The Texan's Forbidden Fiancée

“I show it to her and claim the land.”

“You can just act surprised there really is a deed,” Mike said. “She can’t blame you for feeling uncertain about it.”

“I won’t need to act,” Jake remarked dryly. “I will be as surprised as hell if we find a deed or anything else. I don’t really think that legend is true.”

“Something got it started and it makes sense. You know our ancestors shot and killed Milans and Milans shot and killed some of our ancestors, which is part of what started the feud,” Josh said.

“A woman got it started. She planned to marry a Calhoun and ran off with a Milan,” Mike reminded them.

“You know Madison doesn’t trust you,” Josh remarked.

“I don’t really care,” Jake replied. “If there is a deed and that deed will stand up in a court of law, then part of the Milan ranch is ours. Maybe the best part of the Milan ranch.” All were silent a moment and Jake figured the others were thinking about the prospect of owning part of the Milan ranch just as he was.

“What a deal,” Josh stated, his brown eyes on Jake. “This may get the old feud fired up again.”

“I hope we’re all more civilized today than to go shooting at each other,” Jake said. “We may start searching tomorrow. I’m going to her house tonight to look at aerial photos of her ranch and hear her theories on where to look. I sent her a copy of the map last night.”

They speculated on where the digging would take place, as they had all studied the map and the aerial photos of the Milan ranch.

“All we can do is wait and see,” Mike said. “Call one of us each night and give us a report and we’ll call the other two.”

Jake agreed.

“That old legend,” Lindsay remarked. “It would be funny if it turned out to be true.”

“It sounds likely to me,” Mike added, glancing at the others.

“I go back and forth about it,” Jake said. “I first heard it from Grandad. He said a Calhoun had a box of gold and he was trying to get away from robbers—”

“It might have been just the reverse,” Mike said. “The Calhoun ancestor may have been the robber trying to escape a posse.

“They’ve also said the shoot-out was over a Calhoun’s fiancée who ran off with a Milan and they had the shoot-out over her,” Mike stated.

“That’s what Grandad always said. He said the Calhoun got her back because he killed the Milan,” Jake said. “The deed was won by a Calhoun from a Milan and was supposed to say clearly that the land belonged to the Calhouns, and the deed was with a box of gold coins.”

“The ranch boundaries we have now weren’t clear back in the time that shoot-out happened, but that started the feud,” Mike said. “Myth or truth? Maybe we’ll finally find out with our generation.

“I’d like to come with you,” Mike added, “but I think it would cause trouble with Madison Milan to have two Calhouns.”

“No,” Jake replied. “She won’t want the Calhoun brothers going along, or our sister.”

“Frankly, I don’t want to go,” Lindsay said.

Josh stood up. “I’ve got to go. I leave for L.A. in a few hours. Good luck, bro,” he said, looking intently at Jake. “Sorry, but I don’t think you’ll find anything. If a treasure is on that ranch, it’s a needle in a haystack.”

“I’ll text all of you each night.”

“Good,” Mike said, standing with the others. “Good luck to you.”

Jake gave him a thumbs-up. He watched as his siblings left and then he sat, turning his chair to look out over Dallas while he thought about the old legend and the Milan ranch. Was it really true or was this a wild-good chase? If there was a buried treasure, was there any hope of them finding it? Actually, it might be buried on Calhoun land because to all his family’s calculations it was close to their boundary. Through the years there had been plenty of searching on the Calhoun side, but to no avail.

He thought again of Madison, remembering her perfume, the way the blue dress had clung to a figure that still took his breath away. She was a beautiful woman, poised and confident now. He hadn’t slept well last night with her filling his dreams. Memories of making love to her had plagued him, waking him, leaving him hot, sweaty and wanting her, something he didn’t want to feel. They had been kids when they had thought they were in love.

What had been a significant difference at nineteen and sixteen no longer mattered at thirty-two and twenty-nine. When he looked back on it now, he had to admit that they had been too young to marry, but at the time it hadn’t seemed that way.

Because of Pete Milan’s heavy-handed manner, Jake had never thought about the man being right until the past few years. All he could remember was her father warning him to get out of Madison’s life and disclosing that she had already accepted his offer to open art galleries for her and get her showings in the best exhibitions in the Southwest and along the West Coast—if she would call off the wedding. Her father’s promise had probably saved her several years of struggles and had made her a legitimate working artist. Evidently that was what she’d wanted the most. More than him. Jake had known instinctively that his own dad would have agreed with Pete Milan and said they were too young to marry; his mother never liked any of the Milans anyway.

He thought again of Madison, remembering holding her soft hand last night when they had the handshake on their agreement. Could he work with her and keep his hands to himself and resist flirting with her? Did he really want to resist? Was she still off-limits to his heart? Wisdom answered yes. She obviously didn’t feel kindly toward him or want to recall the past. What would it be like to be with her every day for the next week or two?

* * *

Madison bent over the map and aerial photo spread before her as she made notes. For several hours she’d tried to focus her thoughts, but too often she realized she was staring into space, lost in thought about Jake and their time together last night. She had been shocked at how handsome he looked—far more than when he had been nineteen years old. Worse, he was even more appealing to her as a man than he had been as a teenager.

She had never known if her parents had any inkling of the depth of her feelings for Jake Calhoun. It didn’t matter now.

One time their foreman, Charley, had come around the garages and seen her in her car at midnight. He had asked if her parents knew she was out and he had told her to go back inside. She had gone back, climbing in through her open bedroom window and sitting there, watching in the dark until she saw Charley disappear into the bunkhouse. She had climbed out again and taken a truck, driving across the ranch in the moonlight to meet Jake. That had been one of the last times they had been together before the night they had planned to run away and get married.