“Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Gage Logan.”

“Abigail Holland.” She extended her hand.

“Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Holland.” Logan’s big palm wrapped around her smaller one, and she felt a little kick she hadn’t expected. He was six-two, she’d read when she’d researched him online, far taller than her own five-foot-four-inch frame. Dressed in khaki pants and a yellow button-down shirt, he had wide, muscular shoulders, and what appeared to be a deep, powerful chest.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Abby said. He was thirty-five years old, she knew, born and raised on a big ranch west of Denver. At nineteen, he’d left home for college and never returned.

He was incredibly handsome, with dark brown hair long enough to brush his collar and a solid jaw roughened by the faint shadow of an afternoon beard. His eyes, an amazing shade of blue against his darkly suntanned skin, carried a fierce gleam of intelligence. Though she’d seen his photo on the internet and seen his face on the cover of National Geographic, she hadn’t been prepared for the impact of meeting him in person.

“Why don’t we sit down and you can tell me why you’re here?” Logan led her over to a claw-foot round oak table in the corner surrounded by four oak chairs. Like the outer office, there were stacks of papers and maps around the room, on the floor and the tops of both oak file cabinets. Manila folders sat in a haphazard pile on the corner of his desk. There was a door off to one side that appeared to open to a private bathroom.

“Can I get you something?” Logan asked. “Coffee, or maybe a soda?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

He rested an elbow on the table, his shirtsleeves rolled up over muscular forearms. “I understand you have a proposition for me.”

Her mind went straight to the bedroom. The man had sex appeal and plenty of it. Add to that, she had been following his exploits ever since her grandfather had mentioned him several years back and had begun to imagine him as having almost superhuman abilities. She had a fair complexion, and she hoped the color in her cheeks wouldn’t betray her thoughts.

Abby smiled. “A proposition, yes. I want you to help me find a treasure. That’s what you do, right? You find all sorts of missing things, historical artifacts, sunken ships, missing airplanes.”

“My partner and I tend to specialize, but basically, yes, that’s what we do.”

“But it was you who found the lost rubies of Amanitore, right? Gems that belonged to the Queen of Nubia?”

He nodded. “The rubies actually belonged to a daughter of the queen. I’ve been back in the States for a while since then, but yes, I led the expedition that found them.”

“I want you to help me find my grandfather’s treasure.”