The Cowgirl Ropes a Billionaire (17 page)

“What if we don’t?” Bella asked, looking at her GPS unit worriedly. Evan cursed inwardly. He’d used the things a thousand times—if she’d never used one before, he’d have a hell of a time not beating her ten times over to the final destination.

“Don’t worry, your GPS unit comes complete with a homing beacon. If you don’t find us, we’ll find you, but any geocaches you dig up past sundown won’t count toward your point total.” Jake flashed his trademark smile.

Bella didn’t look reassured.

“It’s not that hard,” Evan said, reaching out to show her. “You just push these buttons to set…”

“I can figure it out,” Bella snapped at him.

Whoops. That’s right—he was supposed to be
clandestinely
helping her. “Sorry. My bad. So, are we all set here? Can I get going?”

“Here are your first coordinates.” Jake handed them each a small, plastic-coated card. The show must spend a mint on lamination, Evan thought. “And here’s a shovel. It just might come in handy today.”

It took Evan all of two seconds to program the coordinates into the GPS, stow the shovel in his daypack, and head off in the right direction. He made a show of rushing out of the campground but after a quarter mile slowed down. “No need to hurry,” he said aloud for the benefit of the cameras. “She doesn’t even know how to program the thing.” He sat down on a handy log, untied his shoes and retied them, as if he’d done a poor job the first time around. Afterwards, he set off at an ambling pace punctuated by frequent stops.

He might be in for a boring day, but at least he’d lose.

* * * * *

Once she got the hang of the GPS, it wasn’t hard to stay on track. Bella decided the product placement of the units was probably more important to the show than making this challenge particularly hard. It made sense when she thought about it. The company that produced the GPS units would want them to seem easy to use and accurate. If she got lost, they’d look bad.

As she moved along the trail she checked the unit from time to time to see if the dot that represented her was indeed getting closer to the dot that represented the first geocache. Yep, right on target. She’d stuck the little shovel through the flap of the day pack where it was easy to carry, but definitely made the pack heavier than on previous days. Ten geocaches seemed like a lot. She wondered just how much hiking she’d need to do before the day was over.

Evan was right; they ought to bill this show as a weight-loss vehicle
, she thought some time later as she reached the spot where her GPS told her the first geocache would be. Her clothes definitely felt bigger today, and the muscles in her legs were more defined.

She looked around the little clearing for a sign of where the geocache was hiding. Was she supposed to just start digging? A few months ago, a little boy at her clinic with his cat had regaled her with a story about geocaching with his family. According to him, the canisters he’d found were hidden—not buried—so people could find them, open them up, sign a log and possibly retrieve a prize, then hide them again for the next seeker.

This was different, she told herself. No one else was going to look for these geocaches—just her. Of course Madelyn would make it difficult by burying them.

She spotted an area where the dirt looked different from the rest of the ground—like it had been disturbed recently—and started digging. Moments later she heard a satisfying thud and bent down to push the rest of the loose dirt away from the metal canister buried in the ground. She pulled it out triumphantly, unhooked the lid and dumped out a laminated card, a stuffed animal that vaguely resembled the marmot she photographed the previous day, and an energy bar.

Hey now, if the geocaches all contained treats, she was on it!

Bella stuffed the marmot in her daypack, programmed the new coordinates into her GPS and unwrapped the bar. This was going to be a cinch.

* * * * *

“Could you go any slower?” Chris said behind him.

Evan turned around. “You’re not supposed to talk to me, remember?”

“The camera’s off. So what gives?”

“I twisted my ankle.” Hell, he’d made a huge production of it back there after he’d found his third geocache in the first half-hour of the day. He’d been limping ever since. Was this guy dense?

“Twisted it, yeah. You’ll get an Emmy for sure for that bit of acting.”

Anger tightened Evan’s jaw. “Look, I don’t need your…”

“Fine, fine. Stop talking to the camera and get a move on,” Chris said.

“You’re the one holding me up now,” Evan said, but he resumed his hike, going just a bit faster. Losing points today was going to be harder than he thought. How was he supposed to fake getting lost when the trail was so clearly marked and the GPS took him right to the caches?

He wondered how Bella was faring. Surely she’d have to have found at least five or six by now. He was moving at a snail’s pace. If she was walking as fast as she normally did, she’d have a big lead on him.

As long as Madelyn hadn’t stacked the odds against her in some way.

Evan stopped in his tracks and Chris swore behind him. Could Madelyn be using their separation as a way to sabotage Bella? Was her hike longer, or her caches buried more deeply? What if Madelyn gave her the wrong coordinates and led her astray completely?

He couldn’t think of any way to find out.

Except….

“I’m beginning to think you guys have it out for me,” he said out loud.

“What do you mean?” Chris said. “You know you’re not supposed to talk to us, right?”

“I mean, what’s with the tiny tents? What about the gondola? What’s next—a night in a cave? It’s obvious you guys know I’m claustrophobic, and you’re using it to make me lose the contest.”

“You’re only losing by a couple of points,” Andrew pointed out. “If you hurried up a little bit, you’d make them up in no time.”

“How? If Bella’s course is as easy as mine, she’ll get full points, too.”

“Dude, if you don’t hurry up, you’re not going to get full points,” Chris said.

“Dude, no matter how slow I go, I’m going to finish this course before noon. Obviously today isn’t the day you’re going to screw me over. But tomorrow…I bet tomorrow Madelyn’s got something up her sleeve that will totally mess with me.”

Andrew snickered. “You’re not the one who needs to worry about that.”

Chris elbowed him. “Shut up, man.”

“Sorry.” Chastened, Andrew put a hand on his hip and addressed Evan. “If I were you, I’d just do my best to complete every challenge as quickly and carefully as I could. Don’t worry about Bella.”

“Whatever.” As he resumed walking, Evan hoped his act fooled them, but he was worried about Bella. More worried than he’d been before, in fact. If Madelyn felt no compunction about using his worst fears against him, even though she wanted him to win, what might she do to Bella?

What was Bella’s worst fear?

And where was she now?

* * * * *

“This can’t be right,” Bella said for the twentieth time as she bushwhacked through thick underbrush, following the GPS directions to her next geocache. She’d found the first four easily enough, but her new coordinates took her right off the trail and into the woods.

She should have known they wouldn’t all be that easy. The show wouldn’t expect viewers to watch two episodes of the contestants simply walking down a trail. Still, this was brutal; she needed a machete to get through this undergrowth.

A half an hour later, she was hot, sweaty, and no closer to the cache if her GPS was to be believed. She shook the gadget, convinced something was wrong with it. Shouldn’t she have reached the next one by now? She squinted at the sun that was climbing higher in the sky by the minute, peeking out through billows of ever-thickening clouds. Evan was probably far ahead of her by now, even if his route was as rough as hers. He knew how to operate a GPS far better than she did, and she was beginning to think her earlier successes were simply luck.

“Maybe you should stop for lunch,” Nita said, startling Bella. She’d become so used to the two silent crew members trailing her, she’d forgotten they could speak.

“I wanted to find five caches before I stopped,” Bella said, but she longed for a break. “Ten more minutes. If I don’t find it, we’ll take a rest.”

Another half-hour later, there was no cache in sight and Bella wanted to throw the GPS unit into the next creek they crossed. The thing was worthless. She should have found that cache five times over by now.

“Eat something,” Nita said gently, pointing her to sit on a fallen log. “You’ll feel better and think better, too.”

“You two aren’t supposed to talk,” Paul said.

“Give her a break, can’t you?” Nita said. “She’s having a tough day.”

Something about the way she said it made Bella look sharply at the camerawoman. What exactly did she mean by that?

That you’re having a bad day, Miss I-Can’t-Use-a-GPS-To-Save-My-Life,
she told herself. Surely there wasn’t anything more to it.

She didn’t have a phobia of geocaches, after all. Madelyn had no way of knowing she’d be a failure at following directions. Now, if the challenge included riding horses, she’d know Madelyn had it in for her.

No, today it was her own stupidity tripping her up. As usual.

She’d always been the one who caused trouble in her family; the one who ruined everything. She’d been responsible for Caramel’s death, hadn’t she? Responsible for Cyclone’s death and the hard months that followed, ending in the sale of half her family’s ranch.

Plus there was her fear of horses. Her refusal to go anywhere near them again despite her mother’s attempts to help her get over it. One day Sylvie had led her to the corral, where a sweet-tempered mare stood ready to be ridden. Bella’s protests hadn’t stopped her, but her father spotted them from the barn and he put an end to the session with a quick burst of words:
Get her away from there! She’s got no business around horses. I can’t afford to lose her; she’s the only one I’ve got.

His words had hit her like a slap to the face. He cared more about the mare than he did her and he thought she’d kill any horse she got near, for heaven’s sake. She’d run into the house and cried for an hour.

After that, her mother kept her away from the ranch as much as possible. With no money for activities, she hit on the idea that Bella could make herself useful to elderly Maggie Silverton, the local pet veterinarian. Maggie, in turn, was grateful for any help she could get. A gray-haired, soft-spoken, gentle woman, she took Bella in every afternoon after school and all day on weekends. Bella wasn’t sure how she’d have survived her teenage years without her.

Her father acted as if she had died along with Caramel and Cyclone. He focused on Craig as the worthy heir to his diminished kingdom. Together they plotted how someday they’d recoup the lost land and restore the Chathams to their former glory.

Bella kept her head down and learned to be invisible. While her parents scrimped and saved to make up any gap between Craig’s scholarships and grants and the cost of his education, she’d never once discussed the cost of hers with them. A top-notch student—all those afternoons working on her homework under Maggie’s gentle tutelage paid off—she’d still needed to take out loans to fund the final years of her veterinary education.

At least she knew she had a job waiting for her with Maggie, and when Maggie had passed all too soon, she’d been shocked to find herself the sole beneficiary of her elderly friend’s will. Maggie was the only reason she had a clinic and shelter to run, and now she was losing it.

She wasn’t worthy of the old woman’s trust. Wasn’t worthy of anyone’s love.

She jerked to her feet, her lunch spilling to the ground. She had to win this thing.

“Bella?” Nita reached out a hand, but Bella batted it away. Blinking back tears, she grabbed her pack and the GPS, leaving her lunch scattered on the ground. She had to move, had to walk and keep on walking, until she left those memories far behind.

“Bella! Wait!”

She didn’t slow down.

She couldn’t.

And if Madelyn tried to put her on a horse, she’d just crumple up and die.

CHAPTER TEN

“What are you doing here?”

Evan, Chris and Andrew all swiveled to see Bella crash through the brush at the side of the trail, followed closely by Nita and Paul, who didn’t look at all happy. Bella’s hair was tumbling down around her shoulders, and a smudge of dirt streaked her forehead. She looked like she’d been crying, or maybe fighting hard not to cry. Evan’s stomach squeezed. Evidently, while he’d been taking it easy, she’d been working hard.

On what? These geocaches couldn’t be any easier to find.

“Damn it, we missed the shot!” Chris said, and he and Andrew raced to get their equipment set up again and rolling as a drizzling mist of rain began to fall.

Bella faced Evan down. “Why are you on my trail?” Her voice was thin and high, and he thought she might break down into tears any second. What the hell had happened to her out there? He wanted to pull her into his arms, but now was not the time.