Page 52 of Weston’s Treasure

“My dad’s not normally that bad,” I started to explain. “Well, he’s always dramatic and irritating when he wants his way. But mostly growing up he showed me love. I think I was about five when he started teaching me to read charts. Dad was searching for an old Portuguese merchant vessel that had sunk in the Strait of Malacca. He was plotting the next day’s dive and I off-handily—because I was five—told him to move his dive to a new location. He humored me and found the wreck and the five coffers of jewels and silver. After that, he called me his good luck charm and nicknamed me Scout.”

“I take it from that, you traveled a lot.”

“I’ve motored around the world more than once. More like six times, and been to every continent and most islands.”

Weston’s arms tightened around me. “Interesting childhood you had. More adventures than most people could dream of.”

It’s funny. What some would consider adventures I’d considered mundane, boring, torture. Being stuck on a boat for days, sometimes weeks, with no dry land in sight. Scary storms where I thought we were going to die, rationing food because we had to take a detour, no friends, no TV, no normalcy. There were times I’d loved it, but mostly I’d hated it.

I wanted to go to school like a normal teenager. I wanted a boyfriend. I wanted girls I could gossip with. When you grow up in a bubble, you have a skewed sense of reality. When your only insight into high school was watching old episodes of 90210 or Saved by the Bell you believe that Brenda Walsh’s and Dylan McKay’s really exist. You long to have a friendship like Brenda, Kelly, and Donna. You dream of walking into the Peach Pit or The Max.

I never had that.

“It was lonely,” I admitted. “And when I got to college, I didn’t fit in. I had no social skills, I didn’t know how to make friends, and I was too trusting. I didn’t know that people were so mean to each other. Everything was new and shocking. I was a new kind of lonely. Lost in a sea of people and I was invisible.”

“You’re not invisible anymore.” Weston’s gruff voice made me smile.

“Well, duh. I now have multiple people all looking for me trying to kill me. If there was ever a time I wished I really was invisible it is now.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Weston tilted my chin up, bringing my face level with his. So close I could see the brown and gold flecks in his eyes. My belly did a somersault at his proximity and I wondered again how it was possible I was where I was—in Weston Beil’s bed. Not only that, I was in his lap. I’d slept next to him and done other stuff in that bed besides.

“I see you,” he murmured. “I see all of you.”

I was blinking back tears when his lips touched mine. My mouth opened for him, and Weston’s tongue swept in and off I went—straight to paradise. The kiss was different, he was giving me gentle, giving me what I needed, telling me he meant those words—he saw me. And I poured everything I had into that kiss, giving him back what he was giving me because he deserved it.

No, he’d earned it.

19

Weston was in the kitchen a mug of coffee—his first of the day—halfway to his mouth when Chasin walked in.

“Where’s Silver?”

The way in which his friend asked, the ease, the normalcy, hit Weston. It was like the woman had been with them months or years—not just days. It was a given she was in the house somewhere and when it hit, Weston liked the tightness in his chest. He liked that Silver was in the house, in his bed where he’d left her sleeping. He liked it enough to know he was going to do his best to convince her that not only did she like it, too, but she wanted to stay.

Weston didn’t know how that was going to work with her job—the commute would suck—but the two-week rotation would suck more. Something he knew he had to prepare for now that Silver was in his life and he was keeping her in it.

“Sleeping,” Weston answered before taking a drink.

“She okay after what went down with her dad?”

Putting the mug on the counter next to his hip, Weston took in his friend. Totally disheveled, track pants on, and shirtless. That was Chasin every morning when he came down for coffee. Something that was going to have to change with Silver in the house.

“You gotta shirt you could put on?”

The smug bastard smiled and shook his head.

“Not one handy.”

“You think maybe you could find one?”

“I could, but I’m not feelin’ the necessity seein’ as I’m in my kitchen first thing in the morning and I haven’t even had a cup a joe a’ yet.”

Weston watched his friend move around the space, pulling bagels from the cabinet before setting them on the counter, pulling one out, splitting it open, then popping it in the toaster. He did that thinking about what he’d done to Silver on that counter. Then Weston smiled and decided he didn’t give a fuck if Chasin walked around with his shirt off. Silver was his in a way that he knew she wouldn’t stray.

“No, she’s not,” Weston answered the other man’s earlier question.

Chasin’s mouth got tight before he said, “That man’s an ass. Totally clueless. His daughter was standing right in front of him and he missed it. And the fuck of it was, she wasn’t hiding what he was doing to her. And if he couldn’t see it, he should’ve been able to hear it.”