“Thanks, but I love being up here.”
He smiled as he steered the boat through the channel markers slowly, then opened up the throttle until they were whipping over the water. The air was cold, and the wind was stinging, but he saw that Caer didn’t flinch; indeed, she seemed to love the feel of it. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself as she sat across from him, staring out at the water and the passing scenery.
Newport was beautiful from the bay. The rocks jutted dramatically, the lighthouse was a piece of bygone charm, and mansions stood sentinel on the cliff. The bridge connecting the city to the mainland rose so high above the waves that the cars crossing it looked like toys.
When they reached Cow Cay, Zach anchored just offshore and found a couple of pairs of waders. Caer stared at him. “We’re walking? In those?” she asked incredulously.
“It’s only a few feet, but it’s worth it to stay dry. Trust me—it’s not deep. You’ll be all right.”
She didn’t look as if she trusted him one little bit, but as he set about zipping himself into the waders, she followed suit. After carefully lowering himself into the water, he reached up to help her. She was skeptical, but she carefully dropped into his embrace.
She smelled sweet—but not too sweet—from some elusive perfume, and no amount of clothing could impede his instinctive response when he felt the vivid crush of her body against his own. He held her close, grinning, as he let her slide slowly down until her feet touched bottom. “It is a deserted island,” he said teasingly.
“And it’s freezing,” she told him primly.
“You’re not much of a romantic,” he said, mock accusingly, then reached for the bag of tools he had left on deck.
“Walk carefully. You don’t want to get a dunking.”
She nodded, preceding him through the shallow water to the shore.
“It’s great out here in summer,” he said.
“Really?”
“Well, if you ask me, the water is still freezing, but it’s bearable. Northerners love it. You’re Irish. You would like swimming here.”
She looked at him as if she didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.
“Are you telling me you’ve never been swimming?” he asked her.
“Actually…no. I mean yes. I mean, I haven’t.”
“You need to learn to swim. And then to dive. Being underwater…it’s another world.” He heard his voice growing husky as he added, “I have to take you south. Home, or to the Caribbean. You can’t imagine what it’s like to dive the reefs. The colors of the fish, the coral…it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen.”
“I’m sure it is,” she agreed, suddenly cool, then asked, “So where is this Banshee Rock?”
He pointed. “Right there.”
He passed her and strode over to the rock. It was an oddly shaped piece of granite, standing by itself as if placed by a giant hand. It stood about ten feet high and four feet wide at the base.
“We’ll be systematic,” he said. If she was going to be all business, so would he.
Opening the canvas bag, he took out the metal detectors, pick and shovels. “We could get lucky and find it immediately, but I have a feeling it’s not going to be so easy.” She watched as he walked around the rock, trying to figure if there was a spot where it looked as if someone might have dug centuries before. It took a while, as he kept circling with the metal detector. Caer watched him, then started using her own.
At one point she cried out with pleasure and dropped down to her knees in the sand. “I found something!”
He hurried over and started to dig. A moment later, he held up a spoon.
“I don’t suppose it’s an antique?” Caer asked hopefully.
“Sorry—it was swiped from a local fish place,” he said, showing her the engraving on the handle. “But now we know your metal detector works. We’ll find more.”
“There might not be anything to find,” she said glumly. “Nothing that matters, anyway.”
“There is. I know there is.”
He went back to searching, and a few minutes later he paused, standing dead still and staring. But not at the rock itself. His vision was focused on a spot twenty feet away, toward the shore, where he suddenly realized that someone else had been digging.
“Look,” he said, striding toward the area. As he got closer, he could see that there were a number of places where someone had been busy with a shovel.
Zach used the metal detector to systematically search the sand. Caer started working nearby, emulating the grid pattern he was walking.
There wasn’t a sound from either of their instruments.
“Maybe, if there was something, it’s been found,” she suggested.
He shook his head. “We’d know.”
“How?”