“What were you doing in a saloon if you were a kid?”
“Getting drunk and doing naughty things with the girls. Now tell me more about this treasure.”
“I don’t know much, except—” She turned to look at him and was tempted to ask about the “naughty things.” “Did the prospector have a glass eye?”
“A great big ugly one, why?”
“People thought he must have had, but no one was alive who had seen him, so they weren’t sure it was him they found in the cave.”
When Kady said no more, Cole, in one easy motion, pulled her from the chair and put her on his lap. With her head on his shoulder and his big arms around her, Kady sighed dreamily. “The whole thing was wonderfully romantic. There was the legend that this old man had found a mine that was guarded by the spirit of a beautiful Indian maiden, but no one believed him.”
When she looked at Cole in question, he guffawed. “He was a drunk and a cheat at cards, as well as a thief and a liar. Of course no one believed him. The newspaper printed the story because they needed to fill up the space.”
“Obviously, he wasn’t always a liar, and you should work on believing in people more.”
“You believe everything anyone tells you, so you’re gullible enough for both of us. Now tell me what was romantic about this mine and how much was in it?”
“Leave it to you to think about the money. Anyway, a couple of hikers saw a bat fly into some rocks and started investigating and found a small cave. Inside were two skeletons, one of a young woman wearing the remnants of a beaded dress and the other of an old man wearing a leather coat. He had a glass eye and—” She looked up at Cole. “Even though carbon dating showed the woman’s skeleton to be about a hundred years older than the man’s, they were holding hands when they were found.”
“And that’s romantic to you? Two dead people? Skeletons are romantic? Life is romantic.”
“You are a man, that’s all that’s wrong with you.”
“And since when did you start complaining about that?”
When Kady smiled, Cole gently kissed her, but she had already learned not to introduce true passion into their kisses. Passion made him pull away. “Let’s go find it. The mine. Let’s go find the mine.”
“But it’s—” She started to say that the mine had already been found, but that wasn’t true, not when now was 1873. “What do you want the money for? Don’t you have enough?”
“It’s not the money; I want the excitement. Finding treasure. That would be wonderful! Oh, wait. What did the people who found it in 1982 do with the money? Some of your good deeds?”
Kady grimaced. “Fought over it. The man and woman who found it were engaged to be married, but after they found the treasure, they spent ten years in courtrooms fighting over who saw inside the cave first and therefore owned the lion’s share of the loot. In the end the lawyers got nearly all of it. I think the hikers ended up with about twenty grand each, out of a total of about thirteen million. And of course their lives were a shambles.”
Raising her head, she looked at him. “And what would you do with more millions than you already have?”
He took a moment before speaking, and when he did, his voice was soft. “I’d bury it under the mosque. No one goes there except me, so it would be safe; then, Kady, if you do go back to your own time, you can come back here and know where to find it. You’d be smarter than to let the lawyers have it.”
For a moment Kady was speechless because she knew that he meant every word of what he was saying.
“Do you love me, Kady?” he whispered, kissing the top of her head.
She hesitated before she spoke, as Gregory’s face flashed before her eyes. Then she seemed to also see the man in her dreams, the man with the veiled face, who had haunted her most of her life. “I—” she began, but he put a finger to her lips, then lifted her chin so he was looking into her eyes.
“Someday I want to see love in your eyes when you look at me,” he said.
Kady started to protest that statement, but Cole wouldn’t let her speak.
“I may not be an expert in love, but I know that when you love someone, you know it. You don’t hesitate or have to think about it. Nor does anyone else come to your mind when you think of love.”
He kissed her softly. “When I look into your eyes, I’ll always know what is in y
our heart.”
His words were so true that they brought tears to Kady’s eyes, and she buried her head in his chest to keep him from seeing.
“Are those tears you’re shedding for me?” Cole asked cheerfully as he pulled her head up to look at him. “I don’t think any girl’s ever cried over me before.”
That made Kady laugh. “As far as I can tell, you’ve made every woman in this town cry.”