That Gold in Laguna: Charisma, #3

By Heather Hiestand

Treasure hunter Thor Erickson stars in California Gold, a reality TV show. An outdoors buff, he wants to dig for buried gems in the wilderness, not in a rich girl's Laguna Beach backyard.

Rachel McHughes is an art expert looking for a new challenge. She wants her wealthy father to sell his property so she can leave her job curating the family art collection and take a fulfilling museum position.

The California Gold producers insist the hunt for missing Hollywood Golden Age jewels is good television. The show must go on despite friction between the cast and the McHughes family.

Thor and Rachel can't avoid each other, or the incredible, sexy chemistry they generate. The treasure they discover might not be gold, but each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heather Hiestand
• Release date: Sep 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386131786

Book preview

THAT GOLD IN LAGUNA

Based on Kaira Rouda’s Laguna Beach Series

A Charisma Series Novella

The Ericksons, Book Two

Written by

Heather Hiestand

www.heatherhiestand.com

Newsletter

That Gold in Laguna

Copyright 2016 by Heather Hiestand

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Elements of Kaira Rouda’s Laguna Beach have been included in this story with the express permission of Kaira Rouda.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Coffee on Sundays Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Coffee on Sundays Press

Visit us at http://www.heatherhiestand.com

Publishing History

First D2D Edition, 2018

V 1.0 R 1.0

Published in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Dear Readers

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Laguna Beach

Acknowledgments

More From Heather Hiestand

About the Author

Chapter One

THOR ERICKSON SAW THE rich girl hair first. Like that royal princess, she had glossy, sable waves cascading over her prim, lightweight navy shift dress. Was the beauty walking into the Laguna Beach Mondrian’s conference room behind wealthy Richard McHughes his daughter or his mistress? Thor knew she wasn’t his wife. When she smiled at the group around the table he pegged her. Daughter. He’d seen the same smile she offered the group cross McHughes’ face when he’d seen the bandit gold their treasure hunting team had found on his land.

When he checked her feet he saw what he expected, matching blue pumps with a stiletto heel. Something to wear to lunch at The Ivy in Los Angeles, famed for celebrity sightings. He didn’t have to look under the table to see what his brother’s girlfriend, Jenny Craft, was wearing on her feet. Flip flops, like a normal person in Laguna Beach’s hot late July. Rachel McHughes was one high-end princess type with the perfect, sleekly designed body to match.

Everyone is here, his brother Crowe, the leader of the California Gold television show team said, rising from his seat at the foot of the table. We’re here today to discuss what’s happening with the second half of our first season. We have three episodes to fill.

McHughes sat at the opposite end of the table, his Kenyan safari tan still evident. He’d interrupted his trip in June to see the gold cache they’d found in his private caves off Thousand Steps Beach, but then had gone back for a month. Everyone had been travelling. Thor had been to New York and Los Angeles. He’d returned to teammate Justin Hatch’s little house in the Laguna Woods neighborhood just the night before.

I think the answer is obvious, Crowe, McHughes said. Keep working on my property.

McHughes’ princess hadn’t seated herself at the table, but on a chair off to the side. Crowe was still standing.

Let’s do introductions before we get into the discussion, Thor said from his position at Crowe’s left side. He wanted to know who the mystery woman was for certain. They were talking about treasure. He didn’t like the idea of outsiders knowing their business.

McHughes’ glance held cool disdain. Everyone here is known to me.

Who is your companion? Thor asked.

McHughes’ gaze went up to the ceiling for a moment, as if he was asking for deliverance from an idiot. My daughter.

Does she have a name? Crowe asked in a cheery manner.

I’m Rachel, the woman said. She tossed her hair.

At least she’d spoken for herself. Thor liked the husky tone of her voice. He even appreciated her looks, even though they screamed hands off.

Roger Dalton, their producer, introduced the three flunkies who were seated next to Rachel McHughes on the room’s outskirt. They all had that wish-it-was-still-Sunday groggy look in their eyes.

Excellent, thank you, Crowe said, looking down at his notes like the academic he someday wanted to be when he hung up his treasure hunting equipment. I have to tell you, Richard, that our research indicates we found the entire Sanchez cache. There could be more in that cave, but we accounted for all of the stolen coins as well as the murdered henchman.

When they’d returned to the cave to check the bandit markings on the walls, they’d dug in the floor below the second set of markings and found a skeleton. Luckily, they’d involved the police from the moment they’d found the gold cache and they were on hand to perform the proper protocols for the skeleton.

What else might be there? Jenny, their resident skeptic, asked. She’d been a reality TV star on the breakout MTV hit show Laguna Nights for five years, before another decade spent quietly managing her Laguna Gold Pizza restaurant. Now she was part of their team, and his brother’s girlfriend. Thor only had a bedroom to call his own in the area because Crowe had recently moved in with Jenny.

We know the cave continues under the cliff, Crowe said.

A grown man can’t fit into the opening we found, Thor pointed out. He reached for the carafe of coffee and poured half a cup. The leaking carafe dribbled onto his fingers. Hoping the cameras weren’t focused on him, and that he hadn’t caught his white T-shirt in the spray, he wiped the liquid onto his jeans.

Not one like you, who is six and a half feet tall. Justin smirked at Thor’s fumbling with the coffee. He pushed his cup over so Thor could refill it. But men were smaller in the eighteen fifties.

Not that much smaller, Crowe said. It’s unlikely there is much there.

Still, it’s worth checking into. Jenny pushed the carafe from her end of the table down to Thor when the last of the coffee dribbled into Justin’s quarter-filled cup. It keeps us moving forward without fighting the summer heat.

Justin nodded his thanks when Thor pushed over his freshly filled cup. Yes, but without much hope of finding anything. Justin was the youngest of the group at twenty-five, and his hair was bleached blond by the sun he loved to surf in. Let’s explore the private land by the Laguna Beach Wilderness Park. My research in Berkeley gave us an X to mark the spot.

That is worth an entire season, not three episodes, Beau Erickson, Thor and Crowe’s father, said. A lifelong gold hunter himself, not to mention a reality TV veteran, he’d been brought onto the team at their producer’s insistence. Thor and his older brother, Viking, took after their father, with their Scandinavian looks, while Crowe and their sister took after their late mother, with her Black Irish hair and features.

Aren’t you itching to dig something up though? We’ve got Thor to run the heavy equipment, now that he doesn’t have to play cameraman. Justin put his hands on an imaginary set of excavator controls.

"Don’t blow the park on three episodes. When California Gold debuts in the fall, you’re going to renew for a bigger second season. That’s the time for a big dig." Dalton adjusted his orange-framed glasses more securely on his nose.

My family has invested a lot of money in the show, said Josh Welsh, a friend of Crowe’s whose family owned a venture capital company. I’d like to see some more gold.

We found approximately one point five million dollars’ worth of gold coins on our first try, Thor said, dead-pan. Isn’t that enough to make your family happy?

Josh shrugged. Could have been luck. If not for that earthquake who knows if you’d have found any more than that penny you turned up.

Let’s give it another go on my land, McHughes said. My family has owned the property since nineteen twenty-eight when the house was first built. That means no one has ever run a metal detector on my land. We’ve kept people out of the caves. I’ll pay for the hole to the next cave to be widened so that your team can get through.

Have we consulted with geologists to see what kind of cave system might be under there? Dalton drummed his hands on the table. Or run sonar?

Rachel McHughes opened a hard-backed notebook with a snap and made notes. I can have that done.

No, Crowe said. That’s the kind of thing our team needs to do, on camera.

And we don’t have another opening on the team, the producer said with a warning glance at McHughes. Not for season one.

Just trying to save you a few bucks, McHughes said.

It will cost us the show if we miss filming important moments, Dalton said. But thank you. Crowe, can you get that done?

I’ll take it on. Beau wrote a note for himself on his legal pad. The task is important but not sexy. Let the old guy handle it.

Thor chuckled. He still remembered their late mother teasing Beau when he’d been featured on the front cover of a sportsmen’s magazine with the banner, The New Indiana Jones:  The Sexiest Treasure Hunter Alive. His father might be fifty-five and gray-haired now, but he was still lean and attractive. He wondered at the cost of Beau’s remaining faithful to his late wife’s memory. It had been six years since she’d lost her battle with cancer.

It’s going to take time to get those two things done, Crowe said. I say we survey the Wilderness Park adjacent area. We can set us up for next season, right Roger? Especially if we have a small find, like another coin.

What do you think is there again? Dalton asked. We could pre-can the footage for season two.

Justin pushed his bleached bangs out of his eyes and opened the manila folder in front of him. Bullet Malone’s treasure, he said. "According to documents I found at the Bradford Library, he operated out of a homestead on the land. His girlfriend lived there. He was killed in a gun battle in Arizona when he was twenty-four. It’s believed that the proceeds