Courted by the Texas Millionaire

by Crystal Green

  Just why did she have to be so…Violet? So hard to negotiate with? Then again, if she weren’t so complicated, he would’ve never been interested.

  When he caught her running her fingers over the printout while rereading it, his skin reacted, just as if she was brushing over him. His belly clenched.

  Was it wrong that he was thinking of what it would be like if she touched him with the same dedication she was showing to a career? What would it be like to have that kind of devotion?

  He cleared away the thoughts, went back to work. They both kept at it, too, until she glanced at her wristwatch then stretched her arms over her head. He tried not to look—really he did—but as her shirt pressed against her breasts, he couldn’t stop himself.

  Hot summer nights…a picnic blanket spread out beneath the old oak near Jenner’s Field…his mouth on hers, his hands…

  Once again, the words were out of his mouth before he could second-guess the wisdom of saying them.

  “Married to a career,” he muttered.

  She crossed her arms over her chest, as if realizing only now that she’d let her guard down around him. “What?”

  “I said, ‘Married to a career.’ I thought you’d go to the city, find whatever it was you were looking for there, maybe even a better boyfriend, then live happily ever after with him. But maybe you were just too independent for that. You always were.”

  Her jaw had tensed, and she got busy on the computer again.

  He leaned back in his chair. “I won’t ask you about how life treated you these past years. We’ll avoid all that and have a great working relationship instead.”

  “I like that idea.”

  “Wasn’t there anyone?” He couldn’t help it. Curiosity—jealousy?—was getting the better of him.

  She stopped moving her mouse around. “All right, I’ll humor you just this once. I do date. But I’m very busy, rushing around on the job and all that. At least, I was.”

  His heart flinched in his chest, then just waited there, seeing if she’d open up any more than this.

  Blushing, she seemed to lose the ability to speak, and he wanted to tell her that she should look at him—really look and see that she’d made a bad choice fifteen summers ago.

  He almost laughed at that. Him, the man with a mansion on his ranch property, the man who threw parties where the guests drank Cristal, and this was all he wanted. One more stolen moment with her.

  She glanced at her watch again. “Would it be okay if I came back later?”

  She wanted to come back? “Sure. Jason Edgett puts the editions to bed these days, so he’ll be coming in soon. That’ll give me a chance to do more digging. I’ll let you know if I find anything.” His devilish streak was still going strong. “We could meet at the diner for a briefing after you get off your waitressing shift.”

  She pressed her lips together, as if ready to call him out on crossing the professional line they’d agreed on.

  Then, the old Violet returned—saucy, always giving as good as she got from him. “Seven o’clock?”

  “Seven it is.”

  After she left, he kept looking at the door, wondering just how safe she would feel if she knew that his attraction was alive and well whenever he was around her.

  * * *

  What was she doing?

  As Violet stood outside the Orbit Diner, its silver siding just as shiny in the dusk as it’d been when she’d last eaten there in high school, she hesitated to go inside.

  She shouldn’t be having dinner with Davis.

  But she was. Her pulse was darn well skipping along, as a matter of fact, and it’d be doing the same all day, as she’d waited tables and tried not to think about him.

  And that was a bad thing, too. When she worked a story, that was where her mind usually was—eating, sleeping, living the facts and questions, and trying to weave them all together.

  Yet now?

  Now she would find herself thinking of him—of that perennially tousled dark blond hair. Of those blue eyes that could talk a girl into almost anything.

  Even a girl like her, who didn’t stop for distractions.

  But Violet had overcome distractions before. That was how she’d succeeded, by driving in a straight line, full speed ahead, through roadblocks and over speed bumps.

  She would do it this time, too. There was even a chance that if there was a big story hidden somewhere under the dirt of St. Valentine, it might go a long way in not only ingratiating her to the town but landing her a new job at another solid paper, as well.

  Feeling more positive now, she went into the diner, looking around at the aqua-upholstered booths, the shiny chrome-and-Formica decor. It seemed like a figment of her imagination, nearly washed away by her time in the city—lunch hours spent at a cluttered desk, happy hours at upscale hot spots where she could see the traffic jams outside the window. But the diner was well-worn, and hardly cosmopolitan; it had reminded her of what someone from the 1950s would’ve predicted the future might look like with plastic bubbles curved over the pie selections, and the spaceship fins winging off the main counter.

  She finally found Davis in a rear booth, a menu in front of his face. As she went to him, she walked past the suddenly silent old-timers who sat around all day drinking coffee and gossiping. By the counter, two of them even had a chess game going. She wasn’t sure, but she thought it might’ve been a game that had lasted since she was in high school, with the same bearded players.

  They were so involved with their playing and socializing that they offered only civil nods along with lingering, maybe even resentful, looks. It was a start, she supposed.

  By the time she reached Davis, he still had his menu up.

  She cleared her throat, and when he lowered the menu, revealing that breathtaking, chiseled face of his, she knew he’d just been testing her again, ignoring her until the last instant.

  Her heart blipped, but she quieted it. All business between them, right?

  She got the briefing started as she sat down. “Any progress?”

  “Not on my watch.”

  Damn.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “All that means is that we start interviewing now. We’ve got plenty of resources in this town.” She gestured around the diner. “I’ll bet half these people were around when Tony was, even if they were just kids. They might remember something that’ll give us another lead.”

  “Plenty of resources, all right.” He gave her a look that said he noted how she was willing to talk to everyone when they might not give her the time of day.

  She’d talked to much tougher people than the ones in St. Valentine, though—alleged criminals, their lawyers. No one scared her.

  Leaving Davis out of that equation, she glanced at the menu, pretty much already knowing what she wanted. There were a lot of things she’d thought were small-time about St. Valentine, but one of them wasn’t the Orbit’s patty melt. No one else out in the world seemed to know how to cook one like they did.

  The waitress stopped by to take their orders, and afterward, Violet got out an iPad from her purse.

  “Maybe,” she said, turning it on, “we should throw around some names and organize a plan of attack. It’d be a waste of time if we both tried to interview the same people.”

  He leaned back in the booth, his arms resting on the top of the seat. The fine linen of his shirt outlined the muscles in his arms, probably honed from ranch work since she’d heard that he liked to let off steam on his small spread.

  Again, she was trying diligently to not gape at those muscles, but she couldn’t help imagining how his arms would feel wrapped around her. How they had felt long ago.

  Not knowing how else to act around him, she accessed the notebook function in her iPad, as res
tless as usual.

  He chuckled quietly, with that edge that always seemed to accompany anything he said. “You can’t wait to hightail it out of here as soon as you can.”

  “The diner or town?”

  “Both, I’d say.” He glanced around. “You know, that stings, Vi. I bought this place a few years ago. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to leave it.”

  He’d bought a lot of property—his ranch outside the town limits, the paper, more than a few tourist-related shops, not to mention other acreage he still hadn’t developed.

  “I like the diner,” she said mildly. “I always have.”

  “Then why are you on pins and needles?”

  Oh, he was really goading her, wasn’t he? And she had the feeling that he was working on an entirely different level of conversation than it first seemed—talking about leaving in general.

  Talking about her betrayal so long ago.

  “I’m just naturally high-strung,” she said, not taking his bait.

  “So it has nothing to do with—”

  “Listen, as much as you want to hear me say I regret what happened, I like the life I made for myself out in the world.”

  The look on his face stopped her tirade. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it struck her as…

  No, he couldn’t still be heartbroken. She’d even convinced herself years ago that he never had been, since he’d always been so cool to her whenever she’d call him from her dorm, trying to make amends. Until she’d given up altogether.

  Maybe it’d be okay for her to capitulate a little right now, with him looking this way. Maybe it’d be okay for her to say something that had nothing to do with business for once.

  “The last few years made me who I am now,” she said softly. “I have good friends who threw me a party when I had to leave. I had an apartment across from the Farmer’s Market near the Grove, where all the movie stars hang out, and we’d go there to spot celebrities and see what they wore and how they handled the paparazzi. I had my dream job, and I found out that I could do it pretty damn well, too. I learned so much about myself.”

  A pang invaded her. After being laid off, she wasn’t so confident about doing well anywhere, but she tried not to let that show.

  Yet Davis had always had her number when no one else did, and now he leaned forward, resting his arms on the table, his startlingly blue eyes searching her gaze.

  “With all of that did you ever think of what might’ve happened if you hadn’t gone, Vi?”

  Her heart smarted as she felt herself being pulled back to the past.

  And, scariest of all, back to him.

  Chapter Four

  If she hadn’t gone…

  The comment reverberated through Davis. He had imagined what life with Violet might’ve been like a million times, but even more forcefully, the fantasies of what they had had with each other flooded him now… .

  Two kids who were riding in his hot rod past county lines, until they arrived at a private place he’d discovered one recent day—a grove of trees under the summer night sky, the stars peeking through the branches, a few blankets in the backseat, his hands actually trembling as he cut the engine then turned to her.

  “So,” she said, her red hair longer back then, down past her shoulders, tied back by a blue ribbon. He’d remembered the blue a long time afterward, remembered so many colors and sensations.

  Her cheeks were flushed, and she ran her palms down her prim skirt, as if she were just as nervous and suddenly awkward as he was.

  “So,” he echoed.

  She leaned forward, turned on the radio, and the inside of his car filled with the murmur of an old, slow country tune. Johnny Lee, gentle and hopeful.

  Tonight, for the first time since he’d started dating, Davis wasn’t sure how to handle a girl. A woman—because that’s what Violet was to him. With her, he was someone who wanted to explore the world by her side, someone with curiosity about life and more drive than he could’ve ever imagined.

  Right now, under the moonlight, he was too overcome to even kiss her.

  Smiling at him shyly, she slipped her hand behind his head, pulling him down until their lips were flush, crushing, seeking. His universe spun, throwing him in a thousand directions.

  They came up for breath and he cupped her face in one hand, looking into her brown eyes.

  The universe was in her gaze, the future.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “I’ve never been surer about anything.”

  His pulse was wild, nearly tearing him apart while he reached back, untying the ribbon in her hair.

  Her locks spread over her shoulders, and he buried his face in them, then in her neck, making her gasp as he pressed tiny kisses against her skin, against the throb of a vein.

  Each beat spelled out the promises they had already made to each other—vows that would go beyond the summer. Vows that would trump what anyone in this town would think once he and Violet told everyone that they were together.

  And he’d do that soon. He’d said it before, but this time he meant it. After tonight, he definitely wouldn’t care anymore about what everyone else would think or say about him and Violet, how much guff they were going to give him for stepping over the class divide in St. Valentine.

  Davis pushed aside all those concerns about her father and his infamous dislike of the “richies.” Pushed away everyone else, too, as Violet slid toward the backseat, pulling him by the shirt to follow her there, passion in her eyes, and something much, much more.

  “I’m so in love with you, Davis,” she said. “I never thought I’d feel this way about anyone.”

  “I love you, too,” he said, as he lay her down in the backseat for what would be their first time. Her first time. “I’m always going to love you, Vi…”

  Her voice brought him back to the here and now, in the Orbit Diner, sitting across from a woman with the same dark red hair, except it was shorter, sharper at the edges. A woman who’d somehow found another life without him.

  “I wonder,” she said, “if maybe going to L.A. with me would’ve been the easy way out for us.” She said it carefully, as if she hadn’t been able to afford thinking any other way.

  He’d gone through the years with that protective attitude, too, and the excuses hadn’t fit him. He realized that now.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  She gave him a wounded look. “I was willing to tell my parents about us and to withstand all the fallout with my dad and anyone else in town who would’ve given me a hard time for dating above myself. But you…”

  He fisted his hands. She was right. “Yes, I was slow in wanting to let our secret out of the bag, but I would’ve told everyone before we left St. Valentine, Vi.”

  “Right before we escaped to a place where we wouldn’t have had to deal with what everyone else thought? Would that have been reality?”

  “Out there, it wouldn’t have mattered. You would’ve been you, and I would’ve been me. Nothing else would’ve come into play.”

  From her expression, he knew that might not have been the case at all. It was a teenager’s point of view, and it was a shock to know that he still hadn’t gotten past it.

  Wasn’t it possible that there were things even in L.A. that they wouldn’t have been equipped to deal with, especially if they hadn’t even been mature enough to face the music in St. Valentine?

 
; “Davis,” she said with a sigh, “for a long time, I told myself that I was nuts for thinking that you were embarrassed to be with a miner’s kid. I made up so many reasons you wanted to keep us undercover.”

  He held his silence, having no defense.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “At least, now it is. But then, we weren’t old enough to be running off together, and I think we both know that.”

  It occurred to him that he might be angrier with himself for how he blew it with Violet than he was with her. It was so easy to think it’d been all her fault, and his mom’s, but he’d been just as responsible.

  Violet went on: “Besides, you wouldn’t have been happy in a city. If the years have proven anything, it’s that you’re devoted to St. Valentine. Leaving it would have mattered in the end. From what I heard, you even turned your back on a life in Chicago to come to St. Valentine and play savior for the miners. And you settled here.”

  Yet he’d done it out of guilt for what his investigation had done to the town, he thought. Or was it something more than that? Had he stayed because St. Valentine was in his blood?

  But once he’d thought Violet was, too.

  “Maybe,” she said, “you would’ve even come to resent me for taking you away from this town, or putting a rift between you and your mom.”

  “That rift would’ve happened, anyway.” He arranged his face so that it didn’t give away any emotion. After all, Violet was still the woman who’d accepted his heart only to throw it right back at him, no matter what he’d done to warrant it. “Mom hardened after my dad died. I was only four, but I knew, just by looking at pictures of them, how happy she used to be, how…soft. If you hadn’t brought on a rift, then it would’ve been something else.”

  And maybe if he’d made different decisions, their relationship would’ve withstood his mom, but he didn’t dare say so. He didn’t even know why the hell he’d asked Violet that idiotic question about the future in the first place.