“Oh, listen to them, Andie,” Miss Mona says. “Isn’t their singsong chitchat charming? I wonder what they’re saying.”
“I’m not so sure I want to know. I half think they’re greeting us and half think they’re laughing at the crazy Americans and all their gadgets. Just wait till Hannah sets up her camera and the rest of her stuff.”
When the Scandinavian blonde does just that, the miners gawk—bet they haven’t seen a girl who looks like her, and worse, who does that kind of work. Their jibber-jabber kicks it up a notch. And while some might think it’s a thrill and a half to watch them get a good giggle at our expense, my patience is now as thin as model Kate Moss. I’ve come to Mogok for one thing.
I rub my hands and open the van door. “Let’s go mine some rubies.”
“You don’t plan to go down that rat hole, do you?” Max asks.
“Do you have a death wish?”
I step out of the vehicle, and the heat from the hard dirt road burns through the soles of my running shoes, sears my legs under lightweight cotton pants, and roasts my short-sleeved arms. “Just a ton of appreciation for the beauty God created under dirt and weeds.”
Max follows me as I approach the mine entrance. “You’re really willing to go into an unsafe dirt tunnel.”
Horror fills his face. “Any footballs or golf balls down there?”
He crosses his arms. “My years of experience on TV did the talking for me.”
“Reading the weather in Who-Knows-Where, Missouri, right?” When he smiles that knee-melter grin of his, I steel myself against its impact. Well, I try.
“Okay, fine.” I swipe the damp back of my hand across my sweat-beaded forehead. “Had it been me, I’d’ve jumped at the chance to peddle stuff too. But didn’t you think you might be on shaky turf selling stuff you know nothing about?”
“The network sells more than baubles.”
“Baubles!” Now you did it, bud. “I show our customers only museum-quality pieces.”
“Hey! You just said if you’d been in my shoes, you would have jumped at the chance to peddle stuff too. So what’s the deal with giving me such a hard time for doing just that? Besides, I figure it’s only a matter of time before Miss Mona promotes me to hosting the sports shows.”
He looks good enough and might know enough to try to edge out our sports guru. But . . .
“Good luck prying Tanya, a former college basketball star
“All right, Andie.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Can we get beyond the Max-doesn’t-know-anything kick?”
“When you get to the other side of doesn’t-know-anything.”
“It’s already reached the boring and annoying point, so I suggest, for Miss Mona’s sake, that you get a life. I’m here, I’m learning, and you’re acting like—”
He stops.
I glare.
He adds, “Let’s just say you’re not helping.”
The thought that he might be right zips through my brain at the speed of the Roadrunner, but the gemologist in me does a Wylie Coyote and crashes a boulder on top of it.
Maybe Scarlett O’Hara had that thinking about life thing right. I’ll think about it tomorrow.
One of the men steps away from the rest and comes up to us. He pulls on a tuft of his dirt-dusted onyx-black hair. “Red.” He nods. “You Miss Andie.” His accent does some weird things to my name. “I mine manager. I help you here.”
His eyebrows shoot tuftward. “You no go there. You woman.”
At my side, Max the Magnificent chortles.
I jerk to my full height. “I’m a woman, a capable, curious woman, and I’ve gone into more mines over the last seven years than you want to count. I so want to go into your mine. And I want to bring a camera with me. It’s what I came to film, what I was invited to show the world.”
He shrugs and goes back to the gathered miners.
“That’s going to go over real well with our three armed shadows,” Max mutters.
“Until they chase me out with one of their guns, I’m doing what I came to do. Are you with me?”
He shakes his head, shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’ll watch.”
