He hummed, pulling his lips to the side. “Possibly. Difficult customers don’t bother me. I have dealt with those types of people many times on fishing trips.” He smiled. “What about you? What will you do with your share?”
“What is my share?” I mimicked his pose and leaned back on my palms, flat on the ground, my thumb barely touching his. The most minor point of contact, yet so much heat streamed through it.
Hunter looked at our hands then at me. “Half, obviously.”
I never thought of having so much money. I was comfortable with what I made at my job (of course, because of AI, I might soon be unemployed), and it never crossed my mind to stop working until perhaps my late fifties (if I invested well), but I was sure I could get used to the idea of even earlier retirement. What would I do with myself? I could sail the world for a few years in honor of my father, visit places he’d mentioned in his diaries, and perhaps understand why he had wanted to do it. I could donate some money to the animal shelter a few blocks from my house, and volunteer there several days a week. Or maybe I should donate right away and then go traveling. Something to think about later.
“You’d give up that much?” I said, my eyes never leaving his. “But I just got here. You have been doing this for much longer.”
It was his turn to tilt his head. “Trust me, I’m still at square one.”
“No, you’re on square two because you narrowed your search to this island.”
“Ithinkit’s here,” he said, arching an eyebrow. “I could be wrong. I’ve been mistaken about many locations before.”
My gut feeling was this time Hunter was right. The island had a skeleton with a compass containing a cryptic message and a pirate’s ship carved on the side of a mountain. There was obviously something special about this place.
“You’re saying if we find the treasure by the time you fix your boat, I can keep half of the finder’s fee?” I asked, and he nodded. A flare of eagerness fizzed through my veins. I had several days to a few weeks to find a two-hundred-year-old lottery ticket. Challenge accepted. I stuck my hand out. “Deal.”
Hunter’s large, callused hand enveloped mine, his warmth seeping into my skin. “Deal.”
ChapterEleven
Dressed in my bikini and jean shorts, I followed a thumping noise to the beach, where I found Hunter erecting a part of the block and tackle system. Yesterday, as we gathered all the lines Hunter had and selected the healthiest and strongest-looking trees, he explained the simple engineering behind the pulley and lifting design we were building today. The easiest part was assembling this system and the structure where theReely Nautiwould be lifted or something like that. But the challenging part was reeling the sunken boat out of the ocean—a many-thousand-pound beast, full of water, resting on its side on the seabed. Several days max.
A few hens pecked the ground, a group of young chickens following them. Tuesday sunbathed on driftwood on the beach, and Monday hid in low bushes, his tri-colored face not blending well with green. I kept in the shade and watched Hunter work as if I’d never seen a man before. Hunter’s shirt hung on the corner of the workbench as he stood tall with both hands holding up a large joist, trying to connect it to a structure with pulleys and cables attached and threaded between other timbers.
As he lifted it, sweat ran down his muscled back and disappeared in the waist of the shorts which hung low on his hips. His broad shoulders and clean-cut muscles were those of a man who didn’t spend hours in the gym huffing in front of a mirror but earned through hard labor. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen him without a shirt on, but right now, scorching heat spread in my chest and reached deep down into my core.
Before I forgot how to breathe (and that we should be a team), I asked, “Need my help?”
Hunter peered over his shoulder at me. “Please.”
Joining him, I flattened my palms next to his on the beam.
“Hold it in place.” Hunter wiped his damp forehead with his forearm and stepped back to grab a hammer. “Watch your fingers.” He came up behind me, so close the heat of his body gave me a long-forgotten lustful thrill of being so close to a hot (figuratively and literally) man. He hammered nails into the wood’s top corners. Then we shifted to work on the lower corner, my shoulder brushed his side. Or did he brush against me?
“You slept late,” he commented.
“You should have woken me up. And thanks for the breakfast.” And fresh flowers in a jar next to the bowl of scrambled eggs and cut-up fruit salad. “What time is it?”
He glanced at his watch. “Almost eleven.”
Hunter hitched his right shoulder and rubbed the side of his face, then returned to aligning the two boards above our heads.
“You need a clock in the hut or the kitchen,” I said.
“I’ll make you a sundial,” he grunted, through squeezed tight teeth, concentrating on the board that wouldn’t go in its place.
Tilting slightly toward him, I took a deep breath. He smelled… well… sweaty. What else did I expect? And Heavens to Betsy I loved this smell. What was wrong with me? I needed a distraction. Quickly. Anything.
“Do you want to get acquainted more? Or talk about anything?” I said louder than intended.
“I’m right here. You don’t have to yell,” he said around a nail between his teeth. His answer wasn’t a splash of cold water, but it calmed my inner crazy. “I’m not sure I want to talk right now.”
I focused on the small grains in the wood. “We don’t have to talk. We can play This or That.”
“Thatinvolves talking,” Hunter grumbled as he tried to pull a broken nail out of the wood that didn’t go in quite right.
