Hours to Cherish (25 page)

Cat and Ariel were left to stare as the men slowly and cautiously wedged with their knives at the seal of the metal, painstakingly careful so as not to damage any precious relic inside. It looked rather like the opening of a clam, Cat thought, and then she realized she was about to keel over because she had been holding her breath so long. She forced herself to breathe, taking great gulping breaths, her body trembling, her heart pounding tumultuously. Now! she kept thinking, ready to scream. Surely they had it. Open it! Open it!

But her husband’s eyes suddenly turned to her, a soft light hazing their glitter as he lifted a hand toward her. “It’s to you, Mrs. Miller,” he murmured.

Dry-mouthed and weak-kneed, Cat made her way to the casket. Everyone aboard had stopped breathing, she thought ridiculously. She couldn’t hear a sound, just the sensation of air and breeze.

Her fingers trembled convulsively as she touched the black, encrusted metal. The men’s efforts were applaudable. With a ferocious screech, the rusty hinges gave. Cat lifted the top. …

Not even the ravages of time could mar the intricate beauty of the Aztec crown jewels. Their light, beneath the warm Bahamian sun, was so dazzling as to blind. Brilliant rainbow hues created a kaleidoscope of unearthly enchantment: blood-red rubies, skyburst sapphires, amethysts, diamonds, emeralds. …

“Oh, my God!” Cat breathed, and then she was touching the gems, trailing their blackened gold chains, gaping at the exquisite settings.

She felt the others as they knelt beside her, felt the awe each of them experienced as their fingers touched, trembling, upon the treasure.

Clay rose first. Cat lifted her eyes to her husband’s and saw a soft query in them. “Well?”

Her breath caught in her throat. Instinctively she knew what he asked. “Oh, Clay,” she murmured. His smile broadened, and then he was reaching for one of the signal flags.

Moments later the Bahamian patrol boat was alongside them. Cat saw the men aboard were grim and heavily armed. Her heart took another flutter.

It had all been prearranged. Clay knew she believed the pieces belonged in the museums of the country of their origin. And that’s where they were going, before a gold or gem fever could insert itself in any of them.

Cat glanced uneasily at the crew, but all wore a secret smile of satisfaction. They had found the jewels; that was enough.

Cat lowered her lashes. “Thank you,” she said huskily, and it wasn’t until later, much later, when she and Clay were confined in their cabin, that she asked the question plaguing her.

“Clay, you run a salvage business. These people work with you for the profits—”

“Cat!” he interrupted her, laughing as he gently cradled her head to his chest. “The
Santa Anita
will still bring plenty in rewards. We will all profit. But we’re not straight pirates, you know. The sea and her treasures are ours because we also love and respect them. The Aztec crown jewels belong to those whose ancestors broke their backs and lost their lives in pursuit of their creation. And they belong to the world. In the museum, they do belong to all men.”

“Thank you, Clay,” Cat said thickly. For the first time in days she realized she was being open with him. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. …”

“Then how about showing me?”

“Pardon?” she murmured. His fingers, light upon her shoulders, tightened. Cat tilted her head back and stared into his eyes. A flame of intensity flared in the deep jet recesses that obliterated all but the edges of deepest brown. His facial muscles were taut; his lips were a thin line that barely twisted into a grim, bittersweet smile of poignancy.

“You won’t talk to me, Cat,” he said huskily. “And the one thing I can’t force is your mind. I reach for you, and I hold you, but you’re not really there. You keep so much in, Cat. We should have talked about DeVante. I don’t know what you were feeling, I don’t know how deeply you cared, whether his betrayal cut like a knife, whether he keeps you from me now more than before—”

“No,” Cat protested with a strangling sound. “I’m over Jules. I told you that.”

“Then talk to me.”

“I can’t.”

“Then come to me, Cat.” His fingers tangled into her hair, his voice, deep and rich and husky as night, caressed and tantalized and demanded as it whispered with soft heat close to her lips. “When I reach for you, you are not really there. And you haven’t reached for me. Come to me now, Cat. Come to me, you make love to me. …” For a moment his fingers clenched so tightly into her hair that her throat was forced into an arch that held her face not an inch from his. Dark eyes held hers, searching with that strange poignant heat that curled just the edges of his lips.

Cat closed her eyes. She felt so weak, her will sapped, taken by his strength, by the desire to still her own fears, to envelop herself in the heavenly security of the magic world that obliterated all else, the magic of his touch.

She never opened her eyes. Her lips crossed the infinitesimal space to his, parted and touched, and then she was sliding against him, mouth, teeth, and tongue beginning a slow torment that would cover his length as she melded, against him, into his arms, and the sleek cushion of his body and the bed. …

Magic had done its trick nicely. Cat slept deeply, exhausted from the considerable exertions of the workday, and cocooned in a marvelous feeling of comfort and well-being, her husband’s body heat keeping her warm and secure as she curled against him.

He had been muttering groggily a long, long time before the sound permeated her consciousness, bringing her slowly from the inner web of that deep, deep comfort.

She was rudely jostled as he began to toss, and she awakened fully, realizing that he was in the throes of a bad dream, gutturally protesting … fighting.

Cat frowned and touched his shoulder, shaking it lightly and whispering his name over and over. Her words had no effect; he didn’t hear her. He shook off her touch and his tossing became more fevered, as did his incomprehensible ramblings. As she watched him in the moonlight with growing alarm, she saw a sheen of sweat break out across his shoulders and chest, drip in tiny rivulets down the rugged lines of his profile.

“Clay!” she exclaimed, attempting to catch his flailing arms as her concern began to rise to a bewildered panic.

His muscles tensed, balling into tight knots. She could clearly see the cords in his strong neck stand out. His flailings became more and more vehement and erratic. She began to comprehend one of the words he whispered louder and louder with increasing fervor, and the word that he shouted was
no
!

“Clay!” Cat exclaimed again, desperate now to awaken him. He was such a large man, and with his muscles powerfully tensed against whatever it was that he fought, her own strength was inadequate. Avoiding his unaimed blows, Cat rolled against his body until she could straddle him, then attempted to get a steady grip on both his shoulders so that she could give him a good shake as she gasped out his name and all the inane assurances she could think of.

“Clay—”

A stunning blow caught the side of her head and she was sent flying from his form with a force that took her reeling frame all the way to the floor. Truly panicked, Cat stumbled to her feet, shaking her head to clear the stars that blinded her vision from the impact. She could do nothing for him, she realized, with tears stinging her eyes. He was simply too strong for her, too swamped in the awful clamp of the dream, but she had to wake him, she had to make it end. There was no help but for her to call in Sam.

Fumbling and half crying with haste and confusion, Cat slipped into Clay’s robe and tossed the sheets over his naked form, sure his thrashing would kick them off again but too concerned to worry about the possibility. She barely had her belt secured before she was pulling open the cabin door in quest of Sam, her mouth open to shout.

Her words never left her throat. Sam, Peter, and Ariel all stood in the short hallway, staring at her with eyes that clearly mirrored her state of concern and alarm.

Cat finally spoke. “Sam, I need you.”

Her mammoth friend hesitated a second, his eyes darting to Peter and back. It was Peter who took the first action. He came for Cat, securing an arm around her as he nodded to his wife, who slipped past them both into Clay’s cabin, pain deep in her beautiful powder-blue eyes. Cat frowned in tense bewilderment, thinking only to wrest herself from Peter’s arm. She didn’t need the help of the tiny blonde, she needed to be with her husband herself, with a burly man to give assistance.

“Peter—” was as far as Cat got with her protestations.

He interrupted her immediately and soothingly. “Come on, Cat, let’s go out on deck. Sam will make you a cup of tea and we’ll talk where it’s cool.”

Cat couldn’t move away from Peter. He was a man built like her own husband, a man of the same breed, equipped with the same quiet strength. “I don’t want tea,” she choked out as she was half led, half dragged through the hallway, salon, and galley to the deck doors. “Clay … Ariel …”

“Ariel will handle Clay,” Peter said softly. “And maybe you don’t need tea. Sam—” Peter called over his shoulder. “I think Cat might need a brandy instead.”

Peter didn’t release her until she was seated in a deck chair, and even then he stood over her, a knee bent over the rail preventing her escape. A second later Sam was handing her a brandy, and holding it with her until she had taken the first swallow. Then he took a silent stance behind her, trying to offer support and comfort in his silent way. Peter met Cat’s stricken eyes and began to talk.

“I wasn’t with Clay and Luke and the rest when they were picked up,” he said softly. “I met them all later on Eleuthera. But from the time they were arrested until they did escape, Clay was the one who kept them together, living with hope. He was determined to get away, so determined that he made several attempts to escape before he finally did. They had an isolation cell—a hot pit where a man had only room to sit hunched over with his arms hugging his knees, for punishment. Clay was kept in one for a week once when the guards they bribed failed to come through with the boats.”

Peter hesitated a moment as Cat stared at him in shock. She had always wondered how Clay had survived his exploits unscarred, and now she was understanding the form of the torture he had endured.

Cat licked dry lips. “So now he has nightmares.” It wasn’t a question but a statement. “And Ariel knows how to handle my husband’s nightmares.”

Peter hesitated a second time. “Clay came with Luke to his home on Eleuthera when they succeeded with their escape. He met Ariel there. They lived together for several months.”

Cat wondered how, as numb as she was feeling, that knowledge could riddle her insides with such acute, stabbing pain. Yet, in a way, she did know what hurt so devastatingly. Ariel was beautiful, gentle, sweet, and very wonderful. She wasn’t another woman one could rationally hate or despise.

Her voice was toneless, so toneless. “Is Ariel really your wife, Peter?”

Peter smiled very gently and reached down to take Cat’s hand. “Of course she is my wife. Everything ended between the two of them long ago. She is a very special creature, my Ariel. She always knew that something haunted Clay. That something was you, Cat. We have all known about you for years. Clay always spoke of you. That is why we feel so intimate, as if we have known you all that time too.”

Peter was trying, Cat knew, really trying. But she could feel nothing. She loved her husband, ached for him until she felt her insides cry, but all she could feel on the outside was numbness.

“Why didn’t he come back then, Peter? Why didn’t he return long ago? Why did he leave me thinking him dead?”

“Because it had been years, Cat. He heard that you were doing very well, that you were happy, content with your life. He was never sure if you would be pleased to see him or not, and he didn’t want you taking him back out of pity. He was plagued very badly by the nightmares at first. He never wanted you seeing him like that. But then when he heard that you were getting serious with DeVante, he started to get worried. We’d heard things about DeVante in our various business dealings, and that’s when Clay started checking him out and … well … you know. Jules was up to his teeth in debt. Clay couldn’t stand the thought of your possibly being used or hurt. So he knew then that he had to come back—no matter how you received him.”

“Oh, God,” Cat murmured. His every action had been for her, and yet Ariel could soothe her husband; Clay could put his faith in the tiny blonde but not in her.

It was then that Ariel appeared on deck, slipping her arm around her own husband and trying to smile easily as she faced Cat. “He’s sleeping soundly again, Cat. Go to him now.”

Cat felt silent tears stinging her eyes, but she didn’t cry. She shook her head. “I can’t, not right now.”

Ariel lowered her lashes and bit into her lip miserably. She glanced at Peter, then back to Cat.

“Please, Cat,” she murmured, “he is your husband. He always was. I—I always knew. You see, he loved you so deeply. …”

“Cat,” Peter interrupted his wife. “Ariel is
my
wife. We love
each other
very much. Clay is a very good friend—the best of friends—to both of us. The past is over; we all accept that.”

Cat nodded vaguely. They were right, of course they were right, yet she felt nothing but this numbness.

“Please,” Ariel whispered. “Go, be with Clay.”

But she couldn’t; she simply couldn’t.

“Thank you both,” she managed to say. “It would have helped if Clay would have told me himself.”

“He was afraid,” Ariel said. “Things were so unsettled between you to begin with. He wants you so badly, Cat. He didn’t want you further upset by the past and things that didn’t matter.”

Cat nodded again. “Please,” she said, forcing a smile for both the Gruutens and Sam—quiet and yet there in the background. “Please, you all go back to bed. I want to be alone for a while.”

They began to protest, but Cat assured them she was fine, that she would go in shortly. Unhappily, they finally left her.