The Texan's Diamond Bride

by Teresa Hill

  And she wondered exactly what it was Travis Foley might want.

  Not her.

  Surely not her.

  He couldn’t have meant that. He was furious with her and probably cursed her whole family right now.

  But why was he furious? It was his brother who seduced her sister for information, while Travis…She wasn’t sure what Travis had done, exactly, or why he’d done it.

  He certainly was the picture of an outraged man, and that just didn’t fit.

  “So,” she began. “The diamond…”

  “I assume you still want to find it? And then get the hell off my ranch?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s what I came to tell you. The water’s gone down. We can get into the mine today, if you want.”

  Just like that?

  Their previous deal stood?

  “You’re still going to honor our agreement?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? Nothing to do with our agreement has changed. Your family’s determined to have that diamond, and as long as you believe it’s here, one of the McCords is going to be here, bothering me, trying to get it. As I see it, the easiest way to get rid of you all seems to be to let you look your fill, until you either give up or find the damned thing. So go look, please, and let’s get this over with. And then you can go.”

  Travis took her that afternoon to the mine, insisting that he be the one to watch over her while she looked. He didn’t trust anyone but himself to make sure she was safe, and he was at least going to make sure she didn’t get hurt on this stupid family quest of hers.

  That her family would send a woman, a young, beautiful woman to do something like this still made him a little bit crazy. He didn’t care that she was the geologist of the family.

  It wasn’t the kind of job he thought a man should send a woman to do.

  Of course, he came from a family that sent his brother to seduce her sister for information, so it seemed he didn’t have much room to talk in the what-your-family-would-do area.

  He was still furious with the lot of them.

  For the whole, crazy feud.

  For the lost diamond.

  For her sister getting hurt the way she no doubt had been hurt when she heard the news about Jason.

  For Charlie, the brother he never knew about until a few months ago, and the father who’d just admitted to always being in love with a woman other than Travis’s mother.

  For all of it.

  And for the woman who’d shown up on his ranch, him not knowing who she was, for the way she’d bewitched him with need and wanting. For the way he’d do just about anything for her, and she didn’t even believe it or care.

  For the whole damned mess.

  But she just had to find that diamond, so he stood there, watching over her and waiting for her, to make sure she didn’t get herself killed over the stupid thing. All so he could stand by and watch her walk away from him when her search was over.

  It was all so stupid. And completely infuriating. How was he ever going to let her go? How could he ever convince her to stay?

  She finally gave up her search shortly before sunset, coming out of the mine cold and grubby and looking completely worn-out. She’d cried herself to sleep the night before. He’d stood on the other side of her bedroom wall, listening to her, fighting the urge to go to her and beg her to believe him about what he’d known and what he’d done, to beg her to forgive him.

  So she had to be exhausted now. But she was still beautiful and he still wanted her, dammit.

  “We can come back tomorrow?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  Fine.

  They’d come back tomorrow, and they’d make this thing between them about nothing but the stupid diamond now.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In the end, Paige didn’t tell anyone else in her family anything about Jason Foley or what he’d done.

  It was Penny’s secret to tell, she decided.

  Penny was the one who’d been hurt the most by it, and she had a baby to think about, too.

  She called Penny the night after spending a second day searching the mine with no luck, Travis just letting her look, standing so somberly by, not trying to talk her into or out of anything. Just letting her do what she had to do.

  Paige didn’t understand him any better than she understood herself or her feelings for him, so she mostly tried not to think about any of it.

  She had a job to do, and she’d do it.

  Part of that was taking care of her poor sister.

  It took four tries before her sister would even answer the phone and when she did, before Paige could even say anything else, Penny just blurted out, “Just don’t ask me what I’m going to do, okay? Because I don’t know yet.”

  “Okay,” Paige agreed.

  “I’m sorry. I just…I don’t know.”

  “That’s fine, honey. I know it’s all a shock. I just…I wanted to be sure I understand where you are in this. Are you sure you’re pregnant?”

  “I…well, it looks like it. I’m late, and I took one of those home pregnancy tests. Three, actually. All positive.”

  “Okay, but you haven’t seen a doctor yet?” Paige tried.

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Well, don’t you think you should? I mean…Surely sometimes those home tests are wrong—” They could hope.

  “Three times in a row?” Penny reminded her.

  “Okay, probably not three times in a row. But still, you want to have a doctor check you out, make sure you’re healthy and that the baby’s okay.”

  “I guess so,” Penny admitted.

  “Let me give you my gynecologist’s name. She’s great. Very gentle, and she’ll be completely supportive. I promise.” Paige gave her the name, then as gently as she could told her, “I haven’t said anything to anyone about this. I’m not going to. It’s up to you. If you want me to tell them or be with you when you tell anyone, I will. I’ll do whatever you want, whatever I can to help.”

  “Thank you.” Her sister started to cry softly.

  “And you didn’t ask me, and I probably shouldn’t say this, but I think as soon as you’ve seen the doctor, you should go see that rat Jason Foley and tell him exactly how well his little seduction plan worked—”

  “Paige, please—”

  “He should know what he did.”

  “It wasn’t just him,” she cried. “It was me, too. I wanted him so much.”

  “And I’m sure he knew just how to make you want him. There’s no telling how many women he’s seduced over the years, the rat!”

  “I can’t tell him,” she argued. “Not now. It’s all too new, too crazy, and I have no idea what I’m going to do about this. No, I can’t tell him. You promise you won’t tell him, either. That you won’t tell anyone.”

  Oooh, that was a tough promise to make.

  True, she’d just promised a moment ago to not do anything her sister didn’t want her to do, but she’d never imagined part of that would be letting Jason Foley off the hook completely.

  “Paige, promise me. Right now.”

  “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “But you have to tell him eventually.”

  “Mom kept Charlie’s secret for twenty-one years. Do you think we’re all better off for knowing?”

  “I don’t know,” Paige admitted.

  “Neither do I, so I’m not telling Jason anything right now.”

  By the end of the fifth day of searching, with no sign of the diamond, Paige was exhausted, frustrated and very, very sad.

  Travis had been stonily silent, icily polite, doing what she needed from him to help with the search but nothing else. Blake sounded more defeated each day when she talked to him and poor Penny still had no idea what she was going to do about Jason Foley or her baby.

  How had everything gone so wrong?

  Paige sat on the ground just outside the mine entrance, cold, wet, dirty, having no idea what to do next.

  She’d never really given
up on anything before.

  Travis stood just beyond the rock overhang outside the mine, waiting, finally saying, “That was it? The last of the eagle markings? You checked the last ones today?”

  She nodded. “Every one mapped by the archaeology team you let explore the mine last year. Unless they missed one or didn’t record the location of one—”

  “They went over every inch of that place. I thought they were crazy, how excited they were to get inside that mine and then to see how carefully they checked the walls. I went down with them a couple of times to see what all the fuss was about. I have trouble thinking they missed anything.”

  Paige shook her head. “I knew it was a long shot. I just didn’t want to admit it to my brother. I mean, even if Elwin Foley came to the ranch after surviving the shipwreck and hid the diamond in the Eagle Mine, it’s been so long. My ancestors worked the mine, bringing out the silver for years. How they could have done that and never found the diamond…I don’t know. I hoped it was possible, but…How could they have missed buried treasure when they were mining here all those years?”

  “I don’t see how they could have,” Travis agreed. “And…I’m not trying to be insensitive or to start a fight here, but Paige, why are you letting your family put this on you? This pressure to find the diamond? I mean, it’s not like your family needs the money. Can’t you just let it go? Tell them to back off? Or to find the damned thing themselves, if it’s so important to them?”

  Which sounded curiously like he was trying to take care of her. Which was the last thing she’d have expected from him.

  And then she was just sick of the whole mess and all the misery it had brought her, all that she felt or thought she’d felt for Travis Foley and how much she missed him, even when he was right here beside her. She couldn’t even let herself think of how she dreaded leaving the ranch and never seeing him again, even if she didn’t really trust him and was furious at his family.

  It was all just such a mess.

  She didn’t care anymore, so she just told him everything.

  “The thing is, we do really need the money,” she confessed. “My father…he wasn’t the greatest guy in the world, and I guess that didn’t just extend toward personal relationships. He wasn’t much of a businessman, either. My brother Blake is much better at it, but I guess when he took over the business after our father died, it was in trouble. Serious trouble. Blake’s doing everything he can, but I really think it’s going to take a miracle to save the family business now, and we were banking on that miracle being the diamond. So, yes, it matters. It matters that much.”

  She looked at him, knowing she’d told him much more than she needed to, things his family would just love to hear about the McCords. But what did it matter now?

  If business was that bad, it wouldn’t be a secret much longer.

  She couldn’t imagine her family without the jewelry stores, without that work to do. It had been much more than a source of income. It had been what they all did together, Blake managing the business, her overseeing the buying of raw stones worldwide and cutting many of them herself, her sister designing settings for the stones, her cousin Gabby the international face and spokeswoman for the stores. It held them altogether, gave them a common goal and a strong sense of pride.

  What would they do now?

  “I just feel like I let my whole family down,” she said.

  “Hey, it’s not your fault if the diamond isn’t there,” Travis began.

  “I know, but…I just really thought I could find it. Once Blake showed me the deed with that diamond in the eagle’s talon, I was so sure. But we’ve searched every eagle marking in this mine, and it’s just not there. Every one—”

  But then as she said it, she realized she was wrong.

  Oh, they’d searched every one inside the mine.

  But right at that moment, she was looking at one spot they hadn’t searched.

  “Paige?” Travis asked.

  She walked over to the big, heavy stone that stood just outside the mine, marking it as the Eagle Mine with an eagle carved into the stone.

  “We didn’t search here,” she said, the idea bouncing around in her head at warp speed. “It’s the same eagle, the same image from the deed. And it’s not in the mine! They wouldn’t have disturbed this area as they mined for silver, so that’s how Elwin could have hidden it at the mine, without worrying about anyone finding it accidentally as they mined the silver! Travis! I think this is it!”

  She turned back to him, and he looked skeptical, like she was grasping at straws or just could not admit defeat. But she didn’t think so.

  This hiding place…This made sense. The diamond would likely be safe here, even if the mine was opened to get the silver out.

  She ran over to the rock, tried to move it and found that it wouldn’t even budge.

  Turning back to Travis, she pleaded with him. “Please? This one last place? If it’s not here, I’m done. Promise.”

  “All right. But quit trying to move that rock. You’ll never manage.” He pulled a rope off of his saddle. “If we’re lucky, Murph can move it.”

  He looped the rope around the rock, then tied the other end to the saddle horn, and took his place by the horse’s head. “Come on, boy. Show us how strong you are.”

  The horse started backing up, until the line stretched taut and then Murph dug in with his big hind legs and very, very slowly eased back some more until the rock tipped over.

  Travis undid the rope, and Paige grabbed a shovel and started digging. A moment later, Travis grabbed another small shovel and started helping her.

  They were three feet down when she hit something.

  Her heart started racing.

  Carefully, they cleared dirt from the top, finding a rectangular-shaped object.

  “Tell me it’s not a rock,” she begged.

  “If it is, it’s the most perfectly shaped rectangular rock I’ve ever found,” Travis said. “And we won’t get it out this way. Start digging on the left side. We need room on at least two sides to pry it loose.”

  They dug some more.

  Finally, Travis could get his hands on two sides of the thing and ease it forward and to the left enough to dislodge it and then lift it to the surface.

  Paige gasped.

  When the dirt was brushed away, she saw that it was a treasure chest!

  An ancient-looking silver chest, if Paige wasn’t mistaken, encrusted with precious stones, emeralds, rubies, maybe even diamonds.

  “Go ahead,” Travis said. “Open it. You’ve earned the right.”

  Her hands shook, literally, she was so excited.

  The lid came open with a creaking sound and on top was an old, dirty cloth.

  She pulled the cloth away and gasped once more.

  Coins.

  Old silver coins.

  Hundreds of them.

  “The ship supposedly held a fortune in old Spanish silver,” she told him.

  She dipped her hands inside the coins, digging in one side of the chest and then the other, finally coming up with a cloth, the ends tied together around something big and heavy.

  All the breath went out of her, as she sat the cloth down on top of the coins and just looked at it.

  Travis laughed and pulled out his pocketknife, cutting the string that held the cloth together.

  “Go ahead. Look,” he told her.

  “It’s huge. I mean, I knew the diamond was supposed to be huge, as big as the Hope Diamond, and I’ve seen the Hope Diamond before. It was huge, too, but I just don’t know if this—”

  “Red, just look and see,” he said, still sounding amused.

  She closed her eyes, took a breath, then opened her eyes and pulled the cloth away.

  There inside the old, disintegrating cloth was a stone roughly the size of an egg, primitively cut but glowing yellow and startling in its clarity.

  She held it up to the light of the setting sun, watching the stone come to life with light, s
himmering all over the different facets of the perfect, flawless stone.

  “That’s it,” she told Travis. “It’s the Santa Magdalena Diamond! We found it!”

  And then she threw her arms around him, let him pick her up and whirl her around while she laughed like she never had before and cried, and then, when he finally set her back on her feet, kissed him like she’d never let him go.

  Paige had to be dreaming.

  She had the diamond in her backpack on the way back to the ranch house, and for a moment back there, Travis had kissed her like a man who never wanted to let her go.

  Could he really not want to let her go?

  Because it was breaking her heart to think of leaving him. They’d kept things from each other, and hurt each other, and their families had hated each other for years, but he was still the best man she’d ever met. The sexiest, the sweetest, the kindest, the most protective, the most gentle man.

  She didn’t care if his last name was Foley.

  It was hard to accept what his brother had done to her sister, and that was likely to be a sore spot between them for years, not just for the two of them, but for both their families. And there was still all that stuff with their parents dating and Charlie trying to find his own way amidst both families.

  Could they ever put all that behind them? Or put it all aside somehow and just be two people who were crazy about each other?

  The last few days had been the worst of her life, thinking he’d lied to her and that his whole family was out to hurt hers and that one day soon, she’d be leaving this ranch and never come back.

  So it was time to put her heart on the line, to take a leap of faith.

  They got back to the ranch near sunset, and he had Cal take care of both their horses. He carried the treasure chest, wrapped in a blanket, into his house, and she had the diamond.

  “Why don’t you go get cleaned up, Red, and then we’ll try to sort this thing out,” Travis said.

  She was a mess. It seemed the whole time she’d known him, she’d been either dirty or wet or both.

  It had been the strangest kind of courtship.

  Nerves eating away at her, she ran through the shower, dressed quickly and came to find him in the library, the treasure chest and the diamond on the table in front of the big, leather sofa.