Pamela Browning - The Treasure Man

He pulled on his trunks in record time, grabbed a towel and followed her. The sky above was laced with slow-moving clouds, and the sun-baked sand burned his bare feet. As he jogged out of the dunes, he spotted Chloe lolling in the shallows close to shore where last night’s wave action had scooped out a tidal pool right below the high-tide line.

“Hi,” Chloe said, interrupting his reverie. “Come on in. I’d forgotten how this is like having our own little swimming pool right down here on the beach.”

He waded in. The water was too warm, more like the temperature of a bathtub than the ocean, and it was translucent, so that every shell and rock on the bottom was clear.

“I know what I want,” Chloe said, leaping to her feet and scrambling out of the water. That swimsuit of hers was almost transparent; the outlines of her nipples were visible. He glanced away, his mouth suddenly dry.

“I’ll be right back,” she said. She ran up the beach and disappeared into the dunes.

I know what I want, she’d said. He tried to stop thinking about what he wanted, which was, let’s be honest here, a tumble with her.

Once, he wouldn’t have put it in those terms. Each woman he’d met before the bad time was new territory to be explored, and he didn’t only consider their bodies. No, he’d always been vitally interested in what went on in their heads. He’d been fascinated with the dimensions of women’s minds, how they brought different perspectives to life than men, how they never failed to surprise and delight him. There had been many women after Ashley’s mother, from whom he’d been divorced shortly after their daughter was born.

All the women after Emily had enriched his life immeasurably, but he’d never remarried. He’d flitted here and there like a butterfly, alighting in one place for a while and then moving on to something that promised to be sweeter but often wasn’t. He wouldn’t ever do that again. It was a way of life requiring optimism, a quality that was missing in his makeup these days.

So why was he feeling positively hopeful as Chloe Timberlake reappeared on the path?

Chloe, he saw as she moved closer, was carrying a couple of deflated beach rafts over her arm.

“I discovered these in the hall closet,” she said as she sat on the sand at the edge of the pool. “Here, one’s for you.” She tossed it to him.

Chloe made a comical sight with her cheeks puffed out as she prepared to blow up the raft. This was a woman who was as unselfconscious as they came.

“I’m looking forward to floating around in the water and getting a suntan,” she said between breaths. She acted as if anything she suggested should be all right with him.

“Okay,” he said. Her plan didn’t sound half-bad, though he didn’t need a tan. He could understand why she wanted one. Her skin was as pale as a tourist’s.

“You’d better put on sunscreen,” he cautioned.

“Already did,” she said in that jaunty way of hers, the faint aroma of coconut-scented suntan lotion wafting in his direction.

Ben concentrated on inflating the raft, wondering if it wouldn’t have made more sense to use the air compressor in the annex closet to do the job. But then he wouldn’t have had the pleasure of watching Chloe puckering up, a sight that put him in mind of other reasons she might do so. He’d bet her lips were soft and pliant, capable of eliciting the most delectable sensations.

Damn, he’d better stop thinking in such terms or this raft wouldn’t be the only thing that inflated.

“There,” Chloe said with satisfaction. She launched the raft with a little push. A couple of fish skittered away, but Ben scarcely noticed now that Chloe was splashing into the water and preparing to board.

Ben knew for certain that there was no graceful way to get on a raft that was floating in the water. You could belly flop, or you could straddle it, or you could shove it under your body and hope it didn’t go all cattywampus. But somehow Chloe managed to arrive stomach-up on the raft with remarkable grace, holding him spellbound in the process.

When she was settled, one hand trailed in the water, the other rested on her abdomen. Her eyes, he discerned in the bright sunlight, were not blue but a delicate shade of lavender, with long dark lashes. Ben usually wasn’t a fan of women with pointy chins, and he couldn’t exactly say that Chloe’s was pointy, but it wasn’t rounded, either. In the middle of it was a dimple that fascinated him because it went away when she smiled, which was exactly the opposite of what dimples usually did. And her eyebrows had a coquettish slant to them, which he didn’t think came from plucking or waxing.

“Is something wrong?” Chloe asked suddenly.

“No, no,” he said too hastily. “I was just watching that guy with the parasail over there.” Down near the inlet, someone was floating effortlessly above the ocean, dangling from a multicolored nylon parachute.

“Right,” Chloe said, after gazing in that direction for a moment, but she sounded unconvinced.

“When the tide comes in, this pool will disappear,” he said, mostly for conversation’s sake. He launched himself onto his raft stomach down, then paddled toward the far end of the pool, which was perhaps twenty-five feet away.

“That’s why it’s important to take advantage of it,” Chloe said as she drifted along beside him. “I intended to go for a quick swim, cool off a bit before getting to work, but it’s going to be difficult to concentrate. I keep worrying about my niece. She’s AWOL, and my sister is beside herself.”

“They live in Texas?”

“Back home in Farish.” Chloe outlined how Tara had disappeared.

“Like you say, she’s probably fine,” Ben said.

Chloe sighed. “Things had seemed to settle down with her, but I should have known better. I had a difficult adolescence myself.”

“I was into trouble most of my teenage years,” he told her. “Riding with a group of kids on motorcycles, finding all kinds of mischief. I lived in Yahola, a small town inland from here. Lake Okeechobee was to the south, a bunch of cattle ranches situated to the north, and I was bored out of my gourd.” He slanted a look at her to assess how she was taking this. She seemed interested rather than critical.

“Me, too,” she said. “To me, Farish, Texas, was the most nowhere place in the world. Our Main Street started at the courthouse square and ended in a cow pasture.” She laughed. “I can’t believe I’ve voluntarily moved to Sanluca, population two thousand. That’s approximately six thousand fewer people than Farish.”

“If this is where you can pursue your dream, it’s worth it, Chloe. That’s how I ended up here when I was nineteen.”

“What got you from Yahola to Sanluca?” Curious, she glanced at him.

“I got a book at the library, and it showed pictures of people diving for treasure off the Florida Keys. After I read it, I hopped on my motorcycle and rode over to see a friend who had moved here, keen to find out if he knew anything about Sea Search. He introduced me to Andy McGehee. Andy said, ‘Kid, you’ve gotta learn to dive before I’ll talk to you,’ so after that, I spent every penny I earned on scuba lessons and all my spare time diving.”

“You had a passion,” she said softly, shading her eyes with a hand for a moment to stare at him.

“I’ll always be grateful to the librarian who recommended that book.”

“That’s probably the key to reaching Tara. Helping her find her niche, I mean. She’s assured me she’s over her past problems. Maybe she’ll find her own passion.”

“What kind of problems has she had?” he asked.

“Tara shoplifted on a dare and got caught. She lifted a pair of panty hose from a store in a mall in Austin. She was only thirteen at the time.”