Fortune Hunter's Hero. Linda Turner

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СКАЧАТЬ spent the last twenty years working as a handyman for a string of apartment complexes in Denver before he was laid off after being injured in a car wreck. He was healthy again and ready to work, and when he was able to easily fix a loose handrail on the stairs, Buck hired him on the spot.

      Buck was the first to admit that working around the house wasn’t his field of expertise. He was a stockbroker—or at least he had been until he quit to accept his inheritance. Over the course of the last four months, however, he’d come a long way when it came to working around the ranch. With David’s guidance, he’d worked on the house and barn and vehicles and learned more than he wanted to about repairing leaky faucets and toilets and crumbling old fireplaces that needed new mortar. He didn’t mind the work—in fact, he enjoyed it—but there was no time to appreciate the progress he and David had made. Something different seemed to break every other day, and the to-do list got longer and longer and longer. It was damn frustrating.

      And they hadn’t even begun to deal with the more serious problems that were threatening to tear the ranch in two. Fences were down, cattle were missing, and lately, he’d noticed signs of trespassers on the ranch. And he knew immediately what they were after. Gold.

      Oh, he knew about the lost Spanish gold mine. Who didn’t? Tales of the lost mine had been circulating in the area for well over two centuries, ever since the mine was lost in a landslide in the eighteenth century. Even his great-grandfather had written in his journals about how Spanish explorers had discovered an incredible vein of gold in the wilds of what was now the Broken Arrow Ranch, but they’d been forced to abandon it after an avalanche covered the mine’s entrance and forever changed all landmarks in the area. According to legend, the massive amounts of gold the Spanish had taken from the mine were nothing compared to what was still buried deep in the mountains.

      Not surprisingly, fortune hunters, adventurers and geologists had been looking for the mine for centuries, without success. Buck knew as long as the mine’s location remained undiscovered, he would have to deal with trespassers who had no respect for what belonged to him and his sisters. For the moment, however, he had more immediate concerns.

      Setting down the pipe wrench he’d been using on the kitchen faucet, he regarded David with a frown. “What seems to be the problem with the generator?”

      “I think it’s just given up the ghost. It’s at least twenty years old. It should have been replaced years ago.”

      “How often is it used? Do we really even need it?”

      “We’re a long way from town, and it doesn’t take much for the lines to go down. Ice in the winter, hailstorms in the spring and summer. And then there’s brownouts. Whenever the electricity goes out, everything shuts down—the freezer and fridge, the air, the heat…”

      It was that time of year, late spring, when the temperature could be in the nineties one day and it could be snowing the next. Last night, the temperature had dropped to seventeen degrees. Record highs were predicted for later in the week. Whatever the weather did, he planned to be prepared. “Then I guess we’d better replace it.”

      “I’ll check around and see what kind of price I can get on one.”

      “What about the truck? How’s it coming?”

      The older man grimaced. “I’m charging the battery right now. If that’s not the problem, then it probably needs an alternator.”

      Buck didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or curse. If. God, he was learning to hate that word. If the termites hadn’t gotten to the studs in the bathroom wall, just the paneling would have to be replaced. If the sick cow that died that morning in the barn didn’t have mad cow disease, the rest of the herd was probably going to be all right. If the well hadn’t run dry, then the problem might be the pump.

      And if the jackass Hilda hired as a foreman had done his damn job and not taken advantage of an old lady instead, Buck thought irritably, then he wouldn’t be bankrupting himself now to put the place back on its feet!

      Quit your whining, a voice drawled in his head. It’s not the ranch that’s really bothering you, and you know it. It’s Melissa.

      He couldn’t deny it. What a fool he was, he thought bitterly. He’d believed that she loved him enough to follow him to the ends of the earth. Fat chance. She hadn’t loved him—she’d loved a stockbroker who vacationed in Switzerland and Monaco and rubbed shoulders with the rich and powerful in London. She’d wanted nothing to do with the wannabe cowboy in the wilds of Colorado. She’d dropped him like a hot rock.

      Forget her, he told himself coldly. She’d shown him who she really was, and he was better off without her. Besides, he had more important things to worry about—like keeping the ranch that had been owned by his family since before the American Civil War.

      He couldn’t argue with that. In spite of all the problems he’d run headlong into, he didn’t regret leaving London and moving to the ranch. He loved the place, loved the untamed wildness of the mountains and canyons, the isolation. Not for the first time, he wondered how his great-grandfather had ever found the strength to walk away.

      Buck had only been here four short months and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else…except when the pipes rattled and doors stuck and the roof leaked.

      How many things could be wrong with one house? he wondered, a reluctant grin tugging at his mouth. After working on it from the moment he’d arrived at the beginning of January, he and David hadn’t made a dent in anything except his bank account. If he was going to restore the ranch to its former glory—and he was determined to do so—he was going to need to win the lottery. Or find the lost gold mine…if it existed.

      Grimacing at that word again—if—he sighed. “I’ll check prices on a new generator and see what I can find. You might as well make a parts list for the truck, too.”

      “Good,” David grunted. “Brake shoes need to be first on the list. They’re just about shot. Oh, yeah, and fan belts. I don’t think they’ve ever been changed.”

      “Make me a list,” Buck said as he turned his attention back to the sink. “I should be finished here in about an hour.”

      Taking him at his word, David returned an hour later with a list that turned out to be pages long. Buck spent the rest of the afternoon tracking down parts and prices, and the final results weren’t pretty. And it was only a partial list!

      Sitting back in his chair at the massive antique desk that dominated the ranch office, staring at the outrageous sum he’d come up with, Buck found himself once again thinking of the lost gold mine. Maybe finding it really was the only solution. The ranch was turning into a money pit, and he’d hardly even tackled the ranching problems: downed fences, lost cattle, feed to get the animals through dry summers and long winters.

      How the hell was he going to do this? he wondered, scowling. What little money Hilda had had at her death had gone for her funeral—the land was all she’d had to leave. He had his own money, of course, but the ranch wasn’t his and his sisters’ yet. Not for a year. He felt sure the four of them would be able to live up to the stipulations of Hilda’s will, but he couldn’t be absolutely certain of that. He’d already invested some of his own money in the place. How much more was he willing to risk?

      Lost in thought, his eyes focused inward, he suddenly realized his gaze had fallen on the built-in bookshelves across from his desk that contained a number of books on the history of Colorado and life in the Old West. Several included references to the Broken Arrow and the lost Spanish mine—he knew because СКАЧАТЬ