Heather Graham (17 page)

“Have it your own way.” The door closed, not with a slam but quietly, resolutely.

Martine sat there trembling long after he had gone. Her mind went blank, then sped along, then went blank again. At last she managed to think coherently. The agony that seemed to pierce her heart had dissipated to a dull pain that shrouded her with a numbness she had to fight.

Kane believed there was a stash of gold on her property. She had always been able to convince herself that he loved her because he had put so much money into the ranch, but maybe he was just betting on much bigger stakes. …

A frightening thought knifed through her. It seemed very possible now that Kane had been on the cliffs the day of Ed’s accident, looking for the gold. Perhaps he had caused the slide because Ed had almost discovered him.

She breathed deeply. Her heart was saying no. She couldn’t believe that she spent her nights making incredibly intimate love to a man who could be capable of attempted assault—or murder.

“It can’t be!” she whispered aloud. And then: “What do I do?”

She had to do something.

She sat there for hours, staring into space. Finally she decided she would copy the map the next day and then demand some answers from Joe Devlin. Maybe, just maybe, she would get somewhere that way.

She jumped when the door suddenly opened. Kane, tall and angry—and totally unconscious of his nudity—stood there, glaring at her.

“It’s almost four
A.M.
Will you please come to bed?”

“No,” Martine murmured, lowering her eyes.

“Why not?”

She had to moisten her lips to speak. “I’m sorry, Kane. You can’t tell me what’s going on. I’m afraid that I—I don’t want to sleep with you until you feel you can.”

She stiffened at the furious sound of his expletive. And this time the door slammed with a thunderous reverberation.

Martine refused to allow herself to cry. Thankfully the numbness helped her now. At last she rose and returned to the foreman’s room. She lay down on the bed, fully clothed, but she didn’t sleep.

Kane was gone when she went out in the morning. Sonia was busy cleaning the house. She gazed at Martie with concern, but before she could say anything, Martine announced that she had to run into town.

She felt guilty for being so curt with Sonia, but she couldn’t have been any other way. She was exhausted, and if Sonia had queried her, she might have given way to the tears she was so far managing to control.

As soon as she copied the map at the library, she hurried back to the Four-Leaf Clover and replaced the original in the false bottom of Kane’s bag. Sonia, Martine noted with relief, was out back, adding chlorine to the pool.

Martine drove away quickly again, determined to talk to Joe. When she reached his place, the front door was standing open. Martie was about to call out his name when she happened to turn and see Thor tethered beneath the overhang of the barn.

Instinctively she entered the house in silence and walked quietly through the living room.

As she had somehow known she would, she saw Kane out on the patio. Joe wasn’t there. Lisa was.

She and Kane were seated together on the lounges; Lisa was very intimately turned to him, touching his cheek.

“Kane, please! You’ve got to keep trying!”

“Dammit, Lisa, I am trying! I’ve made a nightmare out of my own life—”

“Oh, Kane!”

Lisa was no longer touching him; she had burst into tears. He stood but only to sit quickly by her side and take her tenderly into his arms: “Lisa, I think you’re a little idiot, but I am trying, for you as well as Nan. Come on, Lisa, don’t cry.”

Martine never heard Lisa’s reply. She backed out of the living room. She could have confronted the two of them, but she didn’t want to. None of it mattered anymore; it was over. She was going to do two things by that afternoon: find the gold and contact her lawyer.

And she wasn’t going to allow herself to dwell on the pain that seem to eclipse all else. The strangest thing about it was that nothing seemed to matter—except for the fact that he didn’t really love her.

And no matter how horrible the situation, she still couldn’t simply turn off the love she felt for him. But he never need know her feelings. Just because she was a fool didn’t mean she had to act like one.

Yet this time she couldn’t help the tears. She drove the truck through a mist of her own making to reach the cliffs. And then, before studying the map, she indulged herself in another torrent of sobs. When she sat back, exhausted from the draining effort and lack of sleep, she tried desperately to rise above her listless state by raging against Kane out loud—assaulting him with every curse she could think of.

Finally she began to study the map. Kane had already been looking for the gold, so it wasn’t in an obvious place. Obvious! She started to laugh a little hysterically. Of course, it wasn’t obvious! Who the hell ever buried treasure obviously?

She had to think.
Think
. She knew the ranch, she knew the cliffs better than anyone in the world.

For another thirty minutes, enveloped by the heat of the day yet heedless of it, she stared at the map. There was a star at the place where the “treasure” was supposed to be. A star, a star, a star …

She stared up at the cliffs, perversely glad of the puzzle that was taking her mind somewhat off her own misery. And then, just like a flash of light, she understood.

The star was where five boulders encircled one of the strange cave formations. Shaking with nerves and excitement, Martine slammed out of the truck and hurried up the rock-strewn path, a shovel tossed over her shoulder and a flashlight in her pocket.

It took another half hour of uphill walking to reach the place, and then she spent an hour digging in absolute frustration. She almost upset a sleeping rattler and then panicked and ran out. But it was probably a good and sobering thing, she decided. Her close brush with the venomous fangs had taught her quickly that she was fond of living and that she needed to take care with what she was doing.

She didn’t touch any rocks or stones again with her bare hands but cautiously used the shovel for even the smallest movement. She was about to give up, certain that the map was a fake and that no gold really existed, when she lifted a rock at the far left of the cave, slammed the shovel down hard with exasperation—and heard a metallic clink. With renewed excitement she began to dig again, and this time her efforts were rewarded.

The box she dug up was about a foot high and deep and three feet long. There was a lock on it, one that frustrated her, almost as much as the search. By the time she swung the shovel for at least the fifteenth heave, she fell with its downward motion, gasping for breath and drenched with rivulets of sweat.

But that final heave had broken the lock. She cautiously used the shovel to open the box—and was bedazzled as it fell open and the glare of her flashlight picked up an almost ethereal golden glow.

The box was filled with nuggets—raw nuggets of gold.

Martine had never been more stunned in her life—or more bitter. All the time when she had so desperately been trying to make a go of it, there had been a fortune awaiting her on her own property.

And she had been so touched by Kane’s determination to put his own money into the ranch! She didn’t know much about gold, but she did know that there were pounds of it here—even in this raw state. The box had to be worth a small fortune.

“Oh, God!” she cried, shaking as she sat in the dirt.

She just kept staring at the gold, telling herself over and over again that Kane had married her because of it. Yet no matter how foolish it was, she just couldn’t really force herself to believe it could be true.

She should go to the police, she knew. But she didn’t want to—not yet. She could go to Joe Devlin and present him with all the evidence and demand an answer. Surely Joe would never have sent Kane to her if he were nothing but a fortune hunter!

Martine suddenly forced herself to get up. It was going to take her twice as long to get back to the truck as it had taken to get here; she was going to have to drag the gold with her.

It didn’t take her twice as long; it took her four times as long. Her back was in agony from the effort, her palms were scratched and bleeding, and she was as soaked as she might have been had she plunged headfirst into water.

But she made it. And straining and grunting and panting, she managed to get the box into the small trunk compartment built into the back of the truck.

She glanced at the sun. It was starting to fall, but she probably had time to hurry back to the ranch and shower and leave before she would have to face Kane again.

But she had pressed her luck too far. She was standing in the shower, thinking that it was probably dangerous to have a fortune in gold in a truck sitting in her driveway, when her breath seemed to stop completely.

The door to the bathroom had opened, and the shower curtain had been ripped back.

Kane, his arms crossed comfortably over his chest as he leaned against the sink, was staring at her with no apology whatsoever for invading her privacy.

She was so stunned to see him that at first she couldn’t react. But then she did, wrenching at the curtain and screaming out something about his having no right.

The curtain was wrenched open again. “I have a lot of rights,” he reminded her coolly, “even if you’ve chosen to deny a few of them.”

Shaking, Martine turned off the water and groped for a towel. Kane handed her one. She quickly mopped the water from her face and struggled to cover herself. His laughter unnerved her.

“I know every inch of your flesh better than you do yourself, Mrs. Montgomery,” he said coolly. “What you think you’re hiding, I don’t know.”

Martine dropped the towel and hurried out of the bathroom to start opening her drawers, suddenly at a complete loss to find her clothes.

Kane came up behind her. His hands were very dark as they encircled her waist, his fingers splaying over her hips and abdomen. Martine went still. She was so tired that she could barely think, so unnerved by his touch that she could barely remember the horrible things she knew to be true. More than anything, she wished she could fall back against his chest, let him touch her and love her and then lull her to sleep.

“Kane, let go of me. Please.” There was a tremor of beseeching in her voice that was very earnest. She lowered her head, afraid that she was close to being broken. “Please, Kane?” she whispered, and her whisper shook. “I told you that I—I just couldn’t trust you anymore.”

His hand moved upward, over her breast, his thumb grazing her nipple, his palm caressing the fullness of the mound’s weight. Martine closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, reminding herself that it was all a lie.

“Martine …” Her name was the closest thing she had ever heard to a plea from him.

A lie, all a lie.

She shoved away from him and at last found the right drawer for panties and a bra, which she awkwardly, blindly fumbled into. “What do you want?” she asked harshly.

“I want to slap you across your backside and suggest you grow up before you completely destroy a good marriage,” he said harshly.

Martine shivered. “When you’re ready to talk to me,” she said smoothly, “I’ll be ready to listen.”

“Oh, I’m ready to talk. You took off with the truck today without telling a soul. I needed it.”

She laughed bitterly. “It’s my vehicle, Kane. I don’t have to tell anyone when I wish to use it. In fact, I’m using it again tonight.”

“Oh? Where are you going?”

“Out.”

Trying to remain very composed and determined, she turned to walk across the room to the closet. But she hesitated when she caught his eyes on her. They were narrowed slits, gleaming as brilliantly as the gold in the box—

“Out where?”

“What the hell difference does it make?” she inquired with a ragged snap.

Very slowly, so slowly that she was beguiled to immobility, he began to walk toward her. At that moment she wasn’t sure if she was too terrified to move or still so fascinated and in love that she was too stupid to be terrified.

He stopped right before her. His fingers threaded into the hair at the nape of her neck; they caressed her, yet they were firm in a way that brooked no opposition.

“It makes all the difference in the world,” he told her harshly. “You’re my wife. …”

The word lingered on his lips as he lowered them to hers. “I love you.”

The words were formed against her mouth before he kissed her: a kiss that was deep and tender and coercive and firm and consuming, robbing her of all strength. She was very, very tired.

She was too exhausted to fight him, too vulnerable, too determined not to believe the evidence that she had discovered herself.

A small sob of protest escaped her, and that was all. He lifted her into his arms and laid her on the bed. She watched him almost distantly as he began to strip off his shirt.

“You’re having an affair with Lisa,” she told him. “I don’t want you touching me.”

“What?” he demanded as his jeans joined his shirt on the floor.

“I saw you together.”

“You didn’t see us ‘together.’ I admit that I know Lisa, but I swore to you that I’d never had an affair with her.”

He lay down beside her, staring into her eyes. How could he be lying? she wondered.

He pressed his lips against her collarbone. His fingers found the clasp to her bra and released it, and he rested his head against her breasts, touching them with the greatest tenderness.

“I swear to you, I’m not having—nor have I ever had—an affair with Lisa.”

“Why do you keep lying to me?” she whispered.

“I don’t lie to you,” he said.

She closed her eyes and kept them closed as he made love to her. She could not deny the sensation, the magic of his touch. She wanted desperately to believe in him. …

He made love to her slowly, tenderly, drawing out the eroticism, bringing her to a frantic need.

And when it was over, he began again.

He didn’t leave her until she was drifting into an exhausted slumber. Only at that point did she start to wonder—in a mind already lost to dreams—if he hadn’t loved her so passionately and thoroughly because he knew full well that she would then sleep and stay in for the night.