company.
Josh ran his fingers through his hair that sprang away and curled in a tangle. “Have you called everyone to tell them?”
“Yeah, I called you, too, and no one answered.”
Josh grinned. “I got your text. When you called, I was with...a friend.”
“The redhead?”
“No, she’s gone. Sandy is a brunette. You’ll meet her, maybe. Or maybe not.”
He paused as they heard voices outside the office and he watched their oldest brother, Mike, and their sister, Lindsay, appear from his private entrance.
“Good morning,” Mike said, standing and gazing at his brothers with wide dark brown eyes. Locks of his curly black hair fell slightly on his forehead. He shed his brown leather jacket, draped it on a coatrack by the door and hung his brown broad-brimmed hat on the rack.
“Come in and sit. Where’s Scotty?” Jake asked about Mike’s two-year-old.
“Home with Mrs. Lewis.”
“Lindsay, I didn’t expect to see you this morning.”
“I had to get some supplies and Mike talked me into coming. This is great news.”
“Madison was suspicious of my motives at first, but then she bought it and said that I can look for the treasure,” Jake explained and all three siblings cheered. “You two have a chair,” Jake said and Mike sat in the other leather chair while Lindsay took a wingback.
“And Madison thinks the deed gives you land from the McCracken place?” Mike asked.
“Right,” Jake replied. “From what I’ve always understood, until now, no one outside our family knows about the deed.”
“Thank heavens,” Josh remarked.
“Madison’s going with me on the dig. That’s the only way she would agree.”
“That’s bad news,” Lindsay remarked, frowning. “You can bet her brothers will be thinking up ways for her to take advantage of this. She’ll try something sneaky.”
Mike shook his head and rolled his eyes. “She wants to get back together with you.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Jake answered. “Madison doesn’t trust me to tell her if I find the treasure. It’s that simple.”
“Watch her. I don’t think it will be that simple,” Mike said. “I agree with Lindsay. Don’t ever trust a Milan,” he said and Jake’s eyebrows arched.
“What happens if you do find the deed?” Lindsay asked.
“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
