Kiss Me (Fool's Gold series) Read Free

care if he didn’t do well in history. It wasn’t that kind of college. Of course if Zane had his way, Chase would never get to MIT. Instead he’d spend his life shoveling cow shit and feeding goats.
    “I got a phone call about a half hour ago,” Zane said.
    His carefully controlled voice made Chase sit up slowly. Even scarier than the death-ray look was the quiet voice. It meant that Zane was doing the best he could to hold on to his temper before it exploded and took out everyone from here to Sacramento.
    “A woman wanted to know if she could get a massage before going on her cattle drive.”
    “Oh. That.”
    “Yes, that. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
    Chase swallowed as he remembered what he and Peter had done. It had been a joke that had gotten out of hand. He glanced at Zane and saw a muscle twitch in his jaw. Not exactly a good sign.
    “Don’t panic,” he said quickly. “I’ve got everything under control.”
    “Tell me the plan, Chase.”
    Zane looked like a man holding on to his temper with both hands. Chase wasn’t sure how long his brother’s grip would last. He started talking as fast as he could.
    “Like I said, it was our school project. We had to design a website, then put it on the internet.”
    “Through the
school
,” Zane said, his teeth clenched. “But you put yours on a host so anyone could access it.”
    “Um, that was an accident. Reese Hendrix did it as a joke.”
    Zane’s hands curled into fists. “A joke? You advertised a cattle drive. You took reservations. You accepted money.”
    “Just for a little while,” Chase protested. “Look, I know what I’m doing.”
    His brother stood and crossed to the window. “So people are arriving on Saturday expecting a six-day cattle drive? Was that the plan?”
    “No. Don’t worry, I’ve got that taken care of. It was a mistake. When the money started arriving, Peter and I didn’t know what to do.” Okay, later he’d figured out that sending it back with a letter explaining the mix-up would have been really smart, but it hadn’t occurred to him at the time.
    “Peter and I are working on our robot, and we needed parts. Peter put in his share, but you wouldn’t loan me any money or pay for anything.”
    “You used strangers’ money for your project?” Zane bellowed, turning back to face him. “That’s stealing. The whole website is fraud, and I’m sure we can throw in theft for good measure.”
    Chase sprang to his feet. “I didn’t steal. I’d never steal or do those other things.”
    “Then where’s the money?”
    “Right here.” Chase moved to his computer and started typing quickly. “Peter and I did some day-trading. We figured we’d just borrow their money for a while. After we made a bundle off the deposits, we’d return them and keep the profits. Which was a great idea until the fourth day when we lost nearly everything.”
    Zane made a sound low in this throat. Chase kept typing, logging on to his brokerage account.
    “I know what you’re thinking. That we were screwed, right? But then we overheard this tourist at the Fourth of July Festival in Fool’s Gold talking about a tech company that was going to announce a new kind of motherboard, and their stock would go through the roof. So we bought as much as we could with what we had left. The announcement is going to be at five today. We’ll sell the stock and send back the deposits. I figured we’d tell everyone the ranch burned down or something so they won’t show up.”
    He risked a glance at his brother. “So I’ve got it covered. I’ve even written up the letter telling everyone not to come and that we’ll be sending their deposits back overnight mail. Pretty good, huh?”
    Zane’s expression remained unreadable. “You stole their money, lost it day-trading, plan to get it back through insider trading and you’re canceling their vacation with less than a week’s notice. You think that’s
pretty good
?”
    His voice rose with each