Authors: t
Park. “It looks like a ghost town,” she said.
“It is a ghost town for the most part,” Gavin answered. “The sign said the
population was 529.”
“This whole area was booming with 300,000 people after gold was
discovered,” Chloe said. “I Googled it last night after dinner.”
Like studying history was what she wanted to do knowing Gavin was in the
room next door. They’d had a pleasant dinner in Weaverville and the glass of
wine she’d ordered had mellowed her to the point where she had hoped she
might get Gavin’s interest in spite of the “rules” he’d laid out. After all, what
red-blooded American male wouldn’t recognize the romantic setting of the
majestic Sierra Nevada mountains with a nearly full moon rising like a huge
silver ball in a black velvet sky? The air on the veranda was crisp and cool—
what more would a guy need to put his arm around a girl to keep her warm?
Especially if that girl was standing as close as she dared without falling onto
him? Gavin had been oblivious to it all, acting like a perfectly proper Brit,
escorting her to her room and insisting she lock the door once she was
inside. So much for hoping he might want to come in for a nightcap.
“Here we are,” Gavin said as they pulled into the parking lot of the park and
took his sunglasses from the visor.
“Are you sure you need those? It’s overcast.”
His dark eyes met hers for a moment before he slipped them on, his face
becoming a mask to her. “They make my eyes feel better.”
“Whatever.” Chloe stepped from the car and accepted a map from a
volunteer dressed up as a miner—a young miner with shaggy brown hair,
but kind of cute.
“The mill is the first thing everyone wants to see,” he said and pointed
toward a trail. “Just follow that.” He glanced down to her short skirt and
boots and gave her a friendly smile that was just a bit seductive. “If there’s
anything I can do to help, let me know.”
“Thanks,” she said, aware that Gavin had come up behind her. “Maybe I can
ask you some questions later.”
“Sure thing. My name’s Carl. I’ll be here.”
“Chloe. Thanks again.” She gave him a smile and started down the short
trail. Gavin made a sound that almost sounded like a growl, but she wasn’t
sure.
“You shouldn’t be talking to strangers,” Gavin said.
Chloe stopped so suddenly that any other man would have bowled into her,
but Gavin had the agility of a big cat. She glared at him wishing she could
see the expression behind his shades. “Is that another rule?”
His jaw set. “Yes.”
“Since when?”
“Since just now.”
She nearly gaped, not believing what she heard. “You can’t just go ordering
me around. Who do you think you are?”
“I am your guardian, Miss Whitney. You will do as I say.”
This time she felt her mouth drop open and she snapped it shut. Then she
narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. “You didn’t like that guy flirting with
me?”
“I did not assume he was flirting.”
“No? I can recognize when a guy is interested, hard as that may be to
believe.”
A muscle clenched in his already tight jaw. “Miss Whitney. I am merely
trying to protect you. We have no idea if we are being followed or by whom.”
“Now you’re going to go all James Bond on me, like we’re living out some
kind of international espionage plot?”
“We may very well be doing just that.”
“Give me a break. I know you said some nasty guy named Adam Baylor is
after the relics, but you also said he wears an eye-patch. Haven’t seen too
many of those around.”
“He does not do his own dirty work, Miss Whitney. I thought I had made that
quite clear earlier.”
“Okay. So you suspect some nice college kid who works at a national park to
be his henchman?”
Gavin gave an exasperated sigh as though he were dealing with a
particularly dense child. “One never knows, Miss Whitney.”
“Are you suspicious of everyone you meet? Geez, maybe I’m one of the bad
guys, too.”
A corner of his mouth turned up. “You are not. I had you checked out before
we left.”
“You what?”
“You heard me. I am an investigator with Scotland Yard. It goes with the
territory. Now, I believe we are here to either find or eliminate one more
place where the platter might be. Shall we proceed?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, leaving Chloe staring at his back. How dare he
run stats on her? How dare he? I am your guardian. Guardian? That sounded
so medieval. I am merely trying to protect you. She felt the anger lessen.
She couldn’t remember any man ever saying that. Not that she needed
protection. She really doubted she was in any real danger.
Still. Maybe she should consider it a compliment of sorts. At least from him.
She observed him as he walked on ahead. He did have a very nice, broad
back—not to mention muscular thighs and tight buns.
But he really had to lose that male chauvinist attitude. She grinned to
herself. Gavin had met his match—he just didn’t know it yet.
****
college kid. Anyone who wasn’t blind could see Chloe was an attractive
woman, even if she did have spiked, orange hair and neon-pink nails. He’d
kind of even become accustomed to her quirky way of dressing, although
that tiny sheath of a skirt with those platform boots was new. Anyone else
wearing it would look like a hooker—on her it was just…just Chloe.
But that didn’t mean that Carl guy had to ogle her.
“Wait up!” she said as she clunked along the gravelly path toward him. He
wasn’t sure how she actually walked in those things and half-prepared
himself to catch her if she tripped, but she kept her balance.
“This is impressive,” she said when she reached his side.
Gavin frowned. “What is?”
Chloe gave him an arched look. “This—” She waved her hand. “Sutter’s Mill.
Or at least a replica of it.”
He’d hardly noticed where he was standing. A lack of situational awareness
was not good in his line of work. Chloe was getting to him. “I suppose so.
We need to see the museum.”
“Wait a minute. Just think. Less than two hundred years ago nothing was
out here, except Indians and a few Californios—”
“Who?”
“Spanish-speaking Anglos. This was all a part of Mexico. Sutter planned to
be a farmer until his foreman, Marshall, found a tiny piece of gold in the
American River. Sutter didn’t even want anyone to know, but that didn’t last
long. The rest is history.” She tilted her head at him. “I thought you Brits
were interested in history what with all your castles that go back to the
1300’s.”
Farther back than that, Gavin thought. Camelot existed in the sixth century
although it had been a wooden hill-fort that the Normans never reinforced
with stone. He had almost forgotten that two hundred years was a long time
for mortals.
Chloe looked around the park and the distant mountains. “Finding the gold
pushed the pioneers westward and helped settle our country, but it’s kind of
sad it was at the expense of the Modoc Indians.” She took a deep breath.
“But then, that’s the way most of the United States was settled. It doesn’t
really make it right though.”
Gavin didn’t think he’d ever heard her be this serious, except about her
friend, Jake. “It’s the way of it, Miss Whitney. England is mired in bloody
battles, even amongst its own nobles, to say nothing of the wars with
Ireland and Scotland.” If he shut his eyes, he could still hear the cries of
men and screaming horses trapped between the two streams of
Bannockburn while the Templars—as Bruce’s elite cavalry—rode them down.
It had been his first battle since he’d been turned.
“Or us,” Chloe said with a small smile.
“What?”
“Us. Remember the little war called the Revolution?”
He really had to stay focused. “Of course. You Yanks were a self-sufficient
lot even back then.” He looked up at the old mill. “Perhaps it was best gold
was not discovered until you were free of us.”
“Guess so or I’d be talking with a funny accent.”
Gavin gave her a quick look only to see that she was teasing. He smiled,
feeling some of the tension ease that had been building up. He wasn’t given
to frivolity, but perhaps keeping the conversation light would stay his
thoughts from straying to places where he shouldn’t be going with her.
“If you think I talk funny, you should hear some of the regional accents over
there. I daresay you would not be able to understand the English.”
“Try me,” she said impishly.
And, as they made their way toward the museum, he did, alternating
between the deep burr of the Scots, the lilting brogue of the Irish, the
heaviness of the Welsh and the sliding slur of the Cockney.
Chloe laughed, mimicking him with almost perfect inflection
Gavin found himself laughing too—something he hadn’t done in decades.
****
Francisco the next morning.
Gavin glanced at her scouring over information she had printed off the
Internet last night. “We had to start some place. Did you really expect we
would find the platter immediately?”
“I guess not.”
He smiled as he eased the car into the heavy traffic on Interstate 80. “Divine
intervention rarely happens.”
“Maybe my mom can help since she reads the Tarot.” Chloe giggled
suddenly. “Not that she’s divine or anything. She’d have a real hoot if
anyone referred to her like that.”
“Tell me about your mother.” The more he knew about Chloe’s mother, the
better he could be prepared for any potential match-making the woman may
have in mind.
Chloe folded the papers and stuck them in her oversize, leopard-print hobo
bag and relaxed against the seat cushion. “Maybe I’m prejudiced, but my
mother has always been unique. Different from other moms.”
“How so?”
“Well, first of all, she didn’t have me until she was in her thirties. She always
told me she was waiting for just the right time when all the stars were
aligned.”
“Stars?”
“Yeah. Astrology stuff. Mom was a hippie.” Chloe looked at Gavin. “Do you
know who they were?”
“I recall there was some kind of youth movement over here that involved a
lot of drugs and anti-violence, anti-establishment rhetoric.”
“Flower power,” Chloe said. “Mom said a lot of it started with young people
against the Viet Nam war and not wanting to be drafted into the military.”
Gavin frowned. “Men did not wish to defend their country?”
“They didn’t see the need for bloodshed and violence. I guess they saw the
war as something that politicians and big corporations were making money
off of—kind of like those Occupy Wall-Street people did a while back. Of
course,” she continued, “Timothy Leary introduced LSD along with his
message to ‘tune in, turn on, and drop out’ and the Pill became available so
I guess it was a perfect storm of its own making.”
“And your mother was a part of this?”
“Mom ran away from home at age fifteen to join the Summer of Love here in
San Francisco. She’ll be glad to tell you about it.”
Gavin had a mental image of some sixty-ish woman with gray hair trying to
relive her past—or what she could remember of it if she was involved in the
drug culture. The psychedelic world had hit England hard too.
“What about your father?”
An expression of sadness fleetingly passed over Chloe’s face and then it was
gone and she shrugged. “I don’t know who my father is.”
That admission startled Gavin so much, he almost veered into the next lane.
A driver honked his horn angrily as Gavin steadied the car. “I am sorry. I did
not mean to pry, Miss Whitney.”
“It’s okay. Mom said it could have been one of three men.”
He glanced over. “Have you thought about getting DNA testing done?”
Chloe shook her head. “Mom tried to locate all three once she found out she
was pregnant, but the parties were pretty wild in those days and most kids
just went by first names. They drifted, too. She never was able to find any of
them.”
“That’s a shame. Did she eventually marry?” Gavin found himself hoping, for
some unknown reason, that Chloe had at least a step-father in her life.
“No. Mom always said that the universe had given me to her and whoever
the father had been was just a means to an end.” She looked sideways at
him. “That’s kind of romantic, isn’t it?”
Gavin thought he detected a hint of wistfulness in her voice. God’s blood. It
didn’t sound ‘romantic’ to him at all, but then, romance had long since
eluded him. Maybe the mother had tried to put a positive slant on the
situation. “Were you happy?” he asked.
Chloe turned her huge, aquamarine eyes on him and he wondered if he’d
asked the wrong question, but then she smiled.
“Oh, sure. Mom always made sure we had enough to eat and a place to stay
and she discussed things with me. Asked my opinion. Most kids had all these
rules they had to follow, but I had lots of freedom.”
Freedom wasn’t always the best thing for a child, but perhaps it explained
Chloe’s independent free-spiritedness. “It sounds as though you were close.