Lover in the Rough (17 page)

“You can steal every comb I have,” sighed Reba. “In fact, I insist on it.”

The rough-edged purr of Chance’s laugh tingled over her. He gathered her hair in his hands and began braiding it in a single long braid down her back. “No hair piled high for you today, my woman. Shorter is better down in the China Queen.” He finished braiding quickly, secured his work with a rawhide thong and admired her hair. “I missed my calling. I should have been a lady’s maid.”

Reba nearly choked on her laughter at the thought of Chance Walker as a dainty dresser of wealthy women. He let her laugh for a moment before he pulled gently on her braid until she fell backwards against him. He kissed her until all thought of laughter fled. Then he tucked her firmly into the sleeping bag and went back to preparing breakfast.

The smell of steak broiling made Reba realize how hungry she was.

“How do you like your eggs?” asked Chance.

“Cooked the fastest way you know,” she answered, listening to her stomach growl.

“Hungry?” he asked, laughter rippling beneath the question.

“Starving,” she admitted. “Must be the night air and all.”

“Especially the ‘and all.’ ”

“Such modesty,” she said tartly.

Chance looked at Reba with eyes that reflected fire. “Such honesty,” he said quietly. “I’ll never lie to you, even as a joke. Just as you haven’t lied to me.”

Reba started to say that she wasn’t telling him the full truth, either, and hadn’t been since the subject of love was closed between them. But to say anything would be to open the subject, to break her promise to him and herself. So she smiled and spoke about something else entirely.

“When do we go into the China Queen?”

Chance’s head came up sharply, eyes narrowed, his face as hard as the mountains. He searched Reba’s expression ruthlessly, looking for something beneath her smile. Her smile faded. Silently she wondered why he responded almost savagely whenever she raised the subject of the mine.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I was wondering why lies and the China Queen are connected in your mind,” he said bluntly.

She hesitated, off balance. “They aren’t,” she said, confusion and honesty clear in her voice. “Are they connected in yours?”

Chance turned the steaks, squinting against the sizzle and spatter of fat falling into the flames. “Two eggs or three?” he asked, reaching toward the ice chest.

“Two,” she said quietly, realizing that he wasn’t going to answer her question. No lies, no evasions, just silence.

In a few minutes Chance brought Reba’s plate to her, then returned for his own and sat next to her.

“Some day,” he said evenly, “I’ll answer your question. But not now. In some ways you know me better than anyone alive, and in others you don’t know me at all. You would misunderstand whatever I said now.” He took her hand and pressed his lips to her palm in a quick, fierce kiss. “How do you like your coffee? Cream or sugar? Both?”

“Black as a miner’s heart.”

Chance’s eyes narrowed for an instant, then he smiled unwillingly. “Black it is.” He released her hand and went back to the fire, returning with two steaming mugs of black coffee. “Careful,” he said softly as she reached for a mug. “It’s as hot and strong as a certain woman’s love.”

Reba’s hand jerked, then steadied. “Sounds undrinkable,” she said lightly, taking the cup and setting it aside. “I’ll let it cool.”

“Some things never cool,” said Chance, tilting her head with his finger until she was forced to meet his eyes. “The sun. The core of the earth. You. Me. Give us time,
chaton
.”

She looked into his silver-green eyes and said the only thing she could: “Yes.”

They finished breakfast and cleaned up the camp in a silence that was as natural as the sunlight streaming down the rugged granite slopes above the China Queen. When the last utensil had been put away, the last ember buried and the food locked in the Toyota beyond the reach of small animals, Chance turned toward Reba.

“Ready for the China Queen?”

Excitement made her eyes brilliant. “I thought you’d never ask.”

He smiled and explained how to use the equipment he had gathered, particularly the miner’s lamp.

“The battery pack goes on your belt. This switch turns it on. There are three positions on the switch. We’ll use the low illumination most of the time. Once you start using your lamp, don’t look directly at me when we talk. That way we won’t blind each other.”

In addition to the helmets with built-in lamps, Chance had laid out the shotgun in a leather carrying sheath, two flashlights, two pick-hammers, two canteens, a pick, a shovel, two hunting knives with sheaths and a small leather rucksack. He slipped one flashlight, one hammer and one knife in place on a wide leather belt rather like a carpenter’s. He put the belt around Reba’s hips, saw that it was too loose and shook his head.

“You’re too strong to have such a slender body,” he said, pulling the hunting knife out of its sheath and making another hole for the buckle’s tongue. He pulled the belt around her again. It fit well this time, riding securely on her hips. “It will feel awkward at first but you’ll get used to it.”

“Are we going to be separated?” she asked, looking at the duplication of equipment on her belt and his.

“Do you wear a seatbelt because you expect to have an accident?” he asked dryly.

“I see your point. What’s in that?” she asked, gesturing to the single rucksack.

“Food.”

“We don’t need two of that?”

“You can go for weeks without food. Water is another matter. So is light. Men have gone crazy in the dark long before they died of thirst.”

Reba moved uneasily. “Not a pleasant thought,” she said finally.

“Neither is a crash at one hundred kilometers per hour.”

“Touché,”
she sighed.

“Still want to go into the Queen?”

“Yes.”

Chance caught Reba’s face between his hands. “There’s just one other thing.”

She waited, searching his silver-green eyes. “What?”

“Once we’re inside the Queen, if I say stop, you stop. If I say jump, you jump. If I say don’t dig, you don’t dig. If I say quiet, you’re quiet. All right?”

She measured his intensity, knowing that he wasn’t requiring that kind of obedience from her on a whim. “All right,” she said quietly.

His kiss was both gentle and hard at the same time. “I’d rather you didn’t go into the China Queen at all,” he admitted in a husky voice. “Mines can be as unpredictable as drunk drivers. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I won’t be wrapped in cotton and kept in a safe, boring place,” she said evenly. “I had enough of that when I was a child. I’ll obey you when we’re in the mine, Chance, but I’ll obey because I
am
an adult, not a child.”

“How well I know,” he murmured. “Very much a woman. My woman.” His thumbs slowly caressed Reba’s cheekbones, then he sighed and released her. He shrugged into the shotgun sheath, carrying it across his back like a quiver of arrows. He swung the rucksack into place over the flat sheath, fastened on his own belt and said, “Let’s go before I decide there is something I’d rather explore than a cranky old mine.”

“Cranky?” she asked, falling into step beside him.

“That’s her best mood,” said Chance flatly. He looked down at Reba, saw curiosity lighting her cinnamon eyes. “Mines are like ships,” he explained. “They have personalities.”

“And, like ships, mines are feminine?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling crookedly, “because most miners are masculine.”

“And you see the China Queen as cranky?”

“A regular bitch,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “She’s been ignored for a long time and she doesn’t like it.”

“An understandable reaction,” said Reba wryly.

Chance grunted and said nothing. He led the way into the Queen’s black mouth, switched on his lamp and waited for Reba to switch on hers. The illumination from their helmets looked like pale yellow broth in the brilliant cataract of white light pouring through the mine’s opening.

“Once we get further inside,” said Chance, walking easily over the dirt and rock floor, “it may seem like the mountain is riding just above your shoulders, waiting to fall and crush you. If the feeling doesn’t pass, tell me. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Being underground simply takes some people that way.”

“Claustrophobia.”

“Call it what you like. Just tell me if it gets to you. I’d a hell of a lot rather turn back early than carry you out of the mine sweating and screaming.”

“You’ve had to do that?” Reba asked, her mouth suddenly dry.

“A time or three. Never twice with the same person, though. Once they lose faith with the earth they don’t come back.”

“There’s more to prospecting than picks and shovels, isn’t there?”

“Too bloody right,” Chance said flatly.

The last remnant of daylight faded unobtrusively behind them. In the sable darkness the helmet lights seemed like solid cones of white brilliance sweeping the tunnel. Light reflected from Chance’s face, revealing the hard lines of his cheek and jaw. His eyes glinted silver-white. The walls of the tunnel absorbed light, giving back only a subliminal wash of illumination. Though Reba said nothing, she was disappointed. She had expected something more spectacular, some sparkle or glitter that would hint at the wealth of beauty that could be hidden beneath the earth.

The tunnel divided. The right-hand fork was wider than the left, and the walls were composed of lighter rock.

“Pegmatite vein,” said Chance, sweeping his light over the wall. Flakes of mica and minute quartz crystals mixed with other reflective minerals winked back at him, creating a glittering tapestry that excelled the brilliance of a starry night.

“Oh . . .” sighed Reba.

“More like what you expected?” asked Chance, taking her hand.

“Yes. It’s beautiful.”

“Most mines are ugly, little more than holes gouged out of unwilling ground. Tourmaline mines are one of the few diggings that live up to our childhood fantasies of sparkling rocks heaped up in a dragon’s black lair.”

“Or the Seven Dwarfs’ diamond mine.”

Chance laughed briefly. “If there’s anything uglier than an underground African diamond mine, I haven’t found it. Gold mines are a close second.”

“But quartz crystals are beautiful,” objected Reba.

“Bloody little gold is found in ‘jewelry’ rock,” he said. “I’ve seen one rich pocket of gem-quality quartz crystals laced with sunbursts of gold. It was stunning, almost overwhelming—and the whole pocket would have fit in your kitchen sink. Most gold is refined by ounces out of tons of dark rock.” Chance’s headlamp swept the glittering tunnel walls. “But here,” he said softly, “everything is bright.”

He brushed the wall lightly with the pointed side of his hammer. A small shower of material glittered to the floor. “Glad I’m not planning on dynamiting anything,” he said. “The vibrations would tear this place apart.”

Reba looked at the wall and said nothing, listening to the whisper of rock particles sifting down. She sensed Chance studying her, weighing her reaction to being beneath earth that was more fragile than it appeared.

“I’m all right,” she said quietly. “It’s just hard to believe that anything bigger than my fingernail could come out of that mishmash of minerals.”

“Pala tourmaline is a miracle,” he agreed. “Have you seen samples of tourmaline in matrix from the Empress mine?”

“Once. In a museum. Pink crystals as long as my hand, set in a matrix of opaque quartz crystals. You could see the fracture lines in the tourmaline, hundreds of lines, yet the larger crystal structure remained intact. The idea of finding something that beautiful in the China Queen has haunted me ever since,” she admitted softly, playing her headlamp over the pale, rough tunnel walls.

“A lot of the Empress tourmaline in matrix didn’t stay together,” said Chance. “That’s why the ones that did are literally priceless. There is nothing to equal them in any mine in any place on earth.”

Reba listened to the excitement surging just beneath his calm voice and realized that being in the China Queen must be a dream come true for a man like Chance—to be in the one spot on earth where a unique treasure might be found. What wouldn’t a man do for that? Certainly it would take more than the risk of crumbling tunnel walls to deter him.

“Reba?”

She turned toward him with a start, then looked away quickly, realizing that she had flashed her headlamp directly in his face.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Just thinking,” she said.

“About tunnel walls?”

“No. About you. In some ways, being here must be the culmination of a lifetime of dreams for you.”

Chance moved his head slightly, illuminating her face in the backwash of his harsh white helmet lamp. He looked at her for a long time without saying anything. Then he turned away and played his helmet light over the pale tunnel walls. “Yes. It is. I’m sure there’s tourmaline here, Reba. It’s been waiting for millions of years to be found.
And I will find it
.”

The quiet intensity of his vow held her motionless for a moment. “It’s too dangerous, Chance,” she said finally. “Even for a man of your experience. No one will lend me enough money to make the China Queen safe to work in as long as I can only offer fifty percent of an abandoned mine as collateral. I doubt if even one hundred percent would be enough.”

“There will be a way,” he said, moving slowly down the tunnel’s steepening decline, examining the wall as he went. “When you want something badly enough there’s always a way.”

Reba watched Chance’s helmet lamp slowly withdrawing down the tunnel and tried not to cry out in protest. She was beginning to understand what Chance had meant when he’d said that prospecting got in the blood worse than malaria. He was barely aware of her now. She might as well be alone in the mine. Slowly she played her light over the part of the tunnel she had left behind. The walls glittered, then opened into darkness that eventually led back to sunlight.

When Reba looked forward again, Chance was little more than a small cone of brightness moving down and away from her into a darkness unlike anything she had ever known before. She doubted that he’d notice if she turned and walked out of the China Queen, leaving him alone. And perhaps she should do just that. What right did she have to hitch a ride on his dream, distracting him with her foolish questions and clumsiness underground and . . . jealousy.