Tempting Fate

by Stacy Finz

  “That Rosser girl is all anyone is talking about.” Owen pulled a pair of shears from his drawer and started snipping away at Gabe’s sides.

  “Not too much.” He covered the side of his head and Owen slapped his hand away. “What’s everyone saying?”

  “That she’s selling that land behind Rosser Ranch. Folks are worried about what’ll go in there. No one wants a Hilton.”

  Gabe stifled a laugh. A Hilton? As if that was even a remote possibility.

  “The Millers are worried a big-box store will come in and put Farm Supply out of business.”

  “Nugget’s population won’t support a big box store.” That was the other thing about the good residents of Nugget: they had delusions of grandeur.

  “Tell Sam Walton that.”

  “Last I looked, he was dead, Owen.”

  “You know what I mean.” Owen pinned him with a look. “I’m personally concerned that one of those cults will come in, like them Branch Davidians.”

  Where did he cook this shit up? “A Fantastic Sams would be a welcomed addition.” Gabe said it just to get a rise out of Owen.

  Owen didn’t take the bait, rambling on about all the possible businesses that would vie for the land, including a pot farm, which Gabe thought was more likely than a cult or a Costco. Realistically, though, someone would probably want the land to run cattle. Gabe wouldn’t be surprised if the offer had come from one of the local ranchers. Clay McCreedy, Flynn Barlow, even Lucky Rodriguez was a good guess.

  “That girl planning to stay?” Owen asked.

  “Raylene? Nah, she’s going back to LA after the wedding.”

  “She sure pulled the wool over our eyes. Back in the day, she was a sweet little thing. Rodeo queen, champion barrel racer, volunteer at the Elks annual pancake breakfast, real active in the community. Even so, Ray was hard on the girl, publicly laying into her enough times to make me wonder what was going on behind closed doors. But what do you do? You can’t go around telling people how to rear their kids.”

  Nope, Gabe thought. Not unless you witnessed actual abuse. But in a close-knit town like this…someone should’ve known.

  “Back then,” Owen continued, “she and Lucky were attached at the hip. Ray didn’t like his daughter trucking with a Mexican boy, especially since his mama was the help. He never made a secret about it, and to tell you the truth it made me sick.”

  Ray Rosser sounded like a grade-A prick. As far as Gabe was concerned, Logan had dodged a bullet when Rosser refused to claim him as his son. Raylene, not so much. She’d had the misfortune of being groomed by Ray to be his protégée.

  It told Gabe more than he wanted to know. He’d always had a soft spot for the misunderstood—not that he was ready to give Raylene the benefit of the doubt. But there was definitely more to the spoiled rich girl than everyone saw. Everyone but Logan. And Gabe had always found his partner to be a good judge of character.

  “There you go.” Owen twirled the chair around and gave Gabe a hand mirror so he could get a view of the back of his head.

  “Looks good.”

  “You’ll pass muster.” Owen lathered up Gabe’s chin and reached for a straight-edge razor.

  “Don’t get too wild with that thing.”

  Owen laughed. “I’ve been shaving men since before you were born.”

  The barber certainly knew his stuff. Closest shave Gabe ever had.

  Outside, the cold stung his face as he walked to his SUV. It was still too early to head over to the farm, and he wasn’t in the mood for paperwork. Out of obligation—at least that’s what he told himself—he called Raylene.

  “You at Logan’s?”

  “I’m in my truck, in the driveway. Logan’s parents just got here.”

  “Go in and introduce yourself,” he told her.

  “Scared.”

  Gabe’s lips tipped up. Nick was a badass, and could be daunting as hell, but that’s not what Raylene was afraid of, Gabe knew. It was Maisy, though Raylene had nothing to fear. Even if Maisy wasn’t the sweetest woman on earth, she was the one who’d been the so-called homewrecker. Raylene hadn’t even been born when Ray started his affair with Logan’s mom. “Meet me for lunch, then.”

  “Why?”

  “Gotta eat.”

  “Okay. Where?”

  “You’ve got two choices.”

  Raylene groaned. “Fine, the Ponderosa. I’m not eating at the Bun Boy. Ever.”

  Gabe laughed. It was too cold anyway. The burger drive-through only had outdoor seating. And the Ponderosa had sort of become his home away from home when he wasn’t loitering at Logan and Annie’s. Although his little apartment had a full kitchen, he never touched it. “I’m right outside the restaurant. I’ll grab us a table.”

  Gabe crossed the square and felt the warm air as soon as he entered the restaurant.

  “Hey, Gabe.” Today it was Mariah, Sophie’s other half, working hostess duties. Gabe didn’t say “better” because the dynamic duo were both great. Smart, beautiful, sophisticated, older, and, unfortunately, not into men.

  “What’s happening?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Oh, you know, wedding twenty-four seven.”

  She laughed. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  He ordered a plate of super nachos and a beer and read the Nugget Tribune on his phone while he waited for Raylene. He wondered what she’d been up to all day, besides her meeting at the real estate office.

  Ten minutes later, she swept into the Ponderosa in her rhinestone jeans and her turquoise cowboy boots. No frog hogs at McPatrick’s in Coronado ever dressed like that. Their look ran more toward spray tans, bikini tops, and flip-flops, which Gabe liked just fine. But Raylene…let’s just say he was growing partial to cowgirls.

  “You want a beer?” He started to call a server over but Raylene stopped him.

  “I’ll get a cup of coffee when the waiter takes our order.” She took off her jacket and hung it on a hook on the wall.

  “So you ran out before meeting Maisy, huh?”

  “I got a decent look at her coming out of the Winnebago. She’s different than I expected.” She unwrapped the scarf around her neck and draped it over an extra chair.

  Gabe made a Herculean effort not to check out her rack—and failed. “How’d you think she’d be?”

  “I don’t know, kind of slutty.”

  Gabe would’ve laughed, except they were talking about Logan’s mom, a woman he happened to adore. “Cut her a break, Ray. She was barely out of her teens when she met your old man. According to Logan, he seduced her, not the other way around.”

  Raylene shrugged, her mouth forming an affected pout that had probably won over more than a fair share of men. But Gabe saw right through it. Her whole self-entitled schtick was nothing but an act. Armor for the insecure.

  “I heard you had a meeting with Dana McBride this morning.”

  She flipped through Gabe’s menu. “Word always did travel fast in Bumfuck.”

  The nachos came and Gabe handed her one of the small plates the server had left on the table. “What else did you do?”

  She took a sip of water and stared at him over the rim of the glass. “Trespassed.”

  “Yeah?” He arched a brow, trying to act disapproving when for him B&E was just another day at work. “Where?”

  “Rosser Ranch.” She scooped up one of the cheese-laden chips, dipped it in a mound of guacamole, and popped it in her mouth.

  “I hear Flynn Barlow is a good shot.” He and his wife, Gia Treadwell, owned Rosser Ranch now. While Flynn wouldn’t shoot Raylene on sight, he wouldn’t be too happy about her roaming his property. “What were you doing over there?”

  “Checking it out.”

  This was exactly the reason Logan had put Gabe on Raylene duty. Leave the woman alone long e
nough and she’d cause an international incident.

  “Not the best idea, don’t you think?”

  “It was my ranch first.” She pouted again, and Gabe got the sense she was lying. Not about the ranch being hers first—that was uncontested—but about how she’d spent the day. She was trying to throw him off.

  “What’d you think of that new addition they put on the house?”

  “Tacky.”

  Yeah, she was lying, all right. There was no new addition. The place was already large enough to fit an entire battalion. Raylene was up to something, and his sixth sense told him that whatever it was, it was no good.

  He arched a brow. “Tacky, huh?”

  Raylene started to say something, then her attention snapped to the front of the restaurant, where Tawny Rodriguez had just come through the door. A couple sitting by the window, wearing matching bear hoodies, waved to her. She waved back and walked straight to the bar, presumably to pick up a takeout order.

  That was the thing about a small town: you couldn’t avoid your enemies.

  “Shit,” Raylene muttered.

  “Are you planning to kiss me again?”

  She snorted and snatched up the menu to hide her face, trying to make herself as small as possible.

  Gabe tilted his head. “With those turquoise boots, she can see you from a mile away.” Especially because Tawny was a boot designer and had footwear radar. Her custom shit-kickers donned the feet of celebrities, athletes, and a veritable who’s who of the West. And probably the East, North, and South. “I’m guessing those”—he pointed at her feet—“are not hers.”

  “Good guess, New Jersey,” she sneered. “Tell me when she’s gone.”

  “Seriously? You’re going to sit in the corner and cower? I thought you were tough, Ray.”

  She gave him a middle-finger salute, then feigned interest in the condiment caddy. He scarfed down a few more nachos, took a swig of beer, and waited for Tawny to leave before declaring the coast clear.

  “What are you planning to do at the wedding? Hole up in the head?” Between Maisy and Tawny, Raylene was already running scared.

  She let out a breath. “I haven’t figured it out yet.” She swiped a chip and pointed it at him. “I’m trying not to make a spectacle out of myself. Believe it or not, what you saw in Denver isn’t who I am.”

  Who was she kidding? From everything Gabe had heard—and seen—it was exactly who she was. “Really? Folks are still talking about your episode at the Gas and Go.”

  “I was drunk.”

  “It’s okay, Ray, we’ve all done our fair share of regrettable things.” Lord knew he had. One of his had been a redhead with a pissed off boyfriend. He’d like to say another was babysitting the blonde across the table, but he was enjoying himself too much.

  “Like what?” She sat up.

  “I went off to war and made my mama cry.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You steal that from a country-western song, New Jersey?”

  “I don’t listen to that shit. Classic rock, mainly.” He leaned across the table and brushed tortilla chip crumbs from her sweater. “I got my high school sweetheart pregnant.” He never talked about it, but the words had tumbled out of his mouth, and now he was stuck with them.

  “And let me guess, you joined the Navy to do your patriotic duty and stuck her with a kid to raise, alone.”

  “Cynic doesn’t look good on you, Ray. Actually, Bianca lost the baby, then I ran off to join the Navy.” That wasn’t the whole story, but that was all he was telling her.

  They both had their secrets. And tomorrow he was going to find out what hers were.

  Chapter 6

  Raylene loaded a shovel and a pickax into her truck early the next morning. Between Annie and Logan, there was no shortage of tools in the garage, which saved Raylene a trip to the hardware store. Logan and Annie had taken Maisy and Nick to breakfast in town, so Raylene figured it was okay to help herself.

  Maisy had turned out to be a delight, Nick hysterical, telling one joke after another. Neither seemed to hold any ill will against Raylene, despite the fact that originally she’d tried to cut Logan out of his inheritance. God, she’d been too stupid to live back then, and often wondered why God hadn’t sent down a lightning bolt to strike her over the head.

  With the map tucked securely under her floor mat, she felt like a 49er, setting out to strike it rich. Nugget was a Gold Rush town, after all. She put some Garth Brooks on the stereo, turned it up loud, and headed out, hoping to find Levi’s Gold before tonight’s rehearsal dinner. Then she could tell Dana to accept Moto Entertainment’s offer and be watching a Santa Monica sunset by Monday.

  Two hours later, she cursed the cold, hard dirt under her feet and flung the stupid map onto the driver’s seat. She felt a blister on the heel of her left foot. Despite the old song lyrics, her boots were not made for walking. They were made for a pair of sterling silver-studded stirrups.

  She bent down and held her knees, trying to catch her breath. It was twenty degrees, but her skin was clammy with sweat from digging. Knowing her luck, if she worked without a jacket she’d catch pneumonia.

  Raylene straightened up and poked at her hand where the skin had cracked. If she’d been thinking, she would’ve worn gloves.

  Only one hundred and ninety-nine acres to go. I’ll be crippled by then.

  She got in her truck and examined the map again, then peered out at the land. If she was reading it right, the gold was somewhere in the vicinity of the very trees she was standing under. Raylene was starting to think Levi, her great-great-grandfather’s brother, was a real dipshit. Why couldn’t he have just put the gold in a suitcase and stowed it in the attic? Or, even better, gotten a freaking safe deposit box?

  According to legend, Levi had been bad to the bone. Unsatisfied with the modest—but steady—income from selling beef to the prospectors, he started out stealing horses from miners and selling them across state lines in Nevada. When that wasn’t lucrative enough for him, Levi became what the Australians called a “night fossicker.” He spent his days sleeping and his nights pilfering gold from the richest claims. It didn’t take long for the miners to catch on, and soon they gathered a posse to come after him. Ashamed, his family wouldn’t take him in. So Levi buried the gold on Rosser land, planning to excavate it as soon as the heat was off him. That day never came. He was shot and killed after drawing down on a sheriff’s deputy who’d been trying to bring him in.

  When Raylene had asked her granddaddy why he’d never searched for the gold, he’d rolled his eyes and said the lore was worth more in the ground than in his pocket. But Ray swore by the story, and had even shown Raylene historical accounts of the gold in various newspapers and books. From time to time, Ray had had to shoo enthusiastic treasure hunters off the property. But most people, including Butch, thought the story was a crock, something told around the Thanksgiving table for shits and giggles.

  “Sell the fucking land, Raylene, and forget that bullshit,” Butch had told her before the divorce. “We need the money to pay off your goddamn Neiman Marcus bill.”

  Well, he wasn’t getting a dime of it now. Not the proceeds from the sale of the property or the gold, when she found it.

  She got out and leaned against the hood, surveying the fields. The last rain had left the grass green and the river full. And she could smell pine and eucalyptus and the moss of the river rocks. She walked to the embankment, crouched down, and tried to skip a stone over the rushing water. It was so peaceful she could hear her own heartbeat. In the distance, the mountain peaks were white, covered in snow, and the sky so clear she could see to eternity.

  No wonder Ray had never developed the land. Her father had been a ruthless bastard, but he knew a good thing when he saw it. She let out a breath. What if she didn’t find the gold? What if it didn’t exist? She was down to her last few thousand do
llars, not even enough to cover the lease on her beach house or a first and last month’s deposit on an apartment.

  Unless she could find a job training horses or giving riding lessons, she had no skills. Nothing that would earn her a living wage, anyway. She supposed she could learn to wait tables or clean houses. But there were others to consider, people who needed the money even worse than she did.

  Nope, holding on to the property until someone more suitable than Moto Entertainment came along to buy it was out of the question.

  Don’t stand in the way of progress.

  She walked back to where she’d left the shovel on the ground and got back to work. After the wedding, she’d return on Sunday with gloves and a metal detector. Not bringing one today had been shortsighted. But she didn’t think Logan and Annie had one, and she didn’t know where to rent such things.

  “Digging your own grave, or someone else’s?”

  She jumped, then turned to see Gabe leaning against her truck. He looked as though he’d just walked off the cover of one those soldier of fortune magazines. He wore a green army jacket and camo cargo pants, a boonie hat, and a pair of Gatorz sunglasses. He held a thermos in his hand, and the sweet smell of coffee wafted through the air, making her mouth water.

  “Why are you always sneaking up on me?”

  “I wasn’t sneaking.” He pointed at her shovel. “You were distracted.”

  “Well, now that you’re here, make yourself useful.” She grabbed the pickax and shoved it at him. “Start here.” She tapped the toe of her turquoise boot a few inches from where she’d been digging. From the looks of the map, the gold could be buried anywhere in the general vicinity. Or, she could’ve been reading it upside down.

  “Not until I know what I’m digging for.” He took a swig of the coffee.

  “Soil samples. I’ve got a buyer interested but they want soil samples. Be sure to dig deep.”