She might as well enjoy her new status. Who knew what would come of it?
Chapter Three
So much for the ball cap and the sunglasses. Lisa sat cross-legged on her sofa, her Lean Cuisine Mexican dinner in her lap, and stared at the television. Tonight’s recap showed her hosing out the dog runs with untamed morning hair, wearing a pink tank top with yellow polka-dot pajama bottoms and the neon-green rubber boots.
“You people suck!” She sat her dinner on the coffee table and got up to stomp across the room to the front door. She turned the bolt lock and flung open the door. “You suck! Don’t you have anything better to do?”
Her neighbor, Mrs. Carlson, had been setting her sprinkler to water her rose bushes, and she straightened to stare at Lisa. She always stared at Lisa, always seemed to be censoring her every coming and going, so the stare was nothing new.
“Oh, hey, Mrs. Carlson.”
Piper tried to wedge past Lisa’s legs, so she closed the door to keep him in and went back to resume her place. The last image on the screen was the high school picture again, just before the news moved on to footage of a water-main break downtown. Thank God there were a few disasters to occasionally take the focus away from her.
Joey burped from beside the sofa.
Lisa lowered her gaze to the empty tray where her burritos and rice had been. The tray had barely been moved, but it looked as clean as any of the dishes in her cupboards.
She met the dog’s gaze and he smiled.
“Real funny. Now I get to eat peanut butter again. That was the last dinner, and I don’t want to go to the store.”
She ransacked the cupboards and finally ate a handful of trail mix and poured out the expired milk.
“Okay, tomorrow I’ll go to the store.”
Piper laid his head on her lap when she sat at the kitchen table and opened the phone book.
“I’ll get you a chewy, but none for Joey.”
At his name, the retriever padded into the room and stood watching her with expectation.
“Don’t complain to me about heartburn, you pig.” She got up, dialed the phone on the wall and ordered a pizza.
“Lisa Martin?” the voice on the other end of the line said. “Awesome! I just saw you on TV.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s really cool, you owning the mine and all.”
“Yeah, cool.”
“We’ll get your pizza there right away. You want any bread sticks or a two-liter or anything?”
She remembered a couple cans of beer in the back of her fridge. “No, thanks.”
An hour later, she’d eaten her fill of her pan-fried-crust pepperoni pizza, finished a beer and was watching one of her favorite romantic movies. A comfort night she’d needed badly.
Here in her private haven, she was in her zone. The dogs had edged their way onto the sofa on either side of her, and she stroked their ears and heads.
As the movie drew to an end, she blinked back tears and drew a deep breath. “Oh, my—Joey, you dog!”
Now her tears weren’t brought on by sentiment but by the Mexican dinner the canine had consumed.
She herded both dogs to the back door and stepped out for fresh air. “You’re not sleeping with me if you keep that up.”
Her boys ran along the fence and sniffed. Piper growled deep in his throat. Lisa glanced at the dark sky and the woods behind the house, not liking the constant feeling of being observed. “Suppose they have infrared, too?” She waved for good measure. “Let’s go back in, boys.”
Their tags jingled as they joined her.
The Super Saver Mart opened at seven the next morning, and Lisa was in the parking lot waiting for the doors to be unlocked. The television vans were parked at the farthest sides of the lot.
A newer car pulled up to a front slot, and the driver glanced toward the building. Just a customer, Lisa assured herself.
She’d showered and fixed her hair before cleaning the runs that morning and she’d found a skirt that looked less like wallpaper than all the rest. Her denim jacket fit nicely, but her tennis shoes were simply the most comfortable for grocery shopping.
After glancing at her reflection in the rearview mirror and knowing her hair was hopeless, she caught sight of someone unlocking the doors from inside the store and got out of her Blazer. She refused to turn and look at the television vans as she hurried to the door.
An SUV was coming through the parking lot, as well.
It was cool inside the market, and someone was adjusting the piped-in music. Lisa got a cart and passed Joseph Martinelli building a display of boxed macaroni dinners. “Morning,” the store employee said.
“Morning.”
Lisa decided to stock up on nonperishables so she wouldn’t have to come back for a while. She filled her cart quickly and headed for the checkout, where she glanced with trepidation toward the magazine racks. None of them sported her picture, of course, but she sympathized with Kirstie Alley, who’d been photographed at her least flattering moments. She pushed her cart on past.
The two women checkers spotted her and one said something to the other. Lisa had seen both of them in here for years and neither had ever voiced more than the total of her purchase.
Today, however, the woman checking her out said, “Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”
Lisa nodded.
“Did you find everything you needed? This is the best buy this week. I got some of these nectarines the other day and my son loved them.”
“They do look good.” Lisa dug in her wallet for her debit card.
When she glanced up, a tall, dark-haired man was making a purchase in the other lane. She’d recognize Riley Douglas anywhere, even without his sport jacket. Buying his own groceries? How unlikely was that?
He accepted a plastic bag from the checker and turned to leave, then noticed her.
The woman was bagging Lisa’s groceries.
“Well, hi,” he said easily. “You’re out early.”
“Had to get my worms.”
He gave her a blank look.
“Never mind. What brings you into town?”
He raised his bag, which clearly held only one small item. “Allergies are kicking up. Had to pick up something.”
And he didn’t have a prescription for that? Or a personal assistant to run his errands? He looked fine to her. No watering, itchy eyes or runny nose that she detected.
“Uh-huh. Well, I hope it does the trick.”
“Carryout on five, please,” the checker called.
“I’ll get this,” Riley said and took charge of the cart. Lisa glanced from the woman to Riley’s back and followed him and her groceries out the door.
“You realize you’re on Candid Camera,” she said as they crossed the parking lot.
He glanced toward the media vehicles. “Not so candid. Is it like this everywhere you go?”
“Pretty much. They’ll probably go in and interview the checker now, and tonight’s news will feature my supper menu.”
“Yeah, how was the pizza last night?”
She blinked. “You read that this morning?”
With a grin, he nodded.
They had reached Lisa’s Blazer, and she used the key to unlock the back door. It opened with a squeak of metal, and a few flakes of rust fell to the pavement.
“I got rear-ended once,” she said. “This door’s never been the same.” She’d used the insurance money to pay her vet bill instead of having the dent pounded out, but she didn’t feel the need to share that detail.
Riley set her bags in the back, glancing at the items on top. “What kind of wine goes with rawhide strips?”
“Those aren’t my dinner.”
“No kidding.” He finished loading her groceries and pushed the cart into a return area. “Have you been to the mine yet?”
She shook her head. Oddly enough, she wasn’t even sure where the Queen of Hearts was located.
“Want to take a ride out there and have a look a
t your property?”
Couldn’t hurt, could it? She’d been curious but too self-conscious of the stares. She gestured with her thumb to indicate their observers. “They’ll follow, you know.”
Riley didn’t look toward the media vans. “We could lose them.”
“How?”
He appeared to be thinking for a moment. “Drive out to my place. They’ll follow. We’ll leave your vehicle parked and take another one.”
“But they’ll see us leave.”
“Trust me. I’ll figure it out.”
She shrugged. “Okay. I have to get my groceries home, then take care of a few pets. It might take me a couple hours.”
He reached into his pocket and took out a tiny phone, which he flipped open. “What’s your cell phone number?”
“Don’t have one.”
He closed the phone. “Do you have a piece of paper?”
She rummaged through her purse and found a receipt and a pen.
He jotted something down and handed both back. “That’s mine. Call me when you’re leaving.”
She put the pen and note in her purse and got into her car.
An hour and a half later, none of the dogs questioned had answered when asked if they were having any allergy symptoms.
She stopped by the McGills’ to feed their cats and change litter boxes. She asked Sassy and Callie about allergies, as well, but after being rudely ignored, she returned home, freshened up and made an attempt to tame her hair.
If she changed clothes, Riley would think she was trying to impress him or that she cared what he thought. She wasn’t and she didn’t, so she wore what she had on.
Lisa called Bernadine to make sure she wasn’t making a tactical error. “I’m going to see the mine site with Riley Douglas. Do you think there’s a problem with that?”
“Sounds innocent enough. Unless he tries to get you to sign something. Or tries to get you naked.”
Warmth infused Lisa’s cheeks even though she was alone. “I wouldn’t sign anything. And he’s not going to try to…do the other thing you said. What made you think that?”
“You’re a rich woman now. Some men find that very attractive, if you know what I mean.”
“I do know and I’ll be wary.”
“If I was you, I’d be expecting men to fall all over me.”
“Thanks for the warning, but it’s not like I don’t suspect ulterior motives. Let’s see, last ten years, no men seeking me out. Now, today, suddenly man pays attention. I can figure it out.”
“Okay. Good.”
Her next call was to Riley to let him know she was leaving her house.
Lisa would rather have believed Riley was just a nice guy offering to help, but their history made her assume otherwise. She drove to the Lazy D, followed by the news vans. They parked out on the road when she pulled into his drive.
Riley led her out the back door, where his assistant, Marge, waited in the driver’s seat of a Lexus. “Get down in the front,” he told her, and she ducked down on the passenger side while he got into the rear and did the same.
Feeling as if she’d been zapped into an old Dukes of Hazzard rerun, she prayed Marge wouldn’t be driving through fields or jumping any waterways. “Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to the garage at the big house,” Marge replied. “I come and go from this place all day long, so no one will think anything of it.”
A few minutes of blissfully sedate driving later, they pulled into a darkened building, and an automatic door lowered.
“Thanks, Marge,” Riley told the woman.
She smiled and handed Lisa a straw hat. “Anytime.”
Riley led Lisa to a red sports car, held the door for her and, after pressing a garage-door opener, guided the car out into the daylight. “Put that hat on.”
“If we’re avoiding the newspeople, I shouldn’t need it.” She tossed the hat on the backseat.
No cars followed as Riley took a back road. “This way is longer, but we’ll avoid the cameras.”
“Works for me.”
She couldn’t help noticing the shape of his long fingers on the gearshift or the way his jeans stretched taut over his thighs as he drove. He was as appealing as he’d been in high school, sexier even, and the fact wasn’t lost on her. That naked word that Bernadine had used still disturbed her, especially when she thought it in his presence.
Riley knew a back route that brought them out farther north on Thunder Canyon Road. He headed south.
“One of the first things on my agenda was to have a chain-link fence built around the entire area, including the sinkhole and the mine entrance, to protect all the land where the mine sits.”
“Think it’s necessary?”
“Would you lock up a million dollars or leave it out?”
“Good point.”
He took an unmarked road. Four times, brown-uniformed men stationed along the way stopped the car, and each time Riley showed his identification. It wasn’t long before they reached the entrance to the mine.
Two more uniformed men walked out of a canopy-style tent and approached the car. Lisa was surprised to see them carrying pistols in shoulder holsters. Their belts held walkie-talkies and nightsticks. “Looks like they’re ready for an invasion.”
Riley walked around to open her door, but she’d already stepped out.
“Mr. Douglas,” one of the uniformed men greeted him. “I didn’t recognize the car.”
“We’re incognito.”
The guard looked Lisa over then, and recognition dawned. “Gotcha.”
“Miss Martin’s come to look over her property.”
“It’s been quiet all week,” the man told them.
“That’s what we like to hear.”
The entrance to the mine had obviously once been completely closed up, but boards had been removed and replaced with steel beams to take the load from aging timbers.
“Is it safe?” she asked.
“Up front, it is. It’s only been shored up for six hundred feet so far. We won’t go farther than that.”
He entered a trailer situated nearby and returned with two yellow hard hats with lights affixed and carried a high-powered flashlight. He handed Lisa one of the hats, which she placed on her head, then he led the way into the mine.
The beams from their hats bounced off the walls, creating bouncing shadows as they entered and looked around. The interior was larger and cooler than she’d expected, and lights had been strung from posts. It was obvious that a lot of work had already been done to add support and safety features. As the tunnel led them increasingly deeper and lower, their steps echoed eerily in the stillness. Lisa imagined the primitive conditions that had once existed and pictured the original owner, whoever he’d been, carving out these walls.
They walked as far as the improvements extended, and Lisa stared into the yawning darkness beyond. Nothing glittered or gleamed or screamed gold to her, and the musty-earth smell was stronger. Growing up, she’d read too many Nancy Drew novels to feel comfortable in the bowels of a mine. “So, somewhere in there is a lot of gold, eh?”
Her voice carried through the darkness in a ghostly echo. It took all her courage not to move closer to Riley.
“That’s right,” he replied, speaking softly. The low timber of his voice sent a shiver up her spine. “A vein was discovered when a rescue worker was found with the nugget after Erik Stevenson fell into the mine a few months ago. Our experts’ analysis showed the vein stretches back at least another three hundred feet beyond what’s been exposed and branches considerably downward.”
“And this mine was thought to be played out?”
“Apparently. And forgotten over the years.”
“I wonder how my great-great-grandmother came to own it.”
“Apparently her father, Bart, was the second owner. He may have purchased it or won it in a card game. No way to know for sure. Upon his death, she inherited it.”
“Wasn’t there a story abou
t Lily losing the mine to your ancestor?”
“One story says she owed money to Amos Douglas and he took the land as payment.”
“And the other?”
“The other says he foreclosed on her property and took it.”
“Aren’t there records?”
“That was over a hundred years ago. People didn’t exactly have to keep information for income taxes.”
“So how did the fact that I owned the deed come to light?”
“Emily Stanton and Brad Vaughn did all the digging on that. Apparently, as one of their last efforts, they had a talk with Tildy Matheson.”
Lisa knew who the old woman was.
“Her grandmother was good friends with Amos’s wife, Catherine. Tildy offered to show them papers and pictures that had been in her attic, and among her grandmother’s things was the deed to the mine—signed back over to Lily Divine Harding.”
Lisa glanced up at Riley. It was difficult to see his expression with the light on his hat glaring into the darkness. “And that’s a legal document?”
“More legal than anything we Douglases can come up with.”
She’d displaced him from ownership of a gold mine. “And how do you feel about that?”
He seemed surprised at her question and didn’t immediately form a reply.
“Sorry. Dumb question.”
“No. I just didn’t want to sound insincere when I answered.”
She noticed he didn’t say he didn’t want to be insincere, just that he didn’t want to sound that way.
“Let’s head back,” he said and directed the flashlight beam back the way they’d come. He moved around her, brushing her shoulder with his chest. The heat from his body was a pleasant surprise in the cool interior of the mine. “I tried every way I knew to prove ownership to the land. I couldn’t do it. You’re the owner. Those are the facts.”
And on the surface he’d been helpful and informative rather than resentful. The darkness at her back made her uncomfortable, and she didn’t let him get too far ahead of her. “What’s in this for you?”
Million-Dollar Makeover Page 4
