Emerald Fire. Monica McCabe

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СКАЧАТЬ begged a question. Had her objectivity been compromised by out-of-control emotions? Chloe already knew the answer. Yes. Which meant she needed the bounty hunter’s level head because she couldn’t count on her own. She gathered her things and emerged from the tiny bathroom.

      “My turn?” Finn asked when she settled back on her bed to brush her hair.

      “All yours,” she replied with a sweep of her brush. He grabbed his shaving kit and disappeared.

      The telltale squeak of shower knobs and splashing water sounded, and she closed her eyes on a welcome moment of solitude. But the brief respite didn’t last long. Her mind immediately went to the journal.

      The man from NorthStar will be your guide.

      Finnegan Kane was definitely the means to a very important end, but seriously, how could this weirdness even be possible?

      Finn’s NorthStar was an early nineteenth century boat company. That fit the time frame of William Desmond, an English nobleman, her alleged ancestor, and author of the journal currently in peril. But what were the odds that her great grandfather, eight greats to be exact, had a connection to Finn’s great, great whatever?

      They were damn near impossible. It was too far-fetched to believe.

      But how else did one explain it? And even more perplexing, if the connection was true, then it had to apply to more than just finding the Fire. Because there was no way Desmond knew that two-hundred years in the future his journal would be stolen by pirates and a bounty-hunting boat restorer from NorthStar would help get it back.

      It was a riddle that made her brain hurt.

      She went back to brushing her hair, using long, slow strokes to help her focus. How could Finnegan Kane, NorthStar, and Desmond’s cryptic clues possibly be connected?

      What if she was being scammed, and Finn was after more than just her uncle’s yacht? He wouldn’t be the first person to suspect what she was truly after. Owen knew about her mother’s papers. He ridiculed her for believing in fairy tales and claimed that William Desmond was a lunatic, that he had fabricated the tale of royal emeralds to buy the favor of a daughter who hated him. Chloe wasn’t so sure.

      She was in the business of digging up history, and there were conflicting accounts over the sudden appearance of that girl child. But that wasn’t important right now. The problem was that even though Chloe worked hard to keep things quiet, Owen always seemed to know when she pieced something together. Her research undoubtedly had alerted others, too. What if Finn was a treasure hunter on the prowl, one with a passing knowledge of Prussian history, like her?

      No, not like her. This was personal. Desmond may have ended up alone, a recluse slowly losing touch with reality, but he played a critical role in the Napoleonic Wars. His journal held page after page of loneliness, dedication, and willing sacrifice for a deserving queen. He clearly loved Louise Auguste Mecklenburg, Queen of Prussia, and he had given up everything for that love. His home, his family, even his country. But it was what he gained from that sacrifice that intrigued Chloe. He’d never married. No mention of a mistress either. Yet in 1808, he suddenly sailed to America with an infant daughter.

      Chloe’s mother had pointed at the Queen. It was a logical assumption. In 1806 when Napoleon decimated Prussia at the Battle of Jena and ransacked the country, Queen Louise was devastated over the French occupation. Her health suffered, and she went home to her father’s estate in Germany in hopes of recuperation. Louise was the sixth child of a Duke and raised on a country estate. She had no inkling she’d one day be a queen. Chloe’s mother had reasoned there’d been a first love, a local boy. Though no word or hint of scandal was ever associated with the queen’s trip home, months later the royal couple spent weeks in St. Petersburg with close friends. Daisy Banks believed the Queen had an inconvenient daughter, a secret entrusted to her friend and royal protector, William Desmond. If that were true, then Chloe’s ancestor wasn’t Emily Desmond, it was Emily Mecklenburg, the bastard child of a queen.

      The bathroom door opened, and Finn stepped out.

      The man from NorthStar will be your guide.

      A sudden shiver traced along her nerve endings. Whether from the prophetic words or the darkly gorgeous man himself, she wasn’t sure. It could go either way.

      Fresh from the shower, Finn wore cotton sleep pants and an allover tan that proved he spent a lot of time in the sun. Even more intriguing was the maritime compass tattoo that capped his shoulder. Add damp hair with a slight curl, ocean blue eyes full of sinful temptation, and she risked losing all coherent thought.

      “I figured you’d be asleep by now.” He tossed a wet towel in the corner and went to check his laptop again.

      She should be. She’d been up since three a.m., and it had been a long and stressful day. But the truth of it was, right now, staring at the play of masculine muscle as Finn moved to lift his duffle bag to the bed and dig around, she couldn’t think of anything beyond the unwelcome surge of her pulse.

      That alarmed her. Attraction, no matter how small, robbed focus at a time when she needed every last brain cell. Time was not on their side.

      “I’ve been thinking about tomorrow,” she said. Not entirely true, but they did need to strategize. “What do we do first?”

      He shrugged. “Not sure yet.”

      That made her frown. Surely, he was used to this sort of thing; it was his job after all. At least he’d said it was, a nagging suspicion whispered in her ear. “You do have some sort of plan, right?”

      He laughed. “Can I let you in on a little secret?”

      At her slow nod, he continued. “There is no standard operating procedure when it comes to bounty hunting. Most of the time, we just wing it.”

      Her worry factor hitched up a notch. “That doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy. I thought you were good at what you do.”

      “I am.”

      “A girl likes to know that her partner has skills.”

      He zipped the duffle bag closed and tossed it on the floor next to his bed before circling around to stand in front of her.

      Eye level with his trim, bare waist she lifted her gaze to well-defined abs, a light sprinkling of chest hair and all the way up to an extraordinary mouth totally meant for kissing. She blinked and shook her head, trying to clear a sudden fog in her brain.

      “Plans are fluid,” he said with quiet intensity. “I didn’t plan to be in the Dominican Republic, yet here we are. And I certainly didn’t plan on sharing a hotel room with a beautiful, but reckless historian. Again, here we are.”

      There went her pulse again. None of this helped her comfort level a bit.

      “Thing is,” he continued as he sat on the bed next to her, leaning his forearms against his knees and clasping his hands, turning his head to look at her, “I can handle that kind of change. What bothers me is that I suspect there’s more to your motives than you let on.”

      Insistent blue eyes stared at her, and she fought a sudden urge to fidget. But she kept her cool. She’d no intention of sharing anything beyond a need-to-know basis.

      “What are you not telling me?” he asked.

      Despite СКАЧАТЬ