Free The Last Treasure by Erika Marks Page A

chop. They certainly celebrated well enough the night before. Sam remembers the wasteland of trash he passed on the deck as he left for the beach, empty bottles and crumpled napkins, paper plates still soggy with barbecue sauce and shrimp tails. Good to know Whit still leaves his messes for other people to clean up.
    He should get coffee, get ready to go. Climbing the walkway back to the house, he sees a few of the crew wandering the deck with mugs. The house is waking. And somewhere up there Liv and Whit are also coming to—or maybe they’ve been awake for a while, restless as he is.
    Sam had been so close to telling Liv about the diary last night. Looking into those mossy green eyes of hers, he’d felt the knot of his patience tugged hard, teased to the point where one smile, however small or short, and the rope he’d so carefully tied would have come undone in an instant.
    Then Whit had crashed in—in that classic, infuriating Everybody-look-at-me way he always did, and the moment was gone.
    Maybe it was better that he hadn’t told her. Too fast, too soon. Too much.
    He has time. After all, Whit will do something to blow this. Screwups are in Whit Crosby’s DNA. Sam has no doubtthis mission won’t last. Despite his claims to Liv, Sam doesn’t give much of a damn anymore about treasure. He knows there’s nothing of value in that blockade runner Whit’s brought them all here to strip bare. But Sam isn’t here for fortune.
    His eyes drift to the second floor, to the tall bank of windows that belong to the other master suite, and an unwelcome cramp of envy twists his gut.
    One good thing about so much space: He won’t have to hear them screw.
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    â€œH ey, Sleeping Beauty.”
    Liv wakes to the delicious sensation of a soft breeze on her bare skin—or maybe fingertips. She isn’t sure which until she opens her eyes and sees Whit, dressing on the other side of the room, pulling on a T-shirt. The curtains float and fall with the air off the water.
    She sits up and pushes hair out of her face. “Did you sleep?”
    He grins. “Shit, do I look that bad?”
    â€œDon’t joke. You don’t dive well when you don’t sleep.”
    She’s nagging him—as if they were an old married couple. Is that how Sam sees them?
    Sam
. A flurry of apprehension snakes in her stomach. Sam is in the house with them this morning—Sam. Here. Back. So many years later, they are all roommates again—only this time, she is Whit’s wife.
    She hugs her knees to her chest, baring her spine to the breeze. “Whit?”
    He stops in the doorway, turns to her, and the fluttering wings of her heartbeat settle. Maybe it’s where he’s standing, directly in the path of the early sun, his hair and jaw catching the boldest streaks of gold and apricot, or maybe it’s the warm, oddly sweet breeze that passes between them—but she’s filled with longing for him. The sort she used to feel when they’d be left alone, a dangerous possibility that he might be the one to allow her the escape she craved, the approval to seize her own needs without apology. He may have foundered, may have sent them spinning for a bit, but he’s fixed it. He’s righted their ship and put them back on course. And for the first time in weeks, she thinks:
We’ll be okay
.
    â€œI love you,” she says.
    He grabs his shirt above his heart, grips it hard, and smiles. “I love you more.”
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    I dling engines rumble in the driveway, doors slam, feet stomp up and down stairs. Departure. Liv loves every second. The energy of the first day on the water, the crackle of possibility that trails behind them all like a dog, tags jingling and tail whirling, who knows he is about to go for his walk.
    But there is a calm to their frenzy too. No racing to the marina as they