You looked in your crystal ball, and there was the mine, right there in front of your eyes.”
Heat burned her cheeks, but to her credit, she stood her ground. “You’ll apologize to me in the future for that, Mr. Wyatt—”
“I don’t think so, Ms. Brewster. But then again, I’m not psychic.”
“Obviously not,” she said, her blue eyes glinting with triumph, “or you would know that I’m not, either. I discovered the whereabouts of the mine in some private papers in Spain.”
Far from impressed, he just looked at her. “Really? And you expect me to believe that even though people have been looking for the mine for centuries, you found papers that no one else even knew existed?”
Rainey couldn’t blame him for his skepticism. Her claim did sound outrageous. “If you’ll just take a look at what I have, you won’t regret it,” she assured him. “All I need is ten minutes.”
For a moment, she thought she had him. He hesitated, studying her consideringly. Then his jaw tightened. “I don’t know what you found in Spain, Ms. Brewster, or what you paid someone to create false documents, but you wasted your money. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do—”
Lightning quick, she stuck her foot in the door. When he gave her an arch look, she merely held out her card. “When you change your mind, call me. I’ll be in town for another week.”
Making no effort to take her card, he just looked at her. “I have no intention of changing my mind.”
Rainey rolled her eyes. God save her from stubborn men! “If people didn’t change their minds, Mr. Wyatt, they would still believe the world was flat.” Impulsively, she leaned forward and daringly tucked her card in his shirt pocket. In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought with a grin, and winked at him. “I’ll be waiting for your call.”
When he just looked down his aristocratic nose at her, she almost laughed. But her intention was to spark his interest, not irritate him, so she turned and walked away, feeling the touch of his eyes on her long after she drove away. He would call, she told herself confidently. He had to. Her father had spent years looking for the mine, and since his death, she had vowed to keep up the search in his honor. Now that she knew where the mine was, she couldn’t let Buck Wyatt stop her. She would give him a week. If he didn’t call, then she would show up on his doorstep again. Sooner or later, he was bound to give in.
Chapter 2
Rainey Brewster, Ph.D, historian, treasure hunter.
Scowling at the card she’d given him, Buck snorted. So now she was claiming to have a Ph.D. What kind of nutcase was she? Did she actually expect him to believe she’d tracked down some ancient papers in Spain and just that easily, discovered where the mine was? Yeah, right. And his great-aunt Matilda was on a first-name basis with the pope!
So just who was Rainey Brewster and what the bloody hell was she really after? Money? Why else would she have shown up on his doorstep? She claimed to have something he wanted—the location of the mine. Of course she expected him to pay for it.
If that was the case, she was nothing but a scam artist, he thought, scowling, and he’d be crazy to trust her. For all he knew, she could be after much more than just money for telling him the location of the mine. She could be after the ranch itself. If she’d hooked up with the right person, someone who felt that he was the unnamed heir in Hilda’s will, the two of them could have hatched some sort of plan to drive him away from the ranch before the year was up.
Buck tried to dismiss the idea as foolish, but he knew he couldn’t be too cautious. The town was abuzz with talk of Hilda’s unnamed heir. Was it her closest friend? A neighbor? A total stranger? The possibilities were endless, and so were his enemies, Buck thought grimly. Oh, no one had made any direct threats, or, for that matter, openly done anything to make him feel anything less than welcome, but he wasn’t a fool. The entire community of Willow Bend, Colorado, thought Hilda was the last of the Wyatts and had, no doubt, expected her to leave the place to someone in the community. Instead, she’d willed the ranch to Brits she didn’t even know, and that had to make anyone who thought they were the rightful heir bloody angry.
And who could blame them? The Broken Arrow was worth a fortune. How far would someone go to get the ranch back if they thought it rightfully should have gone to them? Considering the terms of the will, all they really had to do was keep him away from the ranch for forty-eight hours. How better to do that than to enlist the aid of a young, attractive fortune hunter who claimed she wanted to help him find the gold mine his family had been searching for for well over a century? How far would she go to keep him away from the ranch? Invite him somewhere and have car trouble? Lose her keys? Seduce him? Just what was Rainey Brewster capable of?
All too easily, he could see the spark of daring in her blue eyes when she’d leaned over and tucked her business card in his shirt. The lady was trouble with a capital T and he’d do well to steer clear of her.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one waiting for a chance to blindside him and keep him away from the ranch. All anyone needed was forty-eight hours. By the time the girls learned he was missing, they wouldn’t even have a chance to fly in from London. Just that easily, the ranch would be lost.
Furious that he didn’t have a clue which direction trouble would come from, he found it impossible to concentrate on the bills and paperwork Hilda had stuffed in boxes over the course of the last two years and just let go. He needed a break from the stress of trying to keep the place afloat, so he grabbed the keys to the Jeep, one of the two vehicles he and his sisters had inherited along with the ranch, and headed for the mountains in the distance.
Later, he couldn’t have said how long he’d been driving when he noticed the temperature gauge on the Jeep had shot into the red zone. Swearing, he braked to a grinding halt and cut the engine. Before he could step to the front of the Jeep and lift the bonnet, a cloud of steam poured out from under the hood.
“Bloody hell!”
He wasn’t a mechanic and what he’d learned about cars over the last four months wasn’t nearly enough, but even he recognized coolant when it puddled on the ground beneath the engine. And even if there’d been a jug of the stuff in the vehicle—which there wasn’t—it would have done little good. When he grabbed an old towel from the back of the Jeep and lifted the steaming-hot bonnet, he spotted the blown radiator hose instantly. Like it or not, the Jeep wasn’t going anywhere.
“Well, you wanted to get away from everything, old chap,” he told himself wryly. “Congratulations. You succeeded.”
He had, in fact, more than succeeded. Glancing back the way he had come, he only then realized that not only had he left the lower grazing land of the ranch far behind, but he was already in the foothills of the mountains. Frowning at the far horizon, he bit back a curse when he saw nothing but undeveloped ranchland all the way to the horizon. The homestead was nowhere in sight.
Swearing, he reached for his cell phone, but one look at the out of range message on the screen had him swearing in frustration. So much for calling for help, he thought in disgust. And considering the fact that David didn’t even know he was gone, the odds of the foreman coming to look for him were slim to none. There was no hope for it—he’d have to leave the Jeep and walk home. He’d be lucky if he got there by dark. Muttering curses, he started walking.
Two hours later, the sun was on its downward slide behind the mountains and his feet were killing him. Damning his footwear,
