14. Secret Treasure
Chapter 14
Secret Treasure
I t’s no surprise that Honey has secrets. They’re hidden in the depths of her eyes. But it is a bit of a shock when she takes my hand in hers. I glance down as if worried the crocogator got ahold of me.
But it’s just her calloused fingers in mine. She doesn’t wear any jewelry ... maybe I’d like to change that even though I’m as far from admitting this as I will be from her come tomorrow.
But I don’t want to think about distance with our hands linked.
Instead, I tighten my grip as if to tell Honey that I trust her to lead me wherever we’re going.
We pass through the gathering room with the vandalized family tree and reach a narrow hall that dead ends. We pause in front of a painting of three men on horseback, disappearing into the sunset. It evokes a certain nostalgia for the old west and pioneer days, so I left it there. Honey reaches for it like she’s going to tear it off the wall with one hand, but instead, I hear a click.
My eyebrows bounce as the painting opens on a hinge. Wispy cobwebs fill half the opening, but it’s big enough for someone my size to step through, so I follow Honey.
“You knew this was here?” I ask, my voice a dull echo.
“Of course.” There are those words again. I wonder what else I’m going to learn tonight.
I cough from the dank, dusty air and would very much like my respirator and maybe my helmet just to be safe.
We turn right and the passage curves slightly.
“Are we behind the fireplace in the gathering room?”
“The office.”
I picture the chateau’s layout in my head, placing our location. “I thought I’d combed the house from top to bottom, but I didn’t find this.”
“You’ve hardly scratched the surface. Remember, Tickle ran with the Boot Beer Boys. He was a gambler too. That man kept no shortage of secrets, stashes, and stories that most would say are Hogwash.”
“But not all,” I say, picking up her meaning.
We stop again and without the aid of light, Honey manages to manipulate some levers into rotating the floor like the lazy Susan in my mother’s spice cabinet. It opens to the dining room and we’re standing where the China cabinet should be.
“Because all the fine China was gone, we didn’t have to worry about making any noise,” Honey says.
“Who’s we?”
“ Les Trois Tasses ,” she says in her Cajun French accent.
“My translation is a bit rusty, but trois means three in French, right?”
“ Oui .” She nods.
“What about the rest?”
“It means The Three Cups. It was my cousin’s idea. Like those shell games where something is hidden under one cup or shell, and the trickster shuffles them around, and then the player has to guess where the hidden object, usually their cash, went.”
“Right into the trickster’s pocket.” Was the trickster Honey?
“Exactly.” She crosses the room and gently taps the bar rail. The wainscotting pops open and she crouches down like she’s done this dozens of times.
I drop to a squat. “ Trois , three, so you, your cousin, and who was the third member?”
Honey glances at me before crawling through the opening. “My mother.”
There’s no way I’ll fit so I go to the hall and into the next room, the parlor. She emerges where a long, moldering side table sat until recently. The marks are still visible on the floor.
“Mama and my cousin worked closely together, and I snuck in ...”
“Why them and not you and your mother?”
“My cousin was more willing. I didn’t want anything to do with their schemes so they made me work in the shadows. The fact that I didn’t want to be noticed helped. They were both quite noticeable, beautiful, boastful, show-women who loved the spotlight.”
Honey is quietly beautiful, but not at all boastful, except when she wins at cards.
She stares out the window into the darkness. “Drunk in New Orleans like many sailors, my father wandered down the wrong street. There, he met a fortune teller. She told him he’d fall in love that night. At a bar two doors down, my mother was waiting. He was their mark after they noticed the gold watch.” She shakes her head.
“Your mother and the fortune?”
“Her sister.”
“That’s some interesting matchmaking.”
“They may have fallen ... in lust, but not love. I came along nine months later.”
“And your father?”
“He denies that I’m his. My mother wasn’t particularly honest, but I knew it was him. We have the same eyes.”
My heart does something funny and I listen for the baby monitor, but Leonie is fast asleep upstairs.
“And you ended up here?”
“At some point, Mama heard about Tickle’s Golden Tokens and joined the hunt.”
Honey sits down at the table and pulls a deck of cards out of a hidden compartment. She shuffles, then deals, while explaining, “Hogwash Holler draws treasure hunters. It was once home to roadside attractions, including the world’s smallest chicken coop ... and the largest one. A massive nest made entirely of peacock feathers collected from within our town limits, and of course the giant rotating mug of root beer.”
“And a crocogator.”
Her lips pucker with laughter as she deals.
I reveal my cards, having lost, and say, “Sounds like a lot of tall tales.”
“I’ve seen the crocogator.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Back to Tickle’s Golden Tokens ...”
“Which don’t lead to treasure. Only to people fighting to get it. The quest ruined families. The town too.” She deals again.
I look carefully over my cards, not wanting to miss a trick. “I’d like to fix that.”
“But you can’t fix people, Maddock. The women in my family were as crafty as they come. They exploited the desires of the scavenger hunters, the people seeking Tickle’s Golden Tokens. We’d clean ‘em out. When I finally turned eighteen, I got out. But it came with a price.” She goes suddenly quiet as if she’s afraid she said too much.
My brow furrows because I can see why she wants to let go of the past but not of control.
The gauzy curtains swish like ghosts trying to escape the truth. It’s eerie here at night, especially when the misty fog settles over the bayou beyond the windows. I don’t love the idea of leaving Honey here alone, but if she’s anything like the other Les Trois Tasses , she can outwit a ghost or walk into the darkest night and challenge anything to spook her.
“You talk about them in the past tense.”
“Mama is in jail. My cousin disappeared. Probably conned some poor guy into marrying her—well, a rich guy because she wouldn’t settle for anything less.” With a smile, Honey reveals her cards. Again, she wins and starts dealing again.
“Where’d you learn to play?”
“I was my mother’s protégé. I spent the first half of my childhood on gambling riverboats. Mama was part of the entertainment but didn’t get paid much. Though, by the time we made landing, she’d have enough for that month’s living expenses.” The expression Honey gives suggests she was robbing the gullible people on the cruise.
It’s then that I realize that my wrist is bare. Honey dangles my grandfather’s military field watch from her forefinger.
Eyes bulging, I reach for it. “It’s not worth much.”
“But it holds sentimental value. Something’s worth isn’t always measured in money.” Honey’s smile slips toward sadness and makes me wonder if her mother using her in this parlor played into her sense of self-worth.
I pat my pockets. “I’ll take my wallet too. Nice sleight of hand. Deal again.”
She returns my watch and deals the cards.
Determined to win, I absently ask, “So how does the Porsche tie into this? Was it your final, big score?”
“Don’t make it sound as if I enjoyed any of it. I despised what we did. Myself too.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
She nods. “The car—” She opens and closes her mouth like she debates whether to say more. “Before we started the gig here at the chateau, we ran in New Orleans. As soon as I was tall enough to reach a car’s pedals, I became the getaway driver.”
My jaw lowers.
“I was good at driving. A natural, people said. Then one day I drove right into Cory Peterson.”
“You ran someone over?”
“No. Technically, he drove into me. Crashed.” She demonstrates with her hands as she arrays her cards. Final hand. Winning hand.
Funny that’s how we met, though thankfully without any auto damage, then I make the connection to Cory’s shop in town.
I fold, dropping my cards on the table. “You’re good.”
“Too good. At least that’s what Mama said. She named me Honey because I was the only sweet thing in her life. I didn’t want mine to turn out like hers. Cory was my oasis. He liked to drive too. We’d race. Me to escape the fact that I’d likely turn out to be a felon. He because of the adrenaline.” Once more, she goes quiet as if that’s the end of the story.
“Were you, him, and Jesse the new Three Amigos ?”
“Not even close. Jesse grew up more like me. Cory was one of the good ones.” Her chin quivers. She gets to her feet and says, “I should check on Leonie.”
I follow her to the living room with the baby monitor. Had she made a peep, we would’ve heard it from the parlor, but I think Honey needs a moment.
“Cory and I were close,” she says softly.
I get the sense they were sweethearts though she might not phrase it that way.
“He joined the military. Died—unrelated. That’s JQ’s story to tell. Losing him was the first thing that woke me up.”
“Was there a second?”
“And a third. The second was Mama going to prison for a long, long time. I thought it would set straight my cousin too, but no such luck.”
“And the third?”
“There I was minding my own business when an infant turned up on my doorstep. Okay, I wasn’t minding my business exactly. Living in this small southern town my whole life, it’s hard not to catch a whiff of gossip—or be the focus of it.”
“Do you know who’s baby she is?”
“My cousin. She never made an honest wager.”
“It was good of you to take care of Leonie.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way. But what else can I expect? Tragedy trails me like a stray cat. Can’t seem to shake the travesties either. But she’s a treasure, so it’s worked out okay.”
“What about lost things?” I ask.
“Do you mean the Cahoot Ruby and the Dubois Diamond?”
“And Tickle’s Golden Tokens.”
“All I can say about that is good luck.” She tips her head as if trying to talk herself into or out of something. She gazes down at her hands and then up at me. “Maddock, I’m not equipped to deal with a relationship.”
“You’ve figured out motherhood.”
“Hardly.”
“Give yourself more credit.”
Her voice is thick when she says, “I’m figuring it out as I go.”
Story of my life. “While you’ve been at the restaurant, I’ve been learning about Hugwash.”
“Hogwash.”
“Sounds the same to me.”
We exchange a smile.
I continue, “Recently, an anonymous donor pledged funds to repair and maintain the community center for the next hundred years.”
“That’s generous.”
“According to the bank records, they paid in gold.”
Honey’s eyes light up. “Is that so?”
I nod slowly. “That it is.”
Then as if having doubts, she says, “Remember, this is Hogwash Holler. Don’t believe everything you hear.”
“But I do believe my eyes. I saw the financial transaction receipt. I also see the history books ... and the way you look at me.”
She bunches her lips together. “Oh yeah. How’s that?”
“You like me.” My thoughts float to our first tour of the estate property.
“And you think I’ve finally realized it?”
My grin reaches my eyes because I know it’s true even if she goes on denying it.
“You are so cocky.”
“I prefer to think of it as confident. But you are so right.”
She tilts her head at a Did I just hear what I think I heard? angle. “You admit that I’m right about something.” Then her jaw lowers and her eyes narrow, shining on me, for me. “You just tricked me.”
I can’t help my gloating laughter, but I keep it playful and light.
Honey pokes me in the chest with each word she speaks. “You. Are. Going, To. Regret. This.”
I wrap my fingers around hers and draw her hand close to my face, contemplating where to start, not wanting to think about it ending.
My tone is gravelly when I say, “You’re wrong about that.”
Her jaw lowers and she tries to bite her lip, but it slips from her teeth.
“Shocked by my audacity?” I ask.
“Floored.”
But this is where our disagreement stops and the space between us narrows.
I search her brown eyes. Our proximity strikes a match in them.
“I’m not sure I can fight this fire.” My voice breaks.
What has felt tense, dark, and impenetrable yields as her eyes flick to mine. She knows we’re on a crash course and does nothing to stop it.
I don’t either. No, I accelerate it.
Leyton once told me that only fools rush into unknown situations. His constant drilling to Stop Assess Act flashes in my mind now. But I ignore it because I’m a fool for this woman, and I want to rush in.
Our mouths meet with fervor, greed, and hunger. It’s like we’ve been staving this off, starving for each other, and now the banquet table is set. The feast begins and we’re stuffing ourselves silly as our breathing comes hard and fast and our motions erratic and frenzied.
My hands are all over Honey. She works hard and her palms have calluses, but everything else about her is soft, supple, and sweet. Her hair is silkier than I imagined ... and I’ve thought about it more than I dare admit.
Her hands cover a lot of surface area, sliding up the sides of my neck, gripping my jaw, cascading down my back, and holding me tight.
This woman is so much more than I deserve. More than I could hope for. She meets me where I am and makes me better. Yes, I even want to kiss her better than I’ve ever kissed anyone. Give her more than I’ve ever given anyone.
Her breath is warm against my cheek as I nibble the spot behind her ear, pausing because I’m struggling to catch mine. She takes it away from me but gives me so much more.
The tiny hairs loose around her neck tickle my cheek. I laugh a little.
She draws back. Her eyes sparkle, but her brow furrows.
I say, “This is so unexpected yet so right.”
“No, Maddo. It was inevitable.”
I don’t argue because I agree.
Her hands grip the back of my neck, returning my mouth to hers. It’s as if she doesn’t want to let me go anywhere. And I don’t. I’m rethinking my plan. My entire life plan. Because I want Honey to be in it. I want her and a future I never foresaw for myself. It’s even better than a Plan B. Better than all the plans. I want to see where this goes if she’ll let me.
Everything about Honey is sweet except for pieces of her past and her side of sass. But I’ll take it. Double portions, please.
The kiss deepens and this is all I want. All I need.