Mountain Heiress

The last time Gabby ate was hours ago—a greasy taco and a milk shake. She pounced on the cookies, which tasted healthy in comparison to her diet for the past several days on the road. The lightly sweetened chamomile tea soothed her throat.

“Oh, Rhoda.” She licked her lips. “This is fantastic. Can I live with you?”

“Don’t be silly, dear. You’ve got a wonderful adventure waiting.” Rhoda sat in the overstuffed chair beside her and tucked her short legs underneath her. “I’m guessing the Roost is going to be a different life than you’re used to.”

“I don’t fit in,” Gabby said. “Is it that obvious?”

“The leopard bra and fancy sandals are kind of a clue.” Rhoda grinned. “Your great-aunt told me that you’d spent your whole life in the city. She said she didn’t know you very well, but she thought you had inherited some of her artistic talent.”

“Me?” Gabby took another bite of oatmeal cookie. “I wonder why she said that.”

“You’re a designer, aren’t you? That’s art.”

Claiming to be an artist seemed pretentious when her most lucrative source of income was alterations like taking up hems and letting out waists. Still, she was flattered. “I guess my work could be called creative.”

“Wait until you see the inside of the Roost. There’s a studio that you could change into a workroom for sewing and an office and a tremendous view.”

“And Charlotte Potter,” Gabby said. “What’s her story?”

“Her parents—a couple of mean, nasty people—threw her out, and Michelle offered her a place to live in exchange for doing some light chores. Charlotte was devoted to your great-aunt.”

Which didn’t necessarily mean that she wasn’t loony tunes. “She seemed to think that somebody was threatening her, and that they sent me to do their dirty work.”

“Treasure hunters.”

Gabby almost choked on her cookie. “Say what?”

“It’s your family history. Haven’t you ever heard of the Frenchman’s Treasure?”

Holding the mug of tea to her lips, she leaned forward. “Tell me about it.”

“A long time ago,” Rhoda said, “way back in the 1870s, your ancestor moved to Colorado to prospect for gold. His name was Louis Rousseau. He always wore a gold hoop earring like a pirate, and he was supposed to be a dashing, handsome man.”

Gabby had a vague recollection of a formal photograph in a family album. “He had a wife and two children. And they came from Wisconsin. Was he a trapper?”

“A trapper or a trader. Nobody knows for sure, but he had enough money to buy a huge parcel of land, build the first structure that was called Rousseau’s Roost and start a cattle ranch.”

If Gabby had known that her ancestor had a treasure, she would have taken more interest in her heritage. It seemed unimportant after her parents were killed in a car accident when she was thirteen. Family, what family? She and her brother were left to be raised by the elderly great-aunt who was Michelle’s sister. Aunt Rene had done her best, even though she was in her eighties when she got stuck with a couple of angry teenagers. She was the one who taught Gabby to sew. She’d passed away when Gabby was twenty-one.

“Louis’s wife,” said Rhoda, “might have been a Sioux Indian, but nobody knew for sure.”

“I might be part Native American?”

“A very small part.”

“Still,” Gabby said, “that’s cool. At Thanksgiving in elementary school, the kids who had a Native American background always got to play special parts.”

“Back in the 1800s, it wasn’t considered cool.”

“Tell me about the treasure.”

“As it turned out, Louis’s wife was very good at raising cattle and children. She had five more while her handsome husband was off on prospecting trips, combing the hills for gold or silver. Though he never filed a claim, he always had cash, which led people to believe that he had a secret stash. The legend grew. People followed him on his trips, but no one learned the secret of the Frenchman’s Treasure.”

Gabby was captivated by the story of her long-ago past. One of the Rousseau children must have moved back East and established themselves in Brooklyn. But which one? Did she have other relations? Aunt Rene had never mentioned anyone other than Michelle. “How does all this relate to Charlotte?”

“Supposedly, the key to finding the treasure is hidden in the house. And Charlotte thinks it’s her duty to protect it.”

While Gabby mulled over the idea of a treasure map tucked away behind a brick in the old house, she heard Zach come into the room. In the light from the fireplace, he was even more handsome. His deep-set eyes were a piercing blue. His shaggy brown hair curled over the collar of his plaid shirt. When she looked at him, she couldn’t help grinning.

He didn’t smile back.

“Now you’ve heard the legend,” he said. “I suggest you forget all about it.”

Chapter Three

The last thing Zach needed was Rhoda filling Gabby’s head with wild stories about the Frenchman’s Treasure. This strange woman from Brooklyn might start tearing down the Roost in the hope of getting rich quick. He took a sip from his steaming mug of herbal tea and gazed into the fire on the hearth, trying his best not to notice how Gabby was clutching the striped blanket over her half-naked body. Didn’t this woman ever wear clothes?

“Why should I forget the treasure?” she asked.

Rhoda answered for him. “Zach thinks that if the treasure or a treasure map ever existed, they would have been found by now. And I guess that makes sense. People have been searching for over a hundred and fifty years.”

“When it comes to secrets,” Gabby said, “time doesn’t matter.”

What the hell was she talking about? He knew that asking for an explanation would open a can of worms, but he couldn’t let her statement stand unchallenged. “Tell me more.”

“Think about the archaeologists in Egypt. They’re still finding artifacts in the sand, and those things have been hidden for thousands of years.”

He hadn’t expected her to talk about archaeology.

“I went to a King Tut exhibit in Manhattan,” she said. When she gestured, her blanket slipped, giving him another glimpse of the leopard bra. “You wouldn’t believe all the gold. And those thousands of years didn’t matter. Finding things is just a matter of knowing where to look.”

“This is different,” he said.

“Think about the last time you lost something and couldn’t find it,” she said. “You search and you search and you just can’t locate it. A couple of days later, you remember that you were in the kitchen when you lost it. You go to the drawer by the door and...ta da! There it is.”

Her logic made a certain amount of sense, but Zach wasn’t going to concede. He was right about the treasure map. “Michelle used to travel a lot. She’d leave the house vacant for days at a time. We tried to keep an eye on things, but anybody who wanted to search could have gotten in.”

“Zach’s right,” Rhoda said. “Treasure hunters have had plenty of chances to poke around at the Roost.”

“Why is Charlotte so worried about it?” Gabby asked.

Rhoda made a tsk-tsk sound. “On the day of Michelle’s memorial service, her house was broken into and some of her things were tossed around. They took the typical stuff like computers, a television and electronics. Sheriff Burton thought it was just a burglary.”

“But he investigated,” Gabby said. “At least, I hope he investigated. That’s his job.”

“The sheriff did all he could.” He didn’t appreciate her implication that law enforcement in this area was less stringent than it would be in a city.

“Did he find fingerprints?”