The Texan's Diamond Bride

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.

Chapter Three

Travis tried not to look too eager at the likely prospect of being trapped here all night with her, because he didn’t want to scare her, and a woman caught alone for the night with a man she didn’t know would have to be a little scared.

So he backed up until the rain blowing in on the wind hit his back in a fine spray, then moved to the side, giving her some space to think things through.

A man who spent his life working the land, often long distances from the ranch house, got caught out in the elements. It was just something that happened. If she’d spent any time in the field as a geologist, she’d probably been caught out in storms, too.

No big deal.

They had shelter from the rain and could likely wait out the storm here just fine, at least until morning light.

He gave up studying her as best as he could through the gloom—it wasn’t getting any easier to see—and went with his impressions of her, what he felt she was like. Calm, practical and then…something else.

“You look like you’re up to something,” he said.

She shrugged. “I’m just thinking that…I’m glad we’re out of the rain,” she tried.

“Yes.” He nodded. “And?”

“And…that…I’ve been caught in worse weather than this.”

“Me, too,” he agreed. But that wasn’t it, either.

“My Jeep is just over the ridge, maybe a mile away, just across the boundary into the park. I don’t suppose—”

Lightning crackled across the sky, then landed with a giant boom.

He could swear he saw her flinch as it hit.

Little Ms. No-Fear was actually afraid of lightning? At least a little bit?

“You really don’t want to take a chance on getting hit by lightning,” he said.

“I know,” she said, like a woman who really knew what a lightning strike could do. “I just thought…the Jeep isn’t that far—”

“Even if we didn’t have the lightning to contend with, in a downpour like this, the soil out here turns to the consistency of warm mush.”

She sighed. “I was afraid of that.”

It happened in Texas with its fine, silty soil not accustomed to this kind of rain. It was like trying to walk through quicksand when it suddenly got wet.

“Hey, what happened to your horse?” she asked.

“Long gone. He doesn’t like lightning, either, wouldn’t leave me for anything but that. Wasn’t much around here to tether him to that could actually hold him, if he decided to run, just some scrawny bushes. He would have uprooted the thing by turning his head.”

“Oh, okay… So, for us…What about in the morning? Surely the lightning will have stopped, and we can make it to the Jeep then, can’t we?” she said.

“Maybe, although it’s still not easy getting any real traction for a while after this kind of storm passes through. Not off-road. You are off-road there, aren’t you?”

“By a couple of miles,” she admitted.

“Don’t worry. If we can’t get to your car, there’s an old hunting cabin a mile or so from here and high ground between us and it. We’ll go at first light, as long as the lightning’s through, and hold up there. The ranch hands will be out, checking to make sure everything’s okay. Someone from the ranch will find us before long.”

“And this spot where we are? It won’t flood?”

“Not overnight. If it’s still raining like this tomorrow during the day, tomorrow night it might. But don’t worry. I’ve lived on this ranch for the better part of twenty years, know every inch of the place. I know how to keep you safe here, Red, and I’ll do it, too.”

“Red?”

He grinned. “It is red, isn’t it? I can’t be sure in this light, but I thought when I watched you walk down to the mine entrance—”

“Yes, my hair is red,” she admitted.

“Thought so.” He didn’t say she had the fiery temperament to go along with it. “So, is this a problem? Spending the night here? Because there really isn’t anything else to do—”

“I know. I believe you,” she claimed. “So, I guess we should probably…get comfortable. Since we’ll be here for the night. Right?”

He nodded. “Are you afraid of me, Red?”

“No.” She vehemently denied it.

“Because there’s no reason for you to be. I’m not gonna hurt you. Or do anything to you. We’re just in this together now, and really, it’s a little bit of nothing. One slightly uncomfortable night. That’s all. Might as well make the best of it.”

He was right. Paige knew he was. No way she could argue the point.

It was just…well, the lightning, for one thing. She hated lightning.

And spending the night with him.

She’d been daydreaming about that very thing when she watched him with his horse by the stream earlier, and she’d felt perfectly safe doing that. Fantasizing about being the kind of woman to just let herself go for a night with a perfect stranger.

She’d never been the kind of woman to let herself do that. A girl growing up with money in a very public way…Well, her father had warned her and her sister early on that there would be boys who wanted her for her money, and she, of course, hadn’t listened. It was one lesson she’d learned the hard way, and it had hurt. She’d always been a bit cautious around men since then, a bit distrustful of their motives when they claimed to want her, and she just couldn’t be sure they didn’t really want a rich woman.