"Piper, we did what we did because it felt like the right thing to do at the time. Period, end of story."
She had to admit that kissing him had felt right, that it still did.
"And if you ever don't want me to"—he smiled slightly, sexily —"pounce, all you have to do is say no."
She acknowledged his words with a curt nod and drank some of her coffee. Three o'clock in the morning and she was sitting in Clate Jackson's kitchen. The Nashville magazine had profiled him as hard edged, sexy, driven, a man who fiercely protected his privacy. He had started in construction at age sixteen, doing grunt work. At twenty-six, he had his own company. With relentless commitment, long hours, an eye for calculated risk, and an ability to pick and motivate good people, he had defied his doubters and become one of his city's most successful businessmen. Now, he owned an exclusive hotel, exclusive office buildings acclaimed for their character and beauty as well as their functionality. He had built a house in a private location on the Cumberland River. Always, profit was at the center of what he did. His integrity was unquestioned, but no one pretended Clate Jackson wasn't capable of playing hardball if he felt the situation called for it.
There was no mention of his family, parents, siblings, cousins, what he'd been before age sixteen, beyond a cryptic line that said he didn't discuss his past.
He pushed his chair back, its legs scratching on the pineboard floor and lurching Piper back into the present. Three o'clock in the morning, Clate Jackson's kitchen, she in one of Hannah's Little House on the Prairie dresses. They'd have had a heck of a time with all the buttons and hooks and eyes if they'd decided to make love out in the moonlight. Of course, maybe they wouldn't have bothered disrobing.
Warmth spread through her. It was wild thinking. Insane.
"Tell me about your aunt's buried treasure," Clate said, giving no sign he had a clue of what she was imagining.
Piper cleared her throat, glad for the distraction. For years her father and brothers had drilled into her the necessity and the advantage in keeping her emotions in check and her mouth shut. She was accustomed to doing what she had to do without a lot of introspection and angst, without expecting anyone else to understand.
But she found herself wanting Clate to understand why she'd put on a black dress and snuck onto his property in the middle of the night, why she was indulging her aunt in spite of threatening phone calls, him, her brothers, her father, and common sense.
"All right. I'll tell you."
He listened without interruption. He gave her that much courtesy. His expression remained neutral, even when she got to the part about the Russian princess and Faberge egg. But she had no illusions. This was a man who was concrete in the extreme, not one given to flights of imagination. He wouldn't easily accept that some things were not subject to logical explanation. Hannah's recovered memory and her firm belief in what she saw that night eighty years ago required a leap of imagination that even stretched Piper's capabilities.
"I've been dragging my heels," she said finally, "and Hannah knows it. She called me on it yesterday. I came out here tonight because I was more interested in pacifying her than finding buried treasure. I just had to act—results didn't matter."
"How far did you get?"
"I didn't even break ground."
"You were going for under the wisteria."
She nodded, suddenly feeling foolish. "If I was eighty-seven and believed the key to my parents' death lay under a wisteria, I'd want someone to dig for me and prove it one way or the other."
"What about the phone calls?"
"I can't explain them. I can't imagine why anyone would care if I were messing around on your property. Hannah says she didn't mention the treasure to anyone." Piper jumped up and returned her mug to the sink. A good thing she'd requested decaf. She'd have trouble sleeping as it was. She turned around and glared at Clate. "She has no reason to lie."
"I didn't say she did."
His tone was mild, not defensive. Piper reeled in her frustration. "I'm just so damned confused. I tried to do some research at the local library, but too many people I know were around. I managed to read one of the major accounts of how my great-grandparents died. People up and down the Cape were outraged and horrified that someone—probably one of their own —would lure two people to their deaths."
"Any proof that that was what happened?"
"A lantern was found on the beach, and an old fisherman said he'd seen a light waving in the fog. There were never any suspects, though."
Clate had his eyes narrowed, and Piper knew he was listening intently, that she had his full attention. "Is there any chance the ship wasn't purposely lured onto the sandbar? Could whoever had the lantern have been trying to help a lost ship and things just went awry?"