Leather and Lace

by Jessie Evans

  “Tell Emily we love her,” Tulsi said, blowing a kiss as she and Clementine headed out the door, obviously in a hurry to get back to the barn and have their mother-daughter fun ride of the day.

  “They love you, sugar britches,” Mia said. “Now what can I do for you, Gram?”

  “You can spare your old grandmother a heat stroke. I’m in a bind. Davy Pyle had a heart attack this morning.”

  “Oh, no,” Mia said, brow knitting. Davy was one of her gram’s best friends and a champion for the town historical society. Back in the seventies, he’d been the one who helped Gram raise the funds to renovate the first section of Old Town. He’d helped bring tourism to Lonesome Point, and life back to their fading community. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “He’s fine and resting comfortably,” Emily said. “But his wife wants him to take it easy for at least a week, and I need someone to step in and play tour guide in his absence. He was supposed to meet the contractor who’s giving us our first quote for the restoration of the south side at four o’clock today.”

  Mia squinched her nose at the busy street outside. “I don’t close until five, Gram, and business has been hopping today. Can you call the contractor and ask him if we can put it off until six? I can definitely meet him then.”

  “I tried to call and cancel, but my call keeps going straight to voice mail. I’m afraid he’s already out at the site and not getting service.” Emily sighed a tragic sigh. “I’d hate to think the poor man will be standing out in the sun for hours waiting for someone who’s never going to show up, especially since he was nice enough to come here all the way from Wyoming.”

  Mia’s shoulders sagged, but she dutifully crossed the room to flip the sign to “Closed.” She knew when she’d been beat. Gram only whipped out her tragic sigh for situations she truly considered emergencies. If Mia ignored that sigh, she’d pay in guilt trips for the next three weeks of Friday night family suppers.

  “Got it, Gram,” she said. “I’ll head out now.”

  “Bless you, baby,” Gram said, obviously pleased.

  “Is there anything special you want me to tell this guy, or just the standard town legend stuff?”

  “Just the usual.” Gram said. “But play it up a little. And be friendly! We want this man to be as excited about this project as we are, and inclined to give us a reasonable quote.”

  “Gotcha.” Mia took a moment to write down the man’s name—Felix Kane—phone number, and the place where Davy had agreed to meet him at four, before telling her grandmother goodbye and heading out to where her white pickup was wedged into the narrow shop owner’s parking spot behind the shop.

  Within a few minutes, she had left downtown behind and was rolling down the narrow, graying strip of pavement leading to Old Lonesome Point. Despite the heat, she rolled down the windows and let the warm air whip through the cabin, carrying the smells of sweet columbine and desert sage with it. Mia breathed deep, the scents putting a smile on her face. Some of her best memories as a child were of coming to Old Town with her grandmother, trailing after Gram as she spruced up the decorations in the exhibits, and told stories about their ancestors who had founded the town.

  By the time Mia arrived at the entrance to the ghost town, she was glad she’d had an excuse to play hooky and come walk around her old stomping grounds. Seeing the parking lot of the visitor center still half full this late in the day was an additional bonus.

  Mia made a mental note to tell Gram it looked like business was booming. Emily was smart to sink more money into expanding the historical site while times were good. Mia’s parents thought the historical trust would be better off investing the money in mutual funds, so that when the original tourist destination needed major renovations in ten to fifteen years, the society would be ready, but Gram had always dreamed of seeing all of Old Town restored to its Wild West glory.

  No matter how crazy Gram drove Mia sometimes, she agreed that the society should go big or go home. Bragging rights to the biggest restored ghost town in the United States were no small prize, and an old woman so close to her stepping off place deserved the chance to reach for her dreams with both hands.

  Mia guided her pickup through the parking lot to the narrow access road leading behind the wooden clapboard gates of the active exhibit to the ten-foot barbed wire fence surrounding the crumbling buildings Gram was hoping to restore. She was still a few hundred feet away from the gate where she was supposed to meet Felix Kane when she saw a familiar Harley parked on the side of the dirt road.

  “Couldn’t be,” she said, but the hair on her arms was standing on end, and a warm, nervous-yet-excited feeling oozed through her chest like molasses melting on Gram’s bacon-and-sweet-onion pancakes.

  When she parked the truck and hopped out to see a tall silhouette in a dusty Stetson and dark blue jeans that molded to his impressive thighs swaggering toward her from further down the fence, she wasn’t that surprised. Or displeased.

  Maybe fate was nudging her in Sawyer’s direction, after all…

  The thought made her heart beat faster as she shaded her eyes from the sun, watching Sawyer close the distance between them. “You don’t look like Felix Kane,” she said when he stopped a few feet away.

  “And you don’t look like Davy Pyle,” Sawyer answered, a smile on his shadowed face. He looked happy to see her, despite the fact that she’d turned him down for a date, compared him to a Mexican wrestler, and all but thrown him out of her shop.

  “Davy had a health scare.” Mia hurried on when Sawyer’s brow creased with concern. “He’s going to be fine, but he needs to stay off his feet for a while. My grandmother is the president of the historical society, so she asked me to come give you the tour instead. Or give Felix the tour.” She turned, surveying the tumbleweed-littered land around them. “Will he be joining us?”

  Sawyer shook his head. “Felix is my great uncle, and partner. He hasn’t been feeling his best, either, so I said I’d come down alone and consult in his place. He’ll fly down to advise if we get the job, but I’ve been working for him since I was sixteen, and have over a decade of experience. I can answer any of your questions, and give you a detailed quote.”

  Mia smiled. “You don’t have to sell yourself to me, but make sure you have your résumé handy if my grandmother calls. She’s a hard ass.”

  “Will do.” Sawyer’s eyes crinkled around the edges, making him look even more like he walked off the set of a Hollywood movie.

  He really was a stunning man. But Paul had been stunning, too, with captivating blue eyes that drew women to him like mosquitoes to a bug zapper, and an intense, personal energy that Mia had found irresistible, at first, and terrifying later on. In her experience, stunning, magnetic men were dangerous, and she wasn’t prepared to let her guard down around Sawyer just yet.

  “So, shall we start the tour?” she asked, keeping her tone businesslike as she led the way toward the gate.

  “Definitely.” Sawyer followed behind her. “I’ve already walked all the way around, but I’m dying to get inside. This place is amazing.”

  “I’ve always loved it.” Mia ushered Sawyer through the gate and closed it behind them to make sure no tourists wandered into the dangerous area. Most of the buildings in this section hadn’t even had so much as a cursory inspection since the eighties, and were a liability suit waiting to happen. “I used to come here with my grandmother all the time. We’re descended from the town founder, Rupert Everett, who led an expedition to mine metal mercury around the butte for Everett, Cooper, and Company in the early 1800s. His wife, Amelia Sherman, is my ancestor, and namesake.”

  “I read that,” Sawyer said, as they started down what used to be the main drag of Old Lonesome Point. “Like I said, I didn’t mean to pry, but I did plug your name into a search engine.”

  “I’ll have to learn not to give my last name to strange men,” Mia said, casting him a sideways glance.

  His lips—those full, shapely lips she kept trying n
ot to look at too closely—twitched. “Well, if you didn’t go around kissing them first, you probably wouldn’t have to worry.”

  “Have to work on that, too.” Mia fought the urge to smile, still not sure flirting with this man was a good idea. “On your right, you’ll see the original Lonesome Point Hotel and Saloon. This is one of the first structures the society would like to see restored. Amelia built this hotel after her husband, Rupert, died on their wedding night. That’s why she went back to using Sherman. She said it didn’t feel right being an Everett when she’d barely been married a few hours before her husband passed. She gave her child by Rupert the last name of Sherman, too, and ran the hotel alone until her death at age sixty-seven, maintaining order with a shotgun and a series of vicious male wolf dogs, all named Paula, after the patron saint of widows.”

  “Male wolf dogs?” Sawyer asked, lifting a brow.

  Mia nodded. “Named Paula.”

  Sawyer grunted. “So eccentricity runs in the family?”

  Mia leveled him with a hard look. “Are you saying I resemble that remark?”

  His answering laugh was a deep rumble that vibrated in her bones, making her feel like she was on the receiving end of a bear hug. She’d never felt embraced by a sound before, but she decided she liked it, and let herself return his grin as she led the way past the hotel to the town jail.

  “The jail was right next door to the saloon, which made it easy to roll the drunk and disorderly out the swinging doors, and into the jail for the night to sleep it off.” Mia turned, walking backward as she motioned to the splintered front walk leading from the hotel to the jail. “Lonesome Point had its share of petty criminal activity, but it also had a thriving women’s suffrage movement. Amelia was a firm supporter of women’s rights, and held suffragette meetings in her office at the hotel. In her journals, she wrote that she believed empowered women fighting for the vote were what gave Lonesome Point the reputation for being the place where the wildest men in the west were tamed.”

  Sawyer crossed his thick arms over his chest, stopping in the middle of the dusty street. “Is that right?”

  Mia nodded, warming to her story. “Between the years of 1834 and 1850, five of the biggest outlaws of the time met and married women from Lonesome Point. Some settled down to live under aliases on the outskirts of town, avoiding the law. But the most famous couple, Alvis and Ginny Watts, became a husband and wife team. They were con artists who duped prospectors up and down the Rio Grande until they were eventually jailed in Eagle Pass days before their seventh wedding anniversary.”

  “Seven year itch.” Sawyer’s eyes narrowed, giving the jail a critical look.

  “Not at all,” Mia said. “Ginny escaped her jail cell two days after they were captured, and broke Alvis out the morning before he was set to be hanged. They ran off to Mexico, and were never seen again, but a man claiming to be their son visited Lonesome Point in 1870.”

  “That’s a romantic story,” Sawyer said, shooting Mia a look that made her stomach do a slow swan dive and her skin feel vaguely…prickly all over.

  “Well, ye-yes, it is,” she said, grateful for the hot sun that gave her an excuse for the blush heating her cheeks. “He brought my great-great-etcetera grandmother a thank you letter from his parents, and the sterling silver, surgical grade amputation set that’s on display in the visitor center museum.”

  Sawyer lifted a skeptical brow.

  “It was a thoughtful gift.” Mia pulled a curl from her lips that the wind immediately whipped into her eyes. “Very practical for the times. Without antibiotics, sometimes amputation was the only way to prevent septicemia.”

  “Sorry, I’m not doubting your story, I was just thinking about the jail.” Sawyer lifted a hand, pointing to the second floor of the structure. “You’ve got a lot of damage to the brickwork, and those look like early Carter Bricks.”

  Mia did a double take. “You can tell that from fifty feet away?”

  “I know my brick,” he said, managing to make the phrase sound unreasonably sexy.

  “I bet you do,” Mia breathed, forcing a smile when Sawyer’s eyes shifted back in her direction. “You’re right. It is all Carter Brick, made during the second or third year the Carter Brick Factory was in business. I’ll have to check the records to be sure, but I know the jail dates back to 1834-35.”

  Sawyer shook his head again, a slow back and forth that foretold certain doom. “That’s going to cost you. Carter Bricks from any era are expensive, but bricks from the early years, before they changed the mold in the 1840s, are hard to find. And when you do find them, they fetch their weight in gold.”

  Mia winced. “Gram won’t be happy to hear that.” She bit her lip, the partially collapsed second story of the jailhouse suddenly looking more irritatingly decayed and less romantically crumbled. Emily had a sizable budget socked away, but not enough to cover bricks that cost as much as gold bars.

  “Is there any way around using actual Carter Bricks?” she asked. “We have a couple of potters in town. If we brought them a sample, they might be able to reproduce the—”

  “You need to maintain the integrity of materials if you’re going to get this portion of the town on the historic register along with the first.” Sawyer pulled his phone from his back pocket and tapped the voice memo button. “Carter Bricks for the jailhouse. Circa 1834-35. Estimated two-hundred to three-hundred bricks for full restoration. Number to be updated after inspection.”

  Sawyer ended the memo and turned to Mia. “Do you have any idea when I’ll be able to do a walk-through of the buildings? I’ll need to get up close and personal before I write up our bid.”

  “We can go in today,” Mia said, refusing to think about how much she’d like to get up close and personal with Sawyer again. The more time she spent with him, the more his sexy, intelligent side began to outweigh his intimidating, I-swagger-on-my-way-to-mount-my-Harley side.

  “I have the key to the jail,” she added. “None of the other buildings have been locked for years. My grandmother misplaced most of the keys in a move shortly after her husband died.”

  Sawyer dipped his head and tipped the brim of his hat up, meeting Mia’s eyes. “Sounds like the women in your family have a bad habit of losing husbands.”

  You have no idea, Mia thought.

  “It was a long time ago, Gram’s fine now,” she said, her tone upbeat.

  She wasn’t about to tell him that Emily had awoken to find Grandpa Frank dead in their bed the morning after their shotgun wedding, losing her husband on her wedding night just like their ancestor Amelia. She also wouldn’t tell Sawyer that at least three of their ancestors in Ireland had lost their husbands in a similar fashion, or utter a word about her own status as a first-born-daughter. And she absolutely wouldn’t confess that, for a few insane days last summer, she had considered marrying her ex-boyfriend, hoping the Sherman Family Curse would work its dark magic and do away with the man who had made her life an exercise in fear.

  Instead, she pulled the key from the back pocket of her jeans and held it up between them. “Shall we go check out the town lock up?”

  Sawyer’s hand closed around hers, sending a wave of awareness sizzling through her as he claimed the key. “I think I should go alone. Old buildings can be unpredictable.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Mia said. At least not of old buildings.

  But she was afraid of letting the attraction she felt for Sawyer do anything but simmer between them. She was afraid of letting down her guard, and allowing another unstoppable force to turn her world upside down. And so when Sawyer said—

  “I’d really feel better going alone. I won’t touch anything.”

  —Mia nodded, and motioned him forward.

  She hung back and watched him go, enjoying the view—the man filled the hell out of a pair of jeans—but feeling sad all the same. Tulsi was right, Paul was winning, and if Mia didn’t find a way to put her fears aside, she might spend the rest of her life watching one sex
y opportunity after another walk away.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sawyer walked the perimeter of the old jailhouse’s ground floor, avoiding the center of the structure, where a few of the floorboards were missing and the remaining boards looked weak. Judging from the honeycombing on the walls near the floor, it looked like the building had sustained termite damage. Termites weren’t usually a major concern in such an arid climate—they needed a damp environment to thrive—but a swarm had definitely come through here at one time or another. If the rest of the buildings were in as bad a shape as the jail, his bid was going to be outrageous.

  He refused to bid low and surprise clients with some “unforeseen complication” halfway through the job, the way some contractors did. Integrity had led to Kane and Kane losing a few jobs over the years, but Sawyer refused to sink to unethical tactics. Still, as his materials budget continued to mount, he almost wished his morals were screwed on a little looser. He really didn’t want to lose this job.

  He wanted to stay in Lonesome Point. He was fascinated by the historic buildings, the town legends, and a certain redhead whose amber eyes lit up when she was telling stories.

  Sawyer didn’t know if Mia had changed her mind about giving him a chance, or was simply doing her best to be a friendly tour guide, but there was definitely something between them. The air crackled every time their eyes met, and when she smiled that lopsided grin with the dimple winking from one cheek, Sawyer’s heart did funny things in his chest.

  He’d never dated a redhead before, or a woman as tall as Mia—she had to be at least five ten—but there was something familiar about her. Looking into her eyes made him feel an unexpected mixture of relaxed and turned on, like the first glimpse of home after hard weeks on the road, and the start of a new adventure, all at the same time. And when his fingers had brushed hers, he’d felt the effects of that innocent touch in not-so-innocent places.

  He was remembering the impossible softness of the skin on the back of her hand, when a cool hand came to rest on his shoulder, making him suck in a surprised breath. He turned, expecting to see Mia standing behind him—they were the only people who had come through the gate, and she’d said it would lock automatically behind them—but when he spun to face the wall, there was no one there.