Tainted Gold

by Lynn Michaels

  It ebbed away slowly, uncurling her fingers, flattening her spine, and fluttering her eyelids solidly shut as it receded. In its place dizziness swelled, ringing in her head as her hands slid limply down his arms and she felt him ease away from her.

  “Quillen?” His voice, still passion-rawed, echoed in her ears.

  “Oh, no,” she groaned, her hands groping for but unable to find his forearms. “I should have had Mogen David instead.”

  Licking her lips to clear her thick, drowsy speech, she finally found his wrists but gripped them in limp, strength-less fingers. She heard him sigh, felt his lips softly against her temple, and whimpered as he rolled away from her.

  “Hush, now, hush,” he crooned, gathering her into his arms.

  A breath of air brushed her shoulder, the cool percale sheet settled over her, and Quillen fell asleep. This time she dreamed.

  Not exactly nightmares, but close enough, as her subconscious gnawed on the particularly inopportune moment she’d picked to fall asleep. Not that she’d had any choice; she did, however, have a choice about waking up, and did so warily with her eyes still closed. She strained her ears, hoping for a rustle of the sheets, a deep breath, anything that would tell her Tucker was still with her. Certain that she’d die if he wasn’t, Quillen drew a deep breath, inhaled warm, soapy-smelling skin, then sneezed as his chest hair tickled her nose.

  “Bless you.” His lips touched her forehead. “Have a nice nap?”

  There was no sarcasm in his voice, but Quillen cringed. Almost sorry now that he hadn’t left, she opened her eyes and looked at him.

  Stretched on his left side next to her, the sheet half-drawn over his hip, he leaned his head on his hand above his bent elbow and smiled. His hair was tousled, his eyes puffy, but the curve in his mouth lacked malice.

  “You’re still here.”

  “Where’d you expect me to be?” His smile widened but he made no move to touch her.

  “Anywhere but here,” she admitted. “I expected to find a note pinned to the pillow that said something like, ‘Thanks for nothing.’”

  “Oh, love.” He laughed, straightened his arm, and slid it under her as he lay on his back, drew her with him, and pressed her cheek to his shoulder.

  “You didn’t, did you?”

  “I didn’t what?” he asked, his fingers swirling circles on her upper arm.

  “You didn’t—finish.”

  “I didn’t what?” His fingers stopped. “Oh—finish. No, I didn’t.”

  “Oh, God!” Quillen cried, covering her face with her right hand. “Why couldn’t you lie to me?”

  “Women lie about it, Quillen, men don’t.” His voice was gentle and so were his fingers as he pried her hand away from her cheek, then lifted her chin. He was smiling. “Do I look like I minded?”

  “Oh, Tucker, that’s not the point,” she wailed. “I failed—”

  “Who did you fail? Me or you?”

  “You,” she moaned miserably.

  “You didn’t fail me.” He curved his knuckles against her cheek and smoothed them along the line of her jaw.

  “Now you’re lying,” she accused, tears hanging, ready to spill from the corners of her eyes.

  “I didn’t enjoy it as completely as you did.” He paused and kissed her forehead again. “But I enjoyed it almost as much as I enjoyed watching you sleep.”

  “Oh, sure,” Quillen muttered, tears thickening her voice. “That must have been a big thrill.”

  “It was.” He caught her right hand in his left and drew it beneath the sheet.

  “No kidding,” she breathed, quivering as she touched him.

  Chuckling, he drew her arm around his waist and pressed his body against hers. A lightheaded rush raised gooseflesh on the back of her neck and, yes, she was dizzy, ecstatically dizzy.

  “I will always put your pleasure before mine,” he murmured, his voice deepening as he cupped her head in his left hand and brushed his lips over hers. “Except this one time”—he leaned up on his forearm, an amused gleam in his eyes—“’cause you owe me.”

  Laughing, Quillen raised her mouth and kissed him as she moved on top of him. His eyelids took a surprised leap, then closed, a groan vibrating his mouth against hers and his jaw slackening momentarily as she rotated her hips over his. When she pulled her mouth away from his and leaned up on her hands, he smiled and curved his fingers around the backs of her legs.

  “Think you can stay awake for this?” he taunted, the gleam still in his eyes as he rolled his hips beneath hers.

  “Try me,” Quillen returned softly, matching the rhythm of her body to his.

  He groaned, “Oh, love,” under his breath—and did. This time, the objection Quillen’s body made was not as noticeable. Without separating them, Tucker rolled her over and made love to her with torturous, agonizing slowness, his mouth mimicking and accentuating the sensuous movement of his hips. Quillen had never felt so awake in her life, every nerve, every cell in her body keyed to his. With his hands and soft, whispered words in her ear, he guided her beneath him. Her back arched and she said his name on a sharp intake of breath, and felt his shudder and heard him moan her name in her ear. Then he relaxed on top of her and burrowed his nose into the curve between her neck and shoulder.

  Cradling him to her, Quillen stroked the damp back of his neck. Through half-closed eyes, she lazily watched the room dim around them. Gradually the ragged burr eased out of his breathing, and she thought he had fallen asleep. Smiling, she drew the sheet over him.

  “I’m not asleep,” he said, his voice muffled against her throat and lacing shivers across her collarbones. “I probably should be, but I think I’ve forgotten how. I haven’t slept since Sunday night.”

  “I could give you a refresher course,” she volunteered, smoothing the wet hair curling at the nape of his neck. “That’s all I seem to be able to do.”

  Chuckling, he levered himself up on one forearm and stroked his curled knuckles across her forehead. “Now I know what kind of man you’re used to,” he said gently, his fingers threading their way into her hair, “Few and far between.”

  “Oh, thank you, how kind of you to say so.”

  Even to Quillen, her quick retort sounded defensive—needlessly so—and she turned her head away from him on the pillow. Bending over her again, he softly kissed the line of her jaw.

  “I’m not complaining,” he said lowly, his lips nuzzling her hair. “It thrills me to my bone marrow when I think of all the delicious things I get to teach you.”

  “Old pro that you are,” she replied dryly.

  “Retired old pro,” he corrected her as both his hands combed her hair across the pillow. “Officially, as of this moment.”

  “When’s my next lesson?”

  “Give me twenty minutes.”

  Laughing, Quillen hugged him and sighed as his fingers kneaded her curls.

  “What are the chances that you’re pregnant, love?”

  In the darkness, she could just make out the soft blur of his features. His fingers still smoothed her hair and his voice was quiet. The question didn’t offend Quillen; she understood why he’d asked it, but she hesitated, counting backward in her mind to make sure before she answered.

  “Don’t misunderstand, I’d be delighted,” he told her quickly. “I just don’t want to rush the wedding.”

  “Whose wedding?”

  “Ours.”

  “Oh, really? When did you ask me? When did I say yes?”

  “You said yes when you made love to me. And don’t worry, I’m reasonably certain that my parents will forgive you in time.”

  “Forgive me? For what?”

  “For marrying me. They’ll think it was all your idea, you know.”

  “This isn’t funny, Tucker,” she told him sharply.

  “These are not jokes, my love.” His hands settled on either side of her face and his thumbs touched her temples. “I’m dead serious. Will you marry me?”

  “You’ve
only known me four days.”

  “Correction, you’ve only known me four days. I’ve had a jump on—” He drew a sudden, deep breath. “Is that why you feel you can’t trust me? You don’t think you know me well enough?”

  “Well, that’s part of it—”

  “You know I love you, Quillen, and you love me. What else do you need to know?”

  He’s got a good point there, her little voice commented. Simplistically put but well made.

  “I do love you, Tucker,” she whispered, touching her fingertips to his chin.

  “So your answer is yes?”

  “Probably, but I’d like to think about it.”

  “Think fast. I have the advantage here and I have no intention of letting you out of this bed until you say yes.”

  “Then yes.” She laughed, hugged him, and kissed his cheek. “But no, I’m not pregnant.”

  “We’ll fix that after we’re married.” He kissed her soundly on the mouth. “Are you hungry? I’m starved.”

  “Right now I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look food in the face again, but I am thirsty.”

  “Then shall we retire to the kitchen?”

  “Yes, let’s.”

  He kissed her again, then rolled away from her across the bed, turned on the lamp, and put on his glasses.

  Blinking in the light as she sat up and drew the sheet over her breasts, Quillen watched him fumble left-handed beneath the covers. He looked so funny sitting there on the side of the bed, an Adonis-like figure with rumpled hair and puffy, red eyes behind his glasses.

  “You lied to me, Tucker.”

  Momentarily he froze, his hand on his shorts, and glanced at her over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

  “About your glasses,” she said with a puzzled smile. “You’re wearing them more and more. I don’t think you’re farsighted—I think you’re just plain old blind.”

  “My love, my eyes are as exhausted as the rest of me. They need all the help they can get.” He smiled at her, and the taut, flexed muscle in his left arm relaxed as he stood up and pulled on his shorts. “I’d also like to remind you that I did not have these on my face when I shot the pants off your friend— Oh, hell!” His eyes widened and he jerked the sheet away from her and flung it and the comforter off the bed. “The arrow—don’t move until I find it!”

  The covers billowed, uncovering her nightshirt, and Quillen snatched it up and wriggled into it while he rounded the foot of the bed, leaned over, and retrieved the arrow. Sighing with relief, he sat on the edge of the mattress and eyed the arrow as he held it up vertically. The razor-sharp tip still gleamed menacingly and Quillen stifled a revulsive shiver.

  “Damn, bent the shaft.” He looked at her and smiled. “But you weren’t hurt and that’s all that counts.”

  “What are you doing with hunting arrows?” She sat forward on her knees and hands and watched him frown as he stroked the teal blue and red fletchings. “Aren’t you the man who throws up if he shoots a rabbit?”

  “I’m not going to shoot at a rabbit, love.”

  “What then?”

  “The clown who pulverized my seismometer.”

  His gaze lifted and met hers, and Quillen went cold all over. Blue ice glittered in his eyes.

  “Tucker,” she said shakily, “you should let Sheriff Blackburn handle it.”

  “I gave him his chance. Now it’s my turn,” he said shortly, swinging off the bed and backtracking to the cinnamon chair where his bow and quiver leaned against the wall. “He fed me the same stuff you did about the kids around here. I didn’t believe him, either.” He slid the arrow into the quiver and glanced back at her. “Tomorrow I’m going to hook up my spare in the same spot, and when the villain returns to the scene of his crime, he and I are going to have a little chat.” He smiled coldly. “Then I’ll call Sheriff Blackburn.”

  “What if it is a child?”

  “Good God, Quillen!” His eyes widened. “I’m not going to shoot anybody. I might, however, take a couple potshots in his general direction.” A sliver of the icy smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “Just to get his attention.”

  “What if you miss and hit him?”

  “I never miss what I aim at.”

  “Tucker, you’re crazy!” she shrilled at him. “All this over a hunk of machinery?”

  “There’s a helluva lot more at stake here than my seismometer.”

  “What?” she demanded, rising on her knees with her hands on her hips.

  “The tremor we felt Sunday night was not Mother Earth yawning and rolling over. It was a dynamite blast.”

  “What?” she gasped. “Where?”

  “In your mine,” he answered quietly, his eyes fixed on hers. “Someone’s sinking a new shaft.”

  Stunned, Quillen sat back hard on her heels. “Why?”

  “I wasn’t going to tell you this until you were feeling better, but—”

  He bent over the other side of the chair and reached inside the dusty navy blue duffel Quillen hadn’t seen since Sunday night. With a large, square-folded map in his left hand and something else closed in his right fist, he returned to the bed. Sitting down beside her, he unfolded the map and spread it on the bed.

  “This covers the one hundred-and-twenty-five-square-mile swatch of the foothills just east of town. Here’s your mine.” He laid his finger on a large red “X” that had been redrawn many times, then traced his fingernail down a penciled vertical line. “This is approximately how the fault lies.”

  The tip of his finger came to rest where the pencil line intersected the red “X” and Quillen felt the blood drain out of her face. Her skin crawled and gooseflesh prickled her scalp.

  “Oh, my God.” She pressed her fingertips to her mouth as tears flooded her eyes and the map swam out of focus. “My grandfather—Daddy—”

  Tucker’s arm swept around her shoulders and his lips pressed against her temple. He held her until she stopped shaking.

  “The fault,” she said, wiping tears out of her eyes, “is the reason the shafts kept collapsing, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, love, I’m sorry.” He kissed her temple softly, then gently chafed her arm with his hand. “It’s been there a helluva long time, probably since there were camels in Kansas, but nobody knew, and right now it’s under a lot of stress.”

  “From one blast?”

  “There have been half a dozen that I know of, and it looks to me like more are planned. I found blasting caps down there and a lot of seepage in the older tunnels—”

  “But what are they looking for?”

  “Gold.”

  He opened his right fist. A darkish lump of rock almost the size of a marble—a gold nugget—lay on his palm.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Tucker, that’s tourist stuff. My father panned nuggets that size out of the creek behind the mine all the time. It’s how we lived.”

  “I broke into a Cassil Construction truck yesterday—it was parked in the ‘exec’ lot—and found a whole slew of these, all of about the same size and purity. This one is roughly six hundred bucks’ worth of gold. Now you multiply that by ten or so, Quillen, and you tell me what they’re looking for.”

  “There is no gold in my grandfather’s mine,” she insisted stubbornly.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” he replied impatiently, “I’m a geologist. I know there isn’t. I panned this at a bend in the creek by an old cottonwood tree—”

  “My father panned there all the time.”

  “Smart man. It’s the lowest point in the streambed, that’s why they collect there. Now you and I both know that any prospector worth his pickax goes looking for the lode when he finds a placer deposit of this size. And man, being the logical creature that he is, starts looking in the closest spot—your mine. But”—he laid his finger on the map again and traced the black squiggles indicating the creek—“the stream meanders through most of this whole area. There’s a lode out there someplace that the nuggets keep washing out of. I don
’t know how large or small, I don’t know where it is, but I know where it isn’t. And Cassil,” he finished, his voice exasperated, “should know it, too.”

  “Gold does that to you,” she told him quietly. “It’s an obsession. To obtain it, you’ll resort to almost anything—”

  Her voice failed and Quillen finished the sentence inside her head—even murder.

  Chapter Seven

  Somehow Quillen managed neither to scream nor to faint—though deep down inside she felt like doing both. Deciding she probably had the dregs of the sedative to thank for the fact that she didn’t, she was nonetheless grateful for the calm it provided while she puttered distractedly around the kitchen with Tucker and considered her options.

  It all made sense now, but she still had a credibility problem—it would still be her word against Desmond Cassil’s. The only thing she had positive proof of was that someone was jumping her claim. She couldn’t prove who and she wasn’t even sure there were still laws on the books that covered such things.

  “That damn gold,” she muttered absently while she sat on her navy stool at the sink, washed salad makings, and stared out the window at the driveway. “That damn tainted gold.”

  “‘O accursed craving,’” Tucker added, kissing the top of her head as he plucked a tomato out of the vegetables she was rinsing in the colander.

  “What?” Quillen asked, blinking as she looked up at him.

  “Virgil—from the Aeneid, I think.” He picked up a paring knife and his mouth pursed thoughtfully. “Or is it Homer?” He shrugged, the light over the sink winking on the lenses of his glasses as he cored the tomato.

  “Tucker,” she said tentatively, as she turned off the water, “can I tell you something?”

  “Sure, love, what?”

  “Desmond Cassil called me yesterday,” she began slowly. “He asked me if I’d decided yet to sell. I said never—”

  Nervously twisting her left thumb in the wet fingers of her right hand, Quillen told him the rest of it, backing up briefly to explain Miss Smythe’s notice, Miss Smythe’s close ties to Mrs. Cassil, and her own theory about Martin Phillips. Staring at the half-sliced tomato on the cutting board, Tucker listened in silence, the knife idle in his right hand, his left spread flat on the red-tiled counter.