Fortune Hunter's Hero

If her father had been here, everything would have been perfect. Instead, Buck Wyatt would be at her side, working with her to find the mine.

Her heart stopped in midbeat just at the thought, and that bothered her far more than she liked to admit. The last man who’d stopped her heart that way had also been incredibly good looking and charming. Carl. Just thinking about him tied her stomach in knots. She was eighteen when she met him and had just graduated from high school. He’d wined her and dined her and, worse yet, he’d said all the right things. He’d claimed he hated working in his family’s hardware business and couldn’t wait for the day when he could quit and join her and her father hunting treasure, and she’d fallen for him—and his story—hook, line and sinker.

He’d lied.

No, she corrected herself. He’d done a hell of a lot more than lie. He’d manipulated her and come close to trapping her in a life he was determined to force on her. He’d never had any intention of leaving the hardware store. Instead, he’d pressured her to give up treasure hunting and stay home and have babies. She wasn’t ready for children, and when he promised he would give her time, she thought she could make things work. But the wheels came off the wagon when he not only refused to let her search for a fortune in stolen bank money in Wisconsin, but also washed her birth control pills down the drain with the announcement that he’d decided they were going to have a baby now. She, according to him, didn’t get a vote.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Just thinking about that day still had the power to infuriate her. Outraged that he’d thought he could dictate to her when she had to have a baby, she’d walked out and filed for divorce the very next day. She’d sworn then that she was done with marriage.

Never again, she promised herself. She wasn’t setting herself up for that kind of heartache again. She knew who she was and what she was, and she wasn’t letting any man mold her into what he wanted her to be.

But there was something about Buck….

Irritated with herself for even letting that particular thought surface, she drove through the entrance to the Broken Arrow and reminded herself that the only reason she was here was because of the mine. Okay, so Buck was one of those men who could walk into a room full of people and draw the eye of every female in sight. That didn’t mean that she intended to give him so much as a second look. She was a professional and planned to stay focused on the treasure. Nothing else mattered.

Her resolve firmly in place, she felt her heart kick into overdrive as she braked to a stop in the circular driveway in front of the house. She had her map, her notes, but she knew it would take more than that to find the mine. The ranch was huge—it covered thousands of acres of trees and canyons and mountains. How much had the landscape changed since the first missionaries arrived and excavated the mine? There must have been earthquakes and landslides and forest fires that forever altered the face of the land. What if everything she found in Spain no longer applied to any section of the ranch? Then what?

Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t realize that Buck had opened the front door and was watching her until he stepped over to her VW bug and knocked on her window. Startled, she jumped and glanced up to find him watching her through the window in amusement. “What are you doing?”

“I was just about to ask you the same thing.” He chuckled. “You’ve been sitting there, staring into space for the last ten minutes. If you’re having second thoughts about searching for the mine with me, don’t feel like you have to. I’ll certainly understand if you want to back out. The land’s pretty rugged—”

Her chin came up at that. “I’ve searched for buried treasure all over the world and I haven’t had to back out of a search yet. Don’t worry about me, Mr. Wyatt. I can take care of myself.”

“Buck,” he reminded her with a knowing smile. “The name’s Buck. You don’t mind calling me by my first name, do you?”

Just that easily, he put her on the spot. For all of five seconds, she considered admitting that she did have a problem with his request, but she couldn’t. Then he would realize that he only had to look at her in a certain way, and she couldn’t think straight. Her heart tripped, her breath caught in her throat and she couldn’t focus. It was totally ridiculous!

Suddenly realizing he was watching every shift in her expression, she stiffened. “Of course I don’t mind calling you by your first name, Buck,” she said coolly. “Why would I?”

“Why, indeed?” he asked, grinning. Stepping around her car, he opened the door for her. “Now that we have that settled, we need to plan our search. Have you had breakfast? I was waiting for you. We’ll go over your notes while we eat. How do you like your eggs?”

“Oh, I don’t usually eat breakfast.”

“Well, maybe it’s time you did,” he teased as she followed him into the kitchen. “Now…about those eggs. How’d you say you like them?”

She wasn’t really hungry—she was too excited—but it was probably going to be a long day and there was no McDonald’s out in the middle of the ranch. “Scrambled,” she sighed. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Toast,” he told her, nodding toward the toaster on the counter near the microwave. “I’ll take three. There are also English muffins in the refrigerator, if you like.”

Somehow, without quite knowing how it happened, Rainey found herself making breakfast with Buck and feeling as if they’d done it a thousand times before. She was far more intrigued than she liked. There was no question that he knew his way around the kitchen, at least when it came to breakfast. Cracking eggs one-handed, he whisked them with an expert hand, then poured them into the melted butter in a hot skillet before she even had the bread in the toaster.

Where had he learned to cook? she wondered as her gaze wandered freely over his long, lean frame. What woman had stood at his side at a stove and taught him how to crack eggs, how to scramble them so that they were so light and fluffy that they looked like they’d just melt in your mouth? Were they lovers? Had they had late-night cooking lessons after they’d made love? Had he loved her? Did he still?

Why did she care?

His eyes on the eggs he was cooking, he glanced up suddenly and caught her watching him. “What?” he asked, his smile crooked. “The men you date don’t cook?”

Heat stung her cheeks, and she looked quickly away. “Actually, I don’t date,” she retorted stiffly. “I don’t have time. But my ex-husband didn’t even know where the kitchen was.”

“Ah, so you have an ex. Kids?”

“No. How about you?”

“An ex-fiancée,” he said flatly. “She broke things off when I moved to America.”

Shocked, she blurted out, “Just because you moved? She must not have loved you very much.” Too late, she realized what she’d said and quickly apologized. “I’m sorry! I had no right to say that. I don’t know the woman. Whatever happened between the two of you is your business.”

“Don’t apologize,” he told her as he carried the skillet of eggs to the kitchen table. “You’re right on the money. She’d be here if she really loved me. At the very least, she would have tried to find a compromise. Instead, she handed me my ring back. There was nothing else to discuss.”

Suddenly realizing he was telling the details of his private life to a complete stranger, he quickly changed the subject. “Enough of that. Is the toast ready? Let’s eat.”

The wooden table that sat before the old rock fireplace at the far end of the kitchen was worn and scarred from use by generations of Wyatts. Taking a seat across from Rainey, the warmth of the morning fire at his back, Buck silently acknowledged that he wasn’t a fanciful man. But as he watched Rainey dig into the eggs she really hadn’t wanted, he could almost feel his ancestors crowding into the room, hovering close as they waited for word on the whereabouts of the mine.

You’re losing it, old chap, he told himself, shaking off his imaginings. There was no such thing as ghosts, and if there were, surely they wouldn’t need Rainey Brewster to tell them where the mine was. That kind of thing had to be common knowledge in heaven.

Swallowing a silent groan at that thought—what was he thinking?—he finished his eggs, then sat back in his chair to study her with sharp eyes. “Okay, back to the mine. If it’s not near the Indians’ summer camp, then where is it?”

“In a canyon that runs east and west,” she said promptly, and pulled out the small map she took with her everywhere. “I copied this from the records I discovered in Barcelona. This canyon is where the mine is,” she told him, pointing out the canyon that looked like nothing more than a bunch of meaningless lines. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but there’s a place on this ranch that looks just like this. The Ute Indians considered it haunted. They wouldn’t go near it, so the last thing they would have done was camp near it. There’s no way the mine is near the Indians’ summer camp.”

Buck frowned. “The ranch library is full of books about the Utes in this area of Colorado. I don’t remember reading anything about a haunted canyon. And I certainly haven’t see any canyon on the ranch that looks even vaguely like your map.”

“It must be incredibly remote,” she replied. “As for any mention of the haunted canyon, I never ran across any reference to it, either,” she replied, “until I went to Spain. Maybe they didn’t talk about it. It’s not uncommon for certain tribes to not speak of their fears of the spirit world. They were a suspicious lot. They would have been afraid of empowering the demons that inhabited such places.”

Buck couldn’t argue with her logic, but she didn’t have a clue how complicated she’d just made their search. “Do you have any idea how many canyons there are on this ranch?” he demanded, frustrated. “There are fifty square miles of them! The mine could be in any one of them. If that’s all you’ve got,” he said, motioning to the map she was folding to return to her purse, “then you’ve made a trip out here for nothing.”

“But that’s not all,” she said when he rose to collect the dishes and carry them to the sink. “There’s a stream that hugs the north wall of the canyon.”

“There are streams all over the ranch, and they all look alike.”

“And there’s a bell—”

Frowning, he gave her a sharp look. “What bell?”

“The missionaries brought it with them from Spain.”

“Yes, I know,” he said. “The Spaniards took it back to Spain after the mine was lost in the landslide. It’s in a museum in Madrid.”

“No, that’s the ship’s bell,” she corrected him. “The bell that I’m talking about was forged in Italy. The bell in the museum is from Portugal. I know. I’ve seen it.”

There was no doubting her sincerity. “So where’s the bell?”

“According to the records in Spain, it never left Colorado,” she replied.

“So it was lost in the avalanche.”

“There’s always that possibility,” she agreed, “but I don’t think so. According to one missionary’s diary, the bell was located a hundred yards due north of the mine’s entrance. For all we know, it’s still there.”