The Barons Of Texas: Tess. Fayrene Preston

hoped it couldn’t.

      “I’ve already had breakfast. The coffee is all I want.”

      “Okay.” She glanced at her watch. A mistake. She couldn’t get the numbers to focus. Then again, he didn’t need to know that. “You have fifteen minutes before the world figures out that I’m awake and starts calling and or party stragglers come down in search of breakfast.” Cautiously she eyed a wheat roll, then tore a small part of the roll off and carefully ate it. If it stayed down, she would consider herself ahead of the game.

      “I realize what an important woman you are, and believe me, I’m very grateful to you for working me into your packed schedule.”

      He’d said it with a straight face, but a light in his eyes told her that he was mocking her. At any other time she would have called him on it, but not this morning. It would take more effort than she was willing to exert right now. Besides, in the next moment, his expression turned serious.

      He leaned back in his chair and fixed his intense amber gaze on her. “There are two things you need to know about me. One, I’m a professor of archaeology at the University of Texas, though currently I’m on sabbatical.”

      “Archaeology?” Clever cover for a sun god, she thought, and might have laughed at herself if she hadn’t been so convinced it would jar loose something in her throbbing head.

      She had to get past that sun god analogy, that amazing kiss they’d shared last night and those amber eyes of his that even now were heating her skin. She had to consider him as she would any other business person who was coming to her with a request.

      Simple.

      She just wished she knew how to do it.

      “The other thing you need to know is that in the 1880’s my great-grandfather discovered a rich vein of gold in the Sierra Madre mountains in Northern Mexico. It was an enormous find. He literally mined a fortune out of those mountains, and he had great dreams for that gold.” Nick’s voice was strong, and his gaze never once left her face. “He turned it into bullion and loaded it aboard a ship, the Águila, at the port of Tampico. The ship’s destination was here.” His index finger pointed to the table, indicating Corpus Christi. “That fortune was to be the start of a new life for him here in Texas. His plan was to buy a vast amount of land, found a great ranch and build an empire.”

      The aspirin seemed to be working a little. It had muffled the acute pounding in her head to a dull pounding. She risked another bite of the roll and washed it down with more coffee. “That’s very interesting, but what does your family’s history have to do with me and my current drilling site?”

      “Just listen. Please.”

      In many different and unusual ways, the man defined the word power, but he’d said please to her with a sincerity and a supplication she wouldn’t have thought him capable of. In that moment she knew she would sit there and listen until he finished his story. “All right.”

      “The Águila had almost reached its destination when it met a hurricane. It was a killer. At a certain point, it turned away from the land and headed back out to sea. It caught the ship up and blew it farther out into the Gulf. The waves were too high, the ship took on too much water, and it sank.”

      She rubbed her aching forehead and wondered how long hangovers lasted. “What a shame, and after he’d worked so hard.”

      “The loss of the gold all but killed him. He had what I suppose today we would call a nervous breakdown, but somehow he managed to go back to the Sierra Madre one last time. However, in his absence, other prospectors had descended on the mine, and his heart wasn’t in it anymore. He managed to extract only a meager amount before he left the mountain for good. Back in Texas, he bought a relatively small amount of land outside Uvalde and ran cattle on it until he died.”

      “It must have been very hard for him,” she said, for want of anything better to say. Nick was a compelling man who could affect her with a mere look or touch, and his story was a sad one that moved her. Yet she had a mountain of her own problems waiting for her as soon as she stepped into the house and sat down at her desk, plus she had this damn hangover to deal with.

      As if he could sense her mind wandering, Nick eyed her consideringly. “I don’t think you can imagine the full extent of how hard it was for him, because even I can’t. I only know that he was a man of great pride and felt humiliated by his failure. To build his self-esteem, he talked incessantly to the people he came to know in and around Uvalde, telling them about the great fortune that he’d wrested from the mountains, then lost. Unfortunately, none of them believed his story of how close he’d come to founding an empire, and they scorned him. He died brokenhearted.”

      Through the windows of the house, she could see Ron already handling calls, but she’d committed to hearing Nick out and that was just what she planned to do. “Your family certainly has an interesting history.”

      She’d managed half of the wheat roll, and despite the color and uncertainty of her stomach, she was pleased the roll was staying down. She still didn’t have a clue what Nick’s story had to do with her, but because of his please, she waited.

      “History, yes. History that has worked its way down through the generations. I grew up on that history. My grandfather inherited the bill of lading for the gold that had been boarded on that ship.”

      “Your great-grandfather had the bill of lading? Then why didn’t he simply show it to his neighbors?”

      “He did. They thought it was a forgery, but his son, my grandfather, never thought it was, and neither did I.”

      Over his shoulder, she saw Ron answering another phone call, and she prayed it wasn’t Jimmy Vega with yet another problem. Jimmy was the best tool pusher in the business, and she’d chosen him to supervise the entire operation. In turn, he had put together the best crew of roughnecks there was. Still, everything about this particular operation had been hard so far. They hadn’t even been drilling a week, yet time and again, the axiom that what can go wrong will go wrong had been proven true. “Again, Nick, it’s all very interesting, but—”

      “I’ve found the shipwreck and the gold.”

      Ron came striding onto the terrace, carrying the portable phone, mouthing Jimmy Vega’s name. Damn. She really did need to talk with Jimmy. But there was Nick, sitting across from her, and there was no way she would be able to focus on Jimmy as long as Nick’s amber eyes were trained so intently on her. She motioned Ron away. A look of surprise crossed his face, but he turned back to the house. “I’m sorry, Nick. What were you saying?”

      “I said I’ve found the gold and I’m ready to start excavating it.”

      “Well, congratulations.” She tried to infuse as much enthusiasm as possible into her congratulations, but she couldn’t say it with any strength or volume. Even though the percussion section in her head had quieted, the rest of the band was still playing.

      “Congratulations aren’t in order yet. I’ve got a serious problem.”

      She exhaled a long breath. “Look, Nick, I could match you problem for problem and more than likely have a stack of problems left over. I’ve listened to your story, as I said I would, but now I need to get back to work.”

      “I’m not through.”

      “I’m sorry, but you are. At least with me.” At any other time, she would gladly have lingered over her coffee and listened to Nick. He had the ability to touch and affect her in a way no other man ever had. But there was nothing normal or right about her current circumstances, and there wouldn’t be for months to come. She started to push her chair away from the table.

      “The Águila and the gold are not far from your drilling site, which is why I’m here.”

      She stilled.

      “It’s perched atop a scarp. You’re drilling in a highly overpressurized zone. It will take only one catastrophe to send the Águila sliding off that