One Night With The Texan

He hadn’t gone ten feet before he stopped and turned to face her. “Have you ever been to New Orleans, Dr. Finley?”

She squinted her eyes and tilted her head, no doubt finding the question odd.

“It’s where I went to school. So, yes. I spent six years there. Why?”

He shrugged. “You just look like someone I knew once who lived there.” He planted the seed. Now to see how long it would take her to come to figure things out.

A long moment passed between them before he turned toward the helicopter, boarded, started the massive engine, lifted off and flew away.

* * *

“Thanks for welcoming me to the neighborhood,” she muttered to herself as she turned toward her old, battered Ford. What an odd man.

And she couldn’t get over the fact that her mind was screaming, You know him! It was an absurdity. He traveled the world, was worth billions with a capital B, while she worked in the dirt and had barely a thousand bucks in the bank. Still...she couldn’t seem to shake the feeling they had met before. And what was with that question about New Orleans? She’d gone to school there but she surely would remember if she had ever met him. She never ventured far from campus and knew very few that weren’t associated with the college.

In fact, the only real outing she’d had was when she, Mac and Ginger had gotten together after graduation. She’d met a handsome stranger that night. But no way could that man have been Cole Masters. The stranger was nice and showed no arrogance at all. If the stranger had even one penny for every hundred thousand Masters had, he would be doing all right. He could even buy himself some new clothes. They were almost the same size. No doubt that’s what kept bugging her. Pushing the thoughts from her mind she began to unpack the old Ford wagon. Maybe it would come to her eventually.

It took her a while to unpack. Most of her things could be stored inside the trapper’s cabin. It was on the land covered by the court order, so she had no qualms using it. If Cole Masters didn’t like it, she could always set up her tent. A closer inspection confirmed the one-room shack was sturdier than she’d originally thought. It contained an old wood-burning stove and a twin-size bed. The mattress, once white, was now the color of the dirt outside and so old it had been stuffed with peanut shells and cotton. There were holes in the roof and floor and the only window didn’t have any panes. She had camped in worse. She just couldn’t remember when. Her sleeping bag would provide some insulation and the rusty legs of the bed would keep her off the floor, so there was that at least.

She was used to roughing it, but her pregnancy added an extra wrinkle to the situation. Before she’d come here, her doctor had given her the green light—she was in excellent health and should be fine to do her job. But he’d warned her to take care of herself. The cabin would do for now, but she was going to have to keep a close eye on how she was feeling and make sure she didn’t overdo it.

By the time she had unpacked most of her things, the bulldozers had been moved and an area had been marked off by little red flags. It was actually a larger area than she’d first imagined. She would have to thank Mr. Masters for that the next time he came snooping, which, if he was like other land owners, should be in about three days.

Tallie eyed the area to determine the best place to start. Over toward the cliffs, she decided. She would map out a grid and go from there.

She returned to her car for the last of the gear. Her old tent was on the bottom of a pile of equipment. She probably should drag it out and spend some time patching the rips and holes. She hadn’t taken time to patch it after the last dig when the wind had blown it into a huge cactus patch. But she was anxious to start the dig. She would leave it for now and just use the old trapper’s cabin. It was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission anyway. If Mr. Masters wanted her out of the ramshackle building, all he had to do was tell her.

She picked up the bolt of orange string, a handful of wooden stakes and a hammer, and chose a spot most favorable. She wouldn’t finish before the sun set, but every step she could complete today would be one step closer to finding the proof of the lost tribe for her grandmother and the faster she could get back to the museum.

She wasn’t used to working alone, but the silence was nice. She just hoped Masters found other things to occupy his time than coming out to bother her. She didn’t need the veiled threats—or the sexual magnetism that made her heart speed up and her rational thinking, for which she was known, take a high dive off the nearest cliff.

With a sigh she hammered the first stake into the ground. Then another. By sunset she’d marked off an area of about one hundred and twenty square feet, and divided it into smaller sections. She’d been able to examine the first four grids. Tomorrow she would set up the sifting box and, with shovel in hand, she would be on her way to discovery. She hoped.

Grabbing her tools, she returned to the trapper’s cabin, dropped the hammer and remaining stakes on the floor just inside the door and stared at the bed, such that it was. It was going to be a long night.

* * *

Cole walked from the helipad toward the house, still in disbelief, livid that Tallie Finley’s dig was allowed to supersede his project and slow things to a crawl. It was ironic that on the day...the day...they were to pour the foundation she had received her permit from Judge Mitchell and shut Cole down. Unbelievable. Even more incredible was that he’d checked with his lawyers eight ways from Sunday and there was nothing he could do about the court order. The only silver lining was that he would have the opportunity to get to know this irresistible woman much better.

Since the day he’d left college his efforts had focused on company business, improving and doing his part to make Masters Corporation, LLC, one of the leading real-estate companies in Texas if not the entire United States. Days turned into nights that turned back into days as he’d worked. He’d flown countless miles, attended innumerable meetings. But it had always been for the family business; he’d never ventured out on his own. This project to build a world-class corporate retreat where Fortune 500 companies could send their executives for training and relaxation was special in that it was his. It was his chance to accomplish something important without company backing. He would prove his worth to his brothers and, more importantly, to himself. At the age of thirty-four he would finally be able to say, I did that. It wasn’t about the money or acclaim. It was the sense of accomplishment and the pride.

The planning had taken years but the end was in sight. The announcement and a brochure detailing the project had gone out to the business leaders and entrepreneurs on almost every continent in the world. An invitation to tour the site had been sent to several prominent CEOs in the U.S. with the hope they would invest in the project. How uncharacteristically naive of him to think at this stage nothing would go wrong.

He’d never seen it coming. Just like before, when he’d found out about his ex-wife’s cheating, he’d once again been caught with his pants down. If anyone had told him a month ago that a one-hundred-and-twenty-five-pound woman could shut down a multimillion-dollar project with a piece of paper and some orange string, he would have laughed in their face. He wasn’t laughing now. He had to wonder if she was a part of a bigger plan by one of his corporate enemies to sabotage his project. If not, he had to be open to the possibility that she was working on her own in an attempt to gain some of his wealth. Did she know who he was and was she only acting a part? He’d learned three years ago just how deceptive a woman could be.

Even after the sheer hell he’d been through with his ex-wife, until today he thought he’d heard and seen it all. False pregnancy claims, varying attempts at blackmail. But claiming to look for some relic on the same spot as his future lodge was a new one. This must have taken some planning. How much was she being paid to sabotage his project and who was paying her to do it? What was the full game plan? Was she planning to fake an injury, as well? Had she set him up in New Orleans? Or was she legit?

As soon as he stepped into the house at the Circle M Ranch, he grabbed his cell and called the head of the security division at the home office in Dallas.

“Jonas? Yeah. I want someone checked out. I want to know when she lost her first baby tooth, the names of her friends in second grade, who she dated in college... I want you to turn over every rock no matter how small. Her name is Dr. Tallie Finley. She’s supposedly an archeologist with the North Texas Natural History Museum. That’s all I have.”

“That should be plenty. I’ll get right on it,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “When I finish, I’ll notify you by email?”

“Call me as soon as you have the full report. You can reach me at this number.”

“Consider it done.”

Cole hung up and slid his phone into his pocket. There had to be more to this than just a search for artifacts. No, she had to be after something more than a relic. It would be interesting to see what it was and how she went about trying to attain it.

For the first time in years, he thought of Gina. When they were newly married, he had trusted her, and she’d had his father’s blessing. But less than a year into the marriage the warning signs had begun to appear. Lying. Disappearing for an afternoon or evening, money in her private account—tens of millions of dollars—vanishing at an alarming rate. His father’s odd advice to not worry about it had sent Cole scurrying to the company’s head of security, who’d provided a report that told it all. She was involved with another man. And she was pregnant. The father of the baby remained a mystery. Cole had had reason to doubt it was his.

But then tragedy had struck and that unborn baby had never gotten to see the world. Because he’d died with Gina the fateful night she’d spun out of control on a rain-soaked road, her car going over a steep embankment and exploding in flames at the bottom of a deep ravine. The night Cole had told her to get out.

There was just something about all the coincidences surrounding Dr. Finley’s arrival that reminded him of his late wife’s deception. Was Dr. Finley trying to play him, too? He damn sure didn’t want to believe something bad about his new mystery woman, but neither did he intend to sit back and watch her destroy his plans.

Four (#ulink_2234c99a-7edc-5ee2-82ca-ba94305858ba)

Three days after meeting her face to face, Cole still couldn’t get over how Dr. Finley had taken over his land. He knew she’d settled into the trapper’s cabin, and he was fine with that. The rough conditions in there would probably hasten her departure. He’d sent ranch hands out to spy on her at varying times. The reports were all the same. During the day, she worked. At night, she soaked in the river then disappeared into the little shack. They had to be missing something. Maybe she was sneaking around at night, looking for who knew what. He decided he would go out to assess the situation for himself.

Frustrated, Cole watched her through the lenses of his binoculars and confirmed what the ranch hands had reported. She worked from sunup to sundown, went for a dip in the cool waters of the river—he had trouble taking his eyes off her voluptuous curves—and finally trudged back to the old trapper’s cabin where she presumably slept through the night. She was a damned hard worker, he’d give her that. But after three days of this nonsense, it appeared as though she’d found nothing, at least nothing she cared to share with him, and his heavy equipment still sat idle.

The next day his head of security called with the findings about Dr. Finley. Nothing out of the ordinary and nothing he could use to get rid of her. There was not one single thing she’d ever done that was suspicious. No black mark against her. Not even a gray one. She’d worked to put herself through school. Her grades had been top-notch. She’d made the dean’s list in her junior and senior years of college before going for her master’s degree then her doctorate at Tulane University. Her mother’s family was Irish. Her father was Choctaw. Her mother taught seventh and eighth grade. Her dad had been an archeologist before he was killed on a dig in Brazil four years ago. Dr. Finley had broken up with her boyfriend, an English literature professor, a year before.

But how could anyone in this day and age be that squeaky clean? How was it possible?

He zeroed in on how she’d gone to Tulane. New Orleans was a city Cole loved. In fact, the night he’d spent there was the first time in years he’d taken the opportunity to enjoy the city. Then, out of all the people who swarmed into the French Quarter on that particular Friday night, he had ended up spending it with the most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes on. That was one night, one memory, he would not soon forget. He would have never believed the next time he saw the woman she would be on his property, calling a halt to his pet construction project. It was uncanny. The chances were a billion to one. But as delighted as he was to see her again and this time to learn her name, he still would not wait ninety days to get his project back on track. Something had to give and it wouldn’t be him.

Maybe if he talked to her, reined in his temper and kept it unemotional, just business, he could make her understand how many problems she was causing. And there was no time like the present. He jumped into a pickup and headed back to the site. He easily spotted her and walked to within a couple of feet of where she worked, moving the soil with a little brush. She glanced at him briefly in acknowledgment and continued to work, all but ignoring him. She was working about halfway through the grid, slowly, methodically, gently raking the dirt then brushing over anything that might be promising.

On hands and knees, she was leaning forward over her digging spot, her butt in the air. He wouldn’t be a man if he didn’t take another long look. She had a damn fine backside. Her hair was pulled up into a messy knot that made her look sexy as hell. Her face was smudged with dirt. He didn’t know many women who would still look attractive in such a state. But it showed the commitment on Dr. Finley’s part, which was something he had to admire.

“Dr. Finley, how are you doing today?”

“Just fine,” she said, eying him suspiciously.

He cleared his throat. “I understand your dig, your search, is important to you.” Admittedly he wasn’t used to talking to someone’s backside. “But the fact is, while you are out here playing with your rake in the dirt, I’m losing thousands of dollars a day.”

“I’m sorry. That’s too bad.”

She didn’t sound sorry. “Well, the thing is, I need to finish what I’ve started.”

“If postponing your project is costing that much money, perhaps you should move it to another location,” she suggested matter-of-factly, never taking her eyes off the section of ground she was working on.

“Impossible,” he snorted. “I already have the plumbing roughed in. The forms are set. Other aspects of my project feed off of this location. It isn’t that easy to just pick up and move.”

“And if I find evidence next to one of your twenty foundations, that foundation will have to be torn out. You only have to stand down twelve weeks, maybe less.” She looked up and caught his gaze. “Surely your business dealings have taught you that sometimes you don’t get your way.”

Cole could feel the anger rising in his chest. Even more frustrating, he couldn’t escape the sheer physical pull of attraction he had for this woman.