Nolan still pinched himself every morning he woke up beside her.
“What the hell happened down here?” she asked.
“André.”
“Don’t tell me, in a past life he was Richard the Lionheart?”
“Something like that. The swords were shipped in from England.”
They reached the tasting room, and he turned a three-sixty, slowly so she could see every detail. Actually, not quite every detail. There was still one surprise left.
“I kind of like it,” she said.
“Kind of like it? It’s fucking spectacular.” Nolan picked up the remote and shut off the main lights. Another click, and small alcoves set into the wall lit up, each holding a piece of art. A statue, a chalice, a painting. He pointed to his favourite, a stone sculpture of a German shepherd. “A friend of Mayra’s made that one.”
“Cute. It reminds me of Juno.”
“Look behind it.” Nolan took a couple of steps closer. “See?”
“Is that…is that gold?”
“André brought in a stonemason.” And a structural engineer, just in case. “The stonemason worked with natural fissures to make the alcoves and struck gold, quite literally.”
Alexa didn’t know it yet, but André’s friend Guillermo had some of that gold, plus the original diamond from the swimming hole. When the time was right, Nolan hoped she’d wear it on her ring finger.
She began laughing. “If ghosts are a thing, I bet there’re a lot of pissed-off forty-niners.”
“Not quite all of them. Now that I have more time, I’ve started going through Grandpa’s shelves, and he kept even more stuff than I thought. Not just his own books and papers, but his father’s and his grandfather’s and more. I found my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s journal—I think that’s right. A bunch of ‘greats’ anyway. He made a small fortune during the Gold Rush.”
“He was a prospector?”
“Nope. He was the guy who sold pickaxes and gold pans, plus he owned a saloon. But even though he was making money, he hated the damage being done to the landscape, so when this place came up for sale…”
“He bought it to stop miners from digging up the entire hillside?”
“Exactly. And going down through the generations, each of the Calder men became…a guardian, I guess.”
“Of the land?”
“And everything on it.”
“Which is why your grandpa left it to you instead of your Uncle David, the property developer?”
Nolan nodded. “David would have parcelled it up and sold it off piece by piece to the highest bidders. When he challenged the will, I thought I’d lose the place, and I probably would have if an attorney hadn’t agreed to help me pro bono.”
“Is now a good time to confess that he wasn’t actually working pro bono?”
For a moment, Nolan just stared at her, but then it was his turn to laugh. Honestly, why was he even surprised?
“I love you.” And he was about to show her how much when he realised they had a problem and cursed. “Fuck, I left the condoms in the house.”
“I’m taking birth control pills.”
Was she saying what he thought she was saying…?
“I don’t have any STIs, I swear.”
He’d gotten tested after Lisanne left, just in case, and it had only been him and his hand since then. As witnessed by Alexa, a ransomware gang, and a bevy of online porn fans.
