in a high wind.

              She stopped smiling. “Are you really going to hurt me?” she asked.

              I couldn’t tell whether she was truly scared, or whether she was mocking me. Somehow both possibilities sent explosions of color into my brain. Olivia the sassy archeologist appealed to the mature half of me, while Olivia the scared, helpless woman drove me mad with passion.

              “Get back!” I said, pushing her backwards. “Once I get wound up, I can’t help myself!”

              Olivia stumbled, but caught herself before falling. “Henry, are you okay?” She looked genuinely panic-stricken, like she was regretting ever having come on this outing, ever agreeing to be with me.

              “I can control myself,” I said, “if you can control yourself.”

              Now she looked confused. “I can’t do that if I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I feel like at any moment I could set you off, and now, frankly, I have no idea how you might react.”

              “As long as we agree to keep our relationship strictly professional,” I said, “I’ll be fine.”

              A thin light of understanding slowly spread across her face. She took a tentative but bold step forward and looked me in the eyes.

              “You’re into me,” she said.

              “Liv, please…”

              “… and maybe you’ve never had a real relationship, so you don’t know what it’s like?” For once her voice was hesitant, insecure, though she was making a game attempt to speak with confidence. “But you don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m a big girl, and I can take care of myself. I’m not a china doll.”

              “That’s not what I meant.”

              “I think I know what you meant,” she said, undeterred. “You knew you were starting to like me, and you didn’t want things to become awkward between us. Is that it?” She seemed to be trying to convince herself as much as she was me. Her breath shaky, she said, “Well, I don’t care if you like me. We don’t have to talk about it. We can focus on the treasure and it doesn’t even have to come up again.”

              “I’m sorry…” Somehow I had been the one to come out utterly humiliated and defeated in this exchange. (I’m not saying I would have preferred it the other way. I’m not sure what I wanted).

              “You don’t need to apologize. I’m a professional woman, and I’ve had to deal with boys’ crushes before.”

Something about the way she said
boys
infuriated me. Anything would have been preferable to this callous display of condescension. “Fine,” I said slowly, swallowing my pride. “We won’t bring it up again. But will you promise me one thing?”

“Anything.”

“Don’t act like a scared little girl again. Just… don’t.”

*              *              *

              Our search led us to Smith’s Cove, a small, partially enclosed body of water with a smooth, sandy beach. Gulls circled overhead, regarding us ominously. The ground was strewn with glass bottles, beer bottles, miniature seashells and the occasional bone of some long-dead animal. An empty bag of Doritos lay half-peeking out of the sand next to a rotted pair of underwear.

              “People have really done a number on this place, haven’t they?” said Olivia, shaking her head in disgust.

              “This whole place used to be so beautiful,” I said. “Not even that long ago.”

              “‘Nothing gold can stay,’” she said sadly.

              Liv explained that in the mid-1970s the Gilman Foundation had taken up residence on this island, cramming it with Volkswagens and scientific laboratories where they conducted bizarre experiments. One of their experiments was to fill the money pit with several hundred thousand tons of red dye, which later turned up in three other places. Smith’s Cove had been one of those places, revealing to the scientists and archeologists stationed here that there was a flooding canal connecting the cove and the pit. Subsequently, five scuba divers explored the cove and were able to swim from one part of the island to the other, though one of them got stuck and died when her oxygen tank ran out. (The Gilman Foundation had tried to hush up both the existence of the canal and the death of the scuba diver, but both were exposed in the documentary
Way to Go, Gilman
, which led Congress to cut funding in 1981, forcing the foundation to leave the island).

              “If that’s the case,” I said, “it’s entirely possible that the treasure everyone has been seeking so assiduously for the last 60 years or so is actually hidden under the island, but is only accessible via water. Which would explain why no one has been able to find it.”

              “Which means that if we really wanted to find it,” said Liv, “we’d have to get our own scuba gear and go down there. Are you trained?”

              “I have a scuba license,” I said proudly. “Granddad made sure of it.”

              “And I trained when I was working in the Caribbean. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves; it would be extremely dangerous. We would both risk drowning or being eaten in shark-infested waters.”

              “Sharks don’t scare me,” I said. Liv raised a skeptical brow. “Once when we were vacationing in Trinidad, I went pearl-diving and a shark swam right up to me. I bopped it on the nose and it swam off, with this look on its face like I had hurt its feelings.”

              “You probably did,” said Liv. “What if it just wanted to say hello?”

              “If you had seen the look on that shark’s face,” I replied, “you would know that saying ‘hello’ was the last thing on its mind.”

              “Maybe it was trying to be
friends
. You never even gave it a chance.”

              “If I had, you would be standing here talking to a very dead Henry.”

*              *              *

              Wind pressure began dropping as we circled the island on foot, passing from one dirty beach to another. The air became unusually cool as thick, fluffy clouds blotted out the sunlight. Olivia shivered and goosebumps appeared running up and down both her arms. Angry waves pounded the surf, flaring up against huge rocks only to sink back down again.

              An hour and a half later we found ourselves staring down at a set of enormous stones that had been pushed together to form a cross, spanning 20 feet horizontally and 60 feet vertically. I speculated that the cross must be the work of Christian explorers who had come to this island in the last three or 400 years, but Olivia shook her head. She said it was 3,000 years old, at least, which made it about the same age as the stone statues on Easter Island. Both were marvels of engineering, even if modern archeology had once and for all dispelled the mystery of how they had been designed and transported.

              In the middle of the cross, where the vertical axis met the horizontal axis, rudimentary drawings depicted human figures wearing elaborate hats. Some were standing upright, while others were lying down on what looked to me like some sort of bed. Some were men, some were women.

              “The primitives who built this cross,” said Liv, having to raise her voice above the roar of the wind and the pounding of waves, “designed it as a sacrificial altar. Every year, at the beginning of their harvest, they would kill 20 people to ensure prosperity for the coming year. Of course this eventually became unsustainable, because the island can’t support that many people. The islanders split in two, with one half wanting to continue the sacrificial system that had served them so well, and the other half wanting to do away with it. There was a great battle and the latter group won, though not before slaughtering scores of their opponents.”

              “So in a way, everyone got their wish,” I said.

              “In a way,” she replied. “Later, pirates and seafarers found their way to the island, and were spooked by the sight of the stone cross and the stories of what was once done here. Concurrent with the tales of a great treasure hidden somewhere on the island, there arose a legend that if the blood of an innocent victim was poured on the cross, the blood would flow along the ground until it reached the sacred heart of the island, where the treasure was buried for all time.”

              “The treasure of Oak Island,” I said.

              Liv shivered.

              “Did any pirate ever try it?” I asked. “You know, to sacrifice one of their own in the hopes of finding the treasure?”

              “If they did, there are no records of it,” she said. “You have to remember that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pirates weren’t nearly as savage as their reputation suggests. Plunder and kidnapping, even the occasional murder was one thing, but most, if not all of them, drew the line at actual human sacrifice.”

              “I don’t understand it,” I said. “How people can be so cruel. How history can be so full of darkness, and then someone comes along to remind you that there’s love in the world, just when you had given up on the human race.”

              Liv didn’t respond; instead she drew closer, wrapping one slender arm around mine. For once I didn’t mind; there was no way her body could affect me in a place that had been the sight of so much suffering and death. We took a final look at the abhorrent cross where so many people had expired, then continued on our way.

              As we neared the pier where the ferry was waiting to take us back to the mainland, trying to forget the gruesome tableau we had just witnessed, we debated our plans for the evening. Liv wanted to stay in and eat in the tavern. I had lost my appetite, but didn’t know how to say so. Instead, I tried to think of a plausible excuse.