Hidden Treasures (10 page)

“Sorry,” he said, catching her and settling her back in the seat. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders to steady her and curved his fingers around her upper arm. The heat of his hand seeped through the sleeves of her jacket and sweater to spread through her arm. How could he be so warm? They were in central New Hampshire at night, just barely out of mud season. And he wasn’t even wearing a jacket.

The swing stabilized, but he didn’t remove his hand. His arm was also warm, radiating heat down her spine. His chest was warm. The swing was too tiny, the air molecules surrounding her were in a hormone-fed frenzy and Jed Willetz, the guy every female classmate—and perhaps a few male classmates, too—had lusted after in high school was leaning in, drawing her closer, lowering his face until his strong, sturdy features blurred before her eyes. And then he kissed her.

Jed Willetz. The heartthrob of Rockwell Regional. The junkyard owner’s son. The man who’d fled this town, which Erica was trying very hard to make her new home.

Oh, God. She was in trouble.

She tried to remember the last time she’d been kissed like this, and realized the answer was never. She’d dated a fellow from Manchester for a while, an insurance adjuster who’d moved his jaw too much
when he talked, enunciating his words as if he were hoping to win an elocution contest. And when she’d been in Brookline during the school’s winter break, she’d run into an old boyfriend in the cheese aisle of Stop-and-Shop and learned that in the years since she’d last seen him he’d gotten married and divorced. They’d gone out for dinner, necked a little for old time’s sake, and then went their separate ways.

This was different, even though Erica knew it would end with her and Jed going their separate ways. He’d turned his back on Rockwell. He’d rejected everything she’d longed for: the small-town charm, the coziness, the tight community. He was going to bury his grandfather’s ashes and disappear.

But damn, he could kiss.

It occurred to her that most men did not know what to do with their tongues. Not that she’d kissed enough men in her life to make generalizations, but Jed…Jed definitely knew what to do. He didn’t poke at her teeth and jab inside her mouth. Instead, he used sweeping motions, licking motions, taking motions that sent her temperature soaring. Maybe that was why he was so warm: his tongue was a source of heat and he had it inside his mouth all the time. Now it was inside hers, and she was burning up.

She felt cheap and silly, kissing this man for whom so many women in town would allegedly drop their panties. She didn’t love him, she hardly knew him, and she was behaving in a way her mother always told her nice girls did not behave. She was being kissed by a near stranger, being kissed hard, being kissed so wantonly that even though their mouths were the only parts of their bodies involved, it felt like the most erotic act she’d ever engaged in.

She tried to kiss him back, but he was definitely the dominant one, determining the pressure, the speed, the depth. That felt strange to her, too, because she was by nature used to being on top of things. Jed was on top of things now, and when she closed her eyes her body shuddered at the thought of how heavenly it would be to have him on top of her.

His arm was still around her, and he lifted his free hand to cup her cheek. His fingers dug into her hair, and his palm covered half her face. The warmth made her jaw go slack, giving him access to even more of her mouth. Either the swing was moving or his kiss was making her dizzy.

After a minute—actually, it could have been two or ten minutes, or maybe just a few seconds—he pulled back and sighed. He let his hand slide down to the side of her neck where it rested, so hot it might be giving her a second-degree burn. She started breathing again, and when he rested his forehead against hers she felt, for reasons she couldn’t fathom, like crying.

“We’d better stop,” she whispered. That must be why she was near tears. She didn’t want to stop, but the nice girl was wresting control back from the silly, cheap lady inside her.

“Why?”

She drew in a deep breath. The air had grown cooler. Her lungs felt colder than the side of her neck where his hand lingered. “I have no idea where we’re going with this,” she said.

He laughed softly. “I think it’s pretty obvious where we’re going.” His thumb stroked the underside of her chin, sending ripples of heat down into her.

She wished he’d move back a little so she could see him, but she couldn’t bring herself to push him away.
“Maybe where we’re going is someplace we shouldn’t go.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” Because she was a nice girl again, and he was going to leave, and while a little just-for-the-hell-of-it making out was fun, something told her that going any further with Jed was not going to be a just-for-the-hell-of-it experience. She’d likely wind up scorched inside and out. The man was just too…
hot
.

“How do I know you’re not kissing me because you think there’s a million dollars in my box?” she asked when no better argument presented itself.

He laughed again. “You figured me out,” he joked, his lips brushing hers with each word. “I’m just after your money.”

“I haven’t got any money,” she warned, hearing her voice waver. Maybe he
was
after her money. Maybe he was a low-down creep. It didn’t seem fair that someone so vile should be able to kiss the way he did, but whoever said life was fair?

“You haven’t opened the box yet. You don’t know what you have.”

“You might be really wasting your time with me.”

“Yeah. I might.” But he kissed her again, a brush of his lips, just enough to remind her of what an all-out kiss from him was like. “If I was smart—” kiss “—and
enterprising
—” kiss “—I’d set my sights on genuine millionaires. Heiresses—” kiss “—and rich divorcées, and gallery owners on Madison Avenue.” He gave her one final kiss, lightly sucking on her lower lip, and her hips twitched from the heat rushing through her. “Guess I’m not so enterprising after all.”

“I guess you’re not,” she said. Her voice sounded choked and raspy. She was in big trouble here. She
was about ten seconds away from begging him to go back to her house with her, to her bedroom, to do to the rest of her body what he was doing to her mouth.

But how could she know this wasn’t about her box? He hadn’t denied it. He’d joked about it, but he hadn’t assured her that she was what mattered, her box and its contents were of no interest to him, he loved her and intended to remain in Rockwell forever and the hell with his New York City resale business.

He wasn’t going to say any of that, because it wasn’t true.

“I’d better go,” she said, pressing as far back into the swing as she could.

With apparent reluctance he withdrew, letting his hand drop and sliding his arm out from behind her. At last she could see his face. He looked bemused but not devoid of hope. Even when he was no longer touching her he seemed to exude heat. She tried to guess its source. His eyes, maybe. They glowed in the dim light. “I’ll walk you back,” he offered, moving to stand.

She nudged him down as she rose, and said, “No, that’s all right.” If he walked her to her house, he’d wind up at her door, and then it would be too easy for him to follow her inside, and then she’d be in big trouble again, much bigger trouble than she was in now.

He peered up at her as she gathered their empty glasses and strode to the porch steps. Lifting his leg to the railing again, he pushed himself in a calm rhythm, his gaze remaining on her as she descended to the dead, scraggly lawn that extended out to the road. She was almost clear of his house when he called after her, “Say hi to Derrick Messinger for me.”

A
H, THE CITY
.

Through the soft haze that marked the halfway point between asleep and awake, Jed heard the rumble of a car engine, the distant honk of a horn, the tinny squawk of a man’s voice somewhere below his window. Pressing his head deeper into his pillow, he listened for the familiar clank of the radiator kicking on, the faint rumble of a subway passing beneath the street a block away.

Thank God he was home, miles from his father and his smothering little hometown and that woman…that woman who…God,
that woman
.

His legs kicked reflexively at the sheets. He heard a horn again and his eyes blinked open. He wasn’t in the city. He was in Rockwell, and
that woman
—the one who had hijacked his dreams and kept him aroused all night, who’d caused him to wake up as hard as a fresh-picked zucchini, damn it—was right next door.

A schoolteacher, of all things. An overeducated teacher who seemed actually to like Rockwell, which proved that for all her intelligence and Ivy League pedigree, she had no sense. Why was he even thinking about her?

So he’d made a move on her last night. Big deal. He’d enjoyed their dinner with Fern Bernard, and he’d enjoyed every other time he’d been with Erica—es
pecially those times when she wasn’t pointing a knife at him—and the night had been balmy. The wine had been smooth and potent and Erica had been sitting so close to him, her big, dark eyes glowing with laughter and generosity and who the hell knew what else. Her eyes were amazing.

He’d figured the worst that could happen was she’d shoot him down. He’d been shot down before and it hadn’t killed him. So he’d gone ahead and kissed her.

He hadn’t expected her mouth to be like a ripe peach, all sweet, juicy texture. He’d wanted to devour it—to devour
her
. He’d wanted to haul her into his lap and feel her weight on him. He’d wanted to close his arms around her and open her legs around him and do all kinds of fun, dirty things with her.

All night long he’d dreamed about her, about kissing her, the smooth, cool surface of her cheek, her hair sliding through his fingers and all the fun, dirty things he wanted to do with her. Now here he was, wide awake in the bedroom he used to use when he stayed with his grandfather, still thinking about her and feeling as horny as a fifteen-year-old locked in a bathroom with the latest edition of
Penthouse
.

With Erica living in the house next door, he just might find remaining in Rockwell bearable, at least until he’d taken care of his grandfather’s ashes and figured out what to do with the house and its contents. Even if he never got further with Erica than he’d gotten last night, he’d like to stick around long enough to find out what was inside her box.

The hell with her box. He wanted her. He hardly even knew her, but he wanted her the way a kid wants an ice-cream cone on a scorching August day. For a few creamy licks of that rich peach-flavored ice
cream—sure, he could put up with Rockwell for a little while.

He heard the drone of a car idling somewhere near his house. Traffic? On Old North Road? Then he heard the man’s voice again, scratchy and unintelligible as he shouted to someone. Jed sat up, pinched the bridge of his nose to squeeze his eyes into focus, swung out of bed and crossed to the window. He lifted the corner of the curtain and frowned.

Two vans, a car and a pickup truck lined the road outside his and Erica’s houses. He didn’t recognize the vans or the car, but he knew the truck, dusty gray with scabs of rust and a funky dent twisting the rear bumper below the tailgate.

Letting the curtain drop back across the window, he grabbed his jeans from the chair where he’d tossed them last night and yanked them on. He flung his arms through the sleeves of his flannel shirt and stormed out the bedroom and down the stairs, ignoring the cold floor against the soles of his feet. He kept on through the hall to the front door and out onto the porch, which was even colder, clammy from the layer of early-morning mist that hovered just above the ground. The sky was pearly; the sun, not yet up. What time was it, anyway? He’d forgotten to grab his watch before barreling down the stairs.

He heard a muffled voice again, and then his father appeared from the far side of one of the vans. He must have spotted Jed on the porch, because he ambled over, more energetic than anyone deserved to be this early in the morning. Dressed in his plaid wool jacket and a pair of corduroy slacks that billowed around his skinny legs, he appeared uncharacteristically cheerful.

“Big happenings, eh?” he said, his voice emerging on puffs of vapor in the chilly air.

“What the hell is going on? What are you doing here?”

“Well, these newsfolks needed to know where the teacher lived. I was happy to show them.”

“I’ll bet you were.” Actually, Jed bet his father had been paid to lead them here. He was always happy to help out if someone waved a few crisp bills under his nose. “Newspeople?”

His father glanced over his shoulder and pointed proudly at all the vehicles but his banged-up truck. “There’s a news team outta Manchester, one outta Boston, and that guy, Derrick Messinger, the one that does all those TV specials on Mafia crime and the like.”

“I know who he is,” Jed muttered, wondering if Erica was awake yet, if she was aware of what was going on right outside her front door.

His father patted his chest as if in search of something, then asked, “You got a smoke on you?”

“I quit,” Jed said, his scowl deepening. He never missed cigarettes more than when he uttered those two words.

His announcement seemed to vex his father. “Quit, eh? What, you’re trying to get healthy or something?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Jack shook his head, clearly disappointed. “Well, maybe one of them newspeople’s got one.” He turned and sauntered over to the caravan of vehicles.

Swearing quietly, Jed marched back into his house and slammed the door. His chest was damp from the morning fog, and he belatedly buttoned his shirt. Then he dug into his jeans pocket for his cell phone, flipped
it open and stalked down the hall. His grandfather kept important phone numbers on scraps of paper taped to the inner surfaces of his kitchen cabinets. Jed hoped he’d find Erica’s among them. She’d been the old man’s tenant for a while, so he probably would have wanted to keep her number handy.

There she was, alongside the number of the pharmacy and just above the number of the National Weather Service on the door of the cabinet where Jed’s grandfather had stored his cooking spices. Jed punched her number into his phone, then moved to the window above the sink and adjusted the blind slats so he could see her house. It looked dark.

She answered halfway through the third ring: “H’lo?”

He’d awakened her. A glance at the wall clock told him it was six-forty, and he experienced a fleeting stab of guilt about having roused her from sleep. But the guilt faded, replaced by a much deeper stab of lust at the thick, dazed sound of her voice. She was in bed, he realized, all warm and soft and tousled. Did she sleep nude? Or in something lacy, maybe?

“It’s Jed Willetz,” he remembered to say. His voice came out a little raspy, but she was probably too drowsy to care.

“Jed?”

His abdominal muscles tightened. He’d like to hear her say his name that way when he was lying beside her, waking up with her. She’d smile, remembering the previous night, and murmur his name, and he’d proceed to replace those last-night memories with some new ones. Yeah, that would work.

He pinched the bridge of his nose again, as if he
could squeeze out all those distracting images. “So you’re answering your phone now?”

“Only when I’m half asleep and not thinking straight.”

He tried not to take her words as an insult. “There’s a bunch of media people in your front yard,” he told her.

“What?” She sounded more alert now.

“TV journalists,” he repeated. “Derrick Messinger and some others. My helpful father brought them here.”

“In my front yard?”

“Look out your window.”

She sighed, a wavering whisper of breath. “Hang on a second,” she said, followed by a muffled thud as she put down the receiver, and then the rustle of sheets as she got out of bed. Her sheets might be dark—midnight blue, or chocolate brown. Or maybe something pastel and flowery.

Like he’d even notice her sheets if he was in bed with her.

While he waited for her to return, he tackled the challenging task of preparing a pot of coffee with only one hand. The stove still looked strangely barren to him without his grandfather’s skillet sitting on a rear burner. It had always sat there, like a part of the range. He wanted to get the pan back from his father, but he wasn’t sure it was worth fighting over.

To silence his cravings for a cigarette, he rummaged through the drawers until he found a toothpick. After wedging it between his teeth, he sucked on the tip.

A rattle on the other end of the phone signaled that Erica was back. “My God.”

“They’re from Manchester and Boston, as well as
your good buddy Derrick Messinger.” The toothpick bobbed up and down as he spoke.

“My God.” She sounded bewildered and resigned. “This can’t just be about the box.”

“No?” He felt his eyebrows rise. “Have you got some other newsworthy stuff going on in your life? Are you having an affair with a congressman or something?”

“I am the most unnewsworthy person in the world,” she said dryly.

“Then it’s about the box.” The aroma of brewing coffee somehow warmed his bare toes. “Open the thing up and those people will disappear.”

“Unless it’s got a million dollars inside.”

“But you don’t think it does,” he reminded her.

After a minute, she said, “I’m not going to open it. Not until Professor Gilman gets here. I’m not going to risk breaking something that could be a priceless artifact.”

“Even if it’s priceless, it’s not going to be worth as much as the million dollars inside it,” Jed pointed out. The toothpick snapped and he tossed it into the trash. He still wanted a cigarette, but at least he hadn’t caught a splinter in his tongue.

“I mean, this is Rockwell.” Her voice took on a slightly hysterical edge. “I came here because it’s a peaceful, quiet place.”

A dead place, he thought.

“It isn’t overrun with people intoxicated with their own importance.”

No, just people intoxicated the old-fashioned way.

“I mean, Meryl Hummer. She’s the sum and substance of the media around here.”

And she’d gone and written a story about Erica’s
box and plastered it across the front page of her newspaper, and now look.
I’m Just the Messinger
and those news outlets from Manchester and Boston were crawling all over Erica’s front yard at six-forty in the morning.

Not that Jed cared one way or the other. It was her box from her garden, on her property, and it was her headache. He would have helped shoulder the burden if she’d been more open-minded about the property line, but she didn’t want to share the box and its bounty with him, so he wasn’t going to share her hassles with her. Let her keep her million dollars—if Glenn Rideout didn’t figure out a way to get his greedy paws on it. What would Jed do with half a million dollars, anyway?

Lots of things, he admitted, pulling a mug from the cabinet that contained the phone numbers of the police station, Ostronkowicz’s garage and Reena Keefer, a plump, taciturn widow who ran a small maple syrup operation west of town. Jed’s grandfather had never come right out and said so, but Jed had always suspected there was something going on between those two. Reena hadn’t shed a single tear at the church service after old John died, and that was just the kind of thing John would have admired in a woman. He’d been about as sentimental as a block of granite. Reena was that way, too.

Half a million dollars. Jed filled the mug with fresh coffee and contemplated what he’d do with that much cash. He could buy his apartment, do away with having to budget according to the whims of his landlord. Or maybe he’d invest the money—some in the store, some in stocks. His accountant kept saying he should set up a retirement fund.

Half a million dollars could pay for some useful things. One thing it couldn’t pay for was a cure to nicotine addiction. He considered whether to mangle another toothpick with his teeth and decided that drinking coffee was just as effective. He sipped it slowly, peering out the window again, across the collapsed fence that separated his house from Erica’s. He could see her back door and her garden from where he stood. Right now, she would be at the opposite end of her house, where her bedroom was located.

He wondered what she’d do with a million dollars. Or even half a million, if she was forced over to fork the rest to Glenn Rideout.

In her position, Jed would leave Rockwell. But he’d done that already. You didn’t need a lot of money to get out of a town like this.

He turned from the kitchen window and wandered back down the hall to the front door. “Look,” he said into the phone, “I’m sorry I woke you up, but I thought you could use a little warning.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Closing his eyes, he pictured her one more time in bed. He pictured her hair mussed and her legs extended, her toenails painted red. She didn’t strike him as the type to paint her toenails, but this was his fantasy and he could make them any damn color he wanted. He pictured her lips slightly parted, the way they’d been last night just before he’d kissed her, and his jeans suddenly felt snug.

She could keep her money, whatever it turned out to be. She could keep her front-page fame, her tabloid celebrity, her Harvard-professor buddy, her priceless artifact and all the rest.

He knew what he wanted from her, and it had noth
ing to do with what she’d dug out of her garden patch a few days ago.

A
FTER SHE HUNG UP
, she berated herself for having failed to bring up the subject of last night’s kiss.

She wasn’t sure what she should have said, but she should have said
something
. “Jed, you shouldn’t have kissed me,” she might have declared. “It’s made things awkward between us. You’re just passing through town, and I’ve planted my roots here, and there’s no reason for us to start something we have no intention of finishing.”