"Don't you dare try to intimidate me, Nick Chas-tain. I came out here tonight to help you get that damned journal. I did you a very big favor. I suspect it annoys you to be in someone's debt, but that's the way things are. You owe me. I'm calling in the marker."
He stilled. The familiar enigmatic mask slipped into place on his austere features. "What do you want?"
"I want you to behave in a civilized manner."
The mask dissolved as quickly as it had formed. Amusement glittered in his eyes. "I love it when you talk dirty."
She blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
His smile was barely discernible. "Never mind. You're right, I do owe you. And I would like to repay the debt."
She eyed him warily. "How?"
He curled his finger around one trailing tendril of her hair. "Would you have dinner with me?"
"Dinner?" She could not seem to get her thoughts into logical order. "When?"
"Tomorrow night?" He glanced at his watch. "Make that tonight."
"I have a focus assignment tonight."
"The following night?"
"You're serious about this, aren't you?"
His gaze did not waver. "Very."
"But you don't need my assistance now. You've got the journal."
"Forget the journal. Will you have dinner with me?"
"You don't need to repay me. I take back what I said about your being in my debt."
"Fine. I don't owe you. I still want to have dinner with you."
She hesitated. "I'm not sure if it would be a good idea. The tabloids seem to have lost interest in us. If we're seen together again in public it might start a new wave of speculation."
"I don't give a damn about the tabloids or the gossip columns." He brushed his thumb across her lower lip.
She was horrified to realize that his touch made her lower lip tremble ever so slightly. She swallowed and took a deep breath.
"Excuse me, but I was under the impression that you were very concerned about your privacy," she said.
"You mean you heard that I'm reclusive? Secretive?"
"Among other things. Are you telling me that's not the truth?"
"I'm telling you that I want to have dinner with you. I'll put up with the gossip and the speculation in order to do so. All I want from you is an answer. Yes, or no?"
It was not the most gallant or gracious invitation she'd ever had, but at least he was not trying to manipulate her this time, she thought. He was simply asking her out on a date. Sort of.
Having to make a request, knowing he had no way to enforce the answer he wanted, was no doubt a completely foreign experience for Nick Chastain. She almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
A dinner date with him would not be wise, she told herself. It would alarm her family, worry her friends at Psynergy, Inc., and quite possibly draw unwanted attention from the tabloids.
But a few sparks of the invisible, beguiling energy that had sizzled between them a moment ago still snapped in the air around her. She had waited all of her adult life to feel that delicious kind of energy, she thought.
And Nick had asked, not threatened or manipulated.
"Yes," she said. "I would like to have dinner with you."
"I called it the Lost Expedition." Newton DeForest cradled the trailing end of a green vine in one heavily gloved hand and clipped it with a pair of gardening shears. "Bartholomew Chastain had made two earlier expeditions to map the islands of the Western Seas. Both had been extremely successful. The teams found deposits of previously unknown ores and minerals. They brought back specimens of a vast array of new plant and animal life. But Chastain's last expedition simply vanished in the jungles of some uncharted island."
"But why aren't there any official records of the expedition?" Zinnia watched uneasily as crimson liquid seeped from the cut vine. The severed plant looked as if it were bleeding.
Leo's information had been correct in one respect, she thought. Newton DeForest was definitely strange. He had invited her into his garden while they talked and she had readily agreed. She loved plants and longed for the day when she could afford to buy a house with space for a garden.
But nothing in DeForest's garden looked quite right to her. There was a grotesque quality to the foliage. Leaves appeared oddly shaped. The colors of the occasional blooms did not look wholesome. Vines were twisted in an unnatural fashion.
The extensively planted grounds of the DeForest estate existed in a perpetual gloom created by a thick canopy of broad leaves and gnarled vines. Once Zinnia got past the trellised gate, she found herself enveloped in an artificial twilight.
Within a few steps she realized that she was disoriented. That bothered her more than the wrongness of the shapes and colors of the foliage. Her sense of direction was usually fairly reliable. She knew that she was not far from the main house but she could no longer see the aging, tumbledown stone structure. She was not certain how to get back to it. She had already lost sight of the trellised garden gate.
She was surrounded by walls of dense dark green. They towered several feet overhead. Corridors formed of seemingly impenetrable masses of leaves twisted their way into the interior of the estate. She stood with Newton in a narrow crooked passageway formed by thick creeping vines. There was a carpet of luminous green moss underfoot. It gave off a faint eerie sheen.
Nothing was normal in this garden, she decided. And that included the gardener.
Newton seemed pleasant enough, even if he was distinctly odd. She wished that he had thought to offer her a cup of coff-tea. She could have used it. What with all the excitement in Curtain Park during the night, she had completely forgotten about her appointment with Professor DeForest until she had awakened an hour ago. In her rush to make the meeting on time she had missed breakfast, coff-tea, and the morning paper-all the little rituals that got the day started.
Newton was a plump, jovial, red-cheeked elf of a man with a neatly trimmed beard and a comfortable paunch. He wore a leather gardener's apron festooned with tool and implement pockets over his plaid shirt and denim trousers. Tiny round glasses perched on his nose. A cap covered his balding head.
He was obviously enamored of his subject, the legendary Third Chastain Expedition. From the way in which he was holding forth, Zinnia suspected that Newton missed the captive audience he had once enjoyed in the classroom. She did not mind his chattiness in the least. She was prepared to listen.
The journal was now safely in Nick's hands, but Morris Fenwick's killer was still at large. If she stuck to her suspicion that Morris had not been murdered for dope money, then the journal was the only other lead she had. She needed to know more about the Third Expedition.
"Ah, yes. Why aren't there any official records of the Lost Expedition?" Newton gave her a sly approving glance as he clipped another vine. "Your question is an excellent one, indeed. I spent years looking for documents and papers that would prove my theories."
Zinnia watched, fascinated, as more blood-red juice dripped from the cut vine. "Did you find any hard evidence?"
"Nothing that satisfied the naysayers and the scoffers." Newton sighed as he surveyed an ugly purple flower. "There was some early paperwork indicating that a Third Chastain Expedition had been planned at one time. But official records state that it was never carried out because Chastain wandered off into the jungle and killed himself a few days before the team was scheduled to depart."
"But you believe that the expedition did take place?"
"Oh, yes." Newton said. "I'm quite sure of it. Twenty years ago I managed to find a couple of old jelly-ice miners who happened to be in Serendipity the week the team gathered there. They remembered the five men of the Chastain Expedition."