Courted by the Texas Millionaire

“So,” Mom said, “does that mean you’re going to stay longer than we first thought?”

Violet laughed. “Adventure’s in my blood, Mom, just like it was with Great-Aunt Jeanne. I miss running around the city, writing about the different trials at court or about what’s being smuggled in through LAX. I miss meeting my friends for cocktails and going to movies at the Chinese Theatre—”

Mom held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear about smugglers and criminals.” She liked to pretend that Violet had a nice, cushy desk job.

Dad stabbed at a pancake on the platter. “I’m about as excited about you working with Davis as I was when you were kids.”

“Gary …” Mom said again, this time with more warning.

Dad knitted his bushy brows as Mom continued.

“Violet’s an adult. Just because she’s living here doesn’t mean we get to poke our nose into her business.” She spread a checkered napkin over her lap. “Besides, you’d think we’ve grown out of all this—who’s rich, who’s poor, especially after Davis went to bat for the miners.”

“Too bad it backfired,” Violet said.

Dad stuffed a bite of pancake into his mouth.

Violet didn’t let him off the hook. “He deserves points for what he’s doing for St. Valentine now, too, Dad. He’s determined to get this place on its feet again.”

Mom shot Dad a “You hear that?” look.

Violet polished off one pancake, knowing she could take some with her, plus her juice, then rose from the table just before her dad did. Dad said he needed to do some saloon paperwork before going in for the day.

She rushed to brush her teeth in her cabin. When she got back into the main house, the sound of a deep, low male voice came from the kitchen. That zinging sensation flew through Violet again.

Davis.

She took a big breath. Steady. You’re just helping him with some research.

But when she saw him standing in the kitchen near the stove—talking with her mom, dressed in a tailored Western shirt, jeans and expensive handworked leather boots—her heart just about leaped out of her chest.

Her mind scrambled, right along with all the crazy electricity flying through her body, and she wasn’t so sure today was about being professional at all.

They’d taken some pancakes with them, driving the country road in Davis’s shiny, vintage Aston Martin.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Violet nibble on a pancake. He’d never been so interested in the way a woman ate. He’d never even dwelled so much on a mouth and what it might feel like against his own. And this was a very adult craving, too—far from the hormonal interest he’d had in Violet way back when.

He rested one arm on the open window, welcoming the morning air as it hit his face. It didn’t do much to cool him off, though.

Davis had just finished telling Violet more of the details he’d culled from his research last night when she brushed a few pancake crumbs from her blouse.

“I think that a break-in at the sheriff’s home the same week that Tony died under mysterious circumstances is worth looking into,” she said, all business. “I don’t know, it could be my imagination getting spooked, but—”

“We could have some kind of a lead about how Tony Amati really might’ve died?”

“Could be.”

“I even wonder if our stranger, Jared, has come here to find out about Tony, too. If he’s his descendent or something and he’s on a fact-finding trip.”

Violet turned toward him, and Davis glanced at her. A few dark red hairs had escaped from her ponytail. Her brown eyes had a gleam—that unmistakable sign of the thrill of the chase that used to light her gaze in their high school days.

Outside the window, white fences and green pastures rushed by. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she asked.

“What—this story, or having you in my car, riding along with me?”

She blushed, and it stirred him right back up again. It also warned him that he needed to back off, because it probably wouldn’t take much for her to shy away from him.

“It has nothing to do with your four-wheeled toys.” Now Violet had that lost expression on her face he’d seen so many times before. “I meant to say that you seem to like the possibility of chasing a real story. More than the usual ‘Fireman Rescues Cat from Tree’ sort of thing.”

“We get a little more action than that in St. Valentine these days. Last month, we actually covered a knockdown-drag-out fight between Maura Stosser and our own Wiley Scott. She’d bopped him on the head in the general store with an umbrella from the sale rack when he’d given her the wrong look.”

“What look was that?”

“Cross-eyed. I don’t know. Wiley and Maura fight like a dog and cat. He’s always straddled the line between the miners and the townies, but Maura’s a …”

He wasn’t sure how to put it without offending Violet.

“Devoted east-side girl who doesn’t think anyone should straddle?” she supplied, laughing, letting him know that she didn’t live by all the labels. She never had.

“Really,” she said, getting back to the previous topic, “you don’t mind the slow pace of this town?”

He steered onto Ranger Street, which bypassed the newer part of town and led to the old section. “Believe it or not, I’m perfectly content here. Even when I took a break from St. Valentine after high school, I never did get comfortable with skyscrapers and concrete. I like the open blue. I like the sound of silence in the morning just after the sun rises. I’m merely simple at heart, I guess.”

“You’re not simple at all.”

She said it as if he’d never been that way.

Would he have been enough to keep her interested? He didn’t know what the hell he’d do with an answer, but not knowing was eating away at him. He’d spent a lot of time finding himself after she’d left.

Why did it seem so damned important for her to acknowledge that he would’ve never disappointed her?

He pulled the car into a spot behind the newspaper office in a plume of dust. As the cloud hovered, they closed up the windows, then alighted, going inside through the back entrance, past the printing equipment and into the main room.

After he snapped on the light, Violet put her hands on her hips and glanced around. She was wearing a crisp white blouse, creased dark blue shorts and Keds, and Davis took a moment to appreciate how her legs seemed to go on forever.

Finally, she said, “Every modern convenience known to man, even air-conditioning. This doesn’t feel like the same place Wiley owned.”

He pulled out a padded leather chair so she could commandeer a computer. She sat right down as he turned on the unit.

He brought her some bottled water from the office fridge and sat at a neighboring computer station to search the digitized archives for other relevant past editions. Every once in a while, though, he couldn’t help glancing at her. He liked how she bit her bottom lip when she was concentrating, liked how she tilted her head, as if that helped her thought process, too.

Something in his chest got all warm. She was serious; he wasn’t all that much. She was a mining kid; he was a Jackson.

But would that matter so much anymore?

“Look at this,” Violet said.

She was pointing to her screen, and he leaned in to her, looking over her shoulder.