Irresistible Fortune
“Well, this is damn inconvenient, isn’t it?” he asked in a low tone.
“I—” She stepped back, unsure if her embarrassing reaction to him or his acknowledgment of the chemistry between them worried her more. “We need to discuss the shipwreck.”
“Fine.” He moved around her and headed to the bedroom. “Let’s go get a beer, and you can tell me all about your tragic cause.”
She glanced at her watch. “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.”
“So? I’ll just throw on a T-shirt.”
When he returned, he was wearing a gray T-shirt and had pulled his hair back with a leather thong no doubt also used by the pirates whose treasure he was so adept at finding.
Lost in thought, she dimly registered that he’d stopped in front of her.
His impressive chest rose, then fell as he sighed, and he, too, checked the time. “It’s not a complicated proposition. Beer, no beer?”
Spending any more time with this man than was absolutely necessary seemed unwise. And yet it had been so long since she’d looked at a man with anything approaching desire, she was reluctant to let the feeling die. She’d been sure her ex had killed all her sexual impulses as well as their future together.
“How about iced tea?” she finally suggested.
He curled his lip as he laid his hand at the small of her back and guided her to the door. “For you, maybe.”
Outside, the wind had picked up, and Brenna flattened her hands against her sundress to keep it from flying up and giving Gavin Fortune and his crew an up-close-and-personal shot of her purple lace panties.
The blond-haired guy with wire-rimmed glasses smiled and nudged the Hispanic guy as they approached. “Pay up, Vasquez.”
“Poker, boys?” Fortune asked. “I thought you were programming the ROV.”
“No cards, amigo,” the Hispanic man, presumably Vasquez, said with a quick glance at Brenna. “A different kind of wager.”
“ROV?” she asked.
“Remotely Operated Vehicle,” Vasquez said, pointing at a device sitting on a table near him.
It was clearly mechanical, with lots of interlocking metal parts and tubing. It looked heavy. And complicated.
And that was pretty much all she could grasp.
“Basically, an underwater robot,” Fortune said, obviously sensing her confusion. “It allows us to take video and gather data without a human diver.”
She nodded. He’d certainly been right about his crew’s brains. “Oh.”
“Pablo, this is—” Fortune stopped, regarding her with surprise. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Brenna,” she said, sending him a reproachful look, realizing he’d never bothered to ask. “Brenna McGary,” she said to Pablo, extending her hand.
“Pablo Vasquez,” he returned. He indicated the blond man next to him. “This is Dennis Finmark. Over there is Jim Upton.”
Brenna shook Dennis’s hand and waved at Jim, a tall, thin, dark-haired guy who was wrapping a thick rope around a metal prong. They all seemed like nice, normal guys. Not minions of the devil at all.
She considered the implications of that as Fortune helped her off the boat, but it wasn’t until they were walking down the pier that she finally understood the bet. “They wagered on whether or not I could pick you up.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ve already turned away three other women today.”
“How do you know that?”
“Pablo told me.” She halted, studying him from head to toe. “Does it ever get old, being infamous and irresistible?”
“Hell, no.”
Ignoring his amused expression, she waggled her finger at him. “This isn’t a pickup. It’s a business discussion.”
“Whatever you say, Miss McGary. It is miss, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but how is that relevant?”
He resumed walking. “Just want to get your title correct.”
No doubt that was a dig to her insistence on ignoring his doctorate. Well, if he wanted to change that, he’d have to show her his diploma first.
And the one from the University of Hot Bare Chests and Dimples didn’t count.
When they reached the end of the pier, Fortune steered her right instead of continuing straight, which would have led them to The Night Heron, the marina bar. “The bar’s this way,” she said, pulling to a stop.
“Let’s walk down the beach to Joe’s.”
“You know about Coconut Joe’s?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
Given the fact that he hadn’t bothered to put on shoes, she supposed the casual dress code of Joe’s was more appropriate. She removed her platform wedges and moved down the stairs into the hot but soft crème-colored sand. “How long have you been on the island?”
“Two days.”
“How long are you staying?”
“As long as it takes.”
Okay, so not much of a talker. Not what she’d expected at all. He’d lost his cocky and careless expression and was watching the horizon.
Who was this guy?
They spoke little until they’d climbed the stairs from the beach to Joe’s, which rose above the sand on wooden stilts. The tacky but charming decor, complete with the expected surfboards and fishing nets hanging on the walls, suited Palmer’s Island’s laid-back style perfectly. And the food was top-notch.
To escape the steaming summer heat, Fortune requested from the hostess that they sit inside with air-conditioning rather than on the screened deck. For some reason, Brenna had the feeling he would have preferred to be outside, but chose not to out of deference to her.
Clearly, the heat was affecting her brain.
She ordered sweet tea, and he stuck with beer. The waitress, named Tammy, gave the man across from Brenna a flirtatious smile and barely bothered to glance in her direction.
“Hey, aren’t you the guy from the paper?” Tammy asked Fortune when she returned with their drinks. “You’re some kind of cool scientist.”
Fortune sent her a charming smile, including the dimples. “Maritime archaeologist.”
Brenna nearly choked on her tea. In what universe?
The waitress’s eyes widened. She leaned closer, giving him and the entire back half of the restaurant an excellent view of her cleavage. “Wow. What’s that?”
“I do research underwater. I’ve also studied history extensively.”
Brenna barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Is that what you earned your imaginary degree in?
“I just love old stuff,” the waitress said.
“No kidding? Old stuff is my specialty.”
Brenna couldn’t take it anymore. She took two large gulps of her tea and held up the nearly empty glass. “Could I get a refill, please?”
The waitress flashed her a resentful glare, but straightened and took the glass. “Weren’t you my kid brother’s science teacher last year?”
“English, actually.”
“Don’t worry, honey,” Fortune said, leaning toward Brenna as Tammy stalked away. “There’s plenty of me to go around.”
2
“THIS IS A BUSINESS meeting.”
There was something wildly arousing about that prissy mouth. Gavin couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed being scolded so much. “So why’d you chase off my opportunity for fun?”
She glowered at him. “You’re a wretch.”
“So?” But for the first time in a very long time he wished he didn’t appear to be. “At least I have fun.”
“I have fun.”
“Oh, yeah? You and your cat get crazy on Friday nights and order anchovy pizza instead of just plain cheese?”
Her face turned bright red with her efforts to hold back her anger—the passion he wanted to see more than anything. “I don’t like you very much.”
“What a shame. I like you very much.”
Leaning back, he sipped his beer and watched her coloring go from red to white in an instant. “Do you honestly think all it takes to get my attention is a set of big boobs and an interest in old stuff?”
“Priceless nineteenth century relics are glimpses into our past, how we lived, where we came from. They’re representations of people who sacrificed for and dreamed of the world we now enjoy. They’re reminders of our mistakes and successes, our tragedies and triumphs. They are not, nor should they ever be referred to as, stuff.”
There was the passion.
His body hardened, even as he cursed inwardly.
He’d cultivated his image carefully. Much of it might be a farce, but his popularity and daredevil reputation got him the important contracts. He couldn’t risk exposure—even for a woman as exciting and challenging as Brenna McGary.
Sure, he’d grown tired of keeping up the pretense, and maybe some of the rumors attributed to him had gotten out of hand.
But he’d cast his lot a long time ago and didn’t see how he could change his path now.
He had artifacts to protect, as no one else could. If lovely crusaders like Brenna had to hate him in order for him to accomplish the bigger goals, he’d have to suck it up and make the sacrifice. “Nice speech,” he said, trying to seem impressed, but not too much. “I can see why the historical society values you.”
“They certainly do. And that’s why they sent me to confront you.”
He spread his arms wide, giving her an easy target. “Confront away.”
“We want the items recovered from the ship assembled into a single collection. We want the public and historical researchers to have an opportunity to view and study the artifacts. We want an effort made to contact descendants of the victims in the event anything with a personal monogram or family crest is recovered.”
“So you want me to find the treasure, but you want to tell me how to do it? ”
She looked annoyed by his assessment. “Not how in the technical sense. You clearly have qualified people and the right equipment. We simply want you to show some decorum. A little reverence for the task you’re undertaking wouldn’t be a crazy notion. And we don’t want the artifacts auctioned off like livestock.”
“I’m under contract with the descendants of the shipping company who owned The Carolina.”
“Captain Cullen didn’t own his ship?”
“If he did, he never registered the sale. It’s possible he won the vessel in a card game, or even took it forcibly, but the last records we can find indicate the owner as the Sea Oats Shipping Company, so the artifacts I find belong to them.”
“But you negotiate a certain percentage for yourself. And you can’t tell me you report every find.”
Gavin wished he could lash out at her accusation, but he frankly deserved it. He’d certainly been part of a team who’d committed that crime. “There are a lot of treasures down there, one of them possibly a chestful of gold and gems. There’s no way the owners are going to plop it down in a glass museum case and charge five bucks a head to watch John Q. Smith walk by when they could make millions selling off the contents.”
“So you haven’t found the chest?”
“Not yet.”
“But you think it’s there.”
He shrugged. “Legends generally have some basis in fact. Personally, I think we might find a chest, but a decoy. Pirates were clever and secretive when it came to their booty. Why would a successful one like Cullen blab about his?” Gavin reached into his shorts pocket and pulled out a bronze-colored coin, which he laid on the table in front of Brenna. “I did find this today.”
“It’s an Indian-head cent piece,” she said, picking it up. “Circa 1860. These were issued by the U.S. Mint, not the Confederates.”
“And The Carolina was known to raid Union merchant ships in the Caribbean.”
Her fairy green eyes widened as they focused on him. “At least you’ve studied the history a bit.”
“Why wouldn’t—” He stopped. He could think of twenty reasons why reckless treasure hunter Gavin Fortune wouldn’t be mistaken for a studious man. “I had some time on the flight up from Miami.”
The waitress returned to see if Gavin wanted another beer, which he didn’t. Brenna also declined any more tea. The meeting seemed to have come to an end.
Gavin was both glad and reluctant to part from her. He’d been reading some firsthand accounts of ship captains who’d encountered Cullen, and the latest batch was in French. Making any sense out of the various dialects, as well as the old-fashioned expressions, required serious focus.
Despite the fact that Gavin the Wretch would let her pay, he couldn’t take the ruse that far. Teachers were shamefully underpaid, and he had plenty of cash to spare, after all.
But the unsettled feeling that had sunk into his gut since he’d heard her impassioned—and perfectly reasonable—list of requests about the recovery efforts refused to abate. Even as his bare feet sank into the hot sand while they walked back to the marina, the cold reality inside him remained.
He wanted to see much, much more of Brenna McGary, and he couldn’t.
At least not in the way he’d like.
He was interested in her take on the differing accounts of Captain Cullen—as a heartless ravager of any and all ships in the Caribbean, or, in contrast, as a gracious seaman who always returned the passengers of the ships he overtook to a safe port. Was that a product of the Confederacy favoring him and the Union deriding him? Was it part of the pirate mystique? A combination of the two?
Even being raised in Texas, Gavin knew South Carolina was a whole different element of Southern culture. First to secede, they still flew the state flag with as much pride as the American one. With the first shots fired in the Civil War, they’d started out, and somehow remained, true rebels.
He’d love to hear her theories almost as much as he’d love to get her alone, aroused and naked.
Hey, he wasn’t actually a wretch, but he was a man.
And it got old pretending to be stimulated by women who weren’t interested in the things he was. Women who wanted to know how much things were worth, instead of what they meant.
“Why do you like me?” she asked suddenly.
Oh, boy. He fought against banality and pretty words. She was probably soft on Yeats, but a specific reference escaped him. “Why not?” he answered.
“Why not indeed?” She kept her face turned slightly away, so he couldn’t see her eyes. “On the upside, I don’t have big boobs or a tendency to call historical treasures stuff.”
“No. Everything about you is tiny.” An instinctive smile broke across his face. “Except your mouth.”
“It helps when attempting to control teenage boys. Do you want to know why I don’t like you?”
He really wasn’t sure he could take any more judgment from her, however justified. “My ponytail. I bet you hate long hair on men.”
“No. The hair’s … fine. It suits you.”
“I’m not really big on shoes. Are you one of those women who uses shoe shopping to replace sex?”
“Definitely not.”
“Then it must be because I’m an amoral, grave-robbing opportunist.”
“That certainly plays a major part.”
That wasn’t it? He had faults besides his scoundrel image? Good grief. “What’s the other part?”
“Parts, plural. I don’t like people who think because I’m small I’m also weak.”
Finally a question he could answer with absolute honesty. “I never, for one second, assumed you were weak.”
“I’m so glad. I also don’t like that you’re all over the place.”
“All over the place?” he repeated, trying to recall the last time a woman had caught him so off guard.
“At times you appear overindulgent and self-absorbed,” she continued. “Then you say something intelligent, almost insightful. It’s interesting.”
He definitely couldn’t have her thinking he was interesting. Her astuteness could ruin everything.
They’d reached the stairs leading from the beach to the pier, and she slipped on her shoes. “Thank you for your time. I’m sure we’ll be seeing—”
“Sure you don’t want to come back to my place for a while?”
“Your place?”
“Yeah. The boat.” He inclined his head toward the marina. “I could tell the guys to take off for an hour or so.”
“Gee, a whole hour?”
“Or so.”
Her eyes frosted over. “No, thank you, Mr. Fortune.”
“Call me Gavin.”
“Not Dr. Fortune?”
“No way. That makes me sound like a comic book supervillain. How about Dr. Kensington?” He pursed his lips. “No, that makes me sound like an uptight English lit teacher.”
“I neither have a doctorate nor am I uptight.”
“But you sound like you do. I have two, and I don’t.”
“Two what?”
“Doctorate-level degrees.”
“From where?”
“Cambridge and Princeton. Oh, and I got a masters in European history from Oxford. Just for fun.”
Brenna burst out laughing. She giggled until tears leaked from her eyes. “Of course. Just for fun,” she managed to say when she calmed enough to talk. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For killing any attraction I might have been delusional enough to feel for you.”
With that, she climbed the stairs and strolled down the wooden slats toward the parking lot.
He’d figured she wouldn’t take either his real credentials or his fake tasteless proposition seriously, but he hadn’t expected to be so disappointed in her reaction.
And the Yeats came back to him.
Here we will moor our lonely ship
And wander ever with woven hands,
Murmuring softly lip to lip,
Along the grass, along the sands,
Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands.
IN THE LIBRARY TWO DAYS later, Brenna leaned against the front counter, no doubt distracting Sloan from her work. But everybody was working. Maybe she should get a summer job.
Of course, she was supposed to be focusing on The Carolina project for the historical society. And that thought led her right back to the place she’d sworn to quit going. “He’s an insufferable egomaniac and an amoral, grave-robbing opportunist.”
“You forgot gorgeous,” Sloan said, never pausing as she tapped her fingertips on the computer keyboard.
“Looks don’t figure into this.”
“Sure they do. Helen said he’s hotter than the Fourth of July sun.”
Helen was another society member, who was also a business partner of Brenna’s father. The two of them were the best real estate agents on the island.
Generally, Helen was a fine judge of man candy, and technically, she wasn’t wrong in this case, though Brenna was loath to admit it.
She’d seethed for two days over her encounter with Dr. Gavin Fortune, whose mystery had only deepened. It took some digging, but with the help of the society’s resident computer expert—a teenager named Penelope Waters—she hadn’t found proof of advanced degrees, but a buried secret.
Fortune hadn’t always been his name. He’d had it changed several years back. When Brenna had asked what his name had been before, she’d gotten a strange answer from Penelope.
“Nobody knows,” she’d said. “The records were sealed by a federal court judge.”
Beautiful, mysterious and possibly brilliant. What were the odds?
Too bad he was a complete ass.
“Helen also says he has a thing for you,” Sloan continued.
“Well, he can keep his thing to himself.”
“He seemed pretty disappointed to find Helen as the new historical society representative for his recovery project.”
“I’m sure he was. He wouldn’t dare pull the kind of crap on Helen he tried on me.”
Sloan finally looked away from her computer screen. “What kind of crap … exactly?”
“He made fun of my cat, my temperament and my outspokenness. He derided a Brontë—he didn’t mention which one—and Jane Austen, then made a clumsy pass. That’s it.”
“So you already told me. I still contend something else must have happened for him to run you off like that.”
Brenna scowled. “He didn’t run me off.”
“Then why did you send Helen to deal with him?”
“Because I can’t stand him.”
Sloan’s gaze probed hers. “You sure it’s not because you like him too much? ”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Madame President, he’s destroying the history of our island.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Mrs. Kendrick.” A dark-haired girl of about ten walked up to the counter. “I’m supposed to find some books for my little brother. Can you help me?”
“Sure thing, sweetie,” Sloan said, rounding the counter. “How old is he?”
“Four.” The girl pursed her lips. “He can’t really read yet, but he likes to pretend.”
“I’m sure we can find something to help him on his way.”
Brenna propped her chin on her fist as they walked away. Sloan was defending Fortune? What was that about?
Maybe Brenna was more sensitive than any of them about this particular project, but the rest of the society had to agree that Fortune and his crew weren’t good for Palmer’s Island. Even her father, who generally lived in the here and now unless a good spot of history helped him sell a property, was concerned about the fate of The Carolina. Before her parents had left on their month-long cruise, they’d encouraged Brenna to keep a close eye on the ship’s recovery efforts.
She wondered what Grandmother would have thought about all of this.
Brenna had been raised on stories of Lucy McGary, her great-grandmother, who’d been a museum curator in Washington, D.C. In 1942, she’d been selected by the museum to transport several canvases of a well-known artist to London.
Unfortunately, the Germans had bombed their ship, convinced the vessel was transporting ammunition to the Allies. Her grandmother, along with fifty others, had been killed. The watertight safe of canvases had also met a watery grave.
Until 1992.
That year, the descendants of the artist convinced the ship’s former owners to explore the wreck site and try to locate the lost paintings, which were now worth millions.
The excavation team, led by Dr. Dan Loff—who would later be famous for serving as mentor to Gavin Fortune—scavenged the sunken ship for treasure. When Brenna’s family learned their relative’s large, jeweled broach had been recovered, they flew to New York with pictures and proof of ownership, hoping to reclaim it.
Loff had already broken the setting apart and sold off the pearls and emeralds, one by one.
So if she was a little bitter toward vultures like Loff and Fortune, Brenna figured she had a right.
As Sloan returned to the desk, though, Brenna tried to set aside her personal prejudice and think logically. She wouldn’t give a student a hard time just because his parents were rude. Maybe she’d wrongly stereotyped Fortune. She wasn’t delusional enough to think good looks equated stupidity. Sloan didn’t look like anybody’s vision of a librarian, but she was brilliant at her job.
Though Fortune was still an ass.
There had been a fleeting moment when she’d thought she’d been wrong about him. When he talked about Captain Cullen, she’d sensed something in his tone. Excitement, maybe?
Then he’d admitted he’d simply read about it on the flight from Miami. He probably had a team of research assistants who culled together the facts he’d need to get through a press conference.
So what about the name change? Who had he been before? Why was it so important to protect that background? And why had he lied about his degrees? If he even had any?
No doubt being a brainiac didn’t fit with his barefoot-with-a-ponytail, beer-drinking, hard-loving image.
“Did I mention I’m throwing a party tomorrow night at my house?” Sloan asked as she took her spot behind the counter.
Brenna struggled to drag her focus away from Gavin Fortune. “Party?”
“Yeah. Just the society, some of the supporters and the mayor. It’ll be a social strategy meeting kind of thing.”
“Sounds fun.” And on a Friday night. See, Dr. Fortune, I have plenty of fun. She’d bet anchovy pizza wasn’t on the menu, either. How had he known about that, anyway? “Can I do anything to help?”
“Yep.” Sloan grinned, and for some reason Brenna didn’t like that smile one little bit. “Don’t go crazy on Gavin Fortune and his team. They’re the guests of honor.”