Claiming His Treasure

Chapter Three

Split, Croatia

This was, quite possibly, the stupidest thing she'd ever done.

Or the best.

She was in Croatia. Standing on Croatian soil. Breathing Croatian air. It felt like a dream—though the twenty-one straight hours of travel she and Jackson had just endured were probably partially to blame for that. After two restless flights and a long layover, the two of them finally stood outside the airport in Split, a small city on the Croatian coast.

She was still in shock that Jackson had agreed to let her come. When she'd threatened to keep the atlas, she'd half expected him to leap across the car and wrestle it out of her hands anyway. He could have easily overpowered her. Instead, he'd just stared at her—long enough to make her squirm in her seat and make her entire body go hot—before giving a single nod of agreement. She still had no idea what was going on, but she wasn't about to question it. This was her chance to have the adventure she'd always dreamed of, wasn't it?

If she was being honest, though, for every ounce of excitement she felt, there was an equal measure of fear. For a moment back in Jackson's car, she'd felt wild and reckless and brave. She'd wanted to see the world. To do something crazy and unexpected. But she'd also been terrified. In a night, her safe, boring world had imploded. She was still trying to process everything she'd just learned. And the thought of sitting and waiting at a friend's house, not knowing what was going on, was far worse than the alternative.

Or so she thought at the time. Now? Her heart was pounding in a way that she couldn't contribute entirely to excitement.

She clutched her purse a little closer. The bag was just large enough to fit the atlas, and she was afraid to let it out of her grip. Jackson hadn't asked for it yet, though she'd thought he might.

She glanced over at him. He'd called someone when they landed, and now he was scanning the handful of cars and buses that drove by. He was looking away from her, so she took the moment to study him in the dawn light. She was still having trouble getting over the subtle changes in him. His bigger muscles were one thing, of course, but he also carried himself differently now. He'd always had a certain worldliness about him—she'd known, the very first time she'd looked into his eyes, that he'd seen things and done things she'd never understand—but there was a depth to it that hadn't been there before. There was a wariness, an alertness—like he was always ready for trouble. He'd changed so much in these last nine months. It was almost like looking at a stranger.

He was a stranger when you were together, she told herself. She'd tried not to think too hard about his mysterious absences when they were a couple, but never in her wildest dreams would she have guessed the sort of life he was actually leading. She still wasn't entirely sure this wasn't a joke.

As if he could sense her thinking about him, he suddenly looked back at her. She turned away, embarrassed at being caught staring. She didn't want him to think she was checking him out. There were a lot of complicated feelings going on in her chest right now, but that didn't change what had happened between them. She couldn't forgive him for the way he'd left things.

"My teammate Leo is coming to get us," he said. "He'll be taking us down to the boat."

"Boat?" Her eyes flicked back to him.

He nodded. "The guys have one ready to go. I told you that we knew Rinaldi met his fiancée in the Croatian isles. We're just waiting for the atlas to tell us exactly where."

It wasn't a direct request for the atlas, but she shifted uncomfortably just the same. Somehow he'd moved without her realizing it, and now he towered over her. He reached out, and for a split second she thought he was going for the atlas—he was so much bigger and stronger that it would be easy for him to take it away from her—but instead his hand moved toward her shoulder. His fingers paused an inch away from her skin.