Hidden Treasures by Judith Arnold Page B

challenging her. “What would you bet on, then?”
    “Absolutely nothing.”
    He laughed. “Not a risk taker, are you?”
    She bristled defensively. She’d taken a huge risk by moving to Rockwell, hadn’t she? Not a life-and-death risk, not a major financial risk, but she’d moved to a tiny village in the shadow of the Moose Mountains, where she knew no one. She’d defied her parents’ expectations by choosing to settle in a place where Clinique facial cleansers and the New Yorker were unavailable in the local stores. She’d bought a house and planted a garden—or at least gotten a start on that. She considered herself rather daring, all things considered.
    “I don’t wager money,” she explained.
    “What do you wager?”
    She couldn’t tell if he was mocking her or coming on to her. She decided to change the subject. “I have no idea why Derrick Messinger would want to see me. Maybe it’s not about the box. Maybe it’s about something else, although I can’t imagine what.” She took a sip of her wine, carefully, because Jed was nudging the swing back and forth with his toe and she didn’t want to slosh any Chianti on her jacket. “Doesn’t Messinger usually do shows on gangsters and missing people?”
    “He does shows on anything he thinks will attract an audience. The guy’s slick. He’s into ratings.”
    “As if a show about an old box with a dirt-clogged lock is going to get high ratings,” she said.
    “If the box is filled with a million dollars, it is.”
    “It’s not,” Erica said with a certainty she didn’t feel. Actually, she didn’t feel certain about anything. The air seemed to fluctuate between mild and cool. Her wine tasted more tart than it had inside. Scattered clouds drifted across the sky, pale gray against dark blue like a Magritte painting. And Jed was so warm . He hadn’t bothered with a jacket, and he clearly didn’t need one. He radiated heat like someone with a fever; only, he was obviously healthy. Big and hot and healthy.
    She lowered her gaze to his left hand, which dwarfed his wineglass. She was used to eight-year-old hands, soft and small, with dirty nails or pencil smudges on them.
    “How do you know it’s not?”
    It took her a moment to remember what they’d been discussing: the estimated value of the box’s contents.“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just hope it’s not filled with money.”
    “You don’t want a million dollars?”
    “Even if the box contained a million dollars, I couldn’t claim the money as mine.”
    He shifted slightly to look at her, and the swing rocked from his motion. She saw mischief in his eyes. When was the last time she’d sat alone at night with someone like him? “In other words, you admit half the money is mine?” he asked.
    That was why he was being nice to her, she realized—if jostling her on the swing so she had to keep flexing her wrist to keep the wine level in her glass, and giving her grins just a bit too tricky for her to interpret, constituted being nice. He wanted half of whatever was in the box. She hoped it was pebbles and pine needles. She’d gladly give him half of that, and it would serve him right for being so greedy.
    Then again, he might just be teasing her. She couldn’t tell.
    She straightened her back. For God’s sake, she wasn’t a ditz. She was a Harvard graduate in charge of her own life. She’d taken on fabulous-looking guys before. Maybe no one quite as fabulous-looking as Jed, but honestly. He was a junk dealer. A Rockwell native. She had the brains to handle him. “Tell me about your business,” she said.
    His gaze softened, his smile losing its taunting edge. “It’s a shop in New York,” he told her. “City Resale.”
    “You really buy junk and sell antiques?”
    He chuckled, shook his head and twisted back on the swing’s bench so he was facing the porch railing. He propped one foot up on it and used it to rock them.His foot was big, too, encased in a thick-soled