“The Lorna Doones?” Maggie felt in her pocket. “Yeah.”
“Let's eat them now. We should keep up our strength.”
Maggie handed over three cookies and bit into a fourth. “They'd be better with milk,” she said.
“Or coffee.” Barb almost moaned. “My head is pounding again. I'd kill for a cup of coffee.”
“We should set out again. I'm sure the intersection is ahead. We just haven't crawled far enough.”
“Not yet. I want to finish my cookies and rest a little.” Maggie heard the crunch of Barb's teeth on the shortbread, the sound magnified by all the rock around them. “I never told you,” Barb said after a moment. “But Carter made a pass at me once.”
Maggie almost choked on her cookie. “Carter made a pass at you? When?”
“Last year. At our annual Christmas party. He'd had a little too much to drink and caught me under the mistletoe. I think you were in the ladies' room. He kissed me; then he propositioned me. Said he was going out of town the next week, I ought to sneak off with him.”
Maggie waited for the sick feeling of betrayal that should have come, but felt only a mild revulsion. A good sign, she thought. “What did you do?”
“I told him he was sick and if he didn't sober up and apologize, I'd tell you. He tried to act like it was all a joke and begged me not to tell you. He said it would only upset you and I realized it was true, so I kept my mouth shut. I felt guilty about that after he told you he wanted a divorce. If I'd confessed then, maybe it would have saved you some heartache later.”
“I probably wouldn't have believed you,” Maggie said. “It might have damaged our friendship, and then where would I have been when he did dump me?”
“I'm sorry.” Barb gripped her hand. “I know you loved him, even though he didn't deserve your love.”
“I despised him for what he did, and the way he did itâcheating on me for God knows how long, then announcing it so coolly.” His callousness still hurt. “But we'd been together so long, more than half my life. I couldn't turn off my feelings for him like a switch.” She studied her hand around the flashlight, the nails in sad need of a manicure. For twenty years she'd had an appointment every two weeks with a nail technician. Now her hands looked like those of a completely different woman. “Carter and I had sex the week before I left to come here,” she said.
“Sex?” Barb's voice rose. “With that bastard?”
“Yeah, except when we were in bed together I wasn't thinking about him as a bastard. I was thinking about him as my husbandâthe only man I'd had sex with for twenty years.” It had felt good, a physical release, if not an emotional one. Of course later, after he left her, she'd felt used and had cried even harder. “I think he was a habit I had a hard time breaking.”
“I think I understand,” Barb said. “I can't imagine suddenly losing Jimmy after all this time. It would be like losing an arm.”
“Yeah,” Maggie agreed. “But they tell me it gets better. And here in Eureka I don't think about him quite as much.” She hefted the flashlight and pointed it down the tunnel. “Come on. I'm ready to get out of here.”
She began crawling faster, ignoring the muddy gravel digging into her palms and the sharp pains in her knees. Barb was right; she didn't remember so much rubble before, but this had to be the right way.
Five minutes later, she felt a surge of triumph as the passage widened and they emerged into a corridor tall enough to stand. “This has to be it,” she said, rising stiffly.
“Thank God.” Barb stood beside her, massaging her back. “Much more of that and I'd have been crippled for life.”
“I don't care what's in this mine, I'm not the one to get it out,” Maggie said.
“You can hire others to work it for you,” Barb said. “Maybe that Bob guy would help.”
“Bob would pocket at least half the profits for himself,” Maggie said.
They quickened their pace toward the entrance. Maggie's confidence rose as they approached the little niche with the water bottle and the saint's medal. They were definitely headed in the right direction.
A few steps more and she was blinded by a beam of light. “Hey!” she shouted, shielding her eyes.
“Maggie? Is that you?” called a masculine voice, distorted by the echo off rock.
“Who is it?” she called, squinting, spots of light dancing before her eyes.
Footsteps hurried toward her; then someone gripped her arm. “It's me, Jameso. Are you all right?” He sounded out of breath.
Maggie was having a little trouble breathing, too. She was torn between the urge to throw her arms around him and the fierce desire to hit him over the head with the flashlight. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
He put his face close to hers, the creases around his eyes sharp, his expression worried. “I was coming to rescue you,” he said.
Chapter 12
B
arb later said she thought it was romantic that Jameso, upon arriving at the house and finding her gone, though the Jeep was still in place, had followed their tracks to the mine and plunged in after them. Maggie, however, was annoyed.
“I don't need rescuing,” she told him. “This is my mine and I have a right to be in here.”
“It's dangerous,” Jameso said, his mouth set in a stubborn line. They were back at the cabin by this time, Maggie drinking coffee and waiting for her turn in the shower while Barb cleaned up. “Murph told me he put that gate up because the mine tunnels were unstable.”
“There's nothing unstable about solid rock,” Maggie said, ignoring the flutter of fear in her stomach.
“What were you doing in there anyway?” He scowled at her as if she were a child who'd misbehaved. The expression infuriated her.
“It's my mine. I wanted to see what was in there.”
“That's a stupid reason.”
“Stupid? Are you calling me stupid?” Where was that flashlight when she needed it? She looked around for something else heavy to hit him with.
“It was stupid to go in that mine, where you could have been hurt.” The lines along either side of his mouth had deepened, his nostrils flared. She'd rarely seen a man look so furious.
And so sexy. The thought ambushed her, weakening her legs so that she dropped into a chair to keep from falling. Was Jameso angry because he
cared?
She glanced at him, but he wasn't looking at her anymore. He'd moved over to the coffee maker and was refilling his cup.
“There's no gold in that old mine. Nothing of value. That's why Murph sealed it up.”
“He didn't seal it,” she said. “He put a gate over it with a lock. And I have the key. And how do you know there's nothing of value in there?”
“Because he told me there wasn't.”
“And you think my father never lied?” All she'd learned of her father so far made her believe he wouldn't hesitate to make up whatever story he thought was necessary.
“He wouldn't lie to me.”
Their eyes met and she saw the real hurt in his gaze. Because Murphy might have lied to him? Because Maggie was doubting him? The emotion in those brown depths made her uncomfortable. She looked away. “Why did you come all the way up here this afternoon?” she asked.
“I wanted to let Barbara know I returned the moving van. And to give her these.” He reached into his pocket and took out a pair of black cat-eye sunglasses, rhinestones at the rim.
“You could have left them on the front porch.”
“I started to when no one answered my knock. Then I noticed the Jeep was still here.”
“You didn't think we might have gone for a hike?”
He made a face. “Barbara didn't strike me as the hiking type. But yeah, I might have thought that, if your tracks didn't lead down the path to the mine. On the way up here yesterday she peppered me with questions about the place. I figured she'd talked you into investigating.”
“It's
my
mine,” Maggie said again. “Why shouldn't I investigate it?”
“Suit yourself.” He tossed the sunglasses onto the table. “I don't know why I bother trying to reason with you.”
“Why
do
you bother?” Why did he give two cents what happened to her?
“Your dad meant a lot to me.”
“The night we met, you made it sound like you didn't even like him much.”
“I was angry at him for dying. He'd still be around if he took better care of himself.”
“You can't know that. Maybe it was just his time.” She winced inwardly at the words. She didn't believe that; it was just something people said as a kind of false comfort.
“Now you sound like Danielle,” Jameso said. “She and Janelle think everything happens for a reason. That everything's connected.”
If a person followed that way of thinking, Carter left Maggie so that she'd be on her own when her father died and left her this place. And she'd come here why? To get rich from what may or may not be gemstones in the mine? To meet Jameso?
The last thought sent a tremor through her that was definitely more fear than desire. The last thing she trusted right now was her ability to have anything like a healthy relationship with a man. Especially one she felt wasn't being entirely truthful to her, about his relationship with her father or his reasons for always showing up on her doorstep.
“My father wasn't overly concerned about my well-being, so I don't see why you should be either,” she said.
She waited for him to offer up some defense of her father, readying her own reply, welcoming the opportunity to give full vent to her emotions.
Instead, he surprised her by stepping forward, his hand cradling her cheek, the tenderness of the gesture and the softness in his eyes like a blanket smothering the fire of her anger. “You deserve someone who cares about you, Maggie,” he said, his voice a rough caress. “You deserve the best.”
Then he turned and left, leaving her wondering if she'd imagined the moment, though her cheek still felt warm where he'd held her.
Â
“And in this blessed valley we shall found a town, Eureka! For here we have indeed found true treasure.”
Cassie had no idea if her great-grandfather had ever said any such thing, and he hadn't exactly named the town. He'd sold a bunch of his land at bargain prices to a group of miners and their hangers-on, and a town had just sort of happened. But a play needed drama, so Cassie had no qualms about adding it when necessary. The basic facts were still there: without her great-grandfather, there wouldn't be a town, at least not right here.
“Excuse me.”
Cassie stared at the computer screen, frowning. After the miners cheered, what should happen next? Should they carry Festus Wynock around on their shoulders? Or break into song?
“Excuse me. Lady?”
Cassie turned and confronted two watery blue eyes behind round spectacles. It was that strange kid again, Lucille's grandson. “What do you want?” she snapped. “Can't you see I'm busy?”
The boy didn't even blink, just continued to stare at her. “I have a paper to write,” he said. “I need to see all your books on local mining.”
First Indians, now mining. What was it with this kid? “I showed you before where the local history section is. Did you look there?”
“There's a sign that says some books are locked up behind the front desk and are available upon request.” He nudged his glasses farther up his nose. “I'm requesting.”
“You're not old enough.” She turned back to her computer, but her train of thought was derailed. She'd moved the most valuable historical booksâthe ones that had belonged to her familyâto a locked case after Jacob Murphy had walked off with one. If it wouldn't have been so much trouble explaining things to the library board, she'd have taken them all home.
“Are they porn or something?”
Of all the . . . Cassie whirled to face him. “We do not keep pornography in this library,” she said.
“Then I'm old enough to read the books,” he said.
Cassie was ready to refuse him, but she knew what that would lead to. He'd run tell his grandmother, the mayor. Then Lucille would show up to tell Cassie why she had to hand over the books. It wasn't worth the trouble.
She stood, deliberately taking her time, and pulled a clutch of keys from her pocket. “You may only examine the books in my presence, and you may under no circumstances remove them from the library.”
“Whatever.”
What was wrong with parents today, allowing such bad manners? Her father would have locked her in her room for a week if he'd heard her address one of her elders as this boy talked to her.
She opened the bookcase and indicated a trio of brown leather-bound volumes at the end of the top row. “Those books mention mining in this area.”
“I'll need any books you have on Indians, too,” he said, helping himself to the three books, plucking them off the shelf all three at once with hands that were surprisingly big for a boy his age.
Jake had had hands like that, with long fingers and bony joints, a smattering a red-gold hairs across the knuckles . . .
“Do you know if any of these say anything about the Ute Indians mining gold?” the boy asked, flipping through one of the books.
“The Indians didn't mine the gold,” she said. “The miners did.”
“The Indians did, too,” he said, his expression hardening.
Whatever,
Cassie thought, but she didn't say it. She didn't have time to spar with this boy. “You can sit at the table there and look through the books.” She pointed to a wooden table closest to the checkout desk. “Let me know when you're finished.”
She returned to her desk, and to the half-finished play on her computer, but her concentration had been destroyed. When she tried to write more dialogue for her great-grandfather, she heard Jacob Murphy instead, asking to see those same books about mining. He'd probably been the last person besides Cassie to crack them open. She'd been taken in by his big smile like everybody else. God, when she thought of the way everyone had carried on at his memorial service. You'd have thought the town's patron saint had expired. The man was nothing but a thief and a bully. Why was Cassie the only one who could see that?
“Is there anything in these books about mining other things besides gold?”
The boy was speaking too loudly for a library; he was too lazy to get up from the table and approach her like a considerate person. “Keep your voice down,” Cassie hissed, in the loud whisper perfected by librarians everywhere.
“I said, is there anything in these books about mining stuff besides gold?” He copied her whisper, overenunciating in a way that might have been mocking. Was he mocking her?
“This is your paper. You do the research yourself.” She turned her attention back to her computer, hands poised over the keyboard as if the words would pour forth at any moment.
She heard a chair scrape back against the floor and sneakers squeaking across the room. “What are you working on?” the boy asked, looming over her shoulder like a gangly birdâ an ostrich or an emu, something with a spindly neck and beady eyes.
It was too late to shield the screen from his view. “I'm writing a play about the founding of the town,” she said. “For our Pioneer Heritage Festival.” She's always thought heritage festival sounded better than Hard Rock Days, which had led more than one tourist to expect long-haired leather bands and giant amplifiers instead of pretend miners and water fights in the street.
“People sure talked funny in the old days.” He squinted at the screen. “Who's Festus Wynock?”
“He was my great-grandfather. He founded this town. The land this building sits on used to belong to my family.”
“If he had all that land, what are you doing working in a library?”
Cassie started to tell him it was none of his business, but when she opened her mouth, the truth came out instead. “Festus was a lousy businessman. He lost a lot of the family money through poor management, and my grandfather and father lost most of the rest.” She still had the house and some old books and antiques, but the family history was her only real legacy.
“I don't even know my father,” the boy said. “And my grandfather, at least the one I know, is a tool.”
Cassie had no idea what he meant by tool, but apparently nothing good. “My grandmother was a wonderful person,” she said. “She was smart and beautiful and kept my grandfather from making even bigger mistakes.”
“I don't know my grandmother all that well, but she seems pretty cool.”
Shrewd was the word Cassie might have used to describe Lucilleâmuch like Cassie's own grandmother, God rest her soul. Cassie respected her, though the women would never be friends.
This boy intrigued her, though, even as he annoyed her. “Tell me your name again,” she demanded.
“Lucas,” he said, eyeing her warily.
“Lucas, I want you to be in my play,” she said. “You can be the messenger boy who announces the discovery of gold in the mountains above town.”
He shook his head, backing away. “I don't want to be in any play,” he said.
“Nonsense. You'll be perfect for the role.” She hadn't actually written that part yet, but she would. She turned back to the computer. “I'll notify you when rehearsals begin.”
He might have mumbled another protest, but she was too engrossed in the words on the screen to hear. What this play needed was a villain. A good-looking, silver-tongued swindler who'd pull the wool over everyone's eyes. And a heroine, the courageous daughter of the town founder, who would see the handsome devil for the snake he truly was.