by Sara Orwig
As his lips covered hers, her heart thudded. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tightly, wanting his kisses as if it were the first time he had kissed her. She wanted to make love, to hold and kiss him. Even more, she wanted to get to know him again.
They made love long into the night.
By then she had decided she would lease the ranchland to him. She suspected it would be a very good deal for her and would top the other offers they had had.
Other decisions weren’t so easily made. Would they fall in love again? Had she already and didn’t realize this was the real thing? She was uncertain, something that thirteen years ago she wouldn’t have thought possible. She had been so wildly in love with him then. Now she was scared to let go and she didn’t know what he felt.
As she ran her fingers lightly over his chest, she kept telling herself one thing: time would tell.
* * *
On Tuesday Madison returned to the search with the men. She took a sketch pad and drew while the men dug, pacing off a grid that she and Jake had planned and drawn.
Following her brothers’ suggestions, they had moved away from the creek and were in an arroyo that was dry. They worked in the sun and even though it was a fall day, the temperature was in the nineties and Jake’s shirt was plastered to his body. She still wanted to come along, in case they found something, but now that she trusted Jake and had no worry about him deceiving her, she decided this would be the last day she would go with them.
When they broke for lunch they went back to where they had parked the trucks in a grove of acacias along the creek to keep the vehicles in the shade.
She sat eating a sandwich with Jake. He had brought a fresh cotton shirt and pulled it on. It was unbuttoned, the shirttail hanging out over his jeans.
He hadn’t shaved this morning and had dark stubble on his jaw. His hair was in a tangle with ends wet from his sweat. In spite of the dust, sweat and stubble, he looked sexy and appealing and she thought about the evening, looking forward with anticipation.
“I need to go home and get some other boots tonight. I forgot to bring them this morning. Come home with me and we’ll eat there. You’ve never been in my house.”
“All right. Are we coming back to mine or staying at yours?”
“Stay at mine tonight, Maddie,” he said, his gaze stirring a sizzling current, making her wish the afternoon would not be so long.
“You have a deal, but I’ll need some clothes. What about stopping at the house when we go back and letting me pick up a few things?”
He nodded. “Sure. You’re the first woman to stay there, you know.”
“That surprises me. You were so eager to marry. I’m surprised you haven’t had a serious relationship, let alone that you’re still single.”
“I’ve been busy and there never has been anyone I’ve been that serious about. And I got burned badly, so I’ve skirted around serious romantic entanglements.”
“I married out of spite.”
“I always wondered if you were as in love with him as we had been,” Jake said quietly.
“Not ever. It was a dreadful mistake that I knew I was making and I got out of it early on because it was messing up Will’s life.”
“Damn,” Jake said quietly, setting down his half-eaten sandwich. “I hope you told your dad.”
“I did and he looked pained and said he was afraid of that. It’s over and done and I’m sorry if I hurt Will. I wasn’t thinking clearly and I was so angry with you at the time.”
She met Jake’s level gaze. “I hate that,” he said and she shrugged.
“As you would say, it’s over. Forget it.”
His gaze shifted beyond her while he seemed lost in his thoughts for a moment. “That’s true,” he said and picked up his bottle of water to take a long drink. He waved the bottle at her. “This is the best part of lunch.”
“It’ll be hotter this afternoon.”
“We can swim when we get to my house.”
“Sure,” she said, smiling at him. He had been about to take a bite of sandwich, but he lowered it and looked at her with raised eyebrows.
“You have something else in mind when we arrive at my house?”
“You don’t?”
He grinned. “I wish we were alone now.”
“I promise you, it would not do you any good out here with the ground full of cactus pines, cockleburs and snakes possibly crawling past. Not ever.”
“There’s a challenge if I ever heard one.”
She pointed a finger at him. “Well, we’re not alone, so forget it. Eat your sandwich and look forward to finishing here for today.”
“Oh, I am looking forward to it,” he said in a husky, seductive drawl while his gaze roamed slowly from her head to her toes, making her tingle in its wake. “It’s going to be difficult to concentrate on digging holes in the ground this afternoon. My thoughts will be elsewhere.”
“It doesn’t take great powers of concentration to dig,” she said, smiling at him. When he gave her a sexy grin, she began to count down the hours.
* * *
In the hot afternoon sun, Jake dug, thinking the treasure could be buried at her ranch house for all they knew. He paused, leaning on his shovel while he glanced at Maddie, who sat with her head bent over her drawing pad while she sketched. Where were they going with their relationship?
She didn’t seem to have an answer any more than he did. Sex was hot, the best, and he couldn’t get enough of her, but did it go deeper than that? Was he so blinded by desire that he couldn’t even perceive the depth of his feelings for her? Did he care if they walked out of each other’s lives when this search was over?
He cared about that. In fact, he wanted her to move in with him, but it was a purely lustful longing. He didn’t feel the way he had at nineteen—as if she was necessary for his life to continue. At that age he couldn’t imagine life without her. They were teenagers and both wildly in love in the way that only teens could be. It had been intense, dramatic and youthful, a love that had been totally entwined with hot sex that she experienced for the first time in her life.
Her father had turned his world upside down. Jake still didn’t like to think about how badly it had hurt to lose her.
What about now? He needed to get a reading on what he felt for her, because she would walk out of his life again soon and there might not ever be another chance. Was it going to hurt to tell her goodbye?
With the hot sun beating down on his shoulders and back, he stood looking at her. The thought of her going her own way made his stomach churn. Their time together was coming to an end and he didn’t want it to—but was that love or just lust?
From what she had said to him, she was as uncertain as he was about the extent of her feelings. He envied the certainty he had felt at nineteen, never questioning if he truly loved her enough to want to spend the rest of his life with her. He had been so sure and it had taken a lot of pain, time and anger to kill those feelings.
Common sense said to step away, get the physical relationship in perspective and see how he felt. That was common sense, but it didn’t appeal to him.
He fished out his phone to call his ranch to tell his cook to put out two steaks for him to grill, and to fix the rest of the dinner and put it in the refrigerator for tonight. He returned to digging, thinking about Maddie and their lovemaking last night and looking forward to tonight. There had never been any woman in his life he had felt so strongly about as he had Maddie. That made him search his feelings now more than ever. If they really fell in love, surely they would each recognize it.
As he dug it dawned on him that if they found the deed, he would have a dilemma—all the more reason to decide soon what his feelings were for her. Now that she would let him lease her land to drill, the whole reason for searching for
the deed had vanished.
He didn’t want to hurt her. That was one certainty in his life. For Maddie’s sake, he would never take any of the Milan land. When he’d thought it would affect her dad, he’d wanted to take it and enjoy every minute when he could tell Judge Milan that part of his ranch now belonged to the Calhouns. That would be sweet revenge. But the ranch was now owned by Maddie. Taking part of it would hurt her, so he wasn’t going to do it. He didn’t really think the deed existed anyway. With the lack of success they had been having, he figured the old legend was just a tall Texas tale and nothing more.
He couldn’t wait to get to the ranch, clean up and enjoy the evening with Maddie.
* * *
By Wednesday, Jake’s hopes had plummeted. Monday he would be in Dallas, back in the corporate life. When would he see Maddie once he was in Dallas or traveling and she was out here at the ranch?
He loved being a rancher, loved everything about the cowboy life and living on the ranch. The quiet was something he occasionally had to come home and enjoy. But he had only days left.
He plunged the shovel into the hard earth and tossed a shovelful of dirt to one side. “Your ranch looks as if an army of gophers have taken over,” he said to Madison, who sat on a nearby rock and sketched.
Once again they were near Rocky Creek. They were in the shade of another grove of trees, digging in ground slightly less packed, and she had found a rock where she could sit and draw.
“What do you say to us stopping at four today? If we haven’t found anything by then, I’m giving up for today. We have tomorrow to try one more time. Tomorrow I’ll pay the guys a bonus for helping this week—yours and mine.”
“You don’t have to do that. I can pay the ones who work for me.”
He shook his head. “No, this has been my project from the start. It’s like chasing rainbows. I insist.”
She shrugged. “Okay. Thanks. That’s nice.” His gaze raked over her. She was dressed to be out on the ranch—boots, jeans, long-sleeved cotton shirt and a broad-brimmed tan Stetson that looked as if she had had it since high school.
“Back to quitting at four. Let’s go home, get dressed and let me take you to Dallas tonight to dinner, maybe dancing. I have a home in Dallas and we can just stay in the city. We’ve earned a night out. Will you go with me?”
A big smile broke out on her face that made his heartbeat quicken. She was irresistible to him when she smiled. “You have a deal,” she said.
“Great. Think you can be ready to go by six?”
“Oh, yes. Easily.”
“Half past five?” he asked and she thought a moment before she nodded.
“That’s it, then,” he said. “If I can get home, shower and get back. If not, I won’t be much later than that, but I’m definitely aiming for half past five.”
“I can’t wait. I haven’t been out to dinner and dancing with an exciting, handsome man in way too long.”
“I hope not since you were sixteen.”
She laughed and his grin widened.
“It was a little later than that, but it was not in the past few months.”
“Not what I wanted to hear.”
“Forget it. I’m going with you tonight.”
“So you are and I can’t wait.” He wanted to chuck this whole search and head home now, but this was next to the last day he could devote to this, so he would stay until four. He jammed the shovel into the ground to get another scoop of dirt and scraped something hard.
Nine
Madison heard the metallic click of Jake’s shovel striking something and looked around. She stood up from the rock and walked closer to watch, her eyes meeting Jake’s.
“Keep your fingers crossed.”
Jake turned to call two of the closest men. “Stoney, Russ, can you come here?”
Both of them came with shovels in hand.
“I’ve hit something. Help dig here so we can get to it quicker.”
They joined him, digging, and Russ struck something after the third shovelful of dirt.
She stood in silence watching them uncover what looked like a piece of battered and scratched black metal. In minutes they began to enlarge the hole. The more dirt they removed the better she could see a large metal box with handles on each side and a smaller handle in the center of the top. Excitement gripped her along with curiosity, far more to see if the legend was actually true than to expect any real treasure.
Soon dirt was dug away from the box and Jake leaned down to pick it up. The other two men bent over to help. Her excitement mounted when it was obvious that the box was heavy. Because it was below them in the ground, it was awkward to grasp, and required all their strength to lift it out unless they dug a larger hole.
Jake called over his shoulder and the other men came to see as Jake and Russ set the box on the ground. She noticed a keyhole on the front of the box. When Jake tried to open it, the lid didn’t move.
“It’s locked,” he said, looking around for a rock. “We’re not digging for a key,” he remarked. Someone handed him a rock and Jake grasped it to swing hard. After the third hit, the lid budged a fraction. Jake opened it and sunlight glinted on gold coins.
The men broke out in applause.
Madison could barely believe her eyes. “You found it!” she exclaimed.
“That legend was true,” Jake said. She could see the surprise on his face and she knew how he was feeling. He’d heard it all his life and had searched for it many times on the Calhoun ranch before trying the Milan ranch.
He picked up a coin and turned it in his hand, standing to show it to Madison while they both peered at it.
“It’s from 1849. One side is a Liberty head, and the other is an eagle,” Jake said, reading and turning the coin. It’s a five-dollar gold coin. I’ll be damned,” he said, still turning the gold coin in his hand.
“Since you said the treasure is mine,” Madison said, “I think everyone here should have ten coins.” The men grinned and cheered and told her thanks.
“And you’ll still get your bonus,” Jake added.
Madison picked up a handful of coins to pass them out. “I’ll have this appraised and find out what these are worth.”
“I’m keeping mine,” Stoney said. “Eighteen forty-nine was a long time ago.”
Others agreed as they looked over the coins, turning the gold in their hands.
“This means the remains of our ancestors may be buried in this vicinity,” Jake said, looking around. “I’ll drive the truck up here and we’ll lock this up in the truck. I don’t know anything about old coins, but these are in good shape. I have a feeling they’re worth a fortune—as long as they’re real, and I think they are.”
Jake gave orders about where to dig to search for the bones. As the men dispersed, he walked to Madison. “I’ll go get the truck and one of them can help me load the box.” He shook his head. “I’m still in shock that the legend is true.”
“Jake, when we get that back to the house, I want you to take half the treasure. We don’t know who that chest really belonged to, and some members of your family may want to keep the coins just because of the historical value. Those coins are part of the Old West, part of early-day Texas and part of our families’ histories.”
“I think you better reconsider your generous offer. Your brothers may not be happy if you give half away. I get along with Tony, but he doesn’t like Calhouns.”
“Tony doesn’t begin to compare to Lindsay’s dislike of Milans,” she added. “The family feud lives on in those two.”
“Our folks, also. And grandparents even more.”
“I don’t care who agrees and disagrees.”
“That’s generous, Maddie,” he said. “But if you want to wait to talk to your family—”
“
I’ll talk them into accepting it,” she said. She looked around the site. “I hope we find the remains and I know you want the deed.”
“Yeah. See you in a few minutes.” She watched him stride away, his long legs covering the distance until he climbed into his pickup and drove toward her with the truck bouncing over the rough ground.
She couldn’t stop her thoughts from returning to a few moments ago. When he’d opened the box, her first reaction was surprise that the legend was true. The thought that immediately followed was a sinking realization that Jake might possibly walk out of her life. Again.
Everything inside her felt squeezed and hurt. The reason for his presence in her life had ended. But she wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
* * *
Over an hour later, Darren called out to Jake, “Mr. Calhoun, come look. I think I may have found some bones.”
Madison had heard Jake instruct the men that they were not to disturb any bones they uncovered, but to wait and let the medical examiner tell them what to do. To her relief, that was what Darren was doing. While Darren stood leaning on his shovel, she hurried to catch up with Jake to go down to the creek bank.
“I hope we can tell whether these are human bones or animal bones,” Jake said. “This is a grim discovery, but if it’s our ancestors’ remains it will be good to get them buried in a proper place.”
She stood beside Jake and looked at a large bone. “I don’t know much about bones, so I don’t know whether it’s from a human or not.”
“Well, we’ll find out from someone official,” Jake said, then he turned to Darren. “Just keep looking carefully and see if you can find some more bones here.”
She walked away from them, going back to get her sketch pad, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Jake. He was strong and fit, sexy. She wanted to hold him and kiss him and she wanted them to make love far more than flying to Dallas for dinner and dancing. She wondered if she could get him to change the plans.