The Adventurer

  v2.0

  July 2006

  The Adventurer

  Ladies and Legends 2

  Jayne Ann Krentz

  "So, how do I compare to one of your heroes?"

  Gideon had asked the question teasingly, but the way his hands roamed over her body left no doubt in Sarah's mind about what was to come next.

  "You're stronger," Sarah murmured, kissing the tip of his nose. "Bigger." She kissed the hard line of his jaw. "Sexier." She kissed his mouth. "Much sexier…"

  "Is that all?" Gideon was nuzzling her neck.

  She leaned back against the couch, as if to postpone the inevitable moment of their union. "Well, the reality is much better than the fantasy version."

  "And you're convinced I'm real?"

  "I know the effect you have on me." She felt Gideon's hand tangle in her hair, forcing her to look straight into his eyes. Suddenly his mood had changed into one of stormy passion.

  "I'm no hero," he warned, dragging Sarah on top of him.

  "Yes, you are," she whispered passionately as waves of anticipation rolled through her. "You're the perfect hero…"

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Author's Note

  At the heart of every powerful romance story lies a legend. There are many romantic legends and countless modern variations on them, but they all share one thing: they are tales of brave, resourceful women who must gentle and tame the powerful, passionate men who are their true mates.

  Those of us who love romance novels, readers and writers alike, understand that it is because women are willing to accept the difficult challenge of bonding with men that civilization itself continues. That, of course, explains the basic appeal of our legends.

  In the Ladies and Legends trilogy, I have written three tales that are modern-day versions of three classic romantic myths. I have created The Pirate, The Adventurer and The Cowboy, all with heroes of mythic proportion, tamed by women who understand romance.

  Jayne Ann Krentz

  Published April 1990

  ISBN 0-373-25393-1

  Copyright © 1990 by Jayne Ann Krentz.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  Prologue

  ^ »

  "DOES IT OCCUR to you that you might have become a little obsessed with this matter of the Flowers, Sarah?"

  "Kate has a point, Sarah. During the past few months, you've talked about nothing else except the Fleetwood Flowers and that man Gideon Trace. Trace may be real enough, but I'm sure the Flowers are just an old legend. There are probably thousands of tales just like it and none of them has much basis in truth. Why get excited about this one?"

  Standing at the window of her bright, cheerfully cluttered apartment, Sarah Fleetwood gazed at the street ten stories below and smiled to herself. "Because this legend is mine," she said enigmatically.

  "You mean, because the woman who once owned the Flowers is a distant ancestress of yours?" Margaret Lark shook her sleek head. "That's no reason to think there's any more truth in this tale than there is in any other lost treasure story."

  "If you ask me," Katherine Inskip Hawthorne said with a knowing wink, "it's not the tale of the Fleetwood Flowers that has you enthralled, Sarah, it's this man, Gideon Trace, the one you've been corresponding with lately, who really interests you."

  Sarah felt the familiar little glow of excitement that always accompanied the sound of Gideon's name. Gideon Trace. She had never met the man but already she knew a great deal about him. After four months of exchanging letters with him she was quite certain he was the real-life version of one of her own heroes, a man straight out of one of her novels of romantic suspense. Dark, enigmatic, mysterious and rather dangerous—the Beast waiting in a haunted garden for Beauty to rescue him from some curse.

  Sarah knew she was no great beauty but she figured she could handle whatever curse had been put on Gideon Trace. In fact, she looked forward to the task with her usual boundless self-confidence and optimism. She glanced over her shoulder to where her two best friends sat on her shiny new, black leather Italian sofa.

  "I can't explain it, Kate, but I know that the legend of the Flowers and Gideon Trace are linked. I'm going after both of them," Sarah said.

  "You have no experience in treasure hunting."

  "Gideon Trace will help me. I have a feeling about this particular treasure. It's mine. I'm going to find it with Trace's assistance."

  Margaret raised her eyes to the ceiling. "Out of all those treasure hunters and salvage operators you contacted five months ago when you were researching Glitter Quest, why on earth did you fixate on Trace?"

  "Something in his letters told me he was different from the others."

  "Well, who am I to discourage you?" Kate said. "I wish you luck, my friend. I've had enough good fortune of my own recently. It's time you had a little, too."

  Kate was dressed for travel in a flower-splashed turquoise cotton dress. She looked remarkably fit and healthy, Sarah noticed with great satisfaction. Her friend's eyes sparkled vivaciously and her tawny-brown hair gleamed. The tense, stressed-out look that had been hounding Kate had gone. There was nothing like a couple of months on a tropical island and marriage to a pirate to give a woman a shot of energy and the sheen of happiness.

  "I suppose Kate has a point," Margaret said slowly. "We probably shouldn't try to talk you out of this. If a treasure hunt is what you want, go for it. Your intuition has always been extraordinary. Maybe it will lead you to the Flowers."

  "Or at least to Gideon Trace," Sarah said, thinking, not for the first time, that her friend Margaret had that wonderfully elusive, subtle quality known as panache. Margaret managed to appear casually elegant just sitting there with one leg tucked under the other. She was dressed with her usual restrained flair, the collar of her pale yellow silk blouse turned up to frame her attractive face. Her black slacks had been beautifully tailored by an expensive designer and her fashionable black pumps had been made in Italy.

  "And meeting Trace is the more important goal?" Margaret asked, her gaze shadowed with faint disapproval.

  "Oh, yes, definitely. There's something in his letters, something I must…" Sarah paused to glance out the window again, her eye caught by a flash of yellow on the street. As she watched, a cab pulled over to the curb and a lean, dark-haired man dressed in jeans and a casual cotton shirt got out. He was followed by a miniature version of himself. "Jared and his son are here, Kate."

  "So much for their whirlwind tour of the Space Needle and the waterfront. Guess it must be time to head for the airport." Kate got up to walk over to the window. Her eyes were warm and soft as she watched Jared Hawthorne lean down to say something through the window to the driver. Then he vanished with his son into the lobby ten floors below.

  "How does it feel to have found your pirate?" Sarah asked softly.

  "What can I say? I'm a
new woman."

  Margaret laughed from the couch. "That's certainly true. I take it Sarah and I are forgiven for having shanghaied you into that trip to Amethyst Island three months ago?"

  "Given the way it all turned out, I'm more than willing to let bygones be bygones. What's a little matter of kidnapping and impressment among friends?" Kate's wedding ring gleamed in the reflected glow of a late afternoon sun. "I just wish you two could be as fortunate." She looked at Sarah. "Do you really think this Trace person is going to be someone special?"

  "Yes." Sarah knew her sense of serene assurance was evident in her voice. "Very special."

  "Don't be mislead by a few cryptic letters," Margaret advised. "The man publishes a low-budget, treasure-hunting magazine, for goodness sake. It caters to a bunch of gung-ho males of questionable intelligence who actually believe they're going to find a lost gold mine or Amelia Earhart's plane. Frankly, that puts Gideon Trace just one notch above a con artist."

  "That's not true," Sarah said quietly. "He sells dreams. Just like I do."

  "Never discount the value of a good dream," Kate added with a note of satisfaction as the doorbell rang. "I'll get that."

  Sarah watched her friend walk across the room to open the door for her husband. No doubt about it, Jared Hawthorne was just right for Kate. Those gray eyes and that wicked grin made Hawthorne a real-life, walking, talking pirate who could have stepped straight from the pages of one of Kate's historical romance novels. What was more, he had the forceful personality a man needed to run a tropical resort or deal with a woman like Kate. Jared did both very well.

  "Hi, honey," Jared bent his head to give his wife a brief, enthusiastic kiss. "All set? I told the cab to wait. We've got a plane to catch."

  "I'm ready." Kate smiled at her stepson. "How was the Space Needle?"

  "It was great. You could see the whole city and the mountains and everything," David Hawthorne enthused. "I told Dad we should build one on Amethyst but he said all we had to do was climb to the top of Hawthorne castle and look out."

  "He's got a point."

  "Yeah, but I like it here. I hope we come back to Seattle, soon."

  "So do I," Sarah said from the other side of the room.

  "You and Margaret will have to come on out to Amethyst one of these days," Jared said easily. "Don't worry, we've got plenty of room."

  "A whole resort," David clarified. "I'll show you how to snorkel, just like I showed Kate."

  "Sounds terrific," Sarah said.

  "Promise me you'll both make plans to visit us soon," Kate said. "I miss you both."

  Jared's brows climbed as he glanced at his wife. "I don't see why. You spend enough time on the phone talking to them."

  "Got to keep in touch with the business," Kate informed him loftily.

  Jared grinned at Sarah and Margaret. "As I said, come on out for a visit. The airfare's bound to be less than the phone bills the three of you are running up."

  Kate wrinkled her nose. "That's not true."

  "Wanna bet?" Jared moved toward the pile of luggage in the corner. "Come on, Dave, give me a hand with this stuff. You know Kate never travels light."

  "Okay, Dad." David threw a quick grin at Kate as he hurried toward the luggage.

  Sarah hugged Kate at the door. "Don't worry, we'll get to Amethyst, one way or the other," she promised as she blinked back a few tears.

  "Thanks," Kate whispered. "And thanks again for sending me on that first trip to the island. I owe all my happiness to you and Margaret."

  "Oh, Kate, I'm so happy for you." Sarah smiled mistily and stepped back as Jared and David started through the door with the luggage.

  "It's been great to see you these past two weeks, Kate," Margaret added, getting to her feet to give her friend a farewell embrace. "It's good to know we'll be able to visit with you at least once a year when Jared brings his son to the States to see his grandparents."

  "Don't worry, you'll see her more often than that," Jared said from the doorway. "But right now I'm taking her home to Amethyst. I've got a resort to run. Place has probably started crumbling into the sea during the two weeks I've been gone."

  "It wouldn't dare." Kate slung her purse over her shoulder and followed Jared and David through the doorway. "Goodbye, you two. It's been a wonderful visit. Can't wait to see you on Amethyst. Sarah, good luck with your treasure hunting. Margaret, take care. And thanks again."

  Sarah went out into the hall to wave the small family into the elevator and then she returned to her apartment. She shut the door behind her with great care and walked over to where Margaret stood at the window.

  "Well, you were right when you said Amethyst Island was the place to send Kate," Margaret remarked. "She looks radiant."

  "She's happy and relaxed." Sarah watched Kate, Jared and David pile into the waiting cab.

  "Good for her. Now, about your plans for the immediate future…"

  "What about them?"

  Margaret frowned, turning away from the window. "You're really going to look him up?"

  "Gideon Trace? Absolutely. I'm driving over to the coast at the end of the week to try to find him."

  "You've got an address?"

  "Just the post office box number on the envelopes he's sent me. The towns on the coast are all small. The one he's in is barely a dot on the map, the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else. Someone will be able to tell me where the publisher of Cache magazine lives."

  "You haven't told Trace you're coming, have you?"

  "No, I plan to surprise him."

  Margaret looked at her ruefully. "You're always so blissfully sure of that intuition of yours, aren't you?"

  "It's only failed me once. And that was my own fault. I wasn't paying attention to the warnings it was giving me." Sarah walked toward the kitchen. "How about a glass of wine before dinner?"

  "Sounds good. Well, at least Trace hasn't tried to talk you into investing a few thousand dollars in some crazy expedition to find a lost World War II plane that supposedly crashed on a Pacific island with a load of gold on board."

  Sarah giggled. "You mean the way that guy Slaughter did?" Jim Slaughter, owner of a business called Slaughter Enterprises, had been one of the professional treasure hunters she had contacted five months earlier. She had found his ad along with several others in the back of a sleazy adventure magazine for men.

  He had written her several letters on impressive letterhead and tried phoning a few times in an attempt to interest her in his scheme to find the plane full of gold. Sarah had politely declined several times.

  "He was a slick one, wasn't he?"

  "I'll say. But that's my whole point, Sarah. People involved in the business of treasure hunting are probably all borderline hustlers or outright crazies. They just want you to pour thousands into their projects to find lost gold mines or something. Then they take your money and disappear."

  "Not Gideon Trace. He's different." Sarah managed to find two clean wineglasses in the cupboard. She made a mental note to run the dishwasher soon. She was almost out of clean dishes. "Trace certainly hasn't tried to convince me to invest a dime in any crazy treasure-hunting scheme. In fact, he's tried to discourage me from wasting my time going after the Flowers."

  "I don't know, Sarah. I just don't like the whole idea. But it's your decision." Margaret sauntered after her, pausing to glance at the evening paper that was lying on the counter amid a motley collection of yellow pads, romance novels and pens.

  Sarah felt a twinge of uneasiness. Hand on the refrigerator door, she turned her head just as Margaret flipped through the newspaper to find the business section, "Margaret, wait, I don't think you ought to read that section."

  But it was too late. Margaret was already staring down at the photo of a hard-faced man in a western-style business suit. "Don't worry about it, Sarah," she said quietly. "He makes headlines in the business world. He always has. You can't expect me to stop reading the paper just because I'm occasionally going to run across
an article about him." She refolded the paper and raised her head, smiling grimly. "Besides, that's all in the past."

  "Yes." Sarah busied herself with a bottle of Chardonnay and sought a way to change the subject. "Want to go out for a bite to eat in the Market?" she asked as she tossed the cork in the vague direction of the trash basket. It missed. Sarah promised herself she would pick it up later.

  "All right. Then I think I'd better go back to my own apartment and get some writing done. I haven't accomplished much in the two weeks Kate's been visiting us and I've got a deadline coming up next month."

  "You'll make it. You always do." Sarah poured two glasses of the clean, polished Washington Chardonnay and handed one to Margaret. "Here's to Kate and her new family."

  "And here's to your treasure-hunting expedition," Margaret added as the glasses clinked. She took a sip and her gaze turned serious. "Promise me you'll be careful, Sarah."

  "Hey, my middle name is Careful."

  "No, it's not. Your middle name is Impulsive and I'm afraid that one of these days that intuition of yours, which you trust entirely too much, is going to land you in a heap of trouble."

  "I'm thirty-two years old, Margaret. Trouble is starting to look promising. Now, no more lectures. Let's get down to serious business. What do we want for dinner and where do we want to go to eat it? I vote for pasta."

  "You always vote for pasta."

  TWO HOURS LATER, pleasantly stuffed with hazelnut tortellini, Sarah turned the key in the lock of her front door. She wandered through the cheerful, vividly decorated one-bedroom apartment, turning on lights as she went.

  When she reached the desk where her computer sat like some ancient monolith rising from a sea of notes, magazines, empty tea mugs and research materials, she stopped.

  It only took her a minute to find the stack of Gideon Trace's letters. Margaret was right, Sarah thought with a small smile as she reread one of them. Gideon's notes did tend to be a bit cryptic. An uncharitable observer might even call them somewhat dry. There was certainly very little hint of the fascinating man she just knew he had to be.