Teresa Hill - The Texan's Diamond Bride

It had been his grandfather’s before him, his absolute favorite place to be as a child. Out here where he could breathe, where in the quiet he could think and find some peace and do an honest day’s work.

The rest of his family, the Foleys, just didn’t understand him, and honestly, Travis didn’t understand them.

They were oilmen and politicians, big shots out in what they thought was the real world.

This world, to Travis, was real.

It was all the life he wanted, right here.

He wished they’d all just leave him the hell alone and let him enjoy it.

But ever since that old Spanish shipwreck had been found in the Gulf of Mexico, people had gone nuts looking for the Santa Magdalena Diamond, a rock that was supposed to rival the Hope Diamond in size and value.

One of Travis’s ancestors, Elwin Foley, had been on that ship when it sank in the 1800s, supposedly along with the diamond and a treasure chest full of old Spanish silver coins.

No one was sure exactly what happened after that. Either the diamond went down with the ship or one of the survivors got away with it. The stone had never been found.

Travis’s ancestor survived, bought the ranch on which Travis now lived and started mining for silver. Elwin Foley certainly hadn’t lived the life of a man who possessed a fortune in diamonds, working hard on the ranch until he lost his life in a mining accident before ever finding any silver.

His son, Gavin, had even worse luck—raised by his mother alone, barely getting by on the ranch and as a man, developing a gambling problem that led to him losing the ranch and the deed to the old silver mines in the late 1890s in a card game to a man named Harry McCord.

Travis was disgusted just thinking about it and how much the old feud was still alive today between his family and the McCords.

His ancestor, Gavin, had always claimed the poker game was fixed, that Harry McCord was a card cheat. And the McCords had the nerve to strike it rich on the silver mines not long after supposedly winning the deed to the ranch and the mines.

Travis really didn’t give a damn. His family had gotten rich in the oil business a few years later. None of them were hurting for money. He didn’t begrudge the McCords the fortune they’d built in the jewelry business over the years, a fortune that started with the discovery of silver in the mines.

But he sure begrudged the loss of the ranch.

Because while he lived on the ranch now, as his grandfather had before him, worked it, sweat over it, bled over it, made this place his life, he could never own it.

The McCords did, thanks to a bad hand of poker more than a hundred years ago or a card cheat, depending on which version of the legend a man believed.

Twenty years ago, in an effort to end the bitter feud, Eleanor McCord had offered a long-term lease of the land to the Foleys, which Travis’s grandfather had accepted, then come here to make the ranch his own.

Travis had spent the best days of his childhood here and had taken over the ranch when his grandfather died ten years ago. But it wasn’t the same as owning the land, and that still had the power to burn a hole in Travis Foley’s gut when he let himself think about it too long.

Which was hard not to do when all the hoopla over the stupid diamond and the feud had sprung up again.

Explorers had found the sunken Spanish ship, along with a cache of old Spanish diamonds.

But not the Santa Magdalena.

Which fueled speculation all over again that someone who survived the shipwreck had gotten away with the diamond, and it had long been rumored that person was Elwin Foley, who’d founded the ranch and lived out the rest of his life there.

Which had even more people thinking that the most likely place to find that diamond was right here on Travis’s ranch.

Now treasure hunters, gem collectors and even jewel thieves were just showing up here, looking for that cursed diamond. Didn’t the damned fools know everyone who’d ever owned it had come to a bad end? Not that it had kept people from looking.

As if Travis didn’t have enough to do on a 6,500-acre ranch in November besides keep people from hurting themselves, spooking his cattle, cutting his fences or getting bitten by snakes or something like that.

They’d already kicked five people off the property since the shipwreck was found.

Even worse, Travis’s family was convinced the McCords were up to something, something to do with the diamond. Like sending someone to look for it on Travis’s ranch.

Had Gavin Foley found it, after he’d supposedly lost the ranch? And hidden it here for one of his ancestors to find later, when one day they might have a hope of owning it free and clear? Finders, keepers?

And had the McCords, after all these years, stumbled upon some clue as to where the diamond might now be?

Travis was highly skeptical of that notion, although his family was not.

He’d finally told them to do what they wanted to figure out what the McCords were up to, that he wanted no part of it. His only concession was agreeing to have someone check each of the mines daily for signs of trouble.

Not just from the McCords but from those damned fool diamond hunters.

Travis had found footprints leading into and away from the Eagle Mine a few weeks ago, had crawled down inside about ten feet and checked things out, but hadn’t found anything else.

Still, someone had been there, and it hadn’t been him or any of the ranch hands.

So he checked the place himself every afternoon.

Today, everything seemed quiet.

He got off his horse, walked along the long, deep rock overhang, twenty feet wide and at least twenty feet deep, the ceiling sloping downward in the back and at its deepest recess, neatly obscuring the entrance to this particular mine in its dark shadows.

All quiet.

No footprints except his own, which he brushed away with a rake he’d hidden in the brush outside the entrance.

But as he went back outside and stood there, taking a long, cool drink of water from his canteen, he had the oddest feeling.

That someone was out there.

That someone was watching him.

He’d felt the same way at the stream, trying to rinse the dirt off the nasty scratch he’d gotten earlier that day tangling with a barbed wire fence someone had cut.

No one should be out here watching him. From here, it was ranch property for as far as the eye could see, except for that corner of the property that butted up to the national park.

But if someone was watching him, Travis was going to find ‘em.

Paige had to admit, she loved exploring and she didn’t get to do as much of it as she liked these days. Too many hours spent at her desk in front of her computer, working on her dissertation.

So she was thrilled in a way to have an excuse to go traipsing through this old mine.

As a highly trained scientist—chief gemologist to her family’s worldwide jewelry company, with a master’s in geology and hopefully soon a PhD—the idea of discovering a gemstone believed to rival the Hope Diamond was thrilling in a way that had nothing to do with saving the family fortune.

It was the kind of discovery anyone who traveled the world exploring and truly loved the various, extraordinary substances the earth, over time, could yield would have dreamed their entire life about making.

Few scientists ever got to experience the thrill of such a find.

Paige wanted it so bad she could taste it.

Her heart was thrumming so fast it was like a roar in her ears as she stood at the entrance to the mine once her adorable cowboy was gone.

She put down her big backpack, then took out her helmet with her LED light and turned it on, leaving it on the ground to provide some light in the recesses of the overhang that guarded the mine’s entrance. From her pack, she pulled out an old pair of coveralls—because exploring was a messy, often cold business. She’d worn her hiking boots in, put one small, spare light around her neck on a cord and another in the smaller pack she’d carry in, along with a small length of rope, spare batteries, power bars and granola, some water, a small notebook and a camera.