Immortal Mine
Cindy C. Bennett
Immortal Mine
Title Page
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 45
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Immortal Mine
Cindy C Bennett
Published by Cindy C Bennett
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Cindy C Bennett USA
Discover other titles by Cindy C Bennett
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Heart on a Chain
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Prologue
Sam
We pull up to the building, the one my uncle and I scouted out and purchased before making the move to this town. It sits ten miles outside of town, an old, abandoned motel. No one knows of the purchase—we’ve kept it looking exactly the same. Same broken windows, same graffiti covered walls, same faded “for sale” sign out front, all of it covered in a layer of disuse.
She looks at me oddly, but doesn’t question as she climbs out of the truck. I follow her, taking her hand and leading her to the only room that has been altered. The alterations are invisible from the outside.
“So, is this the latest venture in the Coleman dynasty?” she teases. I’d hoped that was the conclusion she would come to. I knew that if I tried to tell her the truth, she would run as fast as she could, away from me. The truth isn’t something I can tell her… it’s something I have to show her.
“I want to show you something,” I say, tugging her gently toward room three, pulling the key from my pocket.
“Okay,” she agrees happily, and I feel a tinge of guilt for the deception.
We stop outside the door. I twist the key in the lock, but turn to her before I push the door open.
“Before we go in, I want to tell you something,” I say. “I want you to remember that I love you, and that no matter what happens, everything is going to be okay.”
For the first time, a small amount of wariness creeps into her expression.
“Okaaay,” she answers, hesitant, skeptical. “Is everything okay, Sam?”
I smile at her, and push the door open. She steps in ahead of me, and I close the door behind us, the lock automatically clicking into place. She is staring at the bed, which suddenly seems overwhelmingly large in the room, and I can see what she might think of my bringing her here. She turns toward me, and the worry on her face confirms my suspicion.
“No, it’s not…” I begin.
“You know how I feel…” she says at the same time, laughing nervously as our words overlap.
I walk up to her, place my hands on her shoulders.
“I do know how you feel, and I would never do anything that would cause you to compromise your values for me. I didn’t really think about how this would appear.”
Relief floods her eyes, and she smiles as she leans into me, wrapping her arms trustingly around my waist.
“I know that, Sam. I shouldn’t have doubted you.”
I swallow over the lump in my throat at her words. What I’m about to do is much worse…. She leans back and looks up at me, trust and love shining in her unusual eyes. Those eyes are the reason we are even here. They are what made me first believe that she could be like me… that she could be the one I’ve been waiting centuries for, the hope amplified when I met her grandmother and knew what she is. Those are the eyes that I had fallen in love with so quickly.
And, pig that I am, I take advantage of that love and lean down to kiss her.
I pull one of the two chairs that sit next to the table out, pushing her down gently to sit in it. I back away until I’m standing near the bed, across the room from her.
“I want you to trust me,” I implore. “Just stay there, just... wait. And remember what I said before: everything is going to be okay.”
The smile on her face falters as I pull the gun from my pocket.
“Sam, what—” I can hear the fear sliding up her words.
“I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.” I flip the cylinder of the revolver open and show it to her. “Only one bullet.”
She begins to rise out of her chair.
“I think you should stay sitting,” I tell her, trying not to sound threatening. She hesitates, but when I don’t turn the gun her way, she continues to a standing position, slowly moving toward the door, hands raised toward me, as if she’s the victim of a hold-up. My heart breaks at the fear that shrouds her entire body.
“Sam, I don’t know what you’re planning, but I think this has gone far enough.” Her words are soothing, but firm. I feel a moment’s fierce pride at her courage.
I slide the cylinder back into place and she reaches for the door knob. It turns, but the door doesn’t open.
“Sam,” she says, her voice exerting authority, even over the tremor of fright. “Unlock the door. I want to leave now.”
I almost give in, but can’t now. She has to know, has to see.
“Just trust me—” I see the change in her face at my words, and quickly revise. “Just give me ten more minutes. Then I’ll let you out, and we’ll go home.”
“I don’t like this. I want to go now.” The pleading that has crept into her voice nearly undoes me, but I have to follow through. Her eyes haven’t left the gun since I closed the cylinder. I take a breath and turn the gun toward my chest.
“No!” Her response is immediate, and she takes a step toward me, hand reaching as if to stop me. I can’t let her get any closer, in case something goes wrong. It’s not her time yet.
“Everything will be okay,” I reiterate, and pull the trigger.
Chapter 1
Niahm
Six Months Earlier
Some people might call my little town of Goshen a dying town. The population steadily decreases—along with the size of the ranches and farms—as people move away, looking for a better living elsewhere. I know it will always have a population of at least one—me.
My family made a living originally as sheep farmers. My grandfather wasn’t a very good businessman, though, and sold large parcels off to
pay his debts even before my father became the owner. My father didn’t have much of an interest in farming the creatures, and sold off most of the rest, including the sheep. We went from over a thousand acres passed to my grandfather, to the fifty acres that will be left to me. I plan to spend the rest of my life on my fifty acres.
“You’re crazy for wanting to stay, Niamh Parker,” my friends have all told me, at one time or another.
Yes, that’s me—that’s truly my name. Not pronounced nee-ahm like you’d think. It’s an old Irish name pronounced neeve—which totally makes sense if you throw out everything you’ve ever known or been taught about phonetics. If you don’t think that’s caused me any amount of grief over the years! My name, though, is one of the reasons I love living in a small town so much—no one new to try to explain my name to.
I don’t even have Irish ancestry. Solidly English, with smatterings of German, Scottish, Dutch and Norwegian sprinkled in here and there. My name is reflective of my mother’s romantic nature. She claims she named me Niamh because it means radiant. I think she read it in a romance novel. She’s fond of those.
I looked it up on the internet once—not easy, as it kept telling me I had typed it in wrong—and read that it means snow, which I guess is radiant in the right light. So that’s me, the radiant snow girl. Guess with my peculiar name, strange was written in the stars.
Currently, there are exactly 376 residents of Goshen. Once in a while that number might increase because of a birth, but more likely it drops as people leave. You might be able to understand, then, why such a big deal is made when Shane Coleman and his nephew, Sam, move into the old Stanton place.
There’s a flurry of activity upon their unexpected arrival. They bought the place from Barbara Glissmeyer, the only realtor in town—she also works in four other nearby towns, which probably each do more business in one week than we do in Goshen in a year—and swore her to secrecy on the sale. That in itself is cause for rampant speculation and burning the phone lines up with gossip when it’s discovered.
But then there is Shane and Sam themselves. Mrs. Bradley was the first on their doorstep with casserole in hand, arriving almost simultaneously with the moving truck and the Coleman’s themselves—pretty amazing considering her lack of knowledge concerning their arrival, but she lives nearest, half a block down and across the street from the old ranch. It’s completely understandable that she’d have a casserole ready to go—we all have something food wise we can deliver at a moment’s notice. After rolling out the welcome carpet in her exuberant and overbearing manner, she hurried home to call Mrs. Yonkers. Within thirty minutes, everyone in town had received a phone call from someone or other.
I receive my call from my best friend Stacy.
“Did you hear yet?”
“Hear what?” I ask breathlessly, having just run in from feeding my chickens. I glance at the tile floor, grimacing at the mud tracks sprinkled with chicken feed—and chicken poop—that I tracked in. I grimace at the mess. I should have taken the extra seconds to peel my boots off, but patience is not one of my virtues, you’ll find. The situation is made worse when Bob, my big, black retriever, runs in through the door that I left hanging open in my hurry, tracking in the same mess, because he’d been with me in the coop. He sneezes and a few chicken feathers float into the air, making me smile. He does love to chase them around, tormenting them for his own amusement.
“About the new guy,” Stacy prompts.
I search my memory, not able to think of anyone who might be considered new. Unless she’s speaking of the Fredricks’s new baby? Was it a boy?
“Um…” I respond, and she huffs irritably.
“I swear, Vee, you live in your own, happy little world, unaware of what goes on around you.” She calls me Vee for the simple reason, she says, that she can spell it without having to call me for verification. Of course, that was in the first grade. She can spell it by now—I think. But Vee is just old habit.
I can’t really argue with her summation of my inattention to the world around me.
“Some new people just moved into the old Stanton place.”
“Really?” she’s piqued my interest now. No matter how loyal I am to the greatness of my little town, I’m well aware that folks tend to move out, not in. “Who?”
“It’s a guy named Shane Coleman, and his nephew, Sam.”
“That’s weird,” I say, leaning against the counter, crossing my feet and settling in for the details as I pick up an apple (from my own apple tree) and bite into it. “Where’s the rest of the family?”
“No one knows,” Stacy says, her words shocking me into a straight posture.
“What? Hasn’t Busybody Bradley been there yet?”
“She has.” Stacy’s tone is rife with intrigue.
“Okay, Stace, spit it out. I need details.”
“That’s the weird thing, Vee. There aren’t any details. They bought the place some time ago, but Glisten”—our nickname for Ms. Glissmeyer, partly because of her name and partly because she covers herself with glitter powder—“is being all tight lipped. She says she’s sworn to silence. All she would ‘fess up is that they bought the place, paid some cleaning company to come in and get it ready. She claims she wasn’t even sure of the exact move-in date.”
“No!” This is the best gossip we’ve had since Melissa Stratton gave birth to a purportedly two-month premature baby—that weighed nine pounds, two ounces.
“Yes, but that isn’t all. Busybody Bradley claims that the uncle is beyond gorgeous, which has been verified by nearly every other woman who’s seen him. They say he’s nice enough, but doesn’t seem interested in turning in his single status any time soon.”
“Oh, yeah?” I place my forgotten apple absent-mindedly on the counter, where it’s immediately snatched up by Bob. I vaguely notice the mess he’s making on the floor as he chomps noisily on it. Oh well, what’s a little more mess? “Bet that ticks off all the single oldies.”
“I get the idea he’s not that old. And it’s being said that his gorgeousness is surpassed only by that of his nephew,” Stacy pauses dramatically. “His seventeen-year-old nephew!”
“No way!” I exclaim. “Who told you that?”
“Ashley heard it from Heather and Hilary.”
“Wow,” I breathe. If the double-H—the two most popular girls in the school, and thereby the foremost experts on what can be considered gorgeous—claim it, well, that’s something of weight.
“How soon can you go?” I don’t need to ask what she means. A lifetime of friendship has created enough of a short-hand between us that she doesn’t need to expound. I still have chores to do, animals to feed, stalls to muck, and no one to help me.
That all can wait, I decide in an instant.
“I’m going to need thirty,” I say, knowing that I’ll have to rush. I have to get the farm smell off me, put on some make-up and try to do something with my hair. All this in order to be presented to someone the double-H has given a stamp of approval to in thirty short minutes, someone our own age—a boy our own age.
“Thirty?” Stacy moans. “No way. I can’t wait that long. I’ll give you fifteen.”
“Fifteen! I can’t—”
“I’ll pick you up. Bye.” Stacy cuts me off, and I know that means I really only have, like, ten minutes. I look at the mess on the floor—that really shouldn’t wait. My parents won’t be home from their latest work excursion to Egypt until Friday, three days from now. That gives me time—I always have time before they’ll be home again, it seems. It too can wait, I decide.
“Outside, Bob,” I command. He gives me a forlorn look, so I grab another apple and toss it out the door. He happily bounds after it, tail wagging and tongue lolling. I shut the door behind him—no need to lock up. I don’t think anyone in Goshen could actually tell you where the key to their house is. Locks are pretty much archaic around here.
I hop around, quickly shedding my boots. Running up the stairs, I pull off c
lothes as I go, leaving a trail behind me. I don’t have time for a full-on make-up job, so I pull the mascara wand across my pale blonde but thankfully thick lashes. A couple of swipes with the blush-brush, gloss slid across my lips and I have to call it good.
What to do about the stench? I can’t go over smelling like old MacDonald. Looking around, I have sudden inspiration. I grab a can of Febreeze, spray a curtain of it in front of me and step into it. The chemicals can’t be especially good for me, but it proclaims the ability to rid odors. Then, afraid that might not be quite enough, I douse myself in perfume. I gag and cough a little at the smell. A glance at my watch confirms I don’t have time to wash it off. Oh well, I’ll just have to hope for the best.
I pull on some jeans—what else does anyone around here wear, except a skirt to church—and waste three precious minutes pulling top after top from my closet in indecision. I finally settle on a dark blue peasant blouse that makes my gold eyes look more blue than their unusual color, pulling it over my head.
A brush pulled through the tangles of my long, dark blonde hair make it clear that it’s beyond hope. I hurriedly twist a couple of thin braids into the front, then twist the whole, heavy disordered length up into hair band, leaving pieces dangling. A dark blue silk flower pinned into place completes the masterpiece—okay, so it’s more like a masterpiece created by Picasso than by…well, almost anyone else. I’m going to try to pull it off as one of those hairdo’s that are artfully disarrayed that really take hours to do, rather than one which is just plain disarray.
I leap back down the stairs—a game from when I was a child that I only do if I’m alone, which is often—and pull one of my famous apple pies from the fridge. I made it with my own home-grown apples. Frantic honking from the direction of the front of the house confirms my suspicions about the ten minutes.
Stacy is waiting for me in her old Mustang—which bespeaks of the urgency for speed that we’re taking a car rather than our ATV’s—applying gloss to her own lips as I climb into her car.
