Nat gaped at him.

“Are you telling me that your grandfather discovered there was gold in the mountain sometime back in the thirties, but never told anyone and never mined it himself?”

Rhett winced, because when she put it like that, it sounded like out of a bad TV show. “To my credit, I didn’t know about it either. He didn’t tell me. Not even in the damn will when I inherited the place.”

“How did you find out, then?” she asked.

“When I started figuring out what I needed to do to get the mineral water from the hot springs to the bathhouse, I used his journals and maps of the place. And there was one journal stuffed in a box with this leather pouch that was different than the others, one that was focused on that part of the property. It had all these notes and sketches about this particular rock formation that leads down to a natural cave deep into the earth and that leather pouch was full of nuggets. I’m talking pieces of gold the size of my thumb. Without Gramps’ map, you can’t find the cave. Even with the map, it’s still hard to find. But I found it.”

“And there’s gold there,” Nat said.

“There’s a few large, obvious veins, yeah,” Rhett said. “If I brought out equipment to do testing, I’m sure they’d find more.”

“But the cave is on your property, not Durbin’s” Nat said.

“Right,” Rhett said. “But if there’s gold in that part of the mountain, there very may well be gold on his property somewhere, too.”

“But what does that have to do with taking your water rights away?” Nat mused out loud. She kept tapping her pen against her pillowy lips, and it was damn distracting… almost as distracting as the fact that she’d proposed to him just fifteen minutes earlier.

Don’t think about that, he told himself. You can’t marry her to get Durbin off your back. That’s insane.

But… what if it is the gold that Durbin’s after? Mining the mountain for gold would destroy the entire local ecosystem, destroying the aquifer and artesian springs throughout the area. It’d ruin the forest and kill off or displace the wildlife too.

His heart wrenched at the idea of Durbin laying waste to the pristine, old-growth forests that made up River Run. They had a thriving wildlife population across the mountain and mining… mining would be that the end of it.

He couldn’t let that happen.

“If he’s after the gold, he could be using the water as a gotcha move,” Rhett said. “He might come back with a counter-offer: he’ll give me the water rights if I sign over future mineral rights.”

“If he thinks you don’t know anything about the gold in the mountain, that would be a good con,” Nat said. “You’d be trading what you thought were useless rights for ones that you needed. God,” she shook her head. “I’m suddenly glad that I rent. This property-ownership thing is no joke.”

“Tell me about it,” Rhett said, slumping back in his chair. His head was killing him. He looked over at her helplessly. “I don’t know what to do, Nat. I don’t know what he wants. I can’t let him destroy my home and everything I’ve built.”

“I understand,” she said, her dark eyes sincere. “I know it sounds crazy, getting married so he’ll back off, but doesn’t it seem like the easiest solution here? He could serve you with the order to stop water usage tomorrow. The employees… I know what it’s like, having people and their families dependent on you. And I know you, Rhett. You’re gonna bankrupt yourself to pay people’s salaries even if you have to shut down.”

She was right, of course. He was already mentally running down the path of approaching his father about accessing his trust fund—something he wasn’t allowed to touch until he was forty—in order to keep his employees paid. He couldn’t just leave them high and dry if Durbin forced a shut-down.

If you marry Nat, there’s no way he can shut us down.

He tried to push the thought down, but it was there and she was there and it was hard to deny how easy it would be.

How good it would be.

“Talk to Jace again,” she said. “Maybe there’s another way out of this or he can get it in front of a judge tomorrow. But if he can’t… my offer is on the table. I mean it, Rhett. I’d be happy to do it. It’s not like it’d disrupt anything I have going on in my own love life. Men aren’t exactly breaking down my door, if you know what I mean.”

“Men are fucking idiots,” he said, and her eyes widened a little, her cheeks pinkening.

“You’re sweet,” she said, standing up. “I promise. This will be okay. You have great people working on this problem. And with your permission, Etta will keep digging.”

“I’d appreciate it if she did,” Rhett said. “Jace’s investigators are good, but I have a feeling you employ the biggest shark in the Portland pond.”

She smiled. “You’d be right,” she said. “Etta is the best.”

“Have her send the bill to me, of course,” he said.

“”I will,” Nat said. “Well,” she swung her arms back and forth. “My luggage is in my car outside. I really need to get back to the city. Liberty and Renee are flying back from London tomorrow.”

“I’ll walk you out,” he said, and followed her out of the office and through the clinic to the gravel driveway . Her sleek black Lexus was parked neatly in front, waiting to carry her away from him once again.

She smiled up at him, like she was a little nervous. “Big week, huh?”

He managed a rueful chuckle. “You could say that,” he admitted. “Look, Nat…” he started, but then he stopped, because he didn’t know what to say.

She had offered him something enormous—to save him—so unreservedly, so guilelessly, as if it was the most natural inclination in the world. But a marriage of convenience? That would be a torment to him… and maybe to her, too.

He valued her heart, that giant heart of hers that was hidden under the crisp tailored shirts and the artful feminine armor she employed each day. It was her heart that made her offer—but it was his heart that would screw it all up.

And he couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.

She was looking at him, her dark brows raised expectantly.

“Have a safe drive,” he said.

“I will.”

She put her hand on his shoulder to balance herself, tipping up on her toes to brush a kiss across his bearded cheek. His eyes closed, the brush of her lips setting off a whole new kind of ache inside him, especially because she didn’t pull away.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she whispered against his skin. “I promise.”