“Really?” she said scornfully.
He counted them off on his fingers. “Loyalty, honesty…and well, I’ve forgotten the third, but it’ll come to mind, I’m sure.”
Something in his tone raised her suspicions. “Do you find this amusing?”
“I’m not bored.” The corners of his mouth tugged upward.
“Why, you insufferable blighter—”
“Before you go on, I’d like to point out that it was your wish for this meeting to be brief. Pointing out the flaws in my character will take far too long and postpone getting to the business at hand.”
“We have no business!”
“On that, we disagree. You have something I want, and I have something you need.”
“You have nothing I need,” she shot back.
“I have five hundred pounds. The amount you owe Rotherby’s Bank.”
She was stunned. Couldn’t stop herself from gaping at him. “How do you know that?”
“I also know that your dead husband used your shop as collateral,” he said, not answering her question. “That you have until the end of the month to pay off your debt or Foley’s Emporium belongs to the bank.”
“You…you can’t…this is an invasion of privacy!” she sputtered.
“I consider it research.” He studied his nails, buffed them on his waistcoat. “The point is, we are in a position to help one another.”
Despite her whirling anger, she couldn’t deny the truth of his words. At least on her end. Five hundred pounds would allow her to keep Foley’s, provide for her family, and preserve Paul’s dream. She forced herself to take a calming breath. Then another before she trusted herself to speak.
“What would I have to do for the five hundred pounds?” she asked bluntly.
“Spoken like a true proprietress. No, don’t get cross,” he said, reading her well, “I meant that as a compliment. The short of it is, when my uncle Horatio Jones died, he left me an inheritance. His estate and, er, something else.”
Surprise percolated through her. Horatio Jones had been a local eccentric who’d reputedly traveled the world. No one in the village knew much about him as he’d taken off for long stretches. When at home, he and his staff kept to themselves. As Paul had secured Jones’s permission to explore the caves on his property, Maggie had been to the cliffs at Journey’s End, but she’d never met the owner.
She didn’t know that Mr. Jones had any family. And Rhys hadn’t bothered to mention the connection the night they’d met. Then again, why would he share personal information with a wench he’d casually tupped?
She forced herself to concentrate. “For five hundred pounds, you want me to hunt for fossils in the caves at Journey’s End? I’ve been in those caves, and I’m telling you there are no bones worth that sum in there.”
“I’m not after bones.”
“What then would you have me looking for?”
Rhys gave her a measuring look. “I need to have a fossil hunter I can trust before I answer that question. Do we have a deal?”
He extended a long-fingered hand. Her palms tingled with the memory of those hands touching every part of her. Of her touching him. Of them skin to sweat-slickened skin…
Her breathing hitched. His magnetism pulled at her, warred with her capacity for reason.
But she wasn’t the same naïve fool she’d been nearly a decade ago. Back then, she could chalk up her reckless behavior to ignorance and youthful impulses; if she trusted him again, knowing what she did about him, she’d have nothing to blame but her own moral character. The weakness that ran in the Goode blood.
And while her judgement when it came to men might be lacking, her business acumen was keen: there was something shady about Rhys’s proposition. Why would anyone pay five hundred pounds to have a cave explored? As tempting as the money was, she’d be signing the devil’s bargain. For she’d have to work with Rhys Jones, be near him, this man who knew too much about her past…and who could expose Glory as a bastard and ruin her future.
The terrible risk tipped the scales and made up Maggie’s mind.
“Look for someone else,” she said.
“I have been looking.” Impatience colored his voice. “Mrs. Anning is away on an expedition and unavailable. Yesterday I met with your chief competitor Bill Bancroft.”
