Page 8

Chapter Seven

W e crept down a stairway barely wide enough for Andrew’s shoulders to fit and then came around a sharp corner to a stone landing about ten feet by ten feet. Andrew clicked the flashlight button once more, boosting the intensity of the light and revealing an enormous underground chamber before us.

“Is this a catacomb?” I asked.

“I doubt this was used for burial reasons. This is where they stored smuggled goods.”

My eyes roamed over the empty space. “Someone should tell them that they were robbed.”

“We need to get lower.” Andrew knelt near the edge, then he shook something at his foot. “This should hold.”

“What should hold?” I crept closer to him but kept my distance from the edge.

“The ladder attached to this wall.” Andrew grasped the flashlight between his teeth, turned around, and descended down a fucking threadbare wooden rope ladder. The heavy corded fibers screeched under his weight, and my stomach spasmed.

“You’re out of your mind. It’s been here for hundreds of years. What if it breaks?”

He mumbled something incoherent. Yep, that was exactly how I envisioned the thoughts in his head: incoherent.

Andrew landed on the lower-level dirt floor without breaking any of his bones. He pulled the flashlight out of his mouth and ran it over the room, briefly stopping at another goddamn passage leading somewhere else. He looked up at me. “Now it’s your turn.”

I peered down. The drop was maybe one and a half to two stories high. Would I die if I fell, or would it just hurt really bad? Why did I put the stupid bracelet on?

“What are you waiting for?” Andrew said, his tone hushed and impassioned.

I took my wedges off. “I should hurl my heels at you.”

“What did I do?”

“You dragged me into the abode of the dead.”

Andrew chuckled. “Once again, you did it to yo?—”

I lobbed the right shoe at him.

“Hey, watch it.” He jumped aside. “You almost hit me.”

“You mention again that it was my fault, and the next one will hit you.” I stuffed the other shoe into my bag. “How far is it?”

“Thirty feet at most. Are you afraid of heights?”

“No. I’m afraid of decaying ladders.”

“You’ll be fine. It held me. It should hold you. Drop me your purse.”

I did as he asked, and he caught it.

Fuck. Fuckity fuck.

I lowered to my knees, turned, and inched backward. My hands gripped the ladder’s sides, while I searched with my right foot for the first wooden bar. Then my left foot found the second bar, my fingers digging into the rope on this piece of crap ladder. The cool air snaked up my legs. “Andrew, look away.”

“It’s too dark. Even if I wanted to, I can’t see up your skirt.”

“Look elsewhere anyway.”

I made another two steps down and carefully moved my hands to the next bar. The ladder seemed to be securely fastened to the wall. I didn’t even want to think how. I pressed my forehead to a stony wall, breathed in, and breathed out earthy air. I was halfway down. Everything was going fine, until I realized… once we were done, we had to ascend the same ladder. Well, shit.

The bar under my feet yawped a faint crack, and my skin doused with cold sweat. The brittle structure made a ripping and crunching racket, and everything below my feet crumbled. My heart lurched up into my throat as my body dropped.

“Shit!” I tightened my grip on the bar, my feet desperately searching for some footing on the apparently smooth wall.

“Hold on!”

“I’m trying!” My arms quickly grew tired. I peered down. How far was the ground? Andrew dropped the flashlight and stepped to the wall below me. An additional feeling of horror rose up my neck. “Andrew. Don’t. Look.”

“Christ, Adriana. This is not the time to worry if I see your backside.”

“I’m sure Charlotte wouldn’t approve of this.”

“Charlotte?” he said with bewilderment. “Why would she care?”

Really? Why would a woman care if her husband checked out another woman’s ass?

“Let go. I’ll catch you.”

“It’s too far. I’ll pull myself back up,” I lied through my teeth. There was no way I could do it, and my arms were only getting weaker. Terror ripped my heart apart. I didn’t want to get hurt. I didn’t want to crush Andrew, either.

Damn it.

“This is all your fault!” I yelled, glancing down at him.

“Do you want to chat about whose fault it is, right now?” Andrew pinched his chin. “Fine. Let’s chat. Do you want your shoe so you could throw it at me again because?—”

“Andrew!”

He raised his arms toward me. “Let. Go.”

I squeezed my eyes shut until white dots appeared.

Fuck it.

My fingers relaxed, and I dropped. My skirt flew up to my neck, and a moment later Andrew’s hands wrapped around my torso, catching me. His warm forearms pressed hard into my bare stomach. He stumbled backward, his arms not letting me go, and we crashed onto the ground, our bodies pressed tight, my bottom on Andrew’s crotch, my hands on the ground on each side of his legs, my back against his rising and dropping chest. His heart drummed hard against his ribcage, its beat vibrating through my body. Electricity coursed through me, making me aware of every point of contact between Andrew and me, of every inch where his hot skin was touching mine.

Andrew pressed his forehead into the back of my head, snorted once and then he erupted with a healthy laugh, and the sound of it went straight into my bloodstream and right into the center of me.

A chuckle bubbled up in my throat too, and I burst out laughing.

“That was graceful.” I quietened my laugh and wiped the tears that had formed in my eyes.

Andrew drew in a deep breath. When he released his breath, it skimmed the side of my neck. “Your hair smells like roses.”

Butterflies fluttered in my stomach. “Stop smelling my hair.”

“Your hair is in my face. I’m merely observing a fact.”

The dress bunched up above my waist, covering Andrew’s arms. My dishabille state should have mortified me, and I should have pulled my skirt down, but the flashlight lay several yards away from us, tossing its light into a dark void. Andrew shifted, and his thigh muscles flexed beneath me. I shouldn’t have been in this situation, in his arms or on his lap. But I couldn’t deny how good it felt to be pressed against him. I didn’t want to move. And dang it! It was so wrong to want that. Just for a split second, for that one short second, I wanted to believe he was free, and I could relax into him and pretend that I hadn’t simply crash-landed on him, but that he’d hugged me, wanting to be close to me.

“I don’t think your wife would appreciate us sitting like this,” I said, and my voice came out like I was sharing a secret with him.

“My wife?” he asked his breath a whisper against my exposed skin.

I nodded. “The beautiful woman by the pool? I saw you with her the morning we left.”

“You think Charlotte is my wife?” His question was tinged with humor.

“Yes. And your daughter, Lulu, who seems to like to call you a lot.”

He chuckled. “Charlotte is my sister, and Lucille is her daughter.”

I wanted to let out a sigh of relief but held it in. “You aren’t married?”

“No.”

“So, you don’t have a wife?”

“That’s what unmarried means, usually.”

I cleared my throat. “You go on vacation with your sister?” Why was I talking like I was an idiot? I met Andrew during my vacation with my brother. Families went on trips.

“Yes. Three of us. It’s always three of us.”

“And you aren’t married?”

“We already established that.”

Of course. Where did my smart brain cells go?

“Hmm…” I nodded slowly.

Oh. My. God. I was so fucked.

Figuratively speaking.

“Hmm. What?” Not letting his arms go, he shifted again, as if trying to look at my face. Which I was sure was red with embarrassment. Good thing it was dark in here.

“Why did you say always three of us?”

Andrew’s chest expanded with a deep breath.

“Her husband, Louis, was a pilot. Seven years ago, he was flying his plane with my parents on board.” He swallowed. “They crashed over the Alps. Charlotte was five months pregnant so she hadn’t gone along on the trip.”

My heart pitched hard with sadness. Poor Charlotte, what a horrible thing to live through, especially when pregnant.

“I’m so sorry.” My words came out low.

“There were some scary moments, but she held on to the only thing that was left of Louis. Since then, we’ve always stuck together. After their accident, she moved in with me so I could help her while she was pregnant. Once Lulu was born, I didn’t feel there was any need for them to move out. My home has enough space for all of us. And I needed them as much as they needed me.”

“You love that little girl very much, don’t you?”

“She is the most important person in my life,” he said, and I heard a tender smile in his voice.

“I can see that. You never miss her calls.”

“I never ignore people who are important to me.”

That was nice to hear that there was a man who didn’t disregard a little girl, who didn’t mind taking their time from his busy life to listen to what she had to tell him. Andrew wasn’t even her father, but he made Lulu his priority. I wished I had parents or a parent like that. A parent who gave a damn about how my day in school had been or if I had eaten anything, let alone what I had to say.

“Andrew?” I looked over my shoulder.

“Yes?” His breath brushed against my face, and goosebumps swooshed over my skin like a tsunami.

“I’m safe now. You can let go of me.”

Even though I’d asked him to release me, for irrational reasons, when Andrew eased his grip and moved his arms away from me, it left my skin cold, and I already missed his touch. I tugged on my dress, pulling its skirt down to cover my thighs. He stood, picked up the flashlight, and offered me his hands. With a light yank, he hauled me up.

“I only caught a glimpse of your rump, and…” He wolf-whistled.

I smacked his shoulder, my face turning hot. “I told you not to look.”

“You shouldn’t have worn a dress.” Andrew bent and grabbed my purse.

“How was I supposed to know I’d be hanging on a broken ladder?” I accepted my bag from him and looped its straps over my shoulder. “Plus, I only pack dresses for vacation.”

“Maybe tomorrow you should buy some pants.”

I tilted my head to see the platform above us. “How are we going to get back up there?”

Andrew ran the light up the wall with the missing ladder. “We aren’t.” He shone the light around the space, stopping on a dark tunnel. “That’s our way out.”

Perhaps it wasn’t the first time Andrew had ended up many feet below the ground, in an ancient building, amongst the dead. He was, after all, an archeologist, and my guess, one of the best ones since someone apparently paid him a whole lot of money to chase a lost treasure and break laws.

From the stories Andrew had told me about the treasure, this room should have been filled with a lot of massive chests and crates, but the room was vacant.

“So, no treasure here.” I dusted the dirt off my feet and put my shoes on. “Should we keep moving?”

“It seems we won’t find the Asiento de Padua cargo. But something is here.” He surveyed the walls towering over us with markings and words carved deeply into smooth stones.

“By the way. Yes. Look…” I fished my iPhone out of my bag and found the collage of images I’d made. “Augustine sketched this church.” I held my phone out to Andrew. “When I took this photo today, I immediately recognized the town square.”

Andrew’s warm hand enwrapped mine, bringing the screen closer to his face. “Where did you see this sketch?”

“At the museum.”

“This is good.” His smirk turned into a smile. “Before he died, in his last letter to Simón, Jorge wrote that Augustine’s artwork conveyed more than just the beauty of the world he saw. It told stories. Sometimes, it’s a love story, and sometimes, it’s a message deeply hidden that only select people can grasp its true significance. I presumed it was a poetic way of saying how incredible of an artist Augustine was. But now it makes more sense that what he meant was Augustine left actual messages in his sketches.”

“The museum only had four drawings on display. I have photos of them.”

“May I see them?” Andrew’s eyebrows narrowed.

I pulled my hand out of his touch and found images on my phone. “If you scroll to the left you’ll see an unfinished waterfall, a large house, a palace, and this village square.”

Andrew was staring at my phone, unblinking, a satisfied smile spreading on his face. “I need to ask Carlos if they have more in the archives.”

“Do you know what message he left in this sketch?”

“This could be it.” Andrew pointed the flashlight at the wall in front of us. Carvings showed rural life with figures working in fields, riding horses, ships battling sea serpents, and a jungle with large cats and snakes hanging off trees. In the center of it all was a structure with angels above. Maybe a church? This church? I wasn’t an artifacts expert, but in movies, these kinds of engravings usually carried a message.

I opened the camera app and snapped a picture, illuminating the area with a bright flash.

Andrew studied the wall, slowly moving the flashlight’s beam over it in a kind of pattern. Deep in thought, he looked even more intelligent. The dim light underlined his sharp and confident profile, making it extra noticeable how handsome he was. And he was single.

Well, unmarried, at least.

An old feeling I hadn’t allowed inside me for such a long time pushed all the air out of my lungs. I wasn’t sapiosexual, but I knew well the type of guys that attracted me like positive ions to negative ones. I tended to fall hard for highly educated, intelligent men. And here I was in the company of a man who ticked all boxes. On top of everything, he had a sexy accent. But a man like Andrew wouldn’t fall for a woman like me. I have worked enough with people in high society to know I was too far outside Andrew’s socioeconomic class. Men like him seek partners who share their affluent lifestyle, education, and cultural sophistication. I had none of those. And if I kept reminding myself about it, I could control my growing interest in him.

“These look familiar, but I need my notes from the car.” Andrew’s voice yanked me out of my daunting personal rabbit hole.

“Then we’d better leave,” I said. “William is probably worried.”

“Not just yet.” Andrew stepped to the wall, retrieved a pocketknife, and scraped around the rock at the bottom of the churchy structure.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“This stone is protruding slightly,” Andrew said. Tiny particles of dirt fell on the ground as he grated. “We’re in the lower part of this building. If I’m correct—” The knife blade slid inside. He placed the flashlight into his mouth again , and pivoted the handle side to side, slowly pushing a stone out.

“That can’t be good for your teeth,” I said as I gently removed the flashlight.

Andrew sheathed his knife and slipped it into his side pocket. Grasping the stone, he blew a slow breath and cautiously wiggled it out. We exchanged rock for flashlight, and he shone the light into the hole. He broke into a wide smile, making my heart skip a beat.

“What’s there?” I asked, breathless.

“Possibly the answer to where the treasure is.” He reached inside and withdrew a worn, leather-bound book, then his hand went inside again and extracted a dusty stack of yellow papers. “Now we can leave.”