The Texan's Diamond Bride (2 page)

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.

P
aige 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, extraordi
nary 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.