Treasure Hunters by Sylvia Day Page A

brushing his hand across the tight bun on top of her head.
    “Huh?” Damn, he smelled good, too. Nowadays droids did everything, leaving a lot of men soft. Rick was hard all—
    Her gaze dropped.
    Yep. Hard all over.
    He gave a quick tug and her hair tumbled around her shoulders in a wild mess. “Hey!” she protested, snatching at his hand. He moved too quickly and held her hairpin up high, out of her reach.
    “What is this thing you had in your hair?” he repeated, staring at her.
    She wrinkled her nose. “The stylus for my eBookman.”
    His eyes widened. “You have a working eBookman?” His hand dropped and he tucked the stylus in his pocket.
    “Give me that back,” she snapped, brushing her hair away from her face and twisting it into a coil. “Do you know how hard those things are to find on the black market?”
    “You can use your finger to work it, you know,” he offered helpfully.
    As innocent as his statement was, the fact that it came from a man who looked like he did gave it an added sexual dimension. Sam blushed so hard her face felt like it was on fire.
    “Oh…” Both of his black brows flew up to his hairline as he caught on. “You’re a naughty librarian. With a secret collection of erotic e-books, I bet. And you’re not getting this back.” He swatted her grasping hand away. “You’ll just stick it in your hair again.”
    “I can’t work with my hair falling in my face!”
    “And I can’t work with your hair all prim and tied up like that. It’s distracting.” He walked away.
    “Who said I was going to work with you?”
    Rick snorted. “You survive on grants for your research. In order to get those grants, you’re forced to give speeches and offer some of your precious collection for traveling museum tours. I heard you lost a good portion of your pop culture collection in a raid by antiquity pirates a few months ago.”
    “I did.” She sighed with regret. “It was dreadful. Years of collecting and cataloguing were lost.” Shaking her head, she hit the button that opened her desk drawer. It slid outward silently and she dug through the scattered contents.
    “Think of the credits you would receive if we found that lost database. Don’t you find the thought tempting?”
    Looking up, Sam stared at him hard. “Exactly how much would my share be?”
    “Half.”
    “You’d give me half?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
    “Sure. You’re the brains, I’m the brawn. We’d be a team, therefore you should get just as many credits as I do.”
    “I could keep my brains to myself and hire brawn elsewhere. Then I could keep more than half. What have you got to offer in return for your share?”
    “How about this?” He reached into his shirt and pulled out a chain he wore around his neck. Hanging from that was a small cylindrical data chip
.
“I was told it’s ‘
the key
’, whatever the hell that means. I can’t find any details about how to use it, but I did find a lot of references to a key being required to access the databases.”
    “Where did you get that?” she asked, holding out her hand for it.
    His brows rose again. “I won it in a wager. The previous owner gave up trying to do something with it.” As he dropped the chain back into the neck of his shirt, Sam caught a glimpse of warm, golden skin. “You can examine it all you want,
if
you agree to help me.”
    She swallowed hard and returned her attention to the contents of the drawer. “Ha!” she cried triumphantly, holding up a hair clip with mostly broken tines and then using it to pin up her wild tresses. “I’m a born scavenger.”
    “Why don’t you prove it,” he challenged, “by assisting me? Think of all the people you’ll help if we get those books back on the market. Besides, wouldn’t you like a little adventure?”
    Adventure.
She supposed it would be exciting to do the research up close, instead of through pictures and archaic phrases in books. But that wasn’t what decided her mind. It