“I heard there was a lot of money here—gold, pearls the size of your eye. Men were coming here to find treasure.”
“So you came to hunt for treasure,” she repeated.
“Yeah, you could say that.” He laughed.
She turned, frowning. “What’s so funny?”
“I wasn’t planning on hunting for it.” He held up the deck of cards. “I had big plans to fleece it from the suckers who did.”
“But you got caught and ended up in prison,” she said knowingly.
“No. I didn’t get caught.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. “There is no such thing as innocent until proven guilty in these islands.” He threw the seashell into an incoming wave.
“Napoleonic law,” she murmured and absently drew one finger through the sand. “Sometimes it’s the things we Americans take for granted that are the things we should value the most.”
They sat in companionable silence, something new for them, while the trade wind ruffled the leaves on a nearby palm. A sand crab skittered across the shoreline, then disappeared into the deep safety of the wet sand, a small bubble the only sign that it had ever been there.
After a few minutes Smitty looked back at the bottle. “If you had found this”—she turned it in her hand again—“and were given three wishes, what would you wish for?”
“Freedom,” he said without a second of thought.
He could feel her stare and knew what she wanted. She wanted to ask him about his prison sentence. He turned and gave her one of those direct looks she favored. He saw curiosity, interest, and intelligence in her face. But he’d volunteered enough. “How about you?” He picked up a small stick and jabbed it into the sand a few times, then looked back at her, waiting for an answer.
“I’m thinking,” she said after another stretch of silence.
He laughed to himself. What a surprise. Smitty thinking. He tossed the stick in the water and watched a wave catch it and tumble it back toward them. “What does a woman attorney wish for? To win every case?”
“No. I love the challenge of the law. The way it always changes. It fascinates me.” She paused. “There’s something special about trying to make the world a fair place.”
“That sounds like one of your oxymorons, sweetheart. The world can’t be a fair place.”
“I believe it can be fair and equal.”
“You’re just chasing rainbows.”
“The law is there for all of us. Think about it. Without laws we have chaos.”
“With laws we have chaos.” He laughed more caustically now. “What the hell is the world going to be like a hundred years from now?”
“A better place to live. More fair. More equal. Closer to perfect.”
He just shook his head. A perfect world, what an idealistic joke. He looked at her. Yeah, he thought, she is an attorney. “So what about those wishes, Smitty? What does an attorney who works to make the world perfect wish for?”
“I was a woman before I was ever an attorney.” “What does a woman wish for?”
She shook her head. “I can’t speak for all women. Only me. I would want to go home.”
“You have three wishes. What about the other two?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know,” she said almost as if she were talking to herself. She looked at him. “That sounds strange, doesn’t it?”
“No.” He waited, then added, “You probably haven’tthoughtabout it long enough.”
She slowly turned to look at him.
He tried to keep a straight face.
She burst out laughing. “I walked right into it again, didn’t I?”
