One Night With The Texan. Lauren Canan

a high dive off the nearest cliff.

      With a sigh she hammered the first stake into the ground. Then another. By sunset she’d marked off an area of about one hundred and twenty square feet, and divided it into smaller sections. She’d been able to examine the first four grids. Tomorrow she would set up the sifting box and, with shovel in hand, she would be on her way to discovery. She hoped.

      Grabbing her tools, she returned to the trapper’s cabin, dropped the hammer and remaining stakes on the floor just inside the door and stared at the bed, such that it was. It was going to be a long night.

      * * *

      Cole walked from the helipad toward the house, still in disbelief, livid that Tallie Finley’s dig was allowed to supersede his project and slow things to a crawl. It was ironic that on the day...the day...they were to pour the foundation she had received her permit from Judge Mitchell and shut Cole down. Unbelievable. Even more incredible was that he’d checked with his lawyers eight ways from Sunday and there was nothing he could do about the court order. The only silver lining was that he would have the opportunity to get to know this irresistible woman much better.

      Since the day he’d left college his efforts had focused on company business, improving and doing his part to make Masters Corporation, LLC, one of the leading real-estate companies in Texas if not the entire United States. Days turned into nights that turned back into days as he’d worked. He’d flown countless miles, attended innumerable meetings. But it had always been for the family business; he’d never ventured out on his own. This project to build a world-class corporate retreat where Fortune 500 companies could send their executives for training and relaxation was special in that it was his. It was his chance to accomplish something important without company backing. He would prove his worth to his brothers and, more importantly, to himself. At the age of thirty-four he would finally be able to say, I did that. It wasn’t about the money or acclaim. It was the sense of accomplishment and the pride.

      The planning had taken years but the end was in sight. The announcement and a brochure detailing the project had gone out to the business leaders and entrepreneurs on almost every continent in the world. An invitation to tour the site had been sent to several prominent CEOs in the U.S. with the hope they would invest in the project. How uncharacteristically naive of him to think at this stage nothing would go wrong.

      He’d never seen it coming. Just like before, when he’d found out about his ex-wife’s cheating, he’d once again been caught with his pants down. If anyone had told him a month ago that a one-hundred-and-twenty-five-pound woman could shut down a multimillion-dollar project with a piece of paper and some orange string, he would have laughed in their face. He wasn’t laughing now. He had to wonder if she was a part of a bigger plan by one of his corporate enemies to sabotage his project. If not, he had to be open to the possibility that she was working on her own in an attempt to gain some of his wealth. Did she know who he was and was she only acting a part? He’d learned three years ago just how deceptive a woman could be.

      Even after the sheer hell he’d been through with his ex-wife, until today he thought he’d heard and seen it all. False pregnancy claims, varying attempts at blackmail. But claiming to look for some relic on the same spot as his future lodge was a new one. This must have taken some planning. How much was she being paid to sabotage his project and who was paying her to do it? What was the full game plan? Was she planning to fake an injury, as well? Had she set him up in New Orleans? Or was she legit?

      As soon as he stepped into the house at the Circle M Ranch, he grabbed his cell and called the head of the security division at the home office in Dallas.

      “Jonas? Yeah. I want someone checked out. I want to know when she lost her first baby tooth, the names of her friends in second grade, who she dated in college... I want you to turn over every rock no matter how small. Her name is Dr. Tallie Finley. She’s supposedly an archeologist with the North Texas Natural History Museum. That’s all I have.”

      “That should be plenty. I’ll get right on it,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “When I finish, I’ll notify you by email?”

      “Call me as soon as you have the full report. You can reach me at this number.”

      “Consider it done.”

      Cole hung up and slid his phone into his pocket. There had to be more to this than just a search for artifacts. No, she had to be after something more than a relic. It would be interesting to see what it was and how she went about trying to attain it.

      For the first time in years, he thought of Gina. When they were newly married, he had trusted her, and she’d had his father’s blessing. But less than a year into the marriage the warning signs had begun to appear. Lying. Disappearing for an afternoon or evening, money in her private account—tens of millions of dollars—vanishing at an alarming rate. His father’s odd advice to not worry about it had sent Cole scurrying to the company’s head of security, who’d provided a report that told it all. She was involved with another man. And she was pregnant. The father of the baby remained a mystery. Cole had had reason to doubt it was his.

      But then tragedy had struck and that unborn baby had never gotten to see the world. Because he’d died with Gina the fateful night she’d spun out of control on a rain-soaked road, her car going over a steep embankment and exploding in flames at the bottom of a deep ravine. The night Cole had told her to get out.

      There was just something about all the coincidences surrounding Dr. Finley’s arrival that reminded him of his late wife’s deception. Was Dr. Finley trying to play him, too? He damn sure didn’t want to believe something bad about his new mystery woman, but neither did he intend to sit back and watch her destroy his plans.

Four

      Three days after meeting her face to face, Cole still couldn’t get over how Dr. Finley had taken over his land. He knew she’d settled into the trapper’s cabin, and he was fine with that. The rough conditions in there would probably hasten her departure. He’d sent ranch hands out to spy on her at varying times. The reports were all the same. During the day, she worked. At night, she soaked in the river then disappeared into the little shack. They had to be missing something. Maybe she was sneaking around at night, looking for who knew what. He decided he would go out to assess the situation for himself.

      Frustrated, Cole watched her through the lenses of his binoculars and confirmed what the ranch hands had reported. She worked from sunup to sundown, went for a dip in the cool waters of the river—he had trouble taking his eyes off her voluptuous curves—and finally trudged back to the old trapper’s cabin where she presumably slept through the night. She was a damned hard worker, he’d give her that. But after three days of this nonsense, it appeared as though she’d found nothing, at least nothing she cared to share with him, and his heavy equipment still sat idle.

      The next day his head of security called with the findings about Dr. Finley. Nothing out of the ordinary and nothing he could use to get rid of her. There was not one single thing she’d ever done that was suspicious. No black mark against her. Not even a gray one. She’d worked to put herself through school. Her grades had been top-notch. She’d made the dean’s list in her junior and senior years of college before going for her master’s degree then her doctorate at Tulane University. Her mother’s family was Irish. Her father was Choctaw. Her mother taught seventh and eighth grade. Her dad had been an archeologist before he was killed on a dig in Brazil four years ago. Dr. Finley had broken up with her boyfriend, an English literature professor, a year before.

      But how could anyone in this day and age be that squeaky clean? How was it possible?

      He zeroed in on how she’d gone to Tulane. New Orleans was a city Cole loved. In fact, the night he’d spent there was the first time in years he’d taken the opportunity to enjoy the city. Then, out of all the people who swarmed into the French Quarter on that particular Friday night, he had ended up spending it with the most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes on. That was one night, one memory, he would not soon forget. He would have never believed the next time he saw the woman she would be on