Kitabı oxu: «The Texan's Diamond Bride: The Texan's Diamond Bride / The Texas Tycoon's Christmas Baby»

The Texan’s Diamond Bride

BY

Teresa Hill
The Texas Tycoon’s Christmas Baby

BY

Brenda Harlen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Texan’s Diamond Bride

BY

Teresa Hill

Dear Reader,

Special thanks to a man named Tom who—despite the fact that no one should ever do this because you can get killed—explains his love of exploring old mines and talks about how to do it. (Please don’t ever try this!)

Also, to Lauren in New York with an eBay store called Diamonds By Lauren, who loves coloured diamonds, especially canaries. I’ve admired many beautiful stones and rings on her site. Wouldn’t you know it, it finally paid off. (Hours spent browsing the internet isn’t a waste of time to writers. It’s about ideas. Really.) Finally, there is a stone that’s found only in the area of Texas around Llano. It’s commonly known as Llanite and described on one website as “a form of granite with some gemmy-looking blue quartz inclusions in it.”

No, it’s not red. But for this story, it is, and my heroine discovered it and named it something else.

Happy reading,

Teresa Hill

About the Author

TERESA HILL lives within sight of the mountains in upstate South Carolina with one husband, very understanding and supportive; one daughter, who’s taken up drumming (Earplugs really don’t work that well. Neither do sound-muffling drum pads. Don’t believe anyone who says they do.); and one son, who’s studying the completely incomprehensible subject of chemical engineering (Flow rates, Mom. It’s all about flow rates.).

In search of company while she writes away her days in her office, she has so far accumulated two beautiful, spoiled dogs and three cats (the black panther/champion hunter, the giant powder puff and the tiny tiger stripe), all of whom take turns being stretched out, belly-up on the floor beside her, begging for attention as she sits at her computer.

With special thanks to my mother, Rachel Mcintosh, who accompanied me to Texas by plane and then on a lovely road trip from Dallas through the Texas Hill Country to San Antonio and Austin. We found San Antonio lush, green and beautiful, ate in a cafe in Austin with a huge rattlesnake skin on display above our booth and discovered that, for some reason, there are no acceleration lanes on Texas highways! (Really. There aren’t. Why? Acceleration lanes are a very good thing.)

Chapter One

Paige McCord lay stretched out on a hilltop about a mile away from Travis Foley’s Texas ranch, peering through a pair of high-powered binoculars for the third day in a row of her little surveillance mission.

It was early November, the temperatures warm for that time of year but not oppressively so for this sort of outdoor activity, the fall foliage of the Texas Hill Country at its stunning peak.

But Paige hadn’t come to check out the sights or enjoy the weather.

Although there was one particular sight she had to admit she was enjoying.

And there he was.

Paige checked her watch. Nearly three-thirty.

“A tad late today, aren’t you?” she asked him, adjusting the binoculars to pick up his image as he headed up the dirt trail toward the old mine entrance.

Paige was twenty-six, born and raised in Texas. She was not the kind of girl to have her head turned easily by some cowboy just because he spent his whole life working outdoors, obviously doing very physical work. Which she admitted tended to make a man lean as could be, and yet beautifully muscled, his skin pleasantly browned by the sun.

There was a certain walk cowboys did, an easy, loose-hipped swagger, in jeans that tended to be worn thin over the years, faithfully following every dip and swell of a man’s body.

The look was completed by an expensive pair of boots, scuffed up by hard work over the years and a cowboy hat—not one that was for show—and a little late-afternoon stubble on his face, because he would have gotten up before the sun, and the days were long.

This man had all that, but she’d seen all that before.

And she had things to do, she reminded herself, things that were much more important than admiring a good-looking man.

Everything in her life seemed to be changing, changing too much and too quickly, and it had thrown her harder than any horse that had ever managed to unseat her.

Paige’s two older brothers had just gotten engaged, and Paige hoped they knew what they were doing, but wasn’t so sure. It had all happened so fast.

Tate, her second-oldest brother, had come home from two tours of duty as an Army surgeon in the Middle East and never been the same. She’d been worried about him for a while. Then he’d dumped his fiancée, Katie, whom Paige really liked, and in no time flat, was engaged to the McCord family’s longtime housekeeper’s daughter, Tanya. Paige liked Tanya. She did. She’d just always thought Tate would end up with Katie, that Katie would take good care of Tate and finally be a McCord.

Then Blake, her oldest brother, had suddenly decided he wanted Katie for himself, and Katie had just agreed to marry him!

Paige still didn’t know exactly how all that had happened, she just hoped neither of her brothers had been hurt, and she didn’t want them fighting with each other. The family had enough to worry about without her two older brothers feuding.

Her cousin Gabby, who was practically Italian royalty and the spokesperson for the McCord family’s jewelry empire, hadn’t settled for just an engagement. Gabby had run off with her bodyguard and married him!

It was enough to make Paige’s head spin.

Then, there was her twin sister, Penny, who’d been acting weird all summer, always sneaking off somewhere, keeping all sorts of secrets, and normally Paige and Penny never kept secrets from each other. The last time Paige had talked to Gabby, Gabby had asked all sorts of questions about Penny that Paige couldn’t answer. Gabby was sure something was wrong.

Not that any of the McCords were acting like themselves lately and not just because of the flurry of romances.

It was their mother.

And their youngest brother.

And their father, dead for five years now.

None of them were what they seemed to be. Her family wasn’t at all what Paige had always believed it to be.

She was still so mad—and so shocked—she hardly let herself think about it, but her mother, Eleanor, had confessed this summer to the entire family that she’d long ago been involved with Rex Foley, the patriarch of a family that had been feuding with the McCords since Civil War days.

Not only been involved with him before she’d ever married Paige’s father, but had a child with Rex years later! Paige’s adorable youngest brother, Charlie, born after Paige’s parents had separated briefly when Paige was a little girl, was actually Rex Foley’s son!

Paige remembered, barely, a time when their family’s Dallas mansion had been filled with tension. She and her sister, Penny, had hidden together in corners all over the house, trying to avoid the angry voices and all the tears their mother cried, their father gone, supposedly just on a long business trip.

In fact, it was the last time Penny remembered the whole family being so tense until this awful summer.

Back then, her father had eventually come home. Her mother finally stopped crying all the time, and then Charlie was born. Adorable, silly, happy Charlie.

Paige and her sister had been five when he was born, and they thought he was the best present they’d ever received, playing with him as if he was one of their dolls come to life.

She’d thought everything was fine then, and it had seemed that way for so long.

But it had all been a lie.

It was still hard to even comprehend how many lies had been told or what would happen to them all from this point on. It was hard for her to even think about it for too long. She had tried to keep busy and then, thankfully, had found a job to do for her family.

A very important job.

She was happy to have a reason to be out of Dallas right now and away from all the tension at the McCord mansion.

Happy to be lying in the grass on a gorgeous November day, staring through her binoculars at a man who was every bit as gorgeous and distracting.

He climbed off of his chestnut-colored horse, let the horse take a nice, long drink from the stream nearby, then—looked like it was going to be Paige’s lucky day—started unbuttoning his chambray shirt.

Oh, my.

He pulled a bandana from his back pocket, then he bent over and dipped the bandana in the stream and turned around to face her.

Paige jerked the binoculars away from her face, as if he had a hope of seeing her from this far away. She’d just been so surprised, looking him in the face, even at a distance.

Although to be honest, she couldn’t see his face that well from this distance. Still, it looked like he’d winced at something.

She got the binoculars again, found him and saw him cooling off in the stream, washing off some of the grit from working outside all day.

Looked like he’d landed in the dirt at some point.

Not that she objected.

He lifted his face to the sun and let the water from the bandana run down his face, his neck, run in a line down what looked like a perfectly sculpted set of muscles in his chest and rock-hard abs.

Oh, my.

That water had to be cold, she thought. The days tended to be warm right now in the hill country, but the nights were cooler, dipping into the forties the past few nights.

She knew because she was camping out in the national park that lucky for her was just a few miles west of Travis Foley’s ranch. Because there certainly wasn’t much of a town anywhere nearby, and a stranger staying in a little town like Llano would be noticed.

And Paige couldn’t afford to have anyone—particularly Travis Foley—know she was here.

She went back to watching her cowboy, who’d ridden by this particular spot for the last two days in a row, working hard. She thought he was probably doing grunt work, rounding up strays, checking fences and watching for trespassers, while the boss, Travis Foley, likely sat in his air-conditioned mansion somewhere on the edge of the property, counting all his family’s oil money or checking on investments or something cushy like that.

She couldn’t imagine a Foley working his ranch day-to-day.

He had men like the one she was watching for that.

He finished cleaning up, put the bandana down and buttoned up his shirt. Then he leaned back against that big rock and lifted his face to the sky, like a man admiring the fall sunshine or the still-warm afternoon breeze.

Or maybe like a man worn-out, whether by his work or his own problems, she didn’t know.

Or a man who just really needed to get away from it all, to relax here in the peace and quiet of this empty corner of Travis Foley’s ranch.

If Paige had time, she might like to enjoy some peace and quiet with him, maybe even a little time in the dark.

It wasn’t the kind of thing Paige did, pick up a stranger for the night.

But the summer had been just awful, and sometimes she got to the point where all the problems, all the changes kept racing around in her head, one after another, piling up in there, the pressure building until she just wanted to scream.

This man, this cowboy…surely he could make her forget.

Even if it was just for a night. Not that she had time for that, either. But a woman could dream, couldn’t she?

In the meantime, she had work to do.

Once he left, she’d have a full twenty-four hours before he was back again, if the pattern of the last three days held. She had all her equipment with her in her backpack and was a little uneasy about going into the old silver mine alone—anyone who knew anything about old mines would be—but she’d taken every precaution she could.

And she was determined to do this. Her family needed her. She’d promised her brother, Blake, who was CEO of the family’s jewelry empire.

Paige stopped thinking about her cowboy. If she did her job right, she’d never even meet him. What a shame.

She put down her binoculars and pulled out her satellite phone. Regular cell coverage was lousy out here in the middle of nowhere.

Blake answered on the second ring, sounding anxious. “Well?” he asked.

“I’m set. I’m going in,” she told him. “You know what to do?”

“If I don’t hear from you by dawn, I call your friend in the mining department at the university and we come find you,” he promised. “Paige, are you sure this is safe? I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you.”

“The mine’s been there for a hundred years. Travis Foley let a group of archaeologists in there last year to document the petroglyphs on the walls. I got a copy of their report. The place is stable as can be—”

“Still, isn’t it dangerous to go in there alone?”

They’d been through this. They’d agreed. No one else could know. Too much was at stake.

Blake merely claimed things were difficult right now financially for the jewelry stores, but that he was handling it. Which is likely what Paige’s proud, stubborn, determined oldest brother would say if the world was about to come to an end. He’d be sure he could save it all on his own.

And she was just as determined to help him.

She didn’t think the world was coming to an end, just that the problem with the stores was a serious one, and one problem to do with her family that she could actually solve. And she was determined to do just that. Solve it.

“Blake, I’m working on my PhD in geology. I know what I’m doing. Besides, I was in that mine myself weeks ago, just to make sure the reports were right and to make sure I had the equipment I’d need. Trust me. Everything will be fine.”

Actually, if her cowboy was the one who caught her, Paige didn’t think she’d mind all that much. She was confident she could talk her way out of trouble, if she had to, and she’d be long gone before the news ever got back to Travis Foley that anyone was here.

“I heard the Foleys are having some big family meeting this weekend, which means Travis Foley should be on a plane headed for Dallas by now. So you shouldn’t have to worry about him.”

“Good.” He was one person Paige really didn’t want to run into.

“But what about the weather?” Blake asked. “There are some nasty storms predicted from that hurricane in the gulf—”

“Storms that aren’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow in the area north of here. I checked the weather radar myself this morning. I’m going in now, and I’ll be out before the storm hits tomorrow,” Paige told her brother. “You worry too much. I’ll be in touch by morning.”

Travis Foley got back on his horse and headed up the rise to the rock overhang that hid the entrance to the old mine at the far corner of the 6,500-acre ranch he called home.

It had been his grandfather’s before him, his absolute favorite place to be as a child. Out here where he could breathe, where in the quiet he could think and find some peace and do an honest day’s work.

The rest of his family, the Foleys, just didn’t understand him, and honestly, Travis didn’t understand them.

They were oilmen and politicians, big shots out in what they thought was the real world.

This world, to Travis, was real.

It was all the life he wanted, right here.

He wished they’d all just leave him the hell alone and let him enjoy it.

But ever since that old Spanish shipwreck had been found in the Gulf of Mexico, people had gone nuts looking for the Santa Magdalena Diamond, a rock that was supposed to rival the Hope Diamond in size and value.

One of Travis’s ancestors, Elwin Foley, had been on that ship when it sank in the 1800s, supposedly along with the diamond and a treasure chest full of old Spanish silver coins.

No one was sure exactly what happened after that. Either the diamond went down with the ship or one of the survivors got away with it. The stone had never been found.

Travis’s ancestor survived, bought the ranch on which Travis now lived and started mining for silver. Elwin Foley certainly hadn’t lived the life of a man who possessed a fortune in diamonds, working hard on the ranch until he lost his life in a mining accident before ever finding any silver.

His son, Gavin, had even worse luck—raised by his mother alone, barely getting by on the ranch and as a man, developing a gambling problem that led to him losing the ranch and the deed to the old silver mines in the late 1890s in a card game to a man named Harry McCord.

Travis was disgusted just thinking about it and how much the old feud was still alive today between his family and the McCords.

His ancestor, Gavin, had always claimed the poker game was fixed, that Harry McCord was a card cheat. And the McCords had the nerve to strike it rich on the silver mines not long after supposedly winning the deed to the ranch and the mines.

Travis really didn’t give a damn. His family had gotten rich in the oil business a few years later. None of them were hurting for money. He didn’t begrudge the McCords the fortune they’d built in the jewelry business over the years, a fortune that started with the discovery of silver in the mines.

But he sure begrudged the loss of the ranch.

Because while he lived on the ranch now, as his grandfather had before him, worked it, sweat over it, bled over it, made this place his life, he could never own it.

The McCords did, thanks to a bad hand of poker more than a hundred years ago or a card cheat, depending on which version of the legend a man believed.

Twenty years ago, in an effort to end the bitter feud, Eleanor McCord had offered a long-term lease of the land to the Foleys, which Travis’s grandfather had accepted, then come here to make the ranch his own.

Travis had spent the best days of his childhood here and had taken over the ranch when his grandfather died ten years ago. But it wasn’t the same as owning the land, and that still had the power to burn a hole in Travis Foley’s gut when he let himself think about it too long.

Which was hard not to do when all the hoopla over the stupid diamond and the feud had sprung up again.

Explorers had found the sunken Spanish ship, along with a cache of old Spanish diamonds.

But not the Santa Magdalena.

Which fueled speculation all over again that someone who survived the shipwreck had gotten away with the diamond, and it had long been rumored that person was Elwin Foley, who’d founded the ranch and lived out the rest of his life there.

Which had even more people thinking that the most likely place to find that diamond was right here on Travis’s ranch.

Now treasure hunters, gem collectors and even jewel thieves were just showing up here, looking for that cursed diamond. Didn’t the damned fools know everyone who’d ever owned it had come to a bad end? Not that it had kept people from looking.

As if Travis didn’t have enough to do on a 6,500-acre ranch in November besides keep people from hurting themselves, spooking his cattle, cutting his fences or getting bitten by snakes or something like that.

They’d already kicked five people off the property since the shipwreck was found.

Even worse, Travis’s family was convinced the McCords were up to something, something to do with the diamond. Like sending someone to look for it on Travis’s ranch.

Had Gavin Foley found it, after he’d supposedly lost the ranch? And hidden it here for one of his ancestors to find later, when one day they might have a hope of owning it free and clear? Finders, keepers?

And had the McCords, after all these years, stumbled upon some clue as to where the diamond might now be?

Travis was highly skeptical of that notion, although his family was not.

He’d finally told them to do what they wanted to figure out what the McCords were up to, that he wanted no part of it. His only concession was agreeing to have someone check each of the mines daily for signs of trouble.

Not just from the McCords but from those damned fool diamond hunters.

Travis had found footprints leading into and away from the Eagle Mine a few weeks ago, had crawled down inside about ten feet and checked things out, but hadn’t found anything else.

Still, someone had been there, and it hadn’t been him or any of the ranch hands.

So he checked the place himself every afternoon.

Today, everything seemed quiet.

He got off his horse, walked along the long, deep rock overhang, twenty feet wide and at least twenty feet deep, the ceiling sloping downward in the back and at its deepest recess, neatly obscuring the entrance to this particular mine in its dark shadows.

All quiet.

No footprints except his own, which he brushed away with a rake he’d hidden in the brush outside the entrance.

But as he went back outside and stood there, taking a long, cool drink of water from his canteen, he had the oddest feeling.

That someone was out there.

That someone was watching him.

He’d felt the same way at the stream, trying to rinse the dirt off the nasty scratch he’d gotten earlier that day tangling with a barbed wire fence someone had cut.

No one should be out here watching him. From here, it was ranch property for as far as the eye could see, except for that corner of the property that butted up to the national park.

But if someone was watching him, Travis was going to find ‘em.

Chapter Two

Paige had to admit, she loved exploring and she didn’t get to do as much of it as she liked these days. Too many hours spent at her desk in front of her computer, working on her dissertation.

So she was thrilled in a way to have an excuse to go traipsing through this old mine.

As a highly trained scientist—chief gemologist to her family’s worldwide jewelry company, with a master’s in geology and hopefully soon a PhD—the idea of discovering a gemstone believed to rival the Hope Diamond was thrilling in a way that had nothing to do with saving the family fortune.

It was the kind of discovery anyone who traveled the world exploring and truly loved the various, extraordinary substances the earth, over time, could yield would have dreamed their entire life about making.

Few scientists ever got to experience the thrill of such a find.

Paige wanted it so bad she could taste it.

Her heart was thrumming so fast it was like a roar in her ears as she stood at the entrance to the mine once her adorable cowboy was gone.

She put down her big backpack, then took out her helmet with her LED light and turned it on, leaving it on the ground to provide some light in the recesses of the overhang that guarded the mine’s entrance. From her pack, she pulled out an old pair of coveralls—because exploring was a messy, often cold business. She’d worn her hiking boots in, put one small, spare light around her neck on a cord and another in the smaller pack she’d carry in, along with a small length of rope, spare batteries, power bars and granola, some water, a small notebook and a camera.

Her hair was already in a long braid, which she tucked inside her coveralls. Then she put her helmet on with her LED light wrapped around it. Making sure the light was on, she was ready.

Paige took a breath, let it out slow and off she went into the dark, cool quiet of the old mine.

Travis couldn’t believe she went into that mine alone!

He’d hung back, waiting once he’d gotten over the ridge, and there she’d come, a hat tilted low obscuring his view of her face as she hiked over from the ranch’s boundary nearest the park.

Looking very efficient, he might add, once he’d crept back close enough and gotten down nearly to ground level so he could watch. She snapped on her light in the deep recesses of the overhang. She suited up, checked her equipment—she’d come prepared, at least—and then seemed to disappear.

He’d been sure there had to be someone else with her, that she wouldn’t go inside the mine alone. He’d wanted to catch her companion, too, so he’d waited.

He’d been here when a bunch of archaeologists had explored the mine last year, photographing and documenting the ancient drawings and carvings on the walls called petroglyphs. He had gone inside with them a few times to see what all the fuss was about.

None of the archaeologists had ever gone into that mine alone!

And yet today, there she went!

“Damned, stupid woman!” he growled. His horse gave him an odd look. Travis shook his head. “Not you, Murph,” he told the horse.

He climbed into the saddle and headed for the mine, thinking he just might have her arrested for trespassing. Maybe it would make anybody else think twice before trying what she just did.

He needed to put a stop to this nonsense before anyone got hurt.

At the overhang, he tethered Murphy to a small tree and fished in his saddlebags for an oversize flashlight so he’d at least be able to see a bit in front of him, took off his hat, shook his head and swore some more about lost diamonds, family feuds, treasure hunters and women.

He got to the mouth of the mine and headed after her. The entrance was nearly tall enough that he could stand up without hitting his head.

Nearly.

Apparently the miners weren’t quite six feet two inches.

If he hunched over a bit, he could stand and walk. The entrance sloped down, but only slightly, nothing too taxing or too dangerous here.

He had the flashlight on but pointed at his feet, not wanting to warn his little trespasser she was about to get caught.

About fifteen feet in, he came to a vertical shaft that went down twenty feet to the next level and another horizontal shaft.

He’d gone this far before, just not alone. The makeshift ladder attached to the mine wall was metal and had been checked and reinforced just last year, had held his weight just fine then.

Travis hoped to hell he caught her somewhere on the horizontal shaft at the twenty-foot level.

He sure didn’t want to have to go any farther and allowed himself to mutter some more about stupid legends, ancient curses and women.

He climbed down the shaft, then stood on the horizontal shaft as it opened up both left and right.

Did she know she wasn’t alone by now? Had she heard him? She didn’t have that much of a head start, and he would hope she was being more careful and moving more slowly than he was, since she hadn’t been here before.

At least, he didn’t think she’d been here.

Travis stood there, listening, finally hearing a clank and then a muffled curse in the shaft to the left. He hoped she was at least as frustrated as he was and liked the idea that he might scare her half to death, coming upon her this way in an abandoned mine.

If he did, maybe she wouldn’t do anything this stupid again.

He crept along, the light out now, going by the feel of the cool, rock wall against his right hand. He caught a glimpse of light, then of what she was studying.

One of the petroglyphs.

An eagle.

He could see it in the light from her helmet, but had only a vague impression of her, sturdy boots, baggy coveralls and a helmet, her nose practically pressed against the rock onto which someone maybe as long as five thousand years ago had carved an eagle.

He was sure she’d come after the diamond.

So why was she studying the drawings?

Travis backed out of the shaft quietly, slowly, wanting to know what she’d do next.

Finally, she started making her way back to the center of the twenty-foot level. From there, it was either explore the passage to the right or descend again.

This time to a hundred feet.

He thought it was downright creepy being that far underground under solid rock.

Surely she wasn’t going to do that.

He waited just down the right-hand passageway, peered around the edge of the wall and there she was, checking out the vertical shaft that descended to the next level.

“God almighty!” he muttered, then walked over there and grabbed her around her waist and picked her up as she knelt on the ground peering into a hole, seemingly comfortable as could be, with an eighty-foot drop beneath her.

She screamed so loud he thought she might bring the walls down around them, and he lifted her up in the air and held her there, her body curled up in a ball, mad as hell. She kicked out with her feet and got some leverage against the opposite wall, sent him tumbling back and hitting the wall behind him none too gently.

He held on, one arm around her waist and one managing to get a grip that flattened both arms against her body.

When she finally stopped screaming, he muttered into her ear, “Hush. There’s no place to run, and I’m sure as hell not letting you climb down any farther into this mine.”

She stopped struggling, finally. She had lost her helmet at some point and its light was now shining down the passageway to the right, so he couldn’t see her and she couldn’t see him.

He could feel her breathing hard, and didn’t feel in the least bit guilty about manhandling her this way, at least not until she calmed down. He wasn’t going to let her flounder around and hurt herself or get lost, or God forbid, fall down the eighty-foot vertical shaft in the dark.

“You scared me half to death!” she told him finally, still breathing hard and spitting mad.

Travis eased back just enough to turn her around in his arms, her back against the opposite wall of the mine, then held her there with his own body pressed hard against hers.

“Yeah?” he said, his face so close to hers he could feel the breath coming out of her body. “And you scared me. Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to come into a place like this alone?”

“I know what I’m doing. I’m a grad student in geology at the university,” she claimed.

“Do you also know you’re trespassing on private property?” he tried, looming over her in the dark, determined to have his say.

“Well…yes,” she conceded, finally.

He eased back, still holding her there with his body, but not up in her face, the way he had been.

She was a tiny thing, he’d realized when he’d had her plastered against him just now, slender as could be. Young, too, if she really was a student, like she said.

He didn’t think she was going to try to get away any longer, so staying that close to her was more of a distraction than a help at the moment. And he was quickly discovering she had all the necessary attributes to be very distracting to a man.

Travis fought to put those kind of thoughts completely out of his head as he backed away just enough so that he wasn’t touching her anymore but could still grab hold of her quickly if he needed to.

“You know if I haul you out of here and call the sheriff, he’d treat you to at least a night in jail,” he said.

She sighed. “You don’t really want to do that. Do you?”

“If it kept you from trying some damned fool stunt like this again, yeah, I do.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I just—”

“Have to find that stupid diamond? Yeah. I’ve heard it before—”

“Do you have any idea what kind of an opportunity this is?”

“Oh, yeah. Millions of dollars at stake, and you think all you have to do is find it.”

“No. Not the money,” she claimed. “Finding it. If the Santa Magdalena Diamond is really somewhere on this ranch, it’s the find of a lifetime. Scientists spend their whole lives studying and searching, and most of them will never discover anything like this. It’s amazing! How could anyone who’s serious about a career in science pass up that opportunity?”

Travis frowned, hearing the honest enthusiasm in her voice. Same as with those archaeology students and their supervisors who were on the ranch last summer studying the petroglyphs.

He didn’t really understand getting that excited or being so fascinated with those drawings, but he’d seen that kind of enthusiasm and pure joy of discovery before in them.

So she took stupid risks, but that yearning to explore, to discover, he at least understood better than those fools out to make millions by simply getting lucky and stumbling upon a treasure. He believed in hard work much more than luck, so he could understand a bit of what drove her and wasn’t quite as annoyed as he was before.

And maybe he even envied her that kind of excitement and yearning. Travis, at thirty, was a man content with his life most days. But every now and then, it felt a little too settled, too predictable.

A little empty.

He didn’t remember the last time he was as excited about anything as she was about the chance of discovering the old diamond. A feeling he certainly wasn’t going to stand in this old mine and try to analyze.

“Come on,” he said, finding her helmet and putting it back on her head, wincing as the light hit him square in the face and quickly turning away. “You’re done exploring. We’re going up top.”

She sighed once again. “Couldn’t you just let me look around? I mean, we’re already here. What’s it going to hurt?”

“The next level is a hundred feet below the surface,” he told her.

“I know.”

She sounded like the idea thrilled her.

Then he realized something. “You know? What do you mean, you know?”

“From the maps,” she said.

“You have maps of this mine?”

“Of course. The people who originally worked the mine kept maps. Not as precise as what we’d make today, but you can find those historical documents if you know where to look. And scientists who’ve explored the mines over the years kept maps, too. I told you, I’m serious about this. It’s not a crazy pipe dream to me. I’m a scientist. And you could help me.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

She shrugged. He was close enough that he could feel the movement. “For the money?” she tried. “There’s supposed to be a jeweled chest full of old Spanish coins, too. Silver coins. I mean, even a cowboy could appreciate the chance to have that kind of money. This could be the kind of fortune that would let you buy your own ranch someday, if you wanted. And…you wouldn’t really even have to help me, if you didn’t want to. You could just…not tell anybody I was here? Maybe not tell anyone if I came back and searched some more? I’d pay you, if you wanted, just to…not tell anybody what I was doing.”

“You’d go back in here by yourself?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes. And you could stay topside, just to be there in case I did get in trouble. All you’d have to do is call for help. I have friends who’d know what to do to get me out.”

Travis swore under his breath. “I think you’re nuts to take that kind of risk.”

“And I think some people spend their whole lives without ever taking a risk at all, which to me is even worse.”

He shook his head. “Well, I think this is a ridiculous conversation to be having while buried under tons of rock. Start climbing.”

She hadn’t climbed more than two steps on the ladder when a howling, whistling sound swept through the mine.

And then, as the howling died down for a moment, there was a tapping sound, far away and not that loud. Like the beating of a drum. Solid objects hitting other solid objects. And then more howling.

“What the hell is that?” he asked, as they both froze for a moment.

He told himself if it was what he feared—falling rocks—he’d have been hit by something already. Unless it was father down inside the mine or up near the entrance and just hadn’t made it to them.

Not yet, anyway.

“Wind,” she said.

Okay. Yeah. He felt it, now that he wasn’t thinking obsessively of being pelted by rocks. Still, that wasn’t all.

“Wind and what else?” he demanded.

“I’m not sure,” his gutsy explorer said, not sounding nearly as confident as she had been a moment ago.

He swore, feeling every bit of that distance between him and the surface. “Let’s get out of here. Now.”

She took off for the top, seeming to know her way in the dark a heck of a lot better than Travis did. He went scrambling after her. When he made it to the horizontal shaft near the surface, she found his hand, grabbed it and pulled him along behind her.

The eerie howling got louder with every step they took and at every moment, Travis still expected to have rocks come hurling down on him, but they never did.

He bashed his head a couple of times on the way out, not able to see that well in the tunnel and moving faster than a man of his size should in a shaft of that size.

Near the entrance, she was sure she smelled rain. But there was no way rain would account for the other sound she heard.

The space around them opened up, but it was still oddly dark, and then Travis realized they’d made it out of the mine, to the long, deep rock overhang that created a covered area sheltered from the elements.

Good thing, too, because outside the sky was nearly black, the world around them a gloomy gray. Out in the open, he saw what looked like miniature, eerily white golf balls bouncing off the ground.

Hail.

It was coming down something fierce, pounding into the ground and then bouncing around until it settled for good. The wind sounded absolutely furious, his horse long gone, no doubt realizing weather was coming long before Travis did and taking off for home.

Travis and the woman backed up against the rock wall as far under the overhang as they could get and still stand up. He was breathing hard, bleeding a bit from the gash he’d just gotten on his head, adrenaline still zinging through his whole body.

Looking at her through the grayish light, he felt a little bit foolish for coming near panic back there, a little bit mad at her for putting them both in that situation and very, very grateful to be out of it and safe.

They weren’t buried under tons of rocks.

They weren’t dying or already dead.

Just in the middle of a nasty storm. Hail or not, it was just a storm.

He shook his head, trying to clear it, then chuckled, then started laughing.

Maybe because it was the last thing he’d expected to be a part of his day. Descending into an old abandoned silver mine shaft chasing a determined, passionate, half-crazy woman, and then seeing his life flash before his eyes for a moment, only to see a moment later that he wasn’t in any danger at all.

He wished he could really see her face. The gloom that had descended was like looking through a thick fog, and she’d clicked off her helmet light, which hadn’t shown them anything but rain, and nearly blinded him every time she turned in his direction. He had more of an impression of her than anything else, but he knew she was grinning, too.

A moment later, she was laughing. “It’s easy to get spooked down there,” she admitted.

“I think I was way past spooked,” Travis admitted. “And at the speed you climbed out of that hellhole, I’d say you were, too.”

“Well,” she shrugged. “Yeah. I guess…I mean, I’m really glad I wasn’t down there alone when the storm hit.”

“Me, too,” he said, thinking, scared or not, it was the most excitement he’d had in his life in months, which was surely a sad commentary on his life right now.

So he couldn’t really say he was sorry to have found her sneaking into his mine today, and he wasn’t sorry he’d gone in after her, either.

Or even that there was a helluva storm raging around them, lightning crackling loud enough that it seemed like it could split the ground wide open in front of them at any moment.

Storms came big in Texas. He used to love storms on the ranch when he was a kid, so wild and loud, like coming over the top of the biggest hill on a roller coaster and then feeling like he was going to come flying out of his seat at any moment.

Feeling like anything could happen in the next instant, and that no one was really safe.

A man needed to feel like that every now and then, no matter how much he loved the solitude and serenity of his land.

He stared at her, again wishing he could really see her, that he had more than those fleeting moments when he’d watched her climb down the rise and disappear into the mine. Unfortunately, then he’d been concentrating on figuring out what she was up to, not what she looked like. He just remembered noticing a tall, slender body and a dark reddish-brown braid of hair hanging down her back. And he wasn’t going to ask her to turn on her helmet light just so he could see her better. They needed to save the batteries, anyway.

She went still, then backed up a bit, and he had to catch her before she went too far.

“You’re gonna bump your head if you take another step backward,” he said, holding her by the arms, and then putting a hand at the back of her head, between her and the rock overhang. “Right there.”

She touched his right temple, her fingers cool and soft against his skin. “You already bumped yours. It’s bleeding.”

He kept hold of her head and leaned into her touch, too, gentle as could be.

She had on a pair of coveralls that hid every bit of her body. Her dark hair was pulled back from her face and tucked inside the coveralls, her face turned up to his, his body shielding hers from the worst of the wind.

“Do you think it’s the hurricane?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Because it’s not supposed to be here. It’s supposed to stay well north of here—”

“You want to try telling the storm that?” he asked her.

“And it wasn’t supposed to get this far inland until tomorrow. I checked.”

“Yeah. I did, too. But the weather out here isn’t always as predictable as we’d like.”

She pouted a bit, and he tried to ignore how cute that little pout looked to him. “I’m just saying…I was careful about everything, and I was watching the weather to make sure it would be okay, and now…well, I guess we’re not going anywhere fast in this.”

“No, we’re not.”

He couldn’t say he actually regretted that, either.