LITMIR.BIZ

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full of research, maps, carefully documented facts and precise theories. In my opinion, my father was very close to pinpointing the exact location of the Liberty, an English merchant vessel that sank, stores intact, off the North Carolina coast two hundred and fifty years ago.”

      He listened without a comment or a change of expression from beginning to end. When she finished, Ky studied her face for one long moment. “Come inside,” he said and turned toward the house. “Show me what you’ve got.”

      His arrogance made her want to turn away and go back to town exactly as she’d come. There were other divers, others who knew the coast and the waters as well as Ky did. Kate forced herself to calm down, forced herself to think. There were others, but if it was a choice between the devil she knew and the unknown, she had no choice. Kate followed him into the house.

      This, too, had changed. The kitchen she remembered had had a paint splattered floor, with the only usable counter space being a tottering picnic table. The floor had been stripped and varnished, the cabinets redone, and scrubbed butcher block counters lined the sink. He had put in a skylight so that the sun spilled down over the picnic table, now re-worked and re-painted, with benches along either side.

      “Did you do all of this yourself?”

      “Yeah. Surprised?”

      So he didn’t want to make polite conversation. Kate set her briefcase on the table. “Yes. You always seemed content that the walls were about to cave in on you.”

      “I was content with a lot of things, once. Want a beer?”

      “No.” Kate sat down and drew the first of her father’s notebooks out of her briefcase. “You’ll want to read these. It would be unnecessary and time-consuming for you to read every page, but if you’d look over the ones I’ve marked, I think you’ll have enough to go by.”

      “All right.” Ky turned from the refrigerator, beer in hand. He sat, watching her over the rim as he took the first swallow, then he opened the notebook.

      Edwin Hardesty’s handwriting was very clear and precise. He wrote down his facts in didactic, unromantic terms. What could have been exciting was as dry as a thesis, but it was accurate. Ky had no doubt of that.

      The Liberty had been lost, with its stores of sugar, tea, silks, wine and other imports for the colonies. Hardesty had listed the manifest down to the last piece of hardtack. When it had left England, the ship had also been carrying gold. Twenty-five thousand in coins of the realm. Ky glanced up from the notebook to see Kate watching him.

      “Interesting,” he said simply, and turned to the next page she marked.

      There’d been only three survivors who’d washed up on the island. One of the crew had described the storm that had sunk the Liberty, giving details on the height of the waves, the splintering wood, the water gushing into the hole. It was a grim, grisly story which Hardesty had recounted in his pragmatic style, complete with footnotes. The crewman had also given the last known location of the ship before it had gone down. Ky didn’t require Hardesty’s calculations to figure the ship had sunk two-and-a-half miles off the coast of Ocracoke.

      Going from one notebook to another, Ky read through Hardesty’s well-drafted theories, his clear to-the-point documentations, corroborated and recorroborated. He scanned the charts, then studied them with more care. He remembered the man’s avid interest in diving, which had always seemed inconsistent with his precise lifestyle.

      So he’d been looking for gold, Ky mused. All these years the man had been digging in books and looking for gold. If it had been anyone else, Ky might have dismissed it as another fable. Little towns along the coast were full of stories about buried treasure. Edward Teach had used the shallow waters of the inlets to frustrate and outwit the crown until his last battle off the shores of Ocracoke. That alone kept the dreams of finding sunken treasures alive.

      But it was Dr. Edwin J. Hardesty, Yale professor, an unimaginative, humorless man who didn’t believe there was time to be wasted on the frivolous, who’d written these notebooks.

      Ky might still have dismissed it, but Kate was sitting across from him. He had enough adventurous blood in him to believe in destinies.

      Setting the last notebook aside, he picked up his beer again. “So, you want to treasure hunt.”

      She ignored the humor in his voice. With her hands folded on the table, she leaned forward. “I intend to follow through with what my father was working on.”

      “Do you believe it?”

      Did she? Kate opened her mouth and closed it again. She had no idea. “I don’t believe that all of my father’s time and research should go for nothing. I want to try. As it happens, I need you to help me do it. You’ll be compensated.”

      “Will I?” He studied the liquid left in the beer bottle with a half smile. “Will I indeed?”

      “I need you, your boat and your equipment for a month, maybe two. I can’t dive alone because I just don’t know the waters well enough to risk it, and I don’t have the time to waste. I have to be back in Connecticut by the end of August.”

      “To get more chalk dust under your fingernails.”

      She sat back slowly. “You have no right to criticize my profession.”

      “I’m sure the chalk’s very exclusive at Yale,” Ky commented. “So you’re giving yourself six weeks or so to find a pot of gold.”

      “If my father’s calculations are viable, it won’t take that long.”

      “If,” Ky repeated. Setting down his bottle, he leaned forward. “I’ve got no timetable. You want six weeks of my time, you can have it. For a price.”

      “Which is?”

      “A hundred dollars a day and fifty percent of whatever we find.”

      Kate gave him a cool look as she slipped the notebooks back into her briefcase. “Whatever I was four years ago, Ky, I’m not a fool now. A hundred dollars a day is outrageous when we’re dealing with monthly rates. And fifty percent is out of the question.” It gave her a certain satisfaction to bargain with him. This made it business, pure and simple. “I’ll give you fifty dollars a day and ten percent.”

      With the maddening half grin on his face he swirled the beer in the bottle. “I don’t turn my boat on for fifty a day.”

      She tilted her head a bit to study him. Something tore inside him. She’d often done that whenever he said something she wanted to think over. “You’re more mercenary than you once were.”

      “We’ve all got to make a living, professor.” Didn’t she feel anything? he thought furiously. Wasn’t she suffering just a little, being in the house where they’d made love their first and last time? “You want a service,” he said quietly, “you pay for it. Nothing’s free. Seventy-five a day and twenty-five percent. We’ll say it’s for old-times’ sake.”

      “No, we’ll say it’s for business’ sake.” She made herself extend her hand, but when his closed over it, she regretted the gesture. It was callused, hard, strong. Kate knew how his hand felt skimming over her skin, driving her to desperation, soothing, teasing, seducing.

      “We have a deal.” Ky thought he could see a flash of remembrance in her eyes. He kept her hand in his knowing she didn’t welcome his touch. Because she didn’t. “There’s no guarantee you’ll find your treasure.”

      “That’s understood.”

      “Fine. I’ll deduct your father’s deposit from the total.”

      “All right.” With her free hand, she clutched at her briefcase. “When do we start?”

      “Meet me at the harbor at eight tomorrow.” Deliberately, he placed his other free hand over hers on the leather case. “Leave this with me. I want to look over the papers some more.”

      “There’s

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