Searching For Treasure (6 page)

Her father had been an avid gardener, so she dug up his plants and sold them at farmers markets. She painted the rocks he had used in landscaping and turned them into interesting conversation pieces or paperweights. She took the junk he had never gotten around to discarding and turned them into birdhouses and bird feeders. She became adept at turning the leftovers and castoffs of her parents' lives into something beautiful or whimsical or useful and then selling it to someone by convincing them that they couldn't live without it.

Their mother had been a wonderful baker and had loved making her own jams, jellies and pickles. Knowing that she had passed this same ability to her daughter, Jack had suggested bake sales at local flea markets and participating in the arts and crafts show circuit. Eventually she gave up the handcrafts and concentrated on baking and canning.

Noah watched his sister beat back her fears with work and had been inspired to do the same. He held his own lawn sales, bargaining with the neighborhood kids over the price of old toys. He sold Kool-Aid and some of Dana's home-baked cookies on the sidewalk in front of the castle. He held puppet shows and magic shows in the backyard charging a nickel a head to anyone who would come. When he was older he had a paper route and mowed yards during the summer.

The first day he had poured out his accumulated pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters onto the table in front of his sister, his face had beamed with pride at his contribution. But Dana had not failed to see the traces of uncertainty lurking in his eyes, a fear that what little he had to offer wasn't good enough. Dana thanked him seriously and praised him lavishly for his cleverness and ingenuity. That night she cried herself to sleep.

Dana smiled at her brother, memories both bitter and sweet flowing thickly between them. Grace brought them back to the present when she asked, "What kind of things do you sell on the internet?"

"I have my own line of jams and jellies. I also dabble in pickles, relishes and hot sauce. One day, when I can reproduce my father's secret barbecue sauce, I'll add that to the inventory. I don't know when that will be. I've been trying for years and I still haven't got it right."

Jack laughed. "And I'm the scorched-tongued guinea pig to prove it."

Just then Mark rushed in, carrying an old book in his large hands. "Grandpa, guess what I found!"

"Boy, you're about to miss breakfast. I thought you must be sick. Not like you to miss a meal. What have you got there?"

"It's kind of a history book, except it tells you where people used to hide their money."

"Let me see that
,”
Rose commanded. Mark handed her the book and she flipped through it eagerly as Grace peered over her shoulder.

"According to the book, Grandpa
,”
Mark continued excitedly, "most people used the same kinds of places to hide their stuff. Like inside a well or cistern. What's a cistern?"

"It's a water tank," Henry answered.

"Oh. Well, they also liked to hide stuff in fireplaces or in a secret hidey-hole inside the chimney."

"That had to be a man
,”
stated Rose, turning a page. "What woman would want to scatter soot everywhere each time she wanted to get to her pin money?"

Mark gave her a puzzled look, then shrugged. "What Austin and Brett are doing is in the book, too. It said that people used to hide stuff in steps and something called a newel post."

"That's what you run into with your backside when you slide down a banister
,”
Henry told his grandson.

Rose snorted with laughter. Grace ignored them both.

"There's places outside they used to use, too, Grandpa. That's where I want to look. Fences posts and stepping stones and near animal pens."

Oscar murmured to Dana and Jack, "This is the most animated I've seen the boy since he arrived."

"I guess it just took him a while to get into the spirit of things," Jack said.

Dana changed the subject. "Oscar," she began diffidently, "last night Jack and I were out back and we heard what sounded like whispering by the old oak."

"Did you really?" He looked at both of them sharply. "How very interesting."

Jack and Dana looked at each other and wondered at his reaction. All other conversations had stopped and Grace sat back down in anticipation. "Is this another ghost story?"

"I suppose you can call it that. That tree is called, The Whispering Oak, and the story is that a young girl who once lived here used to meet her lover at night under its branches. Her father disapproved of the young man and one night he caught them together there. Despite his daughters tears, he had a couple of his men drag the boy away, severely beat him and ran him out of town, never to return. The daughter was heartbroken, never married and died an old maid."

"What a sad story!" Rose said.

"The legend has it that on some nights they whisper to each other in the dark. But only certain couples can hear them."

Grace was practically vibrating with excitement. "What certain couples? You're not telling us the whole legend."

Oscar looked at Dana and then at Jack and smiled his maddening, mysterious smile. "It's only a legend, after all."

Everyone turned towards Dana and Jack in speculation. To Dana's relief, Brett chose that moment to come bursting into the dining room.

"Oscar, we need a claw hammer."

Henry couldn't resist the dig. "You mean that was something you didn't think to bring with you?"

Austin sauntered in. "Can't think of everything." He looked Dana up and down with what he obviously thought was a smoldering look. Jack noticed and grimaced.

"In the shed, where I keep most of my tools, but I'm not certain I have a claw hammer. You are welcome to anything in there as long as you return it. If there's something you need that I don't have, I suppose you could drive into town," Oscar said.

"The closest town, if you want to call it that," growled Austin in disgust, "is twenty miles away
.”
He sauntered back out, Brett following, muttering about hammers.

Henry shook his head. "I swear, he'd gripe if he was hung with a new rope."

Oscar sighed with resignation. "I guess I'll have to keep an eye on them just to make sure they don't tear up too much. I have every confidence that the rest of you will use good judgment and consideration."

"Don't worry, Oscar," Mark assured him, "we won't hurt anything."

Anxious to get started, Rose and Grace hurried off, discussing a plan about looking for hidden rooms. Henry and Mark left, heads together, still pouring over the book and discussing possible places to search. Dana looked around and noticed that she and Jack were alone in the dining room. "Hey, where's Noah?" Dana asked.

"He and Josie slipped out the back a couple of minutes ago. I think they are checking out the gazebo." Where Austin had only thought his look was smoldering, Jack's really was. Dana felt herself blushing under his gaze. How does he do that? She had blushed more around him in the last eighteen hours than she ever had in her life. In fact, she hadn't blushed this much since her freshman year in high school when Mrs. Lien, her science teacher, had caught Dana necking with her son Josh in a janitor's closet. Boy, had her face been red then!

"So," he said, edging closer towards her. He gave her a slow, sexy smile. "A part-time showgirl, um?"

Dana's breath caught in her chest. Why hadn't she ever noticed before that Jack had a sexy smile? Apparently, Jack wasn't that determined that things should still be the same between them, at least not all the time. Dana felt her stomach fluttering around her breakfast.
I shouldn't have had that last biscuit
, she thought. She decided that a light answer would be best for her digestion.

"Yeah, I really look cute in feathers."

Jack moved even closer to her and she shivered from his nearness. His voice was a soft breath in her ear. "How about me Dana? Am I cute, too?"

Cute? Are you kidding?
Dana took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of him, a scent so familiar yet now so new. She leaned back slightly so she could look at him. She gave him a sexy smile of her own. "You're beyond cute, Jack."

He grinned and bringing her hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles affectionately. "Come on, D, let's go searching for treasure."

Chapter 5

As the morning passed, Dana began to relax into the scary yet wonderful feelings she now experienced around Jack. Things weren't really all that different, she decided, she was just much more aware of the physical intimacy that had always existed between them. They had always touched each other; holding hands, affectionate hugs, casual kisses. But what had always been natural and comfortable now seemed strangely exciting.

She began to fear less and less the warm glow she felt spreading through her whenever she looked at him. It was the same kind of warmth she saw looking back at her through Jack's eyes. A look, she realized with a start, that she had been seeing for some time now.

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
She gave herself a mental head slap.
What's wrong with me? Am I blind or just a coward?

"Rose was right," declared Jack, wiping ineffectively at the soot on his hands. "This is a filthy place to be hiding things." They had spent the morning poking around the different fireplaces on the ground floor. Jack loved to do research and had read up on old places in preparation for this weekend.

One book had mentioned that chimneys used to be fitted with a partition a little below the opening for the flue. The space below this was completely hollow and oftentimes the owner would have a secret hiding place built into the empty area. But it was apparent that the previous owners of Raven Keep Castle had preferred a cleaner place to keep their valuables.

With a devilish glint in his eye, Jack ran his finger down Dana's nose, leaving a streak. "Hey!" Dana shouted.

"I thought you looked way too clean."

"You turkey!" Jack waved his other blackened fingers at her menacingly. Dana cringed away, laughing. "Don't you dare."

Thinking better of his threat, Jack dropped his hands and leaned against the mantel. "
I’
m very hungry
,”
Jack said in a sultry voice. Dana coughed and her pupils widened
.“
Shouldn't it be close to lunchtime?" he continued in his normal voice.

Dana looked at her watch. "Pretty soon I would imagine."

"I wonder if lunch is going to be as lavish as breakfast and supper was."

"The Cook is becoming something of a mystery. None of the guests have seen her yet. The food just seems to appear as if by magic."

This observation was interrupted by voices drifting through the open window, one ringing with anger, the other one pleading, and both rapidly heading towards the castle.

"You said you had a hold of me!"

"I did. My hand slipped."

Josie came dashing into the castle, fighting mad and close to tears. She was also covered in mud from her chin to her knees. Noah followed, clearly upset. Josie whirled on him. "You did it on purpose," Josie said.

"I didn't! Dana, tell her I wouldn't do such a thing."

"He wouldn't do such a thing
,”
she repeated dutifully. She looked at her brother suspiciously. "What did you do?"

"Nothing! She thinks I intentionally dropped her in the mud."

Dana's lips twitched. "Did you?"

"No!"

"What happened?" Jack asked grinning, clearly enjoying himself.

"There's an old oak tree out back that has a big hole in it just above your head
,”
Josie began, illustrating with her hands a circle about eight inches across.

"The Whispering Oak?" Jack said.

"No, a different one. In case you haven't noticed, Jack, the place is drowning with oak trees," Noah said.

"Noah, don't be rude." Dana turned to Josie. "Go ahead and finish your story."

"Anyway, Uncle Oscar said that sometimes people used to use holes in trees like mailboxes, you know, to pass letters back and forth? I just wanted to see if maybe something could be inside. But someone had left a garden hose running and there was a big mud hole right where I needed to stand. We dragged a box over, but I still needed to kind of reach way over." Josie twisted her body in an unconscious demonstration. "He said he had me."

"I did." Noah turned to his sister in a desperate appeal. "I didn't mean to, I swear."

Dana tried mightily, but she couldn't quite keep a grin from peeking through. Taking pity, she told the furious girl, "He might be a pain-in-the-butt little brother, but he doesn't lie. If he said it was an accident, you can believe him."

Josie gave an unladylike snort, but seemed somewhat mollified. "I'm a mess."

"There seems to be a lot of that going around," Dana offered, rubbing the smudge on her nose. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up."

As they headed upstairs, they could hear Jack's laughter rolling up behind them and Noah declaring hotly, "It's not funny."