The Accidental Cowboy

by Heidi Hormel

  “That’s the easy part to fix. You can do like Olympia and I did. Go to Vegas, get married. I did it to keep custody of Calvin, but it would work as well for the Scotsman to get his US status instantly—nearly instantly.”

  Why hadn’t she thought of that? They could be in Vegas in hours, get married and then she’d have plenty of time to solve the problem of his career.

  “Lavonda, I was kidding. Olympia and I were in a totally different situation. We weren’t trying to fool the feds with our quickie wedding. And let me tell you, immigration takes everything very seriously.”

  She waved a hand that Spence couldn’t see, because she wanted him to be quiet while she analyzed the possibility. “We could marry. He’d stay. Finish his research so he’d get the evidence he needed to write the paper, which will fulfill his grant and then they’ll have to keep him. The paper equals his job. I could put off going to Hong Kong until—”

  “Hong Kong? What’s in Hong Kong?”

  Crappedy crap. She hadn’t meant to let that cat out of the bag. What was wrong with her? Her entire career had been built on her ability to keep her mouth shut when needed. “This could work, Spence. Thanks.” She hung up before he could say more. She started a new document to outline the Green Card Marriage Plan.

  Cat yowled as she sauntered in. “What?” The feline rushed over to her and bumped her head against Lavonda’s leg. “You agree this is a good plan. You’re doing it for the Hobnobs. Unlike me. I’m doing it for the good of the archaeological community.” Cat sat back and stared. “For archaeology and beans.” The unblinking blue eyes bored into her brain. How? She was a cat. “This has nothing to do with making him stay in Arizona. I’m only doing this to help him stay in the States to reboot his career. He doesn’t deserve to have it messed up again because of a few little snafus.”

  Marrying him would be no big deal, just like signing a noncompete agreement. Any fluttering in her stomach related directly to her plan to live in Hong Kong. After all, she’d get to have real Chinese food every day.

  * * *

  AS LAVONDA AND JONES rode farther on their hastily organized final trek, her mind drifted from guiding the horse through the increasingly dense scrub to her plan. The one where she used her PR skills to convince her employer that she would go to Hong Kong later—if the company ever called back. She’d stay in the States until he finished his research and—voilà—career saved.

  She urged Brownie forward. The horse didn’t like the switched-up schedule, where they explored early in the morning and the twilight to avoid the worst of the heat, now that summer had come to the desert. The heat of the day was for lying low, which had come to mean time alone together for Lavonda and Jones. She’d tried to tell herself to stick to her own tent, but then she’d catch his mossy scent or hear him talking with Reese and she couldn’t resist him. Didn’t want to resist him.

  She shook off her worry. What had she learned riding those broncs? Hang on for eight seconds and give the judges a show. Pay attention to what was happening now, not what might happen tomorrow or the next second, but what was happening right now. That’s what she had to do. Hang on to the time they had and not worry too much about would happen next. Could she do that, though?

  Jones, on Joe, walked in front of her, head down and staring at his phone or whatever electronic equipment he held in his large hand. The sun caught the tips of hair that curled under the band of his new lucky hat, nearly identical to the one he’d gotten at the Old West section of Edinburgh. He’d promised to show her the street. That would never happen.

  Hang on for eight seconds.

  She scanned the horizon. Their goal—which she should be focused on—was an arched cat. They’d stopped three times to investigate formations that, with some imagination, could have been cats. Lavonda couldn’t imagine that ancient settlements were so difficult to find if they’d been found before.

  * * *

  BROWNIE STOPPED TO nose at a bush. Lavonda let him rest while she scanned the horizon for shade and/or water to make a daytime camp. She looked behind her at Reese, head down and drowsing. No water nearby or he would have been prick-eared and bright-eyed. She looked to the east, into the sun. Crappedy crap.

  “Jones,” she shouted. “Two o’clock.”

  He didn’t stop Joe.

  “Jones,” she yelled again. “Two o’clock. It’s the cat.”

  His hat moved, and she knew he squinted against the sun to see what she had. He pointed the piece of electronics that way. “It’s a bit off the numbers.”

  “Worth a check, don’t you think?”

  “We’ve thought the same thing before. It’s probably another dead end. That’s the way it is in archaeology.”

  “It could be the real deal, too. Come on, cowboy. Draggin’ your boots won’t make it any less the right or wrong place.”

  “Wait,” he said, putting his hand out to stop her as her horse and the little donkey tried to pass. Both Brownie and Reese were unimpressed, sidling away.

  “Watch it.”

  “Sorry, but I need to say something.” He pushed the hat back and the crease on his forehead and the sweaty bangs touched something deep in her.

  “Shoot.” She loosened her grip on the reins to keep the horse from feeling the sudden tension that raced through her.

  “I don’t know how to say this—”

  He broke off and her heart sank, because suddenly she knew. There was another lie. He wouldn’t look her in the eye. He was married. He had a girlfriend. Oh, crap. She knew that she shouldn’t have trusted him. She knew he wasn’t a real cowboy, the kind of man who told the truth no matter the consequences.

  “You ass. You’ve got a woman back in Scotland.” She pulled the horse’s head around to take off. Brownie snorted and danced. What the hell was she doing? You didn’t treat your mount like that. And exactly what was she going to do—race away? Not likely through the boulders and scrub. She pulled in a breath.

  “Hell, Lavonda, why would you think I would... I never would... How could you even imagine that I would do anything like that?”

  “What else would you lie about?”

  “Actually, it’s about what we’ve been looking for.”

  “Beans. You agreed to complete your research.” This was beginning to make a sick sense.

  “Yes, well.” Jones adjusted his seat and Joe gave him a look over his shoulder. Jones absently patted the gelding. “I told you before the beans won’t restore my reputation or get me the chairmanship.”

  “This time you deserve whatever the university throws at you. You know the ‘fool me once, shame on you’? Well, you’ve fooled me twice and it’s still shame on you. If I didn’t think you’d die on your own, I’d leave you out here in the desert.”

  * * *

  DAMN, THAT HURT. She’d reacted worse than he’d hoped. Maybe he should’ve stuck with his original plan, which was to wait until they’d actually found the cache to give her a full explanation of what had been going on. Then today, the way the sun sparked off her hair while she sang off-key to the horses, it had hit him. She wasn’t an assistant or a colleague or whatever else he’d been convincing himself she was. She was Lavonda—the woman that he...liked...cared for but certainly didn’t love. As such, she deserved to know what he was doing.

  “Let’s go,” she said, aiming her horse at the cat formation.

  He wanted her to understand that he didn’t have a choice. He’d had to do this all under the radar for very good and very logical reasons. “Lavonda, let me explain.”

  Brownie stopped and Lavonda whipped her head around, her flat-crowned hat shading her face so he couldn’t see her expression. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

  He had brains to spare. He shut up.

  The stones really did look like an arched cat. Could it be what the American Kincai
d, his much-removed cousin, had described? And wouldn’t that be the final straw or bead in his never-ending string of bad luck. When he made his greatest discovery, he lost the respect of the woman that he...liked.

  The horses and Reese picked their careful way across the steeply sloped terrain. On other days of the trek, they would have made camp to rest in the heat and...they would have made love. By unspoken agreement, they didn’t stop today, eating in the saddle and allowing the horses to finally rest when they had gone as far as was safe on horseback. Lavonda and Jones scrambled their way up the remainder of the slope to a stack of rocks that had obviously been piled into the shape of a cat.

  “Wait,” Jones said, touching Lavonda’s arm. She pulled away immediately. “You wouldn’t allow me to explain myself earlier, but please allow me the courtesy now.”

  She nodded tightly. “Quick. It’s hot.”

  This was worse than any oral exam. Worse than facing his brother and the full department after Dolly-Acropolis. He’d been formulating this speech for Lavonda for the past hour. Not one word had stuck. “After the dolls—”

  “Which you lied about.”

  “I didn’t... You’re right—I lied about it. It was embarrassing. Worse. It tanked my career. What I’d been working toward since I was in grammar school. My brother always got firsts and taunted me for years about my interest in the West, no matter that the Kincaid family had ties there. If I wanted to be taken seriously as an archaeologist then I needed to study in Scotland or on the Continent. My brother and my father had a very stern talk with me in my second year at university, after I’d suggested a research project in Arizona. They made it clear that I wouldn’t finish the program and would never get a job if I continued my pursuits. They were right, but I did at least choose my own field—agriculture.”

  “We’re burning daylight,” she said, but a hint of interest had entered her voice.

  “I was lucky enough to get connected with a researcher in Iceland and traveled there for digs nearly every summer. I got really good at riding their ponies...horses. Have you seen them? Tough little buggers. Something like Reese...only bigger, with more hair...maybe not like Reese, after all.”

  “Ticktock, doc.”

  “I’d begun to make a name for myself in Iceland, looking at the use of grains and legumes in early settlers, when the chairmanship came open. It was between me and Iain. They chose him, but it had been made clear to me that if I could make a discovery that was original and significant, I would be considered during the next round. All that stood between me and finally being able to do the research that I wanted, finally being out from under Iain’s shadow, was one good piece of archaeology. I got a lead based on what I thought was a believable oral story about Viking gold... You know the rest.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that?”

  “I wish you would.”

  “If wishes were horses, ponies would ride.”

  “That really doesn’t make any sense.”

  “You had your say. We’ll check this out because we’ve come this far, then we’re heading back to the ranch.”

  He’d tried. Time to focus on what was important. Really important. Finding Kincaid’s Cache. He stared at the obviously man-made cat sculpture. He looked at the larger formation and then the smaller one. There had been that article about the original cave attributed to his relative being filled with Egyptian treasure and Egyptians worshipped cats.

  He strolled around the pedestal of the cat, then there it was, plain as day or the nose on Mount Rushmore. The symbol Kincaid had used to indicate the treasure. Jones took in a long breath, then settled into viewing the rocks like the scientist he was. More symbols with the same pattern as those in the journal—definitely faint but still visible on the lee side of the rocks, more than one hundred years after Kincaid had etched them there. He matched the symbols to the key he had memorized. The cave wasn’t here and the directions said to—

  “What did you find?”

  What to tell Lavonda? This could be another dead end. Another Dolly-Acropolis. “The journals were in code and this cat has clues.”

  “Code? Really.”

  “Here.” He pulled her to the side of the cat with engravings. He pointed to the first shape. “That’s what he used to indicate the treasure.”

  “Treasure? What are we, ten?”

  “His words, not mine. The other symbols explain the exact location of the cave or chest—he used the words interchangeably.”

  “Where does it tell you to go? And you’d better not give me some hooey about where the bear of Hopi plays with the hare of Zuni.”

  “The American Kincaid was an archaeologist and scientist, too. The code was because of the value of his find. The symbols give me coordinates.”

  “He just couldn’t have put the actual coordinates in the journal.” Lavonda started to turn away.

  “He insisted that other archaeologists as well as the US government were after the materials. He didn’t want to put every detail in one place.”

  “Baby Jesus and his halo of angels. We’ll go to the coordinates, but that’s as far as I, the horses and Reese are going. If the treasure isn’t there, we’re heading back to the ranch. I can’t put myself in any more jeopardy with the university. I should probably have called Gwen as soon as you told me what you were doing.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lavonda forced herself to stay quiet and not step in to spin Jones’s confession. She’d told him when they’d gotten back to the ranch that either he told the university what he’d been doing instead of his real research—again—or she would do it. He’d stepped up.

  Of course, the coded message on the cat hadn’t led them to a cave of gold. Surprise, surprise. Instead, it had ended at another stack of stones—this one in the shape of a pyramid—with another coded message. Lavonda had stuck to her guns and told Jones they were returning to home base. He’d capitulated after another fervent speech. She’d nearly caved—no pun intended—but then she’d imagined another crawl across the TV screen: Archaeologist from Angel Crossing Campus Dies in Search for Buried Treasure. Not the kind of publicity Gwen wanted.

  While she hadn’t changed her mind on heading back to the ranch, she had agreed with at least a part of his speech. If he had found materials he said the American Kincaid had hidden, then his career would be made. He could lecture around the world, teach wherever he wanted, including Arizona, as well as secure TV appearances, book deals and funding for whatever he wanted to research. The find would have boosted the prestige of Gwen’s small branch campus, too.

  Lavonda was brought back abruptly to Stanley’s windowless and messy office.

  “You said that you would continue with your proposed research,” the older professor said with a snap.

  “I went to sites in my proposal and noted the use of beans. At the same time, I used the journal to find Kincaid’s markers for his cache.”

  Stanley shook his head. “This is beyond unprofessional.”

  “Any research beyond that outlined in my proposal was done on my own. No one knew what I was doing.”

  “Not even your brother? Chair of the department? Am I supposed to believe that—”

  “Iain does not know.”

  Another lie, Lavonda knew. Jones had confessed his brother had discovered the American Kincaid’s—as the family called him—journals were missing. She wouldn’t pile on this detail. In the end, what mattered was what Jones had done.

  Stanley stared at Jones with a flinty gaze. “Your guide is a university employee. Why didn’t she report this?”

  Crappedy crap.

  Jones jumped in, “I lied to her. She didn’t know about any of it.”

  “I’ve got to call Dr. Hernandez. I’m not certain what further contractual issues we may have.”

  “Lavond
a... Ms. Leigh didn’t know anything. She only found out when I told her.”

  “Be that as it may, Dr. Hernandez must be involved.”

  “Please, Stanley, this is not her fault. I take full responsibility.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll stay to speak with Dr. Hernandez,” Jones said, making it obvious that he’d do whatever it took to make Gwen understand the situation.

  Her kilted cowboy, knight in shining armor. Way too many clichés in one thought. Of course, she wouldn’t be facing her friend in the midst of all of this if it hadn’t been for Jones. She had to remember that when everything went to crap and she got kicked off the ranch. It was all Jones’s fault, no matter that he very rightly had taken all of the responsibility on his shoulders.

  Her PR brain, though, had caught on to the idea. His treasure search could be turned into a positive for the branch. It’d certainly catch the public and media’s attention. The kind of attention that was worth its weight in gold—ha-ha. Both she and Jones might come out of this okay.

  * * *

  GWEN GRASPED THE situation quickly and voiced, loudly, her concern over how Jones’s actions flew in the face of the university’s carefully constructed and enforced code of ethics.

  “Lavonda was our representative on this expedition,” Gwen said. “When she understood you were still looking for the ‘treasure,’ she should have contacted us immediately. I was concerned that her involvement with you might cloud her judgment. I was correct to worry.”

  Jones’s fist clenched in his lap. “Lavonda was my guide.”

  “Uh-huh. And I’m the pope of Arizona.” Gwen glared at both of them.

  “Again, I take full responsibility.”

  “Good,” Gwen said.

  “Lavonda will retain her relationship with the university.”

  “Your protection will not ameliorate her culpability.”

  “She did not—”

  “Do not protect her from these consequences.”

  “I’m not protecting her. I’m pointing out the facts of the situation.”