Happily Ever After (18 page)

She laughed softly at the memory. “Actually, I’m
not sure if, in fact, it was a shark’s tooth, but it certainly looked like one.
Some part of me couldn’t begin to fathom fierce fish had once swam through my
yard. But the boys swore it was a shark’s tooth, and somewhere deep down I
wanted to believe it.”

Jack blinked away the image of her as a child
running through the parklands of her home. “Sometimes you have to forget
everything you know and see the world with new eyes.”

“Yes! I think so, too,” Sophie agreed. “Sometimes
everything you know is just plain wrong.” She was talking about Harlan now, her
life in general, but he needn’t know it. “Sometimes everyone around you is
telling you something is one way, and you try so hard to believe it, and it
just doesn’t feel right.” She chewed her bottom lip, contemplating that truth.
“D you know what I mean?”

His eyes twinkled a bit. “I do.”

“Sometimes,” Sophie continued, encouraged by his
rapt attention, “nothing feels right until you forget everything you know ...
and follow your heart.”

He shook his head. “Your heart will get you in
trouble,” Jack proposed. “Follow your gut instead. It never lies.”

“I suppose that’s true.” Her gut said she was
doing the right thing.

“So what did you do with your shark’s tooth?” he
asked, and smiled. “Did you save it?”

Sophie bit her lip and told him a bit sheepishly,
“My mother found it, actually, and was quite horrified by it. She tossed it in
the garden, and told me never to get my hands dirty again. But I went back
later and found it, took it inside, and hid it in my pillow.” She refrained
from adding that she would pull it out each night and sleep with it tucked in
the palm of her hand, certain he would think that was silly.

“I used to imagine it was my good luck charm, to
scare away the ghoulies.”

He laughed, the sound of it rich and warm.

It made Sophie feel completely at ease.

“I think that’s every budding anthropologist’s
first discovery ... the infamous shark’s tooth.”

Sophie grinned at him. “Was it yours?” She lifted
her knees up and hugged herself, lying her cheek atop them, feeling perfectly
at ease when only minutes before she had felt awkward.

“Actually, no.”

“What was yours?”

“A canine tibia.”

Sophie scrunched her nose. “A dog’s leg?” She
laughed. “Yuck!”

He grinned. “Yep. Told my friends it was an
ancient breed of horse that belonged to pygmies who migrated from Africa.”

Sophie giggled. “You told them that?”

He nodded, looking quite pleased with himself, and
Sophie suddenly imagined him as a child, his golden hair white from the sun and
his skin deeply bronzed, his teeth flashing in a mischievous grin that was
inherently all boy. “Wherever did you come up with a theory like that?”

“Vivid imagination, mostly,” he admitted. “But my
father was an anthropologist,” he told her, “and I picked up bits and pieces
from him.”

Sophie’s brows lifted in surprise. “Was he truly?”

“One of the best,” Jack said, and Sophie could see
the pride in his face. His eyes filled with admiration and his smile was
genuine.

“He must be so proud!” Sophie exclaimed.

He blinked then, and looked away, then back,
shuttering emotions from her. “He’s dead now, Sophie.”

She’d known that, actually.

“Oh.” Sophie flinched at her own carelessness. How
could she have forgotten? She sat up, her heart twisting a little. “I’m sorry,”
she offered, and wanted to hug him suddenly.

“Don’t be,” he said, and smiled too. “He lived a
full life.”

She wanted to ask more, but didn’t dare.

Their gazes held.

Her heart began to beat a little faster, and she
swallowed a knot that rose in her throat.

“I guess I should go to bed now,” she said after a
moment, taking a deep breath and sliding her feet to the floor.

She was feeling strange suddenly, wanting things
she shouldn’t dare even think of.

He didn’t speak, merely continued to stare, and
Sophie’s stomach fluttered without cause.

“Well... g’night,” she whispered and rose, leaving
him to his work.

“G’night, Sophia,” he whispered back.

Her body shivered at the sound of her name on his
lips and she quickly closed the curtain between them. Without another word, she
put out the lanterns on her side of the room. She had no idea what had just
happened between them, but her head was spinning as she climbed into her
hammock.

As she lay there, she tried not to think of him
sitting on the other side of the curtain, but was far too aware of every
shuffle of his papers ... every sound that came from his half of the room.

Her heart didn’t stop pounding until long after
his lantern clicked off and the room lay completely still.

The storm that had been threatening earlier never
materialized and the sound of the waves slapping outside the cabin lulled her
to sleep.

CHAPTER 16

It was late afternoon when Sophie finished her
self-appointed chores.

She was weary as she made her way back to the
cabin for a moment’s respite, but filled with satisfaction over the day’s
accomplishments.

In the last few days, she’d managed somehow to
stay out of trouble, and had even made strides toward making amends with Jack.
He seemed different toward her today—not that he’d spoken to her much at
all, but it seemed to Sophie that every time she’d chanced to look up, he was
there, watching her.

She couldn’t tell if it was because he didn’t
trust her, or if he still expected her to find her way into trouble... or if it
was something more... but something about the way he looked at her sent her
pulse skittering.

Maybe he had felt what she’d felt that first night
in his cabin? She tried not to think of that, pushed it aside.

Her life was complicated enough, and she was
determined now to uncomplicate it at all costs. Jack MacAuley was a distraction
she could do without. She didn’t need a man in her life.

At any rate, there were other things to concern
herself with this moment. Thanks to Kell, the stove was no longer a complete
enigma, and she’d managed to concoct a few edible meals. She thought perhaps
she was improving, though it wasn’t as yet evident in the expressions on the
crew’s faces. She’d work on her seasoning now, and maybe before long she would
see them smile at the prospect of eating the fruit of her labors.

She found the captain’s cabin empty and slipped
within, closing the door behind her. She had one dress left and contemplated
changing into it, soiled as this one was becoming, but she didn’t dare. For the
first time in her life, she couldn’t just buy another. Nor was she certain how
to wash them without ruining the material. No, she’d have to make do.

Untying her makeshift apron, she tossed it over
the rope that separated their rooms, and dared to go and sit at Jack’s desk.
She really should wash up first, she thought, but she was far too tired to actually
do it. She sank back in his chair and set her feet up as she’d seen him do
while reading his papers, and smiled to herself at the picture she must
present.

She imagined the look he’d wear if he walked in
just now, and bit her lip to keep from laughing.

All she needed was a cigar and a brandy and a pair
of pants and she’d be just one of the crew. Which made her wonder. What would
it be like to be Jack? To simply be able to come and go when he pleased? To be
in love with his work? To live life by his own rules?

Her gaze was caught by the portrait of Harlan. She
removed her feet from the desk and leaned over to snatch it into her hands.

How could she ever have thought herself in love
with this puny man? Somehow, he paled in comparison to Jack. Everything about
Jack MacAuley bespoke vitality. He was passion incarnate and Sophie couldn’t
see him doing anything halfway.

She admired him, she realized.

She set the portrait of Harlan down and scrunched
her nose in disgust at it. His looks were deceiving. He seemed far too angelic
when he should be wearing devil’s horns and an evil goatee.

On a whim, she picked up Jack’s quill and dipped
it in his inkwell, then drew tiny little horns on Harlan’s head. She smiled,
satisfied with the impression. Next she drew a small goatee, pointy at the
end—almost like another horn—and went on to doodle a mustache as
well. Funny, she had never noticed how weak a chin Harlan had before now. The
goatee only seemed to accentuate it. She giggled as she drew, imagining the
expression on his face were he to see her disfiguring his picture. Next, she
drew little money symbols in his pupils ... so tiny one could almost mistake
them for a simple gleam in his eye, and then she smiled at the finished
product, her mood improved a hundredfold.

It was strange actually... She was no less
determined to face Harlan and seize back her honor, but somehow... the edge had
softened from her anger. She no longer felt such bitter fury when she thought
of Harlan with other women. It no longer stung so much that he had no wish to
see her.

In fact, it no longer even seemed to matter that
he’d been so willing to leave her on a shelf until he was good and ready to
encumbrance himself with the burden of matrimony.

The one thing that did bother her was that he had
used her and her father ... and he continued to use her without compunction.

She set the portrait down again on the desk so
that it faced her side of the room, thinking that there was nothing to stop her
now from going to Paris to study art.

Or perhaps she would go to Italy ...

Or maybe she would go dust off some heretofore
undiscovered pharaoh’s tomb in the great land of Egypt and give Harlan a better
example to follow. She leaned forward and flicked her finger at the picture,
knocking it on its face, smirking at it. It was really bad of her to feel so
vengeful, but she couldn’t quite keep herself from it. She truly hoped it
didn’t make her a terrible person.

Her thoughts returned to Egypt. Wouldn’t it be fun
to explore new cultures and to piece together the puzzle of their existence
through their artifacts? She envied Jack fiercely. She wanted to know the
things he knew.

She glanced down at the small silver key that
protruded from the drawer lock. It was too tempting. Her curiosity beckoned her
to open the desk drawer.

She couldn’t resist.

His papers were all neatly stacked within and she
pulled out a handful of them.

The documents were all titled, with myriad notes
scribbled into the margins. Some caught her attention more than others...

“The Phoenician Connection” ... “Hieroglyphics at
Closer Inspection” ... “The Maya Code.” Skimming the material, she noted that
the last appeared to be an in-depth interpretation of the Mayan system of
record keeping. She leafed through a few more, and paused at one that bore
interesting sketches in the margins. It was titled “The Supernatural
Association.”

One sketch appeared to be the body of an infantile
human with the spots of a jaguar and a rather grotesque face. The figure was
lying on its back and appeared to be having a tantrum of sorts. Under that
particular drawing was scribbled “Baby Jaguar, Early Classic Tikal and
Caracol.” The passage beside it was about the Bearded Jaguar God of the
underworld, and Sophie surmised they were one in the same—a Mayan version
of the devil perhaps?

The next paragraph spoke of a god who sat on his
throne in judgment and destroyed an early creation by flood ... How strangely
coincidental.

Or perhaps not so much at all...

She flipped a few more pages and found another
drawing entitled “The Body and Its Accouterments.” It was a gruesome picture of
the skeletal remains of a Mayan man, with labeled artifacts outside the
boundary of the drawing, and markings showing the position in which they were
found.

Fascinating.

There were, after that, pages upon pages of
crudely drawn maps, depicting what Sophie assumed were tombs. Had he drawn
these maps himself? Had he actually, with his own two eyes, beheld the bodies
at rest? How must it feel to unearth something that had not been seen by human
eyes since the day of its interment?

She read on, devouring information like a hungry
beggar, losing track of time. It wasn’t until the sun began to set and she was
forced to light the lantern on the desk that she realized just how late the
hour had grown. Still she couldn’t put down the manuscripts. They held her
enthralled. Here in these papers were a man’s life’s work, evidence of the time
and heart he had invested in his profession.

Sophie read until her eyes grew weary, until she
had to squint to see the letters because the room had grown too dim to make
them out. Greedy for knowledge, she turned the lantern light higher, the better
to read by, and removed it from its brace, drawing it near. As she huddled over
its flickering flame, heat caressed her lips and cheeks, seducing her into a
sweet languor...

She felt the heat like a whisper touch of his
finger, and she closed her eyes...

Like a phoenix, his image rose before her, and
Sophie dared to imagine what it would feel like if he came to her and took her
face in his hands ... if he kissed her...

To her shock, her mouth remembered the taste of
him, the feel of him... and she touched a finger to her lips... caressing them
softly.

She never failed to surprise him.

Jack had expected Sophie to pout over the loss of
her gowns but she hadn’t from the first. A simple grimace had been the extent
of her lamentation.