She wanted to turn toward life, toward Nathaniel. He could be controlling, demanding, even arrogant, and he posed a very definite threat, but she wasn’t intimidated. Instead, she was drawn to him. Her head told her to be cautious, but her heart was painting a different picture. She was responding to his kindness, the way he seemed to care for her and sense her every mood, meet her every need. She was falling in love with him. It was happening so fast. But hadn’t it happened exactly that way for her grandparents? The way her grandfather told the story, it had taken only one look and he belonged to Diana forever. They were engaged within a week. But that was the 1940s, and there was a war on. Naturally, events proceeded at an accelerated pace.
When she found herself staring into Nathaniel’s eyes and caught him staring back, she wished she could divine his thoughts. Her fingers longed to touch his face, a pirate’s face. She wanted to touch his lips with her own, feel him against her. It was a strange but oddly exciting feeling. She had never felt that way about a man before.
“I could use something to drink,” Nathaniel hinted, wiping his sweating brow and interrupting her daydreams.
“All right. I’ll fix us some lemonade.”
“I imagine you’re really thirsty after the tough morning you’ve put in playing in the garden and haranguing me.”
“I try to do my part.” Patience smiled. “I told you there was no gold here. All those lies you fabricated about my grandfather are just that, lies.”
“I didn’t fabricate the journal, did I?”
Patience stomped up the steps to the kitchen.
When she came back thirty minutes later with a snack for the two of them, she was more composed. The sun was shining, and she planned to enjoy what was left of this glorious day. If Nathaniel wanted to dig around in the dirt like a schoolboy, let him. She was going for a swim in the pool.
She had put on the flimsiest excuse for a bathing suit she could find, one Cecilia had brought for her the last time they’d been swimming. Nothing was left to the imagination. She filled out the skimpy black bikini like a dream, she knew—she’d checked in the full-length mirror. Thanks, Cecilia. Was she borrowing trouble, Cecelia style?
Nathaniel was hot, sweaty, and thirsty. And not for lemonade, she saw when he looked at her. He wiped his brow and lifted off his T-shirt.
Patience tried not to focus on Nathaniel’s nearly naked body and the beads of sweat gathering on his broadly muscled shoulders and hairy chest and dripping down to his fit waist. He had tied his long dark hair back out of his face. A face, she noticed, that was focused intently on her, like a fearless hunter stalking its helpless quarry.
“You know, pirates have always had a longing eye for these islands,” Nathaniel said suggestively, as his eyes roamed the length of her body.
His reference to the speech by one of Bermuda’s earliest governors, Nathaniel Butler, didn’t escape Patience, and she picked up on his challenge by responding in Butler’s own words.
“Let us, therefore, so provide for ourselves, that come an enemy…we may be able to give him a brave welcome.”
Nathaniel continued to fix her with a sultry stare.
“Maybe you should start building some forts to protect your…coastline,” he said provocatively, alluding to Butler’s words again.
“I’m not afraid,” Patience whispered warily, chewing on her bottom lip.
“Maybe you should be. I haven’t decided what to do about you yet.” His blue eyes twinkled, then bore into hers as he inched closer and reached out over the tray she held to take her chin with his fingertips.
“You have roving hands,” Patience said, unnerved and angry, trying to back away from him. He refused to release her.
“You mean for a pirate?” He laughed again.
“For a person who pretends to have manners,” Patience said.
“I don’t pretend anything,” he replied.
Patience placed the tray with drinks and sandwiches on the stone table nearby and turned, still dangerously close to Nathaniel. He reached out for her, and she slipped away from his groping hands and into the heated pool, looking over her shoulder to make sure she had achieved the desired effect.
“What are you wearing?” Nathaniel called out to her.
“It’s called a bathing suit,” Patience replied.
“Is it new?”
“No, I’ve had it for a while. Why do you ask?”
“You forgot to cut off the price tag,” he drawled, and she frowned, felt around for the tag, found it, and tried to tuck it into the scant material. “And it doesn’t look like something out of your closet.”
“How would you know? Have you been snooping around in my closet?”
“I don’t need to snoop around your closet to know that’s not your style.”
“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
“Where did you get it?” Nathaniel demanded.
“I’m sure it must have come from one of the shops in town,” she said demurely.
“I was right. You didn’t pick it out yourself.”
“It was a gift,” Patience admitted.
“Who was the gift from?” Nathaniel asked evenly.
“Cecilia,” Patience said, pouting.
“Why am I not surprised? That suit should come with a warning—dangerous when wet. Or dangerous swells.”
“Don’t you like it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t think it looks good on me?”
“It would look better off you,” he said dryly.
Patience laughed. “Why don’t you stop digging in the dirt and come join me?”
“You’re trying to distract me. You just want me to stop digging, don’t you?”
“That thought had occurred to me. Is it working?”
“Do you really think you can tempt me to give up on my goal?”
“I can try,” she said with a grin.
“You look like a damn mermaid…or a siren,” he muttered. He took several long swallows of lemonade and pressed the icy glass against his brow. “You really want me to come in there after you?” he drawled dangerously.
She wet her lips with her tongue and stretched suggestively in the water. “Suit yourself,” she said.
“I don’t have a suit,” he said, skewering her with his eyes as he slowly stripped off his shorts and his briefs, “but I
am
coming in after you.”
She shrieked. “Nathaniel, you’re naked. Don’t you dare come near me!” Nathaniel was grinning like a schoolboy. “What is it? Why are you looking at me that way?”
The next thing she heard was a splash, and she dove under the water to escape. He raced around the pool after her, and for a few seconds she managed to dodge him and stay just a length ahead. Her heart was racing and her adrenaline pumping.
Then she made the mistake of looking back and saw that he was almost on top of her. Alarmed, she flipped and tried to speed away, but he caught her by the heel and slowly reeled her in, inch by inch, foot by foot, leg by leg, until he’d reached her waist and had her pressed so firmly against him she could barely breathe.
Trapped in his arms, Patience was never so aware of the masculine feel of Nathaniel’s body, the hardness of him, pulsing through the warm water of the heated pool.
“You’re as slippery as an eel, Patience, but it seems I’ve found your Achilles heel,” Nathaniel said smoothly, scooping her up easily so her bottom was balanced snugly on his palms. He was tall enough to stand in the water; she wasn’t.
“I thought you didn’t like sports,” she said nervously, trying not to focus on the fact that she was in the pool with a naked man.
“I said I didn’t like golf. I was captain of my swim team in college.”
He brought his lips tantalizingly close to hers.
“You want me to let you go?” he said quietly.
She didn’t answer.
“I didn’t think so.” His lips began to taste hers, and she moved restlessly in his arms.
“One of us is wearing too many clothes,” he said in a husky voice, as he lifted her bathing suit top over her head and sent it flying onto the pool deck. He palmed her breast and rubbed his thumb over her nipple till it hardened, then replaced the thumb with his tongue.
“Nathaniel,” she sighed. “I can’t, we can’t…”
“Yes,” he answered firmly. “We can. And now the bottoms,” he whispered against her breast. He started to slide the fabric off, and as she became agitated, he stroked her slowly, gently, with his fingers until she quieted, whimpering.
Panting, she felt herself responding to his raw need, to this new sensation.
“Kiss me, Patience,” he whispered, his breath ragged.
She wound her arms around his neck and tested his lips, then dove into him as he plied her with drugging kisses, until she felt weightless in the water and breathless in surrender.
He teased her tongue and ravished her mouth, dragging her into an undertow.
“Feel me, Patience,” he groaned. “Can you feel how much I want you?” She was frozen, motionless. And then his body began to shift.
“Now wrap your legs around me,” he instructed, as he lifted her from the waist, and positioned her, “like this. Please, now. Let me in, please, my sweet Patience.”
She could feel him moving urgently against her, and she panicked.
“Nathaniel,” she gasped, struggling as she pleaded, “No, not like this. Not here.”
“Ssh, we’re all alone, it’s just the two of us,” he said crushing his mouth to hers again. “It will be okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Trust me.”
“I can’t do this. I don’t understand what’s happening to me, Nathaniel, this is my first…I want—”
“I know what you want,” he said insistently. “I want the same thing.”
****
Suddenly it dawned on him what she was trying to tell him. This was the first time for her, and he had practically attacked her in her own swimming pool. Hadn’t Cecilia tried to tell him? She was expecting this to be a romantic experience, and he was acting like a dog in heat that couldn’t control his hormones or his urge to rut. No wonder she was so frightened. Could he have been any less sensitive? He should have taken more care with her.
Apologizing, he held her body away from his, and she tried to cover herself, but that only embarrassed her more because she wasn’t wearing any clothes. Why? Because, he had stripped them off her like a horny teenager.
“Please forgive me, Patience. I don’t know what came over me. I just wanted you, and I acted, well, like a jerk. I’m sorry.” He wanted to kiss her, hold her, give her some comfort, but he was afraid that would make things worse.
“Your clothes… I’m so sorry. Let me get them.” He deposited her at the shallow end of the pool and fished her bathing suit bottom from the water. The wet tag had practically disintegrated. Then he hoisted himself out of the pool and found the top of the bikini, which he also returned to her. He found her towel and stood sheepishly at the edge of the pool.
“You can come out now. I promise I won’t look.” He laid the towel where she could grab it and turned his face away. She emerged from the pool, wrapped the towel around herself, and walked up to him.
“It’s not your fault, Nathaniel. I wanted to. It’s just that—”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Nathaniel assured her. “I understand. I do. I want it to be…special…the first time, you know, for you, when you’re ready.”
She breathed a sigh of relief and, dripping, walked back into the house.
Nathaniel walked back to the moon gate, gathered up the rest of his clothes and put them on, and started digging with a vengeance to release some of his pent-up energy. He stayed out there for hours, mostly because he was afraid to go back into the house and face her.
At one point his shovel hit something hard, a metal container of some kind, and he wiped away the dirt. He was sure this was only the first container. Judging from the number of kilograms listed on the receipt, the whole backyard was probably filled with containers of gold bars and coins. He had done the calculations. In the 1930s and 1940s, the value of one ounce of gold ranged anywhere from $20 to $37, about $14,000 for a full bar. Today’s price for a standard bar of gold was $640,000. If all the gold was accounted for, at current market prices he estimated he was standing on tens of millions of dollars.
“Well, the first thing you know, old Nate’s a millionaire,” Nathaniel sang, hijacking the opening tune of
The Beverly Hillbillies
. He was just plain giddy. Maybe it was all that digging, or overexposure to the sun.
He lifted one of the bars in his palm, moved it from hand to hand. It was standard Swiss issue, untraceable, sanitized as only the Swiss could do. The exact purity and weight was stamped and sealed on each gold bar—24-karat gold purity, weighing 400 ounces.
Nathaniel liked the substantial feel of it, the hypnotic shine of it. This was what he had come for, what had drawn him here in the first place.
But then he thought of Patience. What he had originally considered a liability now turned out to be an unexpected bonus. But would she still want to have anything to do with him after the incident in the pool and after he confronted her with the evidence of her grandfather’s duplicity? There was a reason she had turned away from him. How could she trust him after what he was trying to do to her family?
He walked into the house and called out her name.
“Patience, where are you?”
She had obviously been painting feverishly. She had showered and dried her hair, but there were streaks of watercolor all over her face, similar to the way she looked when he had first seen her.