Millionaire M.D.

Still, that didn’t mean Justin had to like the way he was holding Win. Or smiling at her, for that damn matter. There was a limit to loyalty and friendship. Come to think of it, there was a limit to loyalty and friendship and honor and ethics.

And that damn limit was Winona Raye.

Aw, hell. He was losing his mind. It was her. She’d always made him lose his mind, and every year it was getting worse. He was beginning to sound like a lovesick cow. More pathetic yet, he was beginning to act like one.

“Hey, Dr. Webb, can I get you another?”

Justin’s head snapped around. “Sure, Riley. I’d appreciate a refill.” Well aware he’d been acting—and thinking—way too soberly for a party, he offered a companionable grin for Riley Monroe and another for the stranger next to him.

The short gentleman offered his hand. “I believe that we met on one other occasion, Dr. Webb. My name is Klimt. Robert Klimt.”

“Oh, yes. Of course, I remember.” Actually Justin had no memory of the man whatsoever, but he scrounged his brain for some connection. Klimt, Klimt…he was almost sure somebody’d told him that Robert Klimt was a minor cabinet member in the Asterland government.

“I was just asking Mr. Monroe about the sign over the entrance door.” Klimt motioned to the Leadership, Justice and Peace logo. “I heard someone say that slogan came from a historical story about the town. I gather that there’s some kind of romantic legend about Royal, Texas, and some jewels?”

“Oh, there is, there is.” Riley topped off Justin’s glass with a flourish, then reached behind the bar for Klimt’s poison—imported schnapps. “Next door to our Texas Cattleman’s Club here is a park. You probably noticed. In the early l800s, there was a mission here, an old adobe church. It’s just part of the park now, but back in the War with Mexico, l846 or so, there was a Texas soldier found a comrade fallen in battle, tried to save him….”

The fiddlers had picked up the pace for “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Justin, half listening to Klimt and Riley, researched the dance floor for the black, bouncing curly hair again. She wasn’t with Aaron, wasn’t with Matthew. In a sense, she really was working this evening, even if she was wearing formal attire. Win had never been a carry-a-gun kind of cop—she normally worked with juveniles, kids in trouble, kids at risk. But everyone on the local police force had been quietly coaxed to attend the gathering tonight, because the whole town wanted this shindig to go well, and Winona was always pulled into special problems like this. She was ideal. Everyone knew her. Everyone trusted her. And that was just great, except that she was so damned beautiful, Justin figured some guy, sometime, was going to zip down those cool defenses of hers….

“… So anyhow, this Texas soldier was just trying to save a wounded comrade, but it was just too late. Our Texas soldier had no idea the guy was carrying these three fancy jewels until he’s caring for the body, trying to bury him. Anyway, the old guy was gone, no identification on him, so he took the jewels back to Royal—”

“And this is a true story?” Klimt asked.

Justin yanked his gaze off the dance floor and looked at Klimt again. The man couldn’t be five foot five, but for a little guy, he sure had the puff of a banty rooster. Everything about him was starched—posture stiff as a ramrod, linen shirt perfectly creased, hair perfectly brushed, smile perfectly appropriate. Even his shoes shone like mirrors. Justin’s glance strayed to the smaller man’s left temple. There was a mole there, right by his eye. There were beauty marks, and then there were moles. This happened to be a plain old ugly mole—Justin immediately looked away; it was just second nature as a doc to notice a precancerous physical condition. And in this case, the minor flaw was particularly striking because everything about the guy was so spiffed-up-perfect in every other way.

Riley was laughing. “Aw, none of the story is true. Or maybe it is. The truth is that none of us seem to care. The town loves the legend, so we’ve been passing it on for years.”

“So tell me more about these jewels,” Klimt requested.

“Well, to start with, each of the jewels refers to the motto on the Texas Cattleman’s Club sign, see? Each of the gems is really unusual, partly because they’re so rare as to be priceless. You couldn’t buy one for love or money, not then and not now. Which made it all the more interesting and mysterious, why this Texas soldier was carrying them—but we’ll never know that answer. The point is that he had them. And one stone was a red diamond—”

“I never heard that diamonds came in a red color.”

“They don’t, they don’t,” Riley said. “Except once in a real rare while. And you study some gem lore, now, and you find red diamonds were the stones of kings, because they were that rare. So you look up in our motto sign, and that’s what the first word—leadership—is about. That’s what the red diamond is a symbol for. Right, Dr. Webb?”

“Right, Riley.” The orchestra had switched tunes to an old-fashioned waltz. Aaron Black glided past with a tall, plain young woman in his arms. Justin thought he recognized her. Pamela something? A teacher? Very shy, very proper—and how typical of Aaron to pick out a wallflower and make sure she wasn’t pining on the sidelines.

Even better that he wasn’t dancing with Win. Justin searched the crowd again. He saw Aaron, he saw Matt, he saw… Finally, he caught a glimpse of her again. This time she was partnered by a man with coal-black hair and striking gray eyes, teeth shining stark white in a face that so rarely smiled—the Sheikh. Ben. And another Texas Cattleman’s Club member, thank God, so it wasn’t like Justin had to worry she wasn’t in a gentleman’s hands.

Exactly.

He trusted Ben the same way he trusted Aaron and Matt. With his life. But trusting them with a single, attractive woman was a different story—particularly when the men had no idea how much he cared about her.

Nor would they.

“Dr. Webb, Mr. Klimt was asking about the other stones….” Riley prompted him.

“Yeah? Well, the legend has it that there’s the red diamond…and then a black harlequin opal…and then an emerald.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Riley agreed, and settled on his elbows on the bar to keep spinning the tale for his willing listener. “See, technically the opal’s the least valuable of the three stones. But a black harlequin opal—she’s a rare mother. And those who get into the magic of gems tend to see the harlequin opal as both having healing power and as somehow having the inner light and power to bring justice—so that’s where the second word in the Club motto comes from. Justice. As an ideal, you know?”

“Yes, Mr. Monroe, I believe I know what an ideal is,” Klimt said impatiently. “And the third stone, the emerald?”

“I’m coming to that one. Around the world, for centuries, emeralds were always considered the stone of peacemakers, and this particular emerald was said to be one giant stone besides. So peace was naturally the third word they put in the Club motto.”

“Leadership, justice, peace,” Klimt echoed. “That’s quite a story. But it seems such an elaborate legend if the stones never really existed.”

“And there’s more to it than that,” Riley said happily. “Our guy brought the stones back to Royal after the war with Mexico. He was gonna be rich, you know, sell ’em, buy a big spread, put up a fancy house and all? And he meant to, only he got home, and oil was found on his homestead. He had black gold coming out of his ears, so he never did need to sell those stones to have his fortune made.”

“So what happened to them?”

Riley peered over Justin’s glass, then Klimt’s, then ducked down to bring up bottles again. “I don’t know. Nobody knows. The Texas Cattleman’s Club…well, there were some men formed this group, back even before Club founder Tex Langley’s time. Some say they first got together to guard the jewels. Some say they were just the leading citizens of Royal, who passed on responsibility for the town’s security from generation to generation. Some say they just used the legend of the jewels to create that motto, because, well, it was a good motto. Those are our values around here. Leadership. Justice. Pea—”

“You think the jewels exist?”

Riley fingered his chest. “Me? Oh, you bet. I think they existed for real, back then, and they exist somewhere now.”

“So what do you think happened to them?”

“Well, everybody’s got a theory….”

Someone cut in on her with the Sheikh. Dakota Lewis. Justin’s eyes tracked the two of them on the dance floor, and he almost had to smile. Dakota wasn’t much on dancing. Win’d be lucky if she left the floor without broken toes if she stuck with him long. Dakota looked what he was—no uniform, but the retired military status was obvious from his unyielding posture and scalped haircut. On the surface he looked tough and hard—and truth to tell he was—but Justin couldn’t worry about Winona with Dakota. Since his divorce, Dakota had shown no interest in any women.

“Well, if the jewels did exist, where is your best guess they’d be hidden?” Klimt asked Riley.

Again Justin turned his head to the other two men. Klimt could only seem to march to one drummer. The town loved its legend. Actually, outsiders seemed to love it just as much; tourists consistently ate it up. But Klimt was pushing it beyond anyone’s normal interest. “If the jewels really existed, they’d be under heavy lock and key,” he said mildly. “We only encourage the legend because it’s good fun for everyone. And who’d want to be the one to break hearts by confessing that Santa Claus didn’t exist? I sure plan to believe until I’m ll0.”

Riley chortled appreciatively. “You saying you believe in Santa or the jewels, Dr. Webb?”

“In Santa, of course. You can have the jewels. I’ll take the loot Santa carries around any day.”

Riley laughed again. Klimt even threw him a sour smile, and, temporarily, Riley seemed to be off the hook for entertaining Mr. Banty Rooster. Klimt, carrying a fresh schnapps, wandered off into the crowd.

And Justin was about to do that, too…until Winona caught his attention again. She was still on the dance floor, but dancing with a stranger this time.

A non-Texan. One of the Asterlanders that Justin didn’t know. He watched the dude’s big hand sift down to her fanny.

She smiled at the guy. And then reached back and removed his hand.

Justin shifted on his feet. Something kicked in his pulse. Not just jealousy—God knew he knew all the shades of green there were in that particularly annoying emotion. But Winona was clearly handling the guy—no matter how protective Justin felt, the truth was, he’d never seen a man that Winona couldn’t handle with both hands tied.

That was, in fact, why she so often got conned into attending these kinds of shindigs. Regular cops were always around for security, but it wasn’t the same. The few serious crimes in Royal tended to be robbery. Sure, there was a crime of passion now and then, a fight at the Royal Diner occasionally, domestic dispute problems and that sort of thing. But basically this just wasn’t a high-crime community. This was oil country. Those who’d made it, made it big. And those who hadn’t made it were paid well, simply because there was ample to go around. The school systems were top-drawer, the whole area supported with fine services. The only “risk” prevalent in a small, ultrarich town like Royal was its being a draw for thieves.

Which was exactly why and how Winona was irreplaceable at these galas. She always showed up in the same evil black dress, the same sassy high heels. It wasn’t that she showed off anything—ever—but there just didn’t seem to be a man born who wouldn’t talk to her. On top of that, she sensed things. She had an intuition when someone or something wasn’t right.

And Justin frowned again suddenly. No guy was eyeing her at that specific moment—and her dance partner had quit trying to put the make on her. But her gaze was roving the room. She tripped in her partner’s arms—which wasn’t that much of a shock, because unless a man let her lead, she couldn’t dance worth a Texas jumping bean. But it was the way she suddenly moved—stiffly, warily—that had Justin suddenly alert and pushing through bodies to get to the other side of the room.

Maybe she didn’t know he was in love with her.