Page 57 of Tormented Hearts
Her father was proud of his family history, but he wouldn’t just send her all the way out here to find her great-great-grandfather’s journal stuffed in a burlap sack.
She opened the journal carefully. The spine protested with a soft crack, and she smoothed the page flat before reading aloud. Her voice was low against the crackle of the fire.
Hawk stopped what he was doing and sat back, one arm slung around his bent knee as he listened.
She soaked in the words. Tracing a finger over the page, she met Hawk’s gaze. “He mentions the mine here. But not directly. More like he’s talking in riddles around it.”
“If he wrote it down plain, anyone who got hold of the journal would find it. Men were dying over it back then.” He leaned in, studying the page over her shoulder. “Read that last line again.”
She found her place and read, “‘Men have come sniffing ‘round again, offering coin for what I know. I told them same as always—it goes to my son when his time comes, and not a moment sooner, nor to any other man alive.”
Hawk chewed that over for a moment, firelight playing over the planes of his handsome face. Finally, he nodded. “That tracks with the legend.”
Sinead let out a breath in a trickle as the story filled her mind. “McCrae and Callahan didn’t live to tell their sons. The families only know because Eli gave them a share of the gold.”
He nodded.
She continued reading, and they pieced it together line by line, trading theories back and forth. The way Hawk applied a thoughtful logic to everything, reading what her ancestor hadn’t said as much as what he had, was impressive.
It didn’t exactly surprise her—she expected competence from the man. She just hadn’t expected this kind of sharpness…a kind that matched her own.
In all her years and travels, she had never found her match.
She studied his face as he talked, absorbed in the far-off expression in his eyes that looked like the deepest evergreen on the mountain.
“What did the last line say again?”
His question jarred her from her observations and she searched the page again. The passage was difficult to read, the ink faded.
“I think this says ‘claim.’”
He leaned over her shoulder again, his body heat rippling over her back. “It looks like it says ‘grave’ to me.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. Claim does. It’s a mining term.”
“But grave fits with the ominous tone of the story.”
She cocked her head. “I thought you were a former Ranger and a bodyguard. Not a linguist.”
“I contain multitudes.” He shrugged as if he’d gotten the final word.
“They both have five letters. Unless there’s one hidden beneath this smudge. If you’re so competent, why don’t you get out a flashlight?”
He gave her a direct look. “The campfire is enough of a risk, but we’ve kept it low and we’re hidden between these trees. A light beam will carry through the woods. We don’t want to alert anyone to our whereabouts.”
At his words, her skin rippled for another reason.
They went back and forth on it long enough that she started laughing, swatting his arm, and any heaviness that had settled between them after the cabin eased. Right now, they weren’t treasure hunters or grieving family or a bodyguard and his charge. They were just two people arguing over bad handwriting.
Darkness crept in around them, leaving only the light of the fire left to read by. She squinted harder at the page, tilting it one way and then another, chasing the flicker of flame for enough light to make out the words that were already difficult to decipher.
She shifted closer to the fire and angled the journal, but it still wasn’t enough. The shadows swallowed half the page every time the flames dipped low.
Hawk reached for her. His warm hands landed on her waist, and he pulled her close beside him so they could study the page together. Her breath caught at the way he touched her—like he had every right to.
More surprising was how much she didn’t mind.
Her concentration broke as his shoulder pressed against hers, warm and solid. He didn’t move away and neither did she.
