Searching For Treasure - By L.C. Davenport Page 0,27

it seemed his muscles had turned to jelly. Dana reached for his hand, tugged him up out of his chair and led him to the dance floor. They went into each other’s arms like they had a thousand times before. But this time it felt brand new.

Noah and Josie slapped their hands together in a low five and continued their song.

"I guess he thinks he's pretty clever,”Jack said.

"Actually,”Dana murmured, sliding her hand up his chest to bury her fingers in the hair at the back of his neck, "I think he's pretty clever myself."

The light in her eyes, the playfulness in her tone, warmed him in a way nothing had in years. He felt it all the way to the soles of his boots. "You do, huh?"

"Yes."

Jack looked into her eyes seriously, all teasing set aside for the moment. "D, I know you're scared. I'm scared, too. But I'd rather be scared with you than without you."

"Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut-up and kiss me."

"Yes, ma'am."

This kiss was gentler than the last, but no less powerful. Dana felt it speak promises to her soul. Promises of what she didn't know. But as she put her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, she found herself desperate to find out.

"Hey!"

Dana and Jack jumped away from each other guiltily but Noah was no longer watching them. Instead he was racing towards the back of the castle. "I just saw someone run past!" He stopped at the corner of the courtyard and peered around it. He saw nothing but the old water well.

"It was Just Cedric!" Grace ran to join him, looking around to see if she could catch a glimpse as well. "Oh, Noah, you saw him, too."

Rose snorted in disbelief and smirked at Oscar. "Come on, fess up. You hired someone to run around the castle at night, didn't you?"

Oscar merely cocked an eyebrow. "Did I?"

Rose huffed. "I hate it when he does that."

Chapter 7

Dana couldn't get to sleep that night.

The party had broken up about an hour before midnight. Dana and Jack had spent most of the time dancing, which actually amounted to little more than holding each other and swaying to the music. They had walked hand and hand up the stairs. Jack kissed her at the door of her bedroom until even her body vibrated. Then he left her to go to his own room. So now she couldn't sleep, feeling very confused and out-of-sorts.

What had she thought was going to happen? Had she really wanted Jack to stay with her tonight? While her hormones were screaming, "Yes! Yes!" the rest of her wasn't so sure. Sex had always been a major step for her. The notion of sex with Jack simply boggled her mind. For a moment she tried to imagine what it would be like, but quickly gave it up as a bad idea. She didn't want to have to explain to anyone in the morning why she had been taking a cold shower in the middle of the night.

Most of the people they knew had never understood their friendship. Many believed they were already lovers and simply smiled knowingly when she insisted that they were just friends. Looking at their relationship objectively, she could easily see why people thought the way they did. Dana and Jack had shared so much of their lives with each other for so long, the joys and the sorrows, the laughter and the tears, the good times and the bad.

They knew each other so well, that on many occasions their level of communication seemed to border on the psychic. There was an emotional closeness between them that many of their married friends didn't share. And they had a comfortable, albeit non-sexual physical intimacy that seemed to be rare in male-female friendships. So was the prospect of sexual intimacy really that big of a step, after all?

At the soft knocking on the door, Dana practically jumped out of her skin. Jeeper’s creepers! She used one of Jack's favorite expressions. Was it possible he really could read her mind? She opened the door and cautiously peeked out. The powerful sense of disappointment she felt when she saw it was Rose and not Jack, told her all she needed to know. Her hormones and the rest of her were now in perfect accord.

Rose put her finger to lips then gestured for her to follow. Puzzled by her sense of urgency, Dana didn't even bother searching for her robe. Rose was tiptoeing down the hall that led to