A Bride To Treasure excerpt

COMING SOON

Marilyn Monroe was wrong. Rubies were a girl's best friend.

Hestia Stephanos ran her fingers lovingly over the heart shaped ruby surrounded by dazzling diamonds and sapphires. Until a month ago, the necklace had been submerged in salt water for over three hundred and fifty years lost with the Santa Bernardine during a storm.

Spanish treasure never failed to turn her on. Tia turned the pendant over. Etched into the gold backing she translated the words 'My Love' and beneath the words the date, 1622. She thought for a moment, she was pretty sure she'd seen the necklace before, but couldn't quite remember where. A drawing! A painting! She wracked her brain trying to remember.

As the head of the Stephanos Historical Foundation—an organization set up by her grandmother Moira O'Shaughnessy Stephanos—she loved this part of her job, seeing the first major find of an excavation. But her second favorite part was piecing together the mystery of how a priceless necklace ended up on the ocean floor. She turned to her library shelves and pulled out a half dozen art books.

Beyond the shelves, snow gleamed on the windowsill. New York sparkled in winter. She loved it. For a moment, she stared at the street below with people bundled up against the cold as they went about their business. A dog walker wrestled with his canine charges while a women on turned down a path into Central Park her face covered in a muffler.

Tia smiled. She loved her life except for one nagging little thing her mother would never let her forget. She wasn't married. Because her traditional Greek family believed in tradition, Tia had expected to stay single since her older sister, Artie had showed no interest in marriage until six months ago when she'd met Nick Constantine and promptly married him. Tia, second eldest, had now come under her mother's intense scrutiny to join the wifely ranks.

She sat back down at her desk. After perching thick, horn-rimmed glasses on her nose, she opened the first book, flipped through it and discarded it. The second and third book were perused and returned to the shelf. The sixth book, Royal Mistresses of Europe, fell open and Tia knew this was the correct book. Sometimes, she simply had a sixth sense about something and just knew when she would find an answer. She looked through each section, examining each painting carefully taking her time. She slowed when she reached the section, Spanish Mistresses. The necklace was on page 238 draped about the elegant neck of 'The Mistress' to Philip IV of Spain. Tia's fingers tingled.

The woman reclined on a fur-lined settee, arms behind her neck, breasts thrust forward, and legs crossed. The woman had no name, just a satisfied smile on her lush lips. The necklace rested against her peach colored skin, the pendant dangled provocatively between her full, rosy-tipped breasts.

"Jackpot." Tia grinned, her heart racing.

The necklace was one of the most important finds the Foundation had made in the last five years. The fact was only marred by one thing, she had to share credit with Shane O'Malley, the treasure hunter whose grant request had produced this rare find. At the time, she had thought O'Malley incapable of finding his way around his own kitchen.

He had not impressed her with his diligence or his need, but eight months ago she had been overruled by the Board of Directors, namely her grandmother Moira who believed in his quest. Moira signed the check and promptly disappeared on her own quest, leaving Tia to deal with the impertinent Mr. O'Malley.

She had thought the money wasted, but then the package had arrived, brought to her personally by Jack Bickford, her assistant curator. O'Malley had presented Tia with the gemological equivalent of a slam-dunk. If only he could go the distance and justify the money he'd weaseled out of the foundation. She didn't have much faith in him which was why she'd sent Jack to Florida to keep an eye on the excavation.

Bending over the book, a silken tendril blue-black hair slid along the line of her cheek. She pushed the hair back behind her ear and tugged at an earring. Cool black jet slid between her fingers. The earring matched the black jet necklace she wore about her neck, inherited from her rebellious grandmother whose collection of antique jewelry rivaled that of Wallis Warfield Simpson, Duchess of Windsor. But unlike Wally, Moira purchased her baubles herself. She had not had to earn them the old-fashioned way.

A knock on the door drew her from her concentration.

"Come in," she said.

Jack Bickford stood in the doorframe, balancing his crutches as he eased through the door. His navy Dockers were cut off at one knee to accommodate the walking cast covering his leg from toes to knee. As he moved, long brown hair swayed about his shoulders. Leaning his crutches against the wall, he eased into an over-stuffed leather chair and pushed back his tan, Indiana Jones fedora. "I'm not going back."

"To Florida? Why not?" Tia eyed him innocently.

"The place is a hell-hole. It's hot, humid and the bugs are bigger than my head."

"But Jack, New York is in the grip of the worst winter we've had in years. Who wouldn't want to go to sunny Florida for an all-expense paid vacation?"

"Not me." He reached down to rub the cast. "I hate alligators. I hate fish. I hate water. I'm not going back. I'd rather spend a week on Stanton Island." He shook his head back and forth, vehemently, "instead of that island zoo."

Tia stared at him, unable to believe he was leaving a job in the middle. "Nothing is that terrible."

"You weren't there." He brushed a smooth hand across his face, "the horror, the horror."

"Jack," Tia slapped her desk, "get over it." She had to make him go back otherwise she would be forced to go in his place. She hated the thought of leaving the confines of her safe museum, her office, her comfortable little world. She didn't like messy anything. "You have to go back."

"You go. I simply can't return and face that wacky Noah's Ark O'Malley calls a home. And that includes his kids."

"But, Jack." Tia picked up the necklace and swung it back and forth. "This could be the find of the millennium." She held up the book with Philip's nude mistress and pointed at the necklace around the woman's neck. "Your name will be all over it. Think of the glory, the prestige, the better class of women you can seduce." She knew his weaknesses—his ego and his libido.

"I almost lost my family jewels to that rapacious lizard." He squeezed his thighs together and whined.

She held up her hands spaced a few inches apart. "It was just a little alligator."

"With big teeth. You weren't looking into the jaws of death."

"Jack." Tia pointed at him. "I've known you for ten years. You've excavated caves in the middle of civil wars, and stared down Contras with nothing but a smile. You eat cheap, petty dictators for breakfast."

"So what's your point?"

She smiled at him, hoping she looked calm. "I can't believe you're afraid of one little, itty-bitty, teeny-weeny baby alligator."

Jack glared at her. "You go."

"Jack—"

"You go." He jabbed a bony finger at her.

"Someone from the Foundation has to be on site, that's always been you."

He glared at her, a mulish glint in his eyes. "You qualify, too."

Tia hated Florida. She hated anywhere out of Manhattan, but especially Florida. Bugs, creepy-crawly things and kamikaze flying insects were not her idea of a pleasant recreational experience. "Indiana Jones would go," she coaxed in a last-ditch effort.

Jack stared at her, a deep frown on his handsome face. He stood, took off his fedora, and stuffed it on her head. "Be my guest, Indy." He grabbed his crutches and hobbled out. She took the hat off, leaned back in her chair, picked up the necklace and draped it around her neck. The pendant settled into the hollow between her breasts.

Even through her thick, turtle neck sweater, she felt the jeweled pendant grow warm. She stroked the jewel, thinking about the nameless woman in the painting who had owned this extraordinary ruby. And the man—she had seen paintings of King Philip. He had an elegant, sensual aura to him and a royal manner that would have excited women in any age.

Tia fingered the necklace again. Deep inside the ruby, shards of fire danced. Twisting and turning the gem to catch the light from her window, a flutter of pleasure shot through her.

Reluctantly, she removed the necklace and set it down on the desk. A postcard from her sister, Artie and new husband, Nick Constantine, lay on the blotter. Tia read the postcard again, happy for them, yet ambivalent over her own feelings that the family was going in new directions. Her mother had been pressuring, in her typical sledgehammer manner, for Tia to start her own husband search.

Tia wasn't certain she wanted to be married. She had figured she'd be safe since Artie had spent most of her adult life avoiding the marital trap. But Nick had caught her, and caught her well.

She pushed away from her desk. After storing the necklace in the wall safe, she told her secretary to book her flight to Miami and points onward to Shane O'Malley's Diablo Island.

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