Free Treasure Me by Christine Nolfi Page B

contents were light, inconsequential, as if her life didn’t matter to herself or to anyone else.
    “Still, I’d try,” she said, the hurt cascading over her in waves. “No one said life is simple. You keep moving. You try to forget the bad stuff and move on.”
    Hugh turned and regarded her. “I tried letting go.” He smirked but she wasn’t fooled. He was raw and didn’t like showing it. “First, I broke my engagement to my college sweetheart. I screwed up the next relationship too.”
    “Hugh—”
    “Afterward, I had a love affair with Scotch,” he said, refusing to let her get in a consoling word. It seemed he needed to flail himself in front of her even if she didn’t understand why. “I drank my way out of a few good jobs. Talked my way onto other newspapers. I’m beyond rehabilitation even if I have gotten myself off the sauce. Birdie, some mistakes don’t go away. You live with them like a disease you manage but never cure.”
    He did look sick, the guilt a cancer on his soul. She couldn’t cure him. It wasn’t wise to try. Yet she felt compelled to do something, if only to wash the moment clean.
    She went up on tiptoes like a clumsy ballerina. Pressing herself against his chest, she took his face in her hands. She kissed him full on, the way she’d kiss a man she knew intimately. Hugh shuddered. Then he jerked his hands up, splaying them across her back. Her heart tripped as he took control of the kiss as if she were his first taste of heaven.
    Curving into him, she sank into sensation. The pads of her fingertips scraped across the bristle shadowing his cheeks. She let her eyes drift shut to better focus on the experience. Hugh felt like heat and tasted like glory. No hesitation, no doubt—he kissed her as if he’d done so a thousand times before.
    When he’d finished, he let her go. A mistake. Her knees dissolved and she nearly slumped to the floor. Deftly, he grabbed her by the shoulders.
    She blinked. “Thanks.” She edged out of his grasp.
    “Thanks for catching you or for kissing you?” He took a strand of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers. There was a nice flush on his cheeks and some of the light was back in his eyes. “You have incredible hair. Spun gold.” He drew away. “Goodnight, Birdie.”
    He left without another word. No sexual innuendo trailed in his wake. Steadying herself, she leaned against the counter. Rating a man’s kissing ability was silly but Hugh deserved a ten.
    He’d put a lazy sort of luxury into her veins and she couldn’t clear her head. It wasn’t worth the effort to analyze why she’d kissed him. It would be even worse to analyze why she’d like to do so again.
    Finally she remembered the parchment tucked inside her bra. At the other end of the apartment the bathroom door clicked shut. Seating herself at the table, she withdrew the parchment and unfolded it.
    And read the heavy, sloping script:
    A jewel beyond compare stitched tight
    With red, blue and white.
     
     
     
     

Chapter 7
     
     
    Theodora Hendricks propped her Remington pump shotgun at the snowy base of an oak, surprised to see Landon Williams making his way across the wooded acres of her property.
    Worry formed a tense patchwork of lines across his long-jawed face. His shoulders, set rigidly in his tall frame, seemed posed to ward off a blow. Surely he’d arrived at daybreak without invitation not because he’d misplaced his manners—Landon was courteous to a fault—but because he required her counsel.
    And although she was hard-pressed to admit it, their unlikely friendship was a cherished part of her rich and unusual life.
    Nearing her eighty-first birthday, Theodora still enjoyed hunting when she wasn’t piloting her sky blue Cadillac through the streets of Liberty. She was something of a fixture in town, a crusty old black woman who’d lived long enough to see it all and then some. She had more acquaintances than anyone should be cursed with, but Landon was one of