“But it does seem far. Like we’re in the middle of nowhere. It’s wild and a little frightening and exciting all at once.”
He knew exactly how she felt.
“You really rowed your way out here in your uncle’s dory?”
He grinned. “Yeah, we did. Thank God we told them where we were going. Once it sprung a leak, we were stranded. We were lucky we were so close to the island and didn’t drown.”
“That’s a very different existence from my upbringing.” She laughed. “My parents didn’t even like me walking to the neighborhood convenience store.”
“I hear having boys is different from having girls,” he said.
She winked at him. “I said they didn’t like it. Not that I didn’t do it.”
“You rebel.”
She laughed, the sound floating on the air. “Come on. The path keeps going and I see rocks down there. Maybe there are caves.”
“There are.”
This time he let her lead the way down the path, picking her way over the rocks. He knew very well that the path led down some natural rock stairs—he and his buddies had traveled this path often enough over the years—down to the rocky shore and the jagged cliffs and caves.
“If Charles hid treasure here, he would have had to anchor offshore and row it in,” she mused. “Or dock on the other side and carry it overland. Which is unlikely.”
“We thought so, too. But we never found anything. On either shore.”
“Nothing?”
“No. Except … well, I’ll show you. It’s supercool.”
They cautiously climbed their way down, picking over the rocks carefully, as they were slippery with water and seaweed from the tide. She and Josh had walked only fifty or sixty feet when he stopped, tugged on her hand, and nodded toward the cliffs.
“Look. At low tide you can really see them.”
Nooks, crannies, and deeper caves were eroded into the cliffs by years of tides and winds. Lizzie walked ahead, her expression open and inquisitive as she approached the rocks. A smear of dirt ran up the side of her shorts and her feet were muddy inside her sandals, but she didn’t seem to care. It was such a switch from the neat and tidy, not a hair out of place woman he knew from work or even outside of work in Jewell Cove. This woman reminded him of the one who’d flirted with a teenager to take his mind off of a dislocated knee, who brushed the dirt from a ball field off her knees and smiled easily, openly. He’d liked her that day. Liked her even more as they watched the stars from the bed of his pickup. But today …
Maybe touching her had been a mistake. She was only here for a short time and he was under no illusions about that. When Charlie’s maternity leave was over, Lizzie Howard would go back to where she really belonged. He wasn’t sure his “idea” of enjoying each other during her stay was a sound one. He could get caught up in her quite easily. And the last thing he felt like doing was getting his heart trampled on again.
The biggest surprise was realizing that this woman might actually be able to put him in that position.
“Come on!” she called. She was walking ahead of him, heading toward the biggest gap in the rock, the wind whipping some of her hair out of her knot. He picked up the pace and worked on catching up with her.
“Josh, look!” Lizzie’s voice echoed off the dark rock. “I can actually stand up in here!”
The rock was still shiny and wet from the last tide, and dripping sounds echoed eerily off the walls. “It’s creepy in here.”
“Don’t be such a wuss,” she tossed back at him. “Didn’t you come in here as kids?”
He had, but he hadn’t actually liked this part. Something about being closed in and in the dark. “Well, yeah. Of course we did. I’m just not a big fan of small, dark spaces.” He hesitated. “Or being underground.”
There was a reason w
hy he preferred being on the open water. Freedom and lots and lots of air to breathe. Any time he’d spent in bunkers in the military had just about driven him bananas.
“I did a tour of the Hoover Dam once when I was a kid,” she said, hunching over and stepping farther inside the cave. “You probably would have hated that. Though when I was going through the rocky part of the tour fresh air was piped in.”
He shuddered. Anytime he thought of underground mining or anything of that sort, he got a weird, crawly sensation in the pit of his stomach.
“So, any treasure in here, Dr. Howard?”