Lover in the Rough by Elizabeth Lowell Page B

tried shoring up the China Queen?”
    “I thought about it,” Reba admitted. “The dreams I had . . . mounds of tourmaline glittering, piles of never-melting ice crystals in shades of pink and green.” She laughed quietly at herself. “The reality was a bit less spectacular. As soon as I finished paying for my divorce and reclaiming my maiden name, I had someone estimate the cost of making the China Queen safe to work in. More than a hundred thousand dollars, and that was only if no blasting was ever done. To make the mine safe for blasting would cost two or three times as much.”
    She shrugged. “I couldn’t find a bank that would lend a thousand dollars to me, much less a hundred times that much. Not that I blame the banks. What sane person would hand over that much money to a starry-eyed young woman with a half-interest in a mine that never produced more than a few hundred dollars worth of Pala tourmaline?”
    “Then sell the Queen,” said Chance.
    Reba looked up, caught by the intensity of his voice. “It would be like selling a dream. Whatever money I got wouldn’t be worth what I lost.” She smiled crookedly. “I know it’s silly but that’s how I feel about the China Queen.”
    “Even though you haven’t seen the mine since you were a kid?”
    “Yes.” Reba hesitated, choosing words carefully, trying to make Chance understand why a useless mine was more important to her than it should be. “It’s all I have left of my childhood. I have no family, not really. I don’t even know my father’s name. Mother and I have gone very different ways. I never saw my grandparents; they threw Mother out before I was born. My mother’s twin sister lives in Australia, somewhere in the Outback. I’ve never seen her. She and mother never write. Not even a postcard at Christmas. There’s a girl my age, my aunt’s daughter. Sylvie. That’s it so far as I know. My family.”
    Reba’s smile slipped. She looked at her hands. “That and half of an abandoned mine is my heritage. I may never find a single pink crystal in the China Queen, but half of her belongs to me. One hundred acres outright, plus mineral rights to several square miles.” She looked away from her tightly laced fingers. “It’s beautiful country,” she said softly. “Broken and wild, hot in the summer and green velvet in the winter. Someday I’ll build a house there. Until then it’s enough just to know the land is there, waiting for me. Homecoming.”
    Reba looked up and saw Chance’s eyes narrow as he studied her. His expression was a mixture of anger and sadness and frustration. “You’ll never sell it.”
    “No.” Then, quickly, “It’s not as crazy as it sounds, Chance. The taxes on the mine are almost nothing. And . . . and I can camp there whenever I want.”
    “Do you?” he demanded.
    “Camp there? No,” she admitted. “I drove out to the mine turnoff once after my divorce. The mine road looked awful. I was afraid to try it alone. I suppose it would have been all right.” She thought about it for a moment. “Yes, I’m sure it would be fine. I’ll do it, soon.”
    “Not alone,” he said harshly. “It’s dangerous.”
    “How do you know?”
    Chance hesitated. “You’d be tempted to go into the mine. Besides, any area that isolated will always be dangerous for a woman alone. But with a man who knows rough country . . .” He smiled suddenly, transforming his face. “Want to go camping?”
    Reba’s eyes lit with sudden excitement. With Chance along she wouldn’t be jumping at every sound, every shadow, afraid even to sit in the sun and close her eyes. The thought of sharing the emptiness and silence of the rugged land with him was intoxicating. She smiled up at her Tiger God like a child on Christmas morning.
    “Yes,” she breathed. “Take me camping.”
    “For a smile like that, chaton , I’d take you anywhere on earth.”
    His lips were as warm and gentle as sunlight. She sighed his name,