by Diana Palmer
“I’m really sorry,” Violet told her. “I thought Jordan was smart enough to see through her.”
“She’s pretty and smart and rich,” Libby murmured.
“And what are you, hideous?” Violet chided. “Your people were founding families of Jacobsville, and you’re a paralegal. You’re pretty, too. You’re worth two of Julie Merrill.”
Libby looked less stressed. She smiled. “Thanks, Violet. I really have missed you,” she added. “I don’t have anybody else that I can talk to, except my brother, and I couldn’t tell him how I really feel about Jordan.”
“Julie will fall into that deep hole she’s digging one day,” Violet told the other woman. “With any luck, Janet will fall into one just as deep!” She hesitated, remembering what Libby had said. “Mr. Kemp isn’t going to go up there alone to get those things, is he? I mean, Janet might have an accomplice…”
“Cash Grier is going with him,” Libby interrupted.
Violet laughed. “I’ll stop worrying right now. Nobody is going to mess with our chief of police.”
“That’s gospel,” Libby agreed. “Although you might remember that Mr. Kemp was an officer in the reserves until just recently. He’s no shrinking daisy.”
“I know,” Violet replied, smiling. “Remember those two men he threw out of our office?”
“I’m trying to forget!”
They both laughed.
The pizza was delicious. Violet walked out with Libby when she was ready to leave.
“Are you going to come back?” Libby asked the other woman seriously.
“Yes,” Violet said. “I dread having to tell Mr. Wright, though,” she added. “He was kind to me.”
“Duke’s nice. He won’t mind. He may not like Mr. Kemp, but he likes you,” she added with a smile. “I’ll bet he won’t even ask you to work a two week notice.”
“That would be nice.” She wrapped her arms around herself. The night was cool. “Has Mr. Kemp really missed me?”
Libby smiled. “He really has. He’s set new records for hostility and impatience. I think Jessie quit because she reached the end of her rope. She couldn’t please the boss no matter what she did. It seemed to Mabel and me that Mr. Kemp was trying to make her leave.”
Violet smiled delightedly. “I’ve missed him, too,” she confessed.
Libby hugged her. “We all know how you feel about him. I think you’ve got a good chance with him, Violet,” she said gently. “I wouldn’t encourage you to come back if I didn’t. I know too much about unrequited love.”
“You and Jordan are going to work out one day, too,” Violet assured her friend. “I’m sure of it.”
“Chance would be a fine thing,” Libby sighed. “Well, I’d better get home. Curt’s having a night out with the boys so I don’t have to worry about his supper, thank goodness.”
“Your brother’s a nice man.”
“He is, isn’t he?” Libby grinned. “I wouldn’t have minded you for a sister-in-law, you know. But you can’t get past love. I know. I’ve tried.”
“It will work out, Libby,” Violet told her.
“Somehow,” Libby agreed.
“Thanks for the pizza and the company.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“I’ll call Mr. Wright tonight,” Violet added, full of excitement.
“We’ll look forward to having you back whenever you can come,” Libby called on her way to the car.
Violet did phone Duke Wright, and he did waive her two weeks’ notice. He was sorry to lose her, he added, but a blind man could see how she felt about Kemp. Not that Kemp deserved her, he added wryly. Violet thanked him and hung up. She was going to be sitting at her desk when Mr. Kemp came in the next morning. She could hardly wait to see the look on his face!
Kemp and Cash Grier were on their way back from San Antonio after a stop at the coin dealer’s shop, a local attorney’s office, and a quick lunch. Kemp had salvaged more than enough of the late Riddle Collins’s assets to save Libby and Curt Collins from bankruptcy. They’d be able to pay off their outstanding loan and have plenty left over to put in the bank. The coin collection their father had left them was worth a fortune by itself. But in addition to it, Kemp had found two savings accounts and a new will that their late father had placed with the coin dealer in San Antonio. Apparently, he hadn’t trusted his wife, Janet, one bit, and had planned for her legal shenanigans after his death. He’d assured that his children wouldn’t be left penniless.
“Isn’t greed amazing?” Kemp murmured aloud, having told Grier the bare bones of the shameful way Janet had treated her stepchildren.
“It is,” Grier said. “I’ve never understood it. I like having enough to provide a roof over my head and the occasional night at the theater, but there are plenty of things I wouldn’t consider doing even to make myself rich.”
“Same here.” Kemp glanced at the older man curiously.
“Something bothering you?” Grier asked.
“I’m surprised at the way you’ve fit in here,” he replied with a faint smile. “You do know the whole town’s talking about your defense of your two patrol officers—the ones the mayor is trying to fire.”
“I like controversy if it’s in a good cause,” Grier said. He grinned. “I’m not letting them fire good officers for doing their jobs.”
“You’ve got some drug traffickers on the run as well,” Kemp mused. “You’re shaking up our little community. I like the changes. So do a lot of other people.”
“I’m glad, but I didn’t take the job to win a popularity contest.”
“Why did you?” Kemp asked evenly.
Grier sighed. “I’m tired of living on the run,” he confessed, gazing out the window while Kemp drove. “I’m feeling my age. I think I might put down roots here.”
“With Tippy?” Kemp fished.
Grier didn’t fly at him, as he’d expected. The older man frowned slightly. “She’s not what she seems,” he replied quietly. “I’ve misjudged her badly. I don’t know that she’d be willing to take me on, once she’s back on her feet and able to work again. In any case, I can’t let her far out of my sight right now. Not until that third kidnapper is in custody,” he added coldly. “If he turns up in Jacobsville and makes a try for her, he’d better carry life insurance.”
“It would take a stupid criminal to do that.”
“I’ve locked up a lot of guys who aren’t rocket scientists,” Grier said drolly, with a speaking glance at Kemp.
Kemp chuckled. “I’ve defended a fair number who weren’t, too,” he had to agree. “Which reminds me, if you want me to defend your patrol officers at the hearing, I’ll do it pro bono.”
“Thanks,” Grier told him. “But I’ve got a big surprise for the city council when they meet for that hearing.”
“I forgot. You’re related to the Hart boys, aren’t you?”
Grier grinned. “They’re my cousins.”
“And Simon Hart is our state attorney general,” he added, laughing. “Then I don’t need to offer my services. I won’t try to guess who you’re bringing with you.”
“You won’t need to guess,” Grier said. He stretched lazily. “I need a few days off. Once the election is over and the disciplinary hearing is decided, I’m going to take some time off. Tippy’s little brother is coming down here soon. He likes to fish. Maybe he and I can stake out a riverbank for a few hours and take some fresh fish home to Tippy for dinner.”
“Can she cook?” Kemp asked, surprised.
“Indeed she can,” he replied. “You’d be amazed at how domestic she is.” His eyes were soft. “She looks right at home in a kitchen. I could get used to seeing her across a table for the rest of my life.”
Kemp felt uneasy. Grier, an older and lonelier man than himself, was apparently thinking solemnly about a stable and shared future with a woman. Kemp thought of marriage and it made him uncomfortable.
“I’m not in the market for a wife,” Kemp said aloud. “
I like my own space, my own company.”
Grier gave him a grin. “I used to be that way, too. There’s always the one woman who can change your mind.”
Kemp shrugged. “Not for me. I’ve been that route once. I never want to go over the same ground again.”
“Nothing wrong with being a loner,” Grier said. “Until recent days, I felt that way, too.”
“Tippy’s a beauty.”
“She’s got a good brain, and she’s a quick hand in an emergency,” Grier told him. “It’s not about looks.”
“Sorry,” Kemp said belatedly. “I was thinking out loud.”
“I hear your new secretary quit,” Grier mused.
“She couldn’t spell,” Kemp muttered. “It’s no loss.”
“What are you going to do, have Libby and Mabel double up on work again?”
“Violet might come back.”
Grier pursed his lips. “I thought she was keen on having you for a barbecue as the entrée.”
Kemp shrugged. “We’re speaking again.” He tried not to let it show that they were doing a lot more than that.
“If you say so.”
“I can get another secretary whenever I need one,” Kemp added doggedly.
“Does the employment agency know this?”
Kemp gave him a glare. “Just because they hung up on me doesn’t mean they don’t want my business.”
“I’m sure.”
“Anyway, if Violet comes back, all my problems will be solved,” he said. “And now that I’ve got Riddle Collins’s secret stash in that suitcase, Libby and Curt Collins will be out of debt and back in their own home again.”
“That won’t suit Julie Merrill,” Grier murmured coolly. “She’s hot after Jordan Powell’s money. Poor Libby.”
“Poor Julie, if you can get her where we all want her,” Kemp said.
“I’m working on that,” Grier assured him. “One way or another, I’m going to put the last of the drug cartel out of business in Jacobsville.”
“With my blessing,” Kemp replied, smiling.
Kemp came into his office early the next morning with Riddle’s stash and showed it to Libby, who’d come in early for the occasion. She was ecstatic as they went over the proof of her father’s love for her and Curt.
A few minutes later, Kemp started out for the courthouse to file the revised will Riddle had left. When he walked into the outer office, the first thing he saw was Violet, sitting at her desk.
His expression was enough to feed Violet’s hungry heart. She smiled, flushed and beamed up at him.
“You said I could come back,” she reminded him brightly.
“Yes, I did,” he replied, smiling. “Are you staying?”
She nodded.
“How about making a fresh pot of coffee?” he asked.
“Regular?”
“Half and half,” he replied, averting his eyes. “Too much caffeine isn’t good for me.”
He went out the door, leaving Violet with her jaw dropping.
“I told you he missed you!” Libby whispered mischievously as she followed the boss onto the sidewalk.
As the day went on, Kemp found himself looking for excuses to go to the front of his office. He went through two pots of coffee, because that was the best excuse he had. Violet was wearing a sassy blue dress that emphasized her nice, rounded figure. It was fairly low cut in front, and with her frosted dark hair and her improved use of makeup, she was enough to turn any man’s head.
Libby and Mabel noticed his sudden interest in the coffeepot with subdued humor. They didn’t want to embarrass Violet, who flushed every time the boss came close.
It was almost inevitable that Violet stayed just a few minutes longer than Mabel and Libby at the end of the day.
She tidied up her desk and slowly gathered her purse and sweater. Blake came out to the front office and stood, openly staring at her, with his hands in his pockets and an odd, intent look in the blue eyes behind his trendy spectacles.
“Are you in a rush to get home? Can you phone your mother and tell her you’ll be a few minutes late?” he added.
“Of…of course,” she stammered. The way he was looking at her made her tingle from head to toe. She fumbled the phone to her ear and dialed, her eyes eating her handsome boss all the while.
She told her mother she’d be a few minutes late, trying not to react obviously to her parent’s amusement.
Blake held out his hand. Violet dropped her purse and sweater on her chair and went to him, letting him lead her back to his office.
He closed the door and pulled her hungrily into his arms. She sighed with pure delight as his hard mouth found her lips and he lifted her into an even more intimate embrace.
“I’ve missed you,” he ground out against her responsive lips.
“I’ve missed you…too,” she whispered back.
“Come home with me,” he suggested huskily.
She knew what he was really suggesting, and it wasn’t supper. She wanted to go with him. She wanted to be with him. But she was hesitant.
He felt her hesitation. He let her slide down his hard body and he stared into her eyes hungrily. “Well?”
She swallowed. Her gaze was on his broad chest, because she couldn’t look him in the eye and refuse him.
“What are you offering me, Blake?” she asked quietly.
He scowled. “Are we bargaining for sex?”
She stared up at him, dumbfounded. “Is that all you want from me?”
He was confused. Usually logical and cool in his thinking, now he was like a young man on the brink of his first affair.
“I don’t want to get married, Violet,” he said gently. “You know that.”
She swallowed hard. “Yes. You’ve already said that. But I don’t want to be your mistress.”
His jaw tensed. “I don’t recall asking you to be.”
“What would you call it, then?” Violet asked sadly. “You want to sleep with me, with no ties, isn’t that the truth?”
He stuck his hands in his slacks pockets and let out a long sigh.
“My mother is old-fashioned,” she continued. “She raised me to think of sex as something that goes hand in hand with love and marriage. It would break her heart to have me settle for a purely physical liaison with any man, especially you.” She looked up at him miserably. “Jacobsville is a small town, Blake. Everybody would know.”
“I’m not a slave to public opinion,” he said harshly, feeling himself lose ground.
“Yes, but I am,” she replied. She stepped back, feeling a sudden coldness in his manner. It wasn’t what she’d expected when she came in here with him. She’d hoped that he might come to love her. They’d been so close at his house. Now they were like strangers.
He was furious. He was confused. This woman had caused him more inner turmoil than he’d known since the death of his fiancée, years before. He loved his freedom. But he hated the thought of losing Violet.
“Violet,” he began slowly, “I was engaged once. I loved her more than life. After I lost her, I didn’t want to go on living.” He frowned. “I…can’t go through that again.”
She looked up into his turbulent eyes. “Why would you have to? You don’t love me,” she said miserably. “You only want me.”
She turned and went to the door.
Before she could open it, his hand covered hers on the doorknob. “Wait.”
“I should never have returned here to work,” she said. “I’ll go back to Mr. Wright. You can get another temporary secretary to fill in until you replace me.”
“No!”
Tears blurred her blue eyes. She’d never been so miserable in her life. “Just let me go, please!”
He moved his hand. Seconds later, she was out the front door and gone. He stood alone in his office, feeling empty and cold. She wanted something he couldn’t give her. Why couldn’t women be like men, he wondered angrily, and just enjoy the present without asking for solemn vows of forever?
He went home in a snit and made supper for himself and the cats. They gave him odd looks, as if they sensed his inner turmoil.
He glared at them. “Don’t you start,” he muttered. Mee rubbed against his legs. Yow sat watching him with blue accusing eyes. “Great,” he muttered. “Now I’m talking to cats!”
He finished his meager supper and tried to get interested in a television program, but his body ached with thoughts of Violet in his arms. He wasn’t giving in, though. If she thought she’d get him in front of a minister by holding out physically, she was dead wrong.
He couldn’t forget their one time of intimacy, the beauty and joy of possessing her. It had been a perfect physical interlude.
Then he remembered something else he’d tried to forget. They’d had unprotected sex. What if Violet got pregnant?
He sat up straight, his eyes wide and stunned at just the thought. What would they do? He knew for a fact that Violet would never be able to go to a clinic. She’d insist on having the child. He had a horror of children. He’d never gotten over the fact that Shannon had been carrying his child when she died. It had warped his attitude toward pregnancy. He thought of children and he remembered how he felt when he knew his child had died with the woman he loved. It brought back nightmares of pain. Violet wouldn’t understand that. She wanted happily ever after. All he wanted was relief from the nagging physical hunger that was taking him over.
But if she was pregnant, he couldn’t desert her. Not only would it be unworthy of him as a man, it would reflect badly on his character in a town the size of Jacobsville. The gossip would ruin Violet’s reputation and the shame might well kill her mother, considering Mrs. Hardy’s fragile health.
He cursed under his breath. If he’d never invited Violet home with him, none of this would ever have happened. Why couldn’t he have just let her go and left it at that? He’d landed them in hell with his uncontrollable passion. He couldn’t blame that on Violet. All the same, he didn’t know what he was going to do.
But he couldn’t let her quit. Not until he knew about her condition. He picked up the phone and punched in her number.