She had him there. He also wasn’t going to refuse her company.

By nine they had their tour group and were heading out to walk the town. The morning was warm, the sky blue. Up in the mountains, leaves were starting to turn, but not in town. Not yet. Fall would come soon enough.

Maya gave a brief history of the Máa-zib tribe—their place of origin and how scholars believed they came to be in the area.

“But for me,” she was saying, “the real history of the town starts later than that. In 1849 an eighteen-year-old young woman named Ciara O’Farrell was on her way to an arranged marriage to a much-older man she’d never met. She escaped the ship in San Francisco and headed east. Using the little money she had managed to save, she bought land rights in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.”

“Oh, I know where this is going,” a woman said with a sigh. “It’s going to have a happy ending, I just know it.”

Maya laughed. “You’re right. The ship’s captain, Ronan McGee, goes after her. He’d promised her father to deliver her safely to the wedding. When he finally catches up with her, Ciara refuses to go with him. She has a dream. Ronan says the dream is sheer folly, and then he promptly falls in love with her. They settle here, in Fool’s Gold.”

Maya motioned to the lake. “Lake Ciara is named after her, of course. Some of you are staying in Ronan’s Lodge, which was their home. A big, beautiful mansion that people called Ronan’s Folly. Many of the streets in town are named after their ten children. Ronan and Ciara lived a long and happy life here.”

Del listened to the history of the town and wondered how she’d remembered it all so easily. He could cough up a few facts on the Máa-zib artifacts in the museum, but he’d forgotten about Ciara and her determination to make her own way in the world.

He had a feeling he would have liked the young woman. Or at least have admired her willingness to strike out in a time when women were expected to do what their fathers and older brothers told them.

“Do they still have relatives here in town?” a woman asked Del.

“The grandchildren were all girls,” he told her. “So the name died out. But many of their descendants still live in the area. My family has a few McGees in our history, as does the Hendrix family.”

“That’s so nice,” the woman said with a sigh. “History and family traditions.”

Maya grinned at him, then launched into a story about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and how a subsequent landslide revealed a cave filled with Máa-zib artifacts, including gold statues and jewelry.

When they stopped for coffee and pastries at Brew-haha, Del moved next to Maya.

“Nicely done,” he told her.

“This is fun. I haven’t played tour guide since that summer. I had no idea I’d remember everything, but apparently it’s stored right next to the lyrics to songs that used to drive me crazy.”

His cell phone rang. He glanced at the screen and saw it was his attorney. “Can you handle this crowd for a second?” he asked.

She pointed to the door. “Go take your call. I’ll make sure everyone gets their coffee.”

He stepped outside and answered. “This is Del.”

“You’re avoiding me,” Russell said. “You know that makes me nervous.”

“You’re a lawyer. Everything makes you nervous.”

“That makes me a good lawyer. Have you decided?”

Just before returning to Fool’s Gold, Del had yet another offer to be part of a start-up. The ideas were good and he liked the guys involved. “I think they’re going to be successful,” he began.

Russell groaned. “That’s a no. What is it with you?”

“I’m not an entrepreneur.”

“I’m getting that. Del, you’re too young to retire. You need to do something, and honestly, I can’t see you taking a job somewhere. It’s not your style.”

“I know. I’ll figure it out.”

“And I’ll tell them thanks but no thanks.”

Del hung up. He turned and saw Maya watching him from the entrance to Brew-haha.

“Want to talk about it?” she asked when he rejoined the group.

“Not much to say. I got an offer to be part of a start-up and I said no.”

“I figured that. Any particular reason?”

“It’s not what I want to do. I’ve been lucky. I don’t have to take just anything. I can choose.”

He waited for her to ask what that would be but she didn’t. Instead, she held out a latte. “Patience said to tell you it’s how you like it.”

“She’s a good woman.”

“Yes, well, you get to return the favor in a couple of days when we have to go talk about cameras with her daughter and her grove of Saplings.”

“I thought you were going to do that.”

She smiled. “I am and you’re coming with me.”

He chuckled. “So that’s why you decided to help out today. So I’d owe you.”

“That is very possible.”

* * *

TWO DAYS LATER Maya was incredibly grateful she’d asked Del along. In theory, facing eight girls shouldn’t have been a big deal. And it wasn’t. It was terrifying. Maya stared into their pretty faces, watching them watch her, and knew that if she was by herself, she would have been a stuttering mess. Ridiculous but true. Talking about the town was one thing. She supposed it was because history was impersonal. Explaining how to use a camera seemed more personal somehow. Or maybe it was a passion thing. While the history was interesting, she didn’t care about it.