In a way, she supposed, she had acted like Seraphina, metaphorically tossing her life over a cliff rather than working with the hand she'd been dealt.
That was over now. A little late, she admitted, but she had done the right thing. The Templeton thing, she thought with a smile as she picked her way down a rough and crooked incline. Uncle Tommy had always said that you couldn't be stabbed in the back if you faced your attackers.
The first step she needed to take was to face her aunt. Somehow she had to make things right there again. Kate looked back, and though she was too far down the slope to see the house, she could picture it.
Always there, she mused, tall and strong and waiting. Offering shelter. Hadn't it been there for Margo when her life had smashed around her? For Laura, and her girls, during the most difficult period of their lives?
It had been there for her, Kate thought, when she had been lost and afraid and numb with grief. Just as it was there now.
Yes, she'd done the right thing, Kate thought again as she looked back out to sea. She hadn't given up. She'd finally remembered that a good noisy fight was better than a quiet, dignified surrender.
She laughed a little and drew a deep breath. The hell with surrender, she decided. It was no more palatable than a cowardly plunge off the cliffs. The loss of a job, a goal, a man wasn't an ending. It was just another beginning.
Byron De Witt was another step she needed to take, she decided. Time for another beginning there. The man was driving her crazy with his patience, and it was past time for her to take control again. Maybe she would just ride over there later and jump him.
The thought of that had her laughing loud and lon
g. Imagine his reaction, she mused, clutching her stomach. What did a proper Southern gentleman do when a woman threw him down and tore off his clothes? And wouldn't it be fascinating to find out?
She wanted to be held and touched and taken, she realized as the laughter in her stomach melted into warm, liquid need. But not by just anyone. By someone who could look at her the way he did, the way he looked deep, as though he could see places inside her that she hadn't dared to explore yet.
She wanted the mystery of that, wanted to match herself against a man strong enough to wait for what he wanted.
Hell, she admitted, she wanted him.
If she was strong enough to screw up her courage and face the partners at Bittle, if she had enough left inside her to deal with the damage she'd done to the aunt she adored, then she damn well had enough grit to handle Byron De Witt.
It was time she stopped planning and started doing.
Turning, she started back up the narrow path.
It was right there, as if it had been waiting. At first she simply stared, sure that she was imagining things. Hadn't she just come that way? Hadn't she and Laura and Margo combed every inch of this section of the cliffs over the past months?
Slowly, as if her bones were old and fragile, she bent down. The coin was warm from the sun, glinting like the gold it surely was. She felt the texture, the smooth face of the long-dead Spanish monarch. She turned it over in her palm twice, each time reading the date as if she expected it to change. Or simply vanish like a waking dream.
1845.
Seraphina's treasure, that small piece of it, had been tossed at her feet.
Chapter Eleven
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Kate broke records on the drive back to Pretenses. Even the state trooper who stopped her to issue a lecture on traffic laws and a speeding ticket didn't dampen her spirits—or slow her down. She made it into Monterey in under twenty minutes.
Too wired to cruise for a legal parking space, she zipped through traffic, double-parked, and raced through the strolling wall of tourists.
She spun to the left, narrowly avoiding a collision with a kid on a skateboard, and all but stumbled through the door of the shop.
Her eyes were more than a little wild.
"I started to call from the car." Gasping, she pressed both hands to her thudding heart as Margo gaped at her. "I'm winded," she realized. "I'm going to have to take those workouts Byron's come up with more seriously."
"You had an accident." Margo bolted from the customer she'd been waiting on and made it to Kate seconds before
Thomas got there. He was calling for Susan as he hurried over to take Kate's arm.
"Are you hurt? You'd better sit down." He halfway carried her to a chair.