LITMIR.BIZ

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it is. I haven’t seen the cave yet, but the others brought me up to speed on the discovery. They were pretty excited to find evidence of a prehistoric civilization living in the area. No wonder the world’s scientists are already beating a path to your door.” A frown arrowed his brow. “Didn’t Max Horvath find traces of diamonds somewhere near the Uru cave?”

      She inclined her head in agreement. “Jo found a couple more along the creek in her hidden valley.”

      He drew patterns on the checkered cloth with a finger. “So the truth lies somewhere along that creek between the cave site and the floating island where Jack Logan’s canoe fetched up sixty years ago.”

      Ryan’s nails were short and blunted by hard manual work, Judy noticed, distracted. But his hands were clean and well cared for. A man’s hands, she thought. Hard when touching her softness. Gentle but irresistible. How would they feel seeking greater intimacy? The thought sent streaks of flame licking through her, homing in on the places she imagined him touching.

      A physical relationship with him would never be enough to satisfy her, she sensed. Against all her self-imposed rules, he would make her want more, need more, leading to the very future she was determined to avoid. So she pushed the images away although the quivers of sensation lingered, making concentration difficult.

      As a pilot, she was trained to shut out extraneous images. She made herself think of the problem of Ryan as a tricky landing on a too-short outback strip littered with rocks.

      In other words, a recipe for a crash landing.

      “Do you know anything about a family file Blake and your dad were talking about?” Ryan asked.

      She pulled out of the crash dive barely in time. “Cade’s the only one who saw it. He was helping Dad by catching up on some accounts when he came across a folder of very old records that had been misfiled and forgotten. He didn’t think much about them until a friend showed Blake and Jo an old photo they recognized as Great-grandpa Logan’s canoe washed up on the island. According to Cade, there were more photos and paperwork from the same era, giving us more clues to the mine’s location.”

      “And did they?”

      “We never found out. When Cade went to have a more thorough look at the file later, he was attacked from behind. When he came to, he had a concussion and no memory of the attack.”

      Ryan steepled his hands in front of him. “Of course the file was gone.”

      “What do you think?”

      “I think our next move should be to try and get it back.”

      She picked up he coffee mug and stood up. “Easier said than done. There’s no proof, but we suspect that Max had something to do with the theft.”

      Ryan shot her a curious look. “No fingerprints or other evidence?”

      “He’s too smart for that. If he was involved, he would have put Eddy Gilgai up to the actual attack.”

      “Now that Eddy’s dead, Max might have to start doing his own dirty work,” Ryan mused. “Do you still think it’s a good idea to be involved with him?”

      She knew how reckless her insistence that she was attracted to Max made her look. But admitting the truth would only intensify Ryan’s efforts to claim her. And she couldn’t deal with that now. “So far Max’s part in this is purely circumstantial.”

      “You said yourself you think he was behind the attack on Cade and the theft of the file.”

      She planted a palm on the table. “Look, maybe Max was behind this and maybe he wasn’t. Under the law, he’s innocent until proven guilty.”

      Ryan’s chair scraped back as he stood to face her. “You know he needs the diamonds to repay his creditors before they foreclose on him. And there’s a better than even chance he’s behind some of the attacks on your family. Yet you insist on seeing him. I’d never have picked you for a gold digger, Judy.”

      He’d invaded her personal space, but she held her ground. “You’d better have a good explanation for that remark.”

      “Do I need one? You can’t possibly be in love with the man after all he’s done and is doing to your family. So you must have another reason for sticking with him. The only one I can think of is money. Did he offer you a share of the mine if you become his wife?”

      Ice dripped into her tone. “You’re treading on dangerous ground.”

      “Not really. Just stating the facts as I see them.”

      “You forget yourself,” she raged.

      Her anger washed off him. “Of course. I’m only a drifter who can’t hold down a steady job for more than a few months. Max inherited a substantial chunk of land, and potentially a lot more if he gets his hands on Diamond Downs. From your point of view, he’s a better bargain as a lover.”

      So angry she could barely stop herself from lashing out at him, she slammed the coffee cup down and spun out of the room.

      Out on the veranda she dragged in a lungful of the cleansing air, hardly aware of the splendor of the night sky, like a velvet cloth strewn with the diamonds her home was named for. Did Ryan know that the sky with its myriad stars was the reason for the property’s name, not the fortune in precious stones said to be located here? Did he have the foggiest idea of what this place meant to her?

      The land itself was her legacy, as it had been for generations of Logans. Only her father’s illness and his miscalculation in mortgaging the land to the Horvaths had changed everything. She had grown up knowing the legend of the diamonds, but never cared much about finding them until they were her only hope of holding onto the land for the next generation. The money itself was strictly a means to an end.

      God, she hated to lose. And losing her heritage because she hadn’t done everything in her power to retain it would be the cruelest loss of all.

      Intellectually she knew why Ryan had made his vile suggestion, but in her heart she felt mortally insulted. How could he think she would sell herself to Max for money?

      That wasn’t the real reason she was so angry, she realized as she fought to bring her labored breathing under control. She was affronted because Ryan was the one making the accusation.

      Buying and selling favors was probably second nature to him. The kind of women he was accustomed to dealing with probably wouldn’t have minded, she thought. But being placed in the same category had hurt her beyond belief.

      Aware that he had followed her outside, she tensed, primed for battle.

      His next words came as a shock. “I apologize. I was out of line.”

      With the wind taken out of her sails, she didn’t turn around. “Have you any idea how close you came to being smacked across your big mouth?”

      “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he said, an infuriating note of humor in his tone. “I shouldn’t have accused you of gold-digging. I know you better.”

      How could he know her at all? She wondered. They’d spent so little time together as adults that his memory was of her as a teenage girl, not the woman she now was. He couldn’t possibly understand her fear of falling in love and losing control of her life. “Apology accepted,” she said evenly. “My reasons for seeing Max are my own affair, nobody else’s.”

      “Doesn’t stop me being jealous as hell,” he said.

      He moved up beside her and rested his hands on the top rail. “Beautiful night, isn’t it? Every time I go away from Diamond Downs I forget how magnificent this place is. Then I come back and wonder why I ever leave.”

      Still shaken by his admission that jealousy had caused his outspokenness, she asked, “Why do you?”

      “Work mostly.”

      “You could work around here. Any cattle station in the region would make an opening for a

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