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WHEN JADE REACHED PLAIN dirt in her second hole, she knew the small pocket she’d found was done. She’d only pulled out about a hundred dollars’ worth of crystals. One hundred dollars, for weeks of labor. Her teacher pay was crap, but it was better than this.
And this was much harder work, dammit. She was tired. But the hardest work was still ahead of her. She’d need to fill in this hole, find a new promising area, dig it out. Sort through the dirt, shovel some more. Scrape and chip and hammer away at more rocks. And she might strike out, anyway. Again.
She clenched her eyes shut for a minute, but she didn’t have time for self-pity. She squeezed herself backward out of the hole, dragging her tools along with her.
Out of breath, she stopped at the opening and looked up at the pale blue sky, breathing in the cool, dry air. In and out, in and out. Pacing her breaths to prevent the sob in her throat from making its way out.
She wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t cry. Instead, she would move more boulders, throw more stone, and dig in a new spot. But she wouldn’t cry.
She put her gloves on and shoveled with a vengeance. The sooner this hole was filled, the sooner she could try again.
And fail again.
Jade ignored that pessimistic, defeatist voice in her head and shoveled harder. That voice was a bitch and a liar. It had to be.
Never had she had this bad of luck mining for this long. She was due a good strike, a nice pocket of gems. Maybe one pocket wouldn’t pay out enough, but if she found another after that, and perhaps even another...
Jade looked over her claim, shovel idle in her hands. Where the hell would she find another promising site? Much less two, or three?
She tossed her shovel down and sat back hard on the wall of the pit, her butt sliding a bit on the loose dirt.
She didn’t hear Micah, but she felt him come close. He appeared at the edge of her vision.
“Jade?”
She pushed her fingers through her bangs, over her head, and looked up at him. “Yeah?”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” She stood and started shoveling again, aware that he hadn’t yet walked away.
After a minute where the only sounds were the scrape of her shovel through the dirt and her breath, Micah said, “I could help you find a new place to dig. A good place.”
What, with his magical powers again? No thanks. “I’m good. I’ll find one.” Any random spot she picked would have the same chance of holding gems. And she would have to pick a random spot. She’d exhausted all the surface signs she could find.
“If you followed your instincts—”
“Just stop.” Jade held up a hand and then started shoveling again. “You know what my instincts are saying right now?” She stabbed the spade in, threw a shovel-full of dirt that was way too heavy into the hole. “They’re saying I’ve failed. They’re saying I’m going to keep failing. They’re saying I’m going to fail my mother and she’s going to die in a shitty nursing home. That I’ll fail her.” The tears she wouldn’t let fall thickened her throat again. “So damn it, no, I will not trust my instincts. I’m going to ignore them and dig another hole, and keep digging them until I prove my ‘instincts’ wrong.”
Micah knelt down until he was closer to her level, but she didn’t look up from the pile of dirt she was working. “If you don’t have faith in your own instincts, will you trust mine? Let me help?” His voice was soft, beseeching, and it took all the anger out of her.
“We’ve already done this before, Micah.” Her sigh seemed to come all the way up from her tired feet. He’d tried to lead her to his spot before, promising it was good, with no logic or skill or geologic expertise to back it up. She just couldn’t rely on that, couldn’t trust her mom’s health to feelings.
And why was ‘Mr. Strong & Silent’ being so pushy all of a sudden?
He inched closer and held out his hand. “Trust me?”
It was really that he sounded like he asked her to trust him, not his instincts, that did it. She did trust him, more than anyone in recent years. And she needed a new hole, anyway. At this point, when she was considering throwing darts to pick a spot, whatever Micah had in mind couldn’t be any worse.
“What the hell,” she muttered, and plopped her hand in his.
He helped her out of the pit and moved to her side until they both faced the same direction. He didn’t let go of her hand, and her whole arm seemed to thrum from the contact.
“Ready?”
“Ready for what, exactly?”
“We’re going to walk over your claim, and you’re going to use your instincts to find where to dig next. Now, close your eyes.”
She looked sideways at him with a hard roll of her eyes. “No way.” This was a mistake. Mystical woo wouldn’t help her find gems.
“Okay,” he grinned, and her heart did a little flip in her chest. “Then look down at the ground. But focus on the inside.” He said the last with his fist pressed against his stomach. “Try to ignore what logic is telling you. Visualize the crystal pocket you want to find.”
“Here,” he said, moving his hand to her abdomen. Every nerve fired under his touch until her stomach practically vibrated. “Follow the feeling in here.” And then he removed his hand while she tried to catch her breath.
He was staring at her, so she nodded that she was ready. He turned away, leading her by the hand. Slowly, they walked from her hole to a different area. Then another, pausing for a minute each time.
“Feel anything?”
“No.”
“Visualize.”
Jade visualized as hard as she could. A pocket underground just filled with perfect crystals. Her Hail Mary pocket. Her Honor-Dad’s-Memory pocket. Her Take-Care-of-Mama pocket. But this was stupid. It was a bunch of hippy-dippy, new-age mystic crap and—
She jerked, her eyes tearing open. She hadn’t meant to close them, but Micah had safely led her over the ground to a new spot.
The spot he’d shown her before.
Her breath came out in short bursts. No matter what she believed, something was undeniably happening to her. The vibration in her abdomen wasn’t something she was doing. It felt the same as when Micah touched her, only he wasn’t touching anything now but her hand. And yet the feeling had intensified, to where she couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t pretend the sensation wasn’t there.
Wary, she turned to him. “What is that?”
“That is Earth. The earth you are formed from, the earth that nurtures you. Those are your instincts telling you what the Earth would, if it could speak.” His eyes did that thing again where the brown melted into a molten gold.
Jade took her hand from Micah’s and swiped the back of it over her sweaty upper lip. The vibration faded a bit when she wasn’t touching him, but a slight tremor remained inside her.
She looked at the soil beneath her feet as if it might open and swallow her up.
What the hell had just happened?
Micah stood in the same place, hands loose at his sides, waiting.
Brain engaging, she focused on the geologic signs. A line of lighter-colored pegmatite bisected the spot. Her eyes picked out bright specs in the rocks, reflecting sunlight. Could just be sparkly schist, or they might be small crystals. Promising, but it would take a test pit to determine how good the signs actually were.
Jade put her palm over her stomach. The sensation was still present, but inside. Ever the scientist, she had to test it. With a deep breath, eyes open, she walked away from Micah and the site. The vibration quit. She turned back, and the quiver returned. She checked once more, in a different direction. Same results.
Micah crossed his arms, his head tilted, watching her as she tried to process.
There was something about this location, no matter how she wanted to deny it.
What did she have to lose by digging here, really? She had to start a new hole anyway, every other one had been a dead end. And time was shorter than it seemed. Winter was a cold shadow over each day even though it was still summer. It snowed up here about six weeks earlier than it did at lower elevations. This spot was as good, or bad, as any she had to choose from at the moment.
“I don’t understand it, I don’t believe it.” She threw her hands up, both physically and emotionally. “But... I’ll give it a shot.”
Micah’s smile was like lava. Slow, hot. Striking. It melted all of her thoughts into a messy jumble.
He walked toward her and stopped close enough that her breasts would brush his chest if she took a big breath.
So she inhaled deeply and looked up at him.
Her insides quivered again, but this time she recognized it as Micah’s effect on her.
Oh lord, she was already in deep.
“You’ll be glad you trusted your instincts.”
If she hit a vein of gemstones, yes. If not, it would just be another time they betrayed her.
He lifted a hand toward her face, but stopped a few inches away. “May I touch you?”
He’d held her hand before, but she understood he was asking her for permission to touch her more intimately now.
She was exhausted from digging her way to dead ends, and despite whatever strange experience she just had, she really didn’t expect that to have anything but another unproductive hole. Her rule about not mixing mining and romance couldn’t be broken if there wasn’t any profitable mining happening... right? And to be honest, she was tired of fighting off something she wanted.
Oh, how she wanted.
“Yes,” she whispered, and his hand brushed up the side of her face, into her hair, and then down to cup her neck. The humming started in her body again, but better, hotter. Lower.
And he didn’t stop there. He brought up his other hand too, and brushed both across her shoulders, down her arms, and back up again, his eyes following his hands. As if he’d been dying to touch, and couldn’t get enough once she’d given him permission.
Her nipples tightened against her shirt, sheer pleasure from his touch and the intensity of his attention.
His mouth came closer and her breath came shorter as she stared at his lips, eager for the moment they would meet hers.
He buried his hands in her hair at the base of her neck, gripping tight enough to let her know he was there, but not enough to hurt. He titled his head and placed his lips near her ear and whispered...
“Now, dig.”
And then he let go and stepped back, leaving her hot and cold and unbalanced. The sudden change in atmosphere between them left her blinking.
When Micah handed her the shovel, she had one tiny moment where she considered tossing it to the ground and climbing his big body like a tree.
But the lure of the minerals, the possibility of what might be beneath her feet, the promise of being able to help her mother, all allowed her to keep her sanity.
But only barely.
When the moment came, Jade should have been surprised. She should have been shocked when she hit the pocket full of thick, rich mud and crystals. So many crystals.
But she wasn’t.
They were tightly packed into the hole, mud outlining their shapes. And as the crystals grew in size as she pulled them out, her excitement grew, but she still wasn’t surprised.
Micah had been right about this location. She’d been right about it. The feeling... hadn’t been a lie. That surprised her, that somehow a mystical hum in her body led her directly to what she wanted most.
How?
She’d heard of dowsers and such her entire life, people who’d tried to use pseudo-science to find water, oil, minerals—always failing when put to the test. She’d waived it off into the same category as metaphysics, and Wicca, and belief in angels.
But was it possible she’d been wrong?
Jade sat back on her heels, holding the newest crystal point to come out in her palm. It was unbroken, unmarred. Spectacular in its perfection. Eons old, and huge. And it made her hand imperceptibly vibrate, just as the spot had. Just as Micah’s presence did. But perhaps that was only her exhilaration, her adrenaline.
And there were many, many more like it still inside. It was the pocket of a lifetime. There would be plenty of money from the sale of the gemstones to keep her mother comfortable for years.
She held the muddy thing to her chest and closed her eyes, relief and elation swamping her. Then she laid it carefully in the small pile of gems nested on her flannel over-shirt and stood, her head barely topping the hole she stood in.
She swiveled her gaze and found Micah, where he always was, kneeling and looking north.
“Micah,” she whispered, exhilaration stealing her breath. It was hitting her now, how big this was.
But somehow he heard her, of course. He turned and met her eyes and then stood.
Jade scrabbled up out of the pit, a squeal forming behind smiling lips. She threw her hands wide. “It’s glorious! How? How did you do this?”
He smiled at her, with her, genuinely happy for her. And why? It wasn’t his score, he wasn’t getting a share of the profit. Perhaps he was just pleased to be proved right, but it didn’t explain the warmth in his gaze. He was happy because she was happy. Because she’d succeeded.
Because he cared?
“I did nothing,” he shrugged. “I simply helped you trust your instincts.”
Maybe that was true. Maybe he just encouraged her to trust something she knew way deep down inside.
Her instincts were saying something else, now. They were saying she could trust Micah, that he was special. Speaking words she couldn’t hear, her instincts said run to him.
Before she could think too hard, she followed the hum inside her to the other thing she really wanted. Micah. She ran up and jumped on him, no fear that he would topple or fail to catch her. As soon as his arms enclosed her, she cupped his face between her hands and kissed him.
She put all her excitement, all her joy, all her appreciation into her kiss, and after a tiny moment of hesitation, he kissed her back with hunger.
After several hot seconds, she let go and slid down him, delighted to feel just how much he liked her kisses. She grinned up at him and then turned back to the dig site.
Now she smiled at the fact that Micah was staring at her ass.