42
TREASURE HUNT
She drove for two hours—twenty minutes of which
was spent lost on a lonely back road—and when she arrived at the
spa, it was already dark. Ray, the kids, and Muriel had gotten
there hours before. Grace had called ahead to tell them not to wait
for her to eat dinner. As she checked in at the lodge-style old
lobby, the separation from her father and everything that was
happening in Austin was making her feel torn in two. She barely
spared a glance for the immense stone tiles on the floor, or the
vaulted ceiling overhead.
A bellboy of sorts, a rangy-looking
teenager in a cowboy hat, led her to her room. She followed him
past a low-lit dining room with vast picture windows on two sides,
and then back outside down a covered walkway to another
building—one of three of similar modest gray stone appearance—and
was shown into her room. Her surprisingly sumptuous room. There was
a queen-size bed with a down coverlet festooned with a ridiculous
number of fluffy pillows. Across the room, double doors opened onto
a patio, which she decided to wait until morning to investigate.
She crossed to the bathroom, which was like something out of a
magazine. Just the sink itself, an elegant bowl fashioned from pink
marble, seemed almost museum worthy. Plush white bathrobes hung on
brass hooks next to plump towels. And light-colored tiles led to a
sunken tub big enough for three people.
What was she doing here? All the
pampering and lavish excess seemed so crazy, given her present
mood. It was wasted on her. How was she going to survive till
Sunday?
The kids came by to inspect her room,
which Jordan, with true disappointment, declared not as cool as
hers and Lily’s. Dominic was more interested in showing her how to
use the television, which had satellite and a Wii player
connected.
Finally Ray came by and rescued her,
after Muriel had retired for the night. Grace felt a strange sort
of flush, a loss of equilibrium when she met his gaze, which she
chalked up to the strangeness of seeing him there, on foreign soil.
They were both unwillingly out of their element.
“I was worried you would decide not to
come,” Ray said. “You must have had a hard day.”
Grace nodded. “Hard, long,
sad.”
Ray wasted no time herding everyone out
of the room. Yet Grace was glad when he lingered a moment after the
others had gone. “I’m happy you’re here,” he said.
“I’ll be more in the spirit of things
tomorrow,” she promised, even though she had her
doubts.
But when she woke up the next day and
looked outside through the glass doors, a rush of excitement took
her by surprise. Because she’d driven in after dark the night
before, she had not realized that the scenery would be so
spectacular. The spa was situated in an area where light gray
granite bluffs rose above the Guadalupe River. Through the
millennia the rock had been worn down in places, so that the
granite formed a lip over the low-water river, and at various
higher elevations the stone jutted precariously out into space like
jagged granite balconies. Live oaks dotted the landscape and
smaller bushes, some also evergreen, clung to the thin topsoil on
the shelflike protrusions.
She slipped into the fluffy terry-cloth
robe provided in her bathroom—a robe so soft it was a little like
stepping into a plush cocoon. Then, she threw open her doors and
went out onto her patio. Moisture hung in the air and she had to
hug her arms around herself to ward off the bracing morning chill.
Even so, the clean air brought a blissful smile to her
lips.
She didn’t realize she wasn’t alone
until she caught a flash of orange out of the corner of her eye.
When she turned, Jordan was peering at her critically from the next
patio over.
“You do wear make-up, then,” Jordan
said. “I wondered, but it’s pretty obvious when you’re not wearing it.”
“It’s eight A.M.”
“Yeah, but shouldn’t you . . . I dunno
. . . make yourself look decent?”
Grace laughed. She couldn’t believe she
was getting a fashion critique from the girl with Ringling Brothers
hair. “I’m hoping to get a facial this morning.”
“That’s good,” Jordan said. “Just so
long as you’re finished by one o’clock. At one we’re going on a
geo-caching treasure hunt.”
“I have no idea what that is,” Grace
admitted.
“It’s like a treasure hunt, only you
use GPS devices.”
Grace frowned and looked out toward the
river. “Actually, I was hoping to hang out around here and relax.
Maybe read a book.”
“Well, you can’t,” Jordan said. “We
already signed you up.”
Lily rushed out in her bathrobe.
“What’s going on?”
“She’s saying she won’t go geo-caching
this afternoon,” Jordan said, clearly miffed.
Lily gasped. “But you have
to!”
“She says she wanted to
read.”
“You can read anywhere,” Lily said.
“Wouldn’t you rather explore with us?”
It was a topsy-turvy world when Lily
told people they shouldn’t read and a
chummy Jordan and Lily invited her out for rambles in nature. But
rambling with Jordan West didn’t strike Grace as a dream
vacation.
Looking into Lily’s pleading eyes,
however, she felt powerless to resist.
“Okay,” she said, caving. “Count me
in.”
She spent the rest of the morning
getting massaged and facialed, buffed, manicured and trimmed. By
the time she presented herself at the treasure hunt meeting place,
the kids were waiting, although neither Ray nor Muriel had arrived
at the designated spot yet. Dominic scrutinized Grace closely as
she approached, his face taking on a relieved expression when she
stopped next to him. He turned to his sisters. “She looks okay to
me.”
Lily tactfully ignored him. “We’re
waiting for Dad and Muriel,” she explained. “Muriel wanted to play
golf, so they went out to a driving range. I hope she hasn’t tired
him out.”
Grace laughed. “I think your ancient
dad still has a two-activity day left in him.”
He certainly seemed perky when he and
Muriel ambled up. Ray was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved polo
shirt, but Muriel was decked out in her Dinah Shore golf
clothes—white golfing shoes, a baby blue skirt, and a matching knit
top. Grace wished Sam was there to see it.
“Okay,” Jordan announced, barely giving
the late arrivals time to catch their breaths or say hello to
Grace. “Here’s your tracking device, Dad.” She handed him a small
plastic doodad about the size of an iPod. “And here’s a list of the
stuff you’re supposed to bring back. You and Grace are on one team,
and Muriel, Lily, and I are on the other team. We’ll all be going
for the same treasure, but our team will start by trying to find
position A and work down to G, while you guys start at G and work
the other way. The coordinates for each letter are programmed into
the device. Oh—and you can only grab one item at each location. And
no cheating. Got it?”
Lily and Jordan were already starting
to head out when they noticed the adults weren’t following. The two
girls were forced to turn around.
“Is there a problem?” Jordan asked,
hands on her hips.
“How did these teams get picked?”
Muriel asked.
“When did they
get picked?” Ray followed up.
Grace added, “And what about
Dominic?”
In a disturbingly Jordan-like gesture,
Lily rolled her eyes. “Since y’all were late, we went ahead and
picked. We only have until dinner, so there’s not a lot of daylight
to waste. And Dominic isn’t playing. He signed up for pool
chess.”
Grace glanced over at Dominic, not
quite believing this could be voluntary. “Really?”
He nodded mutely.
“We could do three teams of two,” Grace
suggested. “Dominic and I could be a team.”
“No, you can’t,” Jordan said quickly.
“Because Dominic wants to play pool chess in the luxurious heated
indoor pool. Don’t you, Dominic?”
Dominic nodded again.
“But shouldn’t the rest of us draw
straws or something?” Muriel asked.
“We drew for you,” Jordan said.
“Congratulations—you won. You’re coming with us.”
“Unless you don’t want to be on our
team,” Lily said, challenging her. “I mean, if you just don’t like
us or something.”
Jordan and Lily stared at Muriel so
pointedly that Grace almost felt sorry for the woman. To respond
she would either have to lie or be offensive.
Sensing her dilemma, Muriel capitulated
with a huff. “Well, at least let me carry the cockadoodie list!”
she grumbled, snatching the list out of Jordan’s hand as she
stomped past.
After they were gone, Grace turned to
Dominic. “You can still join us, you know,” he said. “Even out the
numbers.”
Dominic shook his head. “I signed up
for pool chess. I figure I have a pretty good chance of winning
after all my practice with Professor Oliver.”
Grace also figured he had a pretty good
chance of getting clobbered by his sisters if he dared joined Ray
and Grace’s team.
Ray turned to Grace with an amused
smile. “I guess that leaves you and me chasing G to
A.”
They set off down a well-worn path, Ray
walking slightly ahead. Now that they were alone, Grace felt
awkward, and a little miffed. She wasn’t so desperate that she
needed two teenagers to fix her up with their dad—especially since
it was clear they were doing so only because she was less loathsome
than the alternative.
Especially when their dad seemed just
as happy with the loathsome alternative.
Ray flicked a glance back at her. “Is
something wrong?”
“Why?”
“You’re walking a few steps behind me,
as if I were a king.”
“Sorry—I had the impression that you
were walking ahead of me, as if I were a leper.”
He slowed down.
“Although you have seemed a little
kinglike lately,” she pointed out. “You seem to have your would-be
consort orbiting around you.” The minute she said it, she wanted to
slap her hand over her mouth. Where had that come from?
He stayed focused on the screen of the
GPS device. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He pointed
to a smaller path. “This doohickey is telling us to go this
way.”
She nodded, grateful for once for his
studied obliviousness.
G turned out to be a plastic bag
hanging from a tree. They hauled it down and examined the contents,
then compared it to the list. Two of the things they needed were in
the bag—a kazoo and a red plastic heart.
Ray frowned. “We can only take one
thing from each site.”
“So we’re gambling that the thing we
don’t choose will be in another cache?”
“Right. So which do we
choose?”
They both thought for a
moment.
“Heart,” she decided.
“Kazoo,” he said at the same
moment.
They laughed. “We’ll go with the
heart,” he said.
She shook her head. “No—the kazoo. That
way if we get hopelessly lost, we’ll at least have
music.”
“That decides it. We’re definitely
taking the heart.”
After that, the ice, if not broken, was
at least chipped a little. She and Ray rambled down pathways and
picked up a tiny mirror at F.
“So where next?” she
asked.
He arched a brow. “I think that would
be E.”
Wiseacre. “I know the letter, but what
direction?”
He punched in F and then gave the
letter E as their destination, and the words north
100 yards flashed up on the screen. “That way.”
“Wouldn’t north be over there?” she
asked, pointing to their right. “The river bends sharply here,
doesn’t it?”
He frowned. “How do you know
that?”
“They had a drawing on the place mat at
breakfast. Didn’t you notice?”
Judging from his expression, her
argument wasn’t very convincing. “We’re supposed to use your foggy
memory of a place mat as a road map?”
“It’s a very clear memory of a place
mat,” she argued.
“Okay—but don’t say I didn’t warn
you.”
Her memory might have been right, but
after ten minutes it seemed as if the place mat wasn’t. They had to
double back in the direction of the river.
“This will probably cost us,” Grace
said, wryly apologetic. “We’ll probably be out here forever
now.”
He sent her a strange look—whether hurt
or exasperated, she couldn’t tell. Pained, probably, at the idea of
being stuck out here with her much longer.
“I’m sure Muriel would never have
gotten you lost.”
He didn’t say anything.
She wanted to slap herself upside the
head for the sting of jealousy she felt. Why was it that the minute
you started to play a game, no matter how old you were, the desire
to beat the pants off the other team kicked in?
In her case, the person whose pants she
wanted to kick was Muriel.
Maybe he did
like Muriel. More power to him. It was certainly no skin off her
nose if the two of them wanted to live happily ever after. She was
foolish even to have come on this expedition.
She walked ahead.
From behind her, he called out. “Grace,
what’s wrong? What did I say?”
She stopped—not that she had much
choice. She’d reached the edge of the bluff overlooking the river.
“Nothing,” she said, turning. “You didn’t say a thing. I just
suspect you wish we weren’t out here doing this.”
A laugh sputtered out of him. “Oh, and
you’re thrilled to be here, I can tell.”
“It’s beautiful!” she said. “And yes—I
thought we were having a reasonably good time. In spite of being
forced together.”
He caught up with her. “I got the
impression that you’d rather be out here with anyone
else.”
“Me?” She
laughed. “I wasn’t the one who questioned the method of team
picking as soon as they were announced.”
He frowned down at her. “No—you were
the one who wanted to drag Dominic along the moment you thought you
would have to be out here alone with me. Not that I blame you.
After last spring.”
“Forget last spring! I wanted to drag
him along because he so clearly wanted to come,” she
argued.
“Then why did he sign up for pool
chess?”
“Can you possibly be this thickheaded?”
Grace asked aloud. When he recoiled in surprise, she attempted to
enlighten him. “His sisters put him up to it because they didn’t
want you out here with Muriel Blainey. In fact, I’m certain this
whole setup, if not this entire weekend, was just a way to make
sure you spent as little time as possible with Muriel. Surely you
can see that.”
He looked genuinely perplexed. “Why
would they care?”
“Because they’re so desperate to have
you not involved with Muriel that they’re willing to spend the
afternoon with her themselves. That’s sacrifice, Ray. They’ve
jumped into the volcano, for you.”
“But why? I have no intention of
getting involved with Muriel. We’re just neighbors.”
“No—we’re just
neighbors, Ray. You and Muriel are something else.”
He took a step forward. “You’re as
misguided as they are, then. You’ve got it completely backward.
Muriel means nothing to me. While we’re . .
.”
He stopped. Their gazes
locked.
She swallowed. “What?”
He reached out and took her arm,
tugging him gently toward him. She stumbled a step and found
herself against his chest, enveloped in a kiss. It was a surprise,
but there was none of the rush of the time before, the furtive kiss
stolen on her dad’s porch. This time, his lips explored hers more
casually, more forcefully. And she didn’t step away. She
couldn’t—not with a forty-foot drop behind her.
He pulled away and pushed a lock of
hair behind her ears, then hugged her and kissed the top of her
head. “Raw umber.”
“It’s auburn,” she said, burrowing
against the soft cotton of his shirt. It felt so good just to stand
here, alone, away from their problems. Away from
everyone.
“I should never have come along on this
trip,” she said, sighing. “I’ll always feel we were set up by
Jordan.”
“I would have been miserable if you
hadn’t come,” he confessed. “Every time I’ve looked at that damned
FOR SALE sign, I’ve felt sick, as though I
was losing you, even though you weren’t mine to lose. It only felt
like you were, because without you I don’t know how I would have
survived last year.”
“Oh, Ray.”
“When I see that sign, I want to rip it
out of the ground, sabotage the sale . . . anything to keep you
from going.”
She smiled. “I’ve wanted to do the same
thing myself.”
“But not for the same reason. You’re
heartbroken about your father, while I was worried you would leave
before I could—”
Something dropped to the rocks. She
felt the muscles in his arms tense.
“Ray?”
He groaned.
“What was that?” she
asked.
“That was our GPS tracking
device.”
She twisted to glimpse over her own
shoulder at the drop below. “What do we do now?”
He looked down at her, eyebrows arching
above the frames of his glasses. “Forfeit the game and find some
other activity to keep us occupied?”
She smiled and settled her arms around
him again. “Good plan.”