Lover in the Rough Read Online Free Page A

There was no one behind her. He had gone as silently as he had appeared. If she hadn’t felt the weight of his canteen in her hand, she would have thought she had dreamed him.
    Were there any lingering doubts about the stranger’s reality, though, Todd’s presence at the dunes would have removed them. He hung around the edges of the activity like a sullen cloud looking for a place to rain. Reba stayed out of his way. The third time she casually evaded Todd’s attempts to get her alone, she remembered the stranger’s words: It’s not as easy to be trapped in the open .
    Reba waited patiently while the photographer rearranged the last pieces of the Green Suite on the lip of a dune. The descending sun threw out long, crisp shadows, emphasizing ripple marks in the sand. Cut stones and gem crystals in matrix gleamed against the umber sand, tints and tones and every possible shade of green. Emeralds cut and in matrix, tsavorite cut and in matrix, peridot and diopside and corundum, topaz and diamonds scintillating; a stunning crystal shaft of Brazilian tourmaline that gave new meaning to the word green .
    A smile curved Reba’s lips as she looked at the tourmaline. That, at least, was one thing time could not take from her, the only thing that she had left of her childhood; half-ownership of the China Queen, an abandoned tourmaline mine in the Pala area of San Diego county.
    The mine had come down to her from her great-great-grandmother. The terms of her will stated that it was to go to the oldest girl in each generation on her twenty-sixth birthday. That had worked well until her mother was born, one half of identical twins. The birth had been accomplished in the backseat of a car. By the time her grandmother and the twins were in the hospital, no one knew which girl had been born first. So her mother got half of the mine and her aunt got the other half. The aunt had married an Australian and vanished into the Outback, taking her half of the mine with her.
    Once, Reba had dreamed of opening the China Queen and finding fabulous treasures overlooked by earlier miners. Sometimes she wondered if that fantasy hadn’t been what urged her onto the gem trail with Jeremy, a dream of treasures come true. But as for the mine itself . . . it remained merely a childish fantasy. The costs of mining were staggering and the mine itself sagged under eighty years of neglect. She hadn’t been to the China Queen since she was a child.
    “Ms. Farrall? We’re ready to leave if you are.”
    Reba looked up at the owner of the patient voice. “Sorry,” she murmured. “The Green Suite always sets me to dreaming.”
    The photographer grimaced and watched the last of the precious specimens being packed away in their individual cases. “It gives the insurance people nightmares. They can’t wait to get back to L.A. and steel vaults. That guy hanging around a few dunes over isn’t doing anything for their nerves, either.”
    Reba turned and saw a man standing outlined against the late afternoon sky. Lithe, relaxed, radiating strength even in his stillness, unmistakably the stranger whose canteen now bumped companionably against her hip. “Tell the guards to relax,” she said. “That man has seen more rare gems than a tour guide at the Smithsonian.”
    “Tell it to Mr. Sinclair. He’s been trying to talk the guards into running the guy off.”
    “Death Valley is a national monument. He has as much right to be here as we do.”
    “That’s what one of the guards said. Several times.” The photographer shrugged and turned away. “I’ll call you when I have today’s proofs.”
    From the top of her dune, Reba watched as the group of people slowly fragmented and retraced their hollow footprints back out to the road. She looked over her shoulder, expecting to see the stranger. The ridge was empty of all but wind. When she turned back she saw Todd struggling up the face of the dune, determination in every stride. She turned and lightly ran