Searching For Treasure - By L.C. Davenport Page 0,22

In the bright light of day, Dana was beginning to wonder if maybe she had overreacted to a simple prank and had infected Josie with the same paranoia. And once the joke turned nasty, the perpetrator was too ashamed or too embarrassed to now admit it. Somehow this explanation didn't feel right, but it made more sense than anything else did.

Chapter 6

She had barely made it two feet into her bedroom before Jack was at the door. She felt as if he had been laying in wait. "I ought to turn you over my knee."

Dana grinned and said, "Kinky."

Her attempt at humor fell flat on its face. Jack had clearly passed cranky right into furious. "What the hell did you think you were doing? You knew you weren't supposed to be up there. But you couldn't resist, could you?"

The adrenaline in her system had not completely abated and Dana felt her own temper start to sizzle from it. "No, and neither can you. If you had been with me, we both would have been going up those steps. So you can lay off the parental tone."

"This isn't about me." He then put lie to the words by adding, "You took five years off my life."

"Well, it wasn't any picnic for me, either," she said shouting, practically nose to nose with Jack. "So you need to back off and calm down! You don't have the right to be angry with me!"

Putting her hands on Jack's chest, Dana shoved futilely in helpless frustration, trying to push him out of the room.

Jack grabbed her wrists, pulled her roughly against him and kissed her fiercely with all the anger, all the fear, all the longing that boiled inside of him. Everything went into that kiss. All the years of hiding what he felt, all the years of waiting for her to feel the same, all the years of desire, of want, of need–poured into that kiss. When he broke away, it was hard to say which one of them was the most shaken.

He looked down at her, her face white with shock, her lips bruised from his kiss, her eyes dazed from the power of it. "Now tell me I don't have the right,”he ordered hoarsely.

Behind him Noah cleared his throat. "Uh, guys?" He edged into the room cautiously, like one might approach a spooked horse. "Everything all right?"

Jack released her slowly, never breaking eye contact. Dana cleared her throat. "Yes,” she said quietly, her eyes troubled. "Everything's fine." Liar, liar, lair!

Without a word, Jack spun on his heel and left the room. Dana sank onto the bed and pressed her hands to her face. The skin under her fingers felt hot.

Noah closed the door and sat down beside her. "That was pretty intense. What's going on?"

"I only wish I knew,” she whispered. Liar! Dana looked at her brother and smiled faintly. "Don't look so stricken. This isn't the first time Jack and I have had an argument."

"I know, but-" Noah suddenly sounded very young, "I don't like it when you fight."

"I know." She touched him briefly on his cheek. "Neither do I."

Noah hesitated as if he wasn't sure how much to say. "The two of you, there's something different…"

Dana looked at him sharply. "What do you mean?"

"I don’t know…different. For one thing, I've never seen him kiss you like that before."

Unconsciously, Dana rubbed her fingers across her lips. "That's because he never has." She was still awed by the emotions that had swirled over and around them in those few seconds. The foundation of her life, in which her friendship with Jack was such a huge part, had trembled with that kiss. This went beyond the warm glow of physical attraction she had been trying to get used to earlier in the morning, which now seemed like such a long time ago. This was something more, something infinitely more dangerous and frightening.

This feeling inside of him, this feeling inside of her, held within it great risk, the risk of losing everything they were to each other for a chance at something new. Is it something better than friendship? It appeared that Jack had the courage to take that risk. Did she?

"Maybe you could go talk to him?" Dana said nothing. She just shook her head rather sadly.

Noah watched his sister for a moment as she stared off into space, lost in her thoughts. He had wondered for quite some time why Dana had never tumbled to the fact that Jack always seemed too