“I’ll eat.” Sam detected grudging respect in Chelsea’s tone.
The waitress straightened away from the table. “Take the silver spoon out of your mouth first so you don’t choke.”
A grudging smile bloomed on Chelsea’s face.
How did the woman know they had money? To fit in, Sam had dressed down in denim and a plaid shirt, along with cowboy boots and hat.
Chelsea wore black punk. What about them said money? Nothing, as far as he could tell. He had to be more careful. The woman’s intuition disturbed him and he struck out at her.
“I asked you to load her burger with onions.” He hadn’t really wanted the waitress to, but Chelsea had many lessons to learn and Sam had no patience left for teaching them. Every stop on this ill-conceived trip, every mile of highway traveled across country and every single black inch of asphalt navigated had been littered with heartache for both of them. When all roads had steep uphill pitches, all you wanted was to roll backward and give up.
He wished he could turn back time and start over with his daughter.
Violet flipped her violet gaze on Sam. “Do you want her to eat or not?”
“At this point, I don’t much care,” he groused. Tired, hungry and out of patience, he wished he was back home in Manhattan where he belonged.
“Mom says I shouldn’t eat too much,” his child piped up. “She says I’m too fat.”
“You’re not fat!” Sam hadn’t meant to raise his voice, but Tiffany’s complaints about Chelsea had worn him thin. “You’re perfect, okay?”
“You should eat, kid.” The waitress smelled like fried food and roses.
Sam held his breath. Nobody called Chelsea a kid and got away with it. On her young, chubby face, thunder started to build.
Then Violet added, “It takes a lot of calories to feed that much ’tude.”
Chelsea burst out laughing, stunning Sam. His daughter, who hadn’t laughed in months, who hadn’t given him a genuine smile in twice that long, picked up her burger and happily bit into it.
Violet sauntered away while Sam envisioned himself getting down on his knees and kissing her feet...and every inch of her calves. She had great calves, strong but feminine.
She returned with their drinks.
“Has anyone ever mentioned that your name matches your eyes?” They were gorgeous.
“Nope. Not once. That’s a new one.” She slapped cream and sugar onto the table in front of him.
His jaw hardened. She had no right to treat him badly. It was just mild harmless flirtation. “You’ve got a lot of attitude.” He didn’t like sarcasm. Didn’t like people treating him badly. Back home—
Well, he wasn’t back home, was he?
“Let me speak to the manager,” he ordered.
“That would be me.”
“Okay, then. Is the owner in?”
She tapped one red-tipped fingernail against her chin. “Let me think. Yes. That would also be me.”
Chelsea giggled.
Good Lord. Two against one. “You don’t know much about business and good customer service, do you?”
He’d meant to put her in her place, but she turned to the customers in the large room and called out, “Does anyone have trouble with how I run my business?”
One and all shook their heads no.
Damn. He hadn’t meant to draw attention.
“Do I give good customer service or not?”
“Good service, Vy,” the old guy two tables down yelled. “Love the mashed potatoes. What did you say you put in them?”
“Garlic, Lester. That’s why they’re called garlic mashed potatoes.”
“Makes sense.” Lester nodded. “Like ’em. Refill my coffee when you get a minute?”
“Sure thing. I’ll get right on it as soon as I can get away from this table.”
Heat in Sam’s cheeks burned. His daughter watched him with a mocking smile. The townspeople watched him curiously. Great. He’d wanted to avoid drawing attention to himself, but here he was center stage because of this bad-tempered woman.
She presented her back to him and walked away.
“All I did was be nice to her,” he mumbled while he doctored his coffee.
“You gave her your fake, cheesy grin, Dad. You were flirting with her badly.”
He pinned his daughter with a hard glare. “What do you know about flirting?”
She rolled her eyes. Sick of the action, he pulled out of his pocket a small change purse he’d picked up at a souvenir shop on the way. “You rolled your eyes. Pay up.”
“Daaad.”
“Pay up.” He held out the purse. “Now.”
She took a quarter out of her pink knapsack and dropped it into the change purse.
“It’s getting heavy,” he remarked.
“You’re mean to take money away from your daughter. I’m only thirteen years old!”
“Thirteen going on twenty. Your mother gave you all kinds of money before we left. I give you a good allowance. You ain’t starving, kid.”
“Aren’t. It’s aren’t starving. Just because we’re in this tiny town doesn’t mean you have to speak like the locals.”
Sam grinned, but didn’t apologize. “What was wrong with my flirting with the waitress?”
“Owner.”
“Owner,” he conceded.
“You’re coming on way too strong. It makes you sound corny. Maybe you forget how to do it right because you’re getting old.”
He bristled. “Since when is thirty-nine old?”
She shrugged.
A minute later, he said, “There’s nothing wrong with flirting. It’s what men and women do when they’re attracted to each other.”
“I know, but don’t be so artificial about it.” She mimicked him with a false voice, “‘Your violet eyes match your name,’” and, worse, with a fake smile. She looked like a politician.
“Her eyes do match her name.” Defensiveness made him petulant.
“Yeah, and that’s so obvious. Everybody must say that to her. You have to notice different things and say more original stuff.”
“Like what?”
“She’s funny. She makes me laugh.”
“At my expense. I’m not about to compliment her on her sense of humor when I’m the butt of her jokes.” He liked her legs, especially her calves.
“So should I have said, ‘Great calves, lady’? Yeah, that would have gone over real well.”
Chelsea peered around the edge of the booth to look at Violet’s legs as she stood chatting with customers at another table. The girl turned back to him with wide eyes. “Her calves are kind of big. You think they’re great?”
“Sure. They’re shapely.”
The thoughtful frown on Chelsea’s forehead intrigued him.
“There’s nothing wrong with a woman being shapely.”
She nodded, still thoughtful.
“I wasn’t kidding, Chelsea. You are perfect the way you are. Your mom stressed too much about being thin.”
“So, like, didn’t you like her that thin?”
“I wouldn’t have minded if she worried about it less. It was always on her mind. She ate like a bird.”
“Not really, Dad. Lots of birds eat half their body weight every day.”
He smiled slowly because Chelsea was smiling, too. When she was small, they seemed to have this ability to read each other’s minds and get each other’s jokes before they’d even been delivered. “Can you imagine your mom eating half her body weight?”
She laughed then sobered. “She used to binge and purge.”
Sam’s lips thinned. “Purge. You mean...”
Chelsea sighed. “Yeah. Didn’t you know? Mom used to get rid of her food a
fter dinner all the time.”
He’d known, of course—she was painfully thin—but had hoped Chelsea had remained ignorant. It seemed she’d been aware all along.
Kids always did seem to know everything you tried to hide from them.
He wanted his daughter to have healthy behavior.
“Chelsea, promise me something?”
She made a noncommittal sound, which he took as permission to continue. “Never do that. Okay? Never. Enjoy your food and your life. Nothing is worth that kind of behavior. It didn’t buy your mother more love or more respect. Okay?”
“Yeah.” She stared at the fry in her hand. “Okay.”
“Eat up.” He picked up his burger.
On her way along to another customer, Violet slapped a bowl of ketchup onto their table.
What was her problem?
He was a paying customer like everyone else in the diner and deserved as much respect, but she’d taken an instant dislike to him.
Or maybe it was you trying to get her into trouble with her manager, Sam, who just happened to be her.
Starving, he bit into his burger and instantly sat up straight.
“This is good.” He wiped juice from his chin. “Excellent.”
“Yeah. It’s the best burger I’ve had since we left home.”
“No fooling.” It was the best he’d had in years.
“The fries are good, too,” Chelsea said.
He bit into one, twice fried so they were crispy. Vinegar and pepper sharpened the side dish of coleslaw.
Maybe eating here wouldn’t be so bad, after all, if the rest of the meals lived up to their corny names.
For the first time since leaving home, he felt in harmony with his daughter. He’d missed that amazing feeling.
A craving arose in him to relax with her and have fun like he used to do, to tease her and hug her and call her goofy pet names.
He didn’t want to be this uptight guy he’d become since Tiffany’s betrayal.
On impulse, he blurted, “Let’s share dessert?”
She brightened a little. “Okay.”
They argued for a good five minutes about what they would share.
“I’m too full to eat a whole dessert,” he said.
“Me, too.”
“So we have to come to an agreement. We do that by negotiation.”
“Dad, I hate when you teach me. Why can’t we just talk?”
“I thought we were just talking.”
“No, you’re lecturing and I’m—”
They were interrupted by Violet plopping a plate in the middle of the table with small portions of four desserts and two forks.
“Knock yourselves out,” she said. She slapped their bill onto the table and walked away. He checked the total. Too reasonable. She needed to raise the price points on her meals.
“She heard us arguing.” Chelsea stared at the plate before picking up a fork and tasting the cherry cheesecake. “Oh, that’s sooo good. She’s smart. She has good solutions to problems.”
“She does.” Sam had to agree. Why hadn’t he just asked her if she could sell them portions? So would she have a solution to his biggest problem?
He motioned her over.
She watched him with what could only be described as neutrality. Apparently, it was too much to expect friendliness.
“We’re going to be in the area for a while. Can you recommend a place to stay?”
“Hotel? Bed-and-breakfast? A rental room for a longer stay?”
“Dad needs a job.”
Sam choked on a bite of cheesecake and coughed. After a gulp of coffee, he glared at his daughter. No, no, no. This wasn’t what he’d wanted. He’d planned to glide in under the radar, to get the lay of the land and to see if he could get answers before having to commit to the last, desperate level of subterfuge.
But now it was out in the open. Damn.
“Not really. I—”
“A job? As a ranch hand? Sure,” the owner responded almost gleefully. “That can be arranged. There’s always room for a hardworking cowboy on any ranch in the county. Especially for an experienced one, which you must be at your age.”
Your age? Why was everyone fixated on his age?
Chelsea laughed, enjoying this too much.
“You have your daughter with you,” Violet said, “so that will limit the living arrangements. You can’t stay in a bunkhouse. Let me see what I can do. I’ll make a few calls.”
“But—” She left before he could stop her.
“Thanks a lot.” He muttered, directing his displeasure toward Chelsea. “Now I can’t renege without looking foolish. You shouldn’t have mentioned I needed a job. That was supposed to be a last-ditch scenario. I mean really last-ditch. I’m not a cowboy.”
Chelsea sat back and crossed her arms. He hated her scowl. She used to be sunny and carefree. God, what had he and Tiffany done?
“You shouldn’t be dishonest, Dad. You shouldn’t be pretending to be someone you’re not.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Sure you do. Don’t you remember what you always used to tell me?”
He blinked. “I’ve told you a lot of things.”
“‘Your choices define who you are.’” She mimicked him perfectly at his pedantic worst.
He asked quietly, “Do you really dislike me so much?”
She didn’t meet his eyes. Folding and unfolding a corner of her place mat, she mumbled, “No. I don’t dislike you.”
He believed her. On the other hand, she made sense about the choices he was making here in this town. They weren’t his best. But what else could he do? Gramps needed help. The second Gramps had called last week with concerns about the fair, Sam had packed and left. His gramps meant more to him than...than air. More than his father did.
Violet Summer had better be on her game.
A voluptuous figure, violet eyes and thick midnight hair meant nothing. As much as he found the diner owner attractive, he would not be kind to his enemy. Guilty until proved innocent.
Gramps, the greatest guy in Sam’s life, deserved to be protected from a bunch of deceitful women.
Chapter Two
“He’s conniving and dishonest, Rachel. I’m sure of it,” Vy said into the phone in her office. “He’s the phoniest cowboy I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, come on, Vy,” her friend responded, “You can’t possibly know he’s not a real cowboy.”
“His boots and hat are spotless. There isn’t a speck of dirt or dust on them,” Vy said. When that didn’t get a response, she added the kicker, “He irons his jeans.”
“Oh,” Rachel breathed into the phone. “I see what you mean.” After a pause, she asked, “What do you want from me?”
“You know how you’ve been complaining about how expensive it’s been for Travis to start up his herd?”
Travis Read had moved into town five months ago and had fallen like a ton of bricks for Vy’s best friend, Rachel McGuire.
“Setting up the ranch has been a financial challenge,” Rachel said. “Especially with his sister no longer moving in and contributing to the mortgage.”
Newcomer Sammy Read had found a good match in local rancher Michael Moreno. Her kids needed a father and his children needed a mother. Win-win. Plus, they were super hot for each other.
“No doubt there’ll be a wedding soon?”
Rachel laughed. “Like yesterday, if they had their way. As soon as they can organize it.” Rachel paused, then said, “Travis has been great with money over the years, but...”
“Getting the ranch going is putting pressure on you?”
“Yeah,” Rachel admitted. “But it’s the right thing to do. I don’t want Travis to have to
work for other ranchers for the rest of his life. He wants to be his own boss.”
Vy knew how good that felt.
“Plus, his land is beautiful. It would make an excellent ranch. Wouldn’t it be amazing for him to have a legacy to leave to both Tori and Beth and any children we might have together?”
“Yeah, it sure would.”
Was she doing the right thing in recommending that Travis take on this stranger? She thought so. She’d met evil in her past. She’d known bad men. Her intuition told her this guy wasn’t one of them. Besides, she liked his prickly porcupine of a daughter a lot. The girl reminded Vy of herself. On the other hand, there did seem to be something fishy going on with him. What? If it affected her town, Vy needed to know.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Travis and Rachel were smart people. They could keep an eye on this man.
“Sooo, you and Travis can make extra money by renting the fake cowboy and his daughter the rooms that Sammy and her two boys would have used. What do you think?” When Rachel hesitated, she rushed on, “And Travis would have a ranch hand.”
“Not much of one if he’s not a real cowboy.”
Vy wanted to see the ersatz cowboy brought down.
Unreasonable, Vy. What’s your problem? He’s done nothing to you, so why the big push to destroy a man you don’t even know?
Bits and pieces of memories, of another time and place threatened to intrude, and she turned them aside with a firm resolve.
Nope. She wouldn’t be going down that road.
Suffice it to say, she disliked liars.
“Do you think we can trust him in our home?” Rachel asked. A reasonable question.
“Yes. I’m certain he isn’t dangerous or I wouldn’t have called. Besides, he has his daughter with him. She’s either a teenager already or a tween and has some attitude, but don’t we all?”
“You do,” Rachel retorted and Vy laughed.
“True.”
“Why are you so upset about this man?” Rachel asked.
Vy didn’t want to look too closely at that. She brazened it out. “Anger is my natural response to any kind of charade or dishonesty. I dislike fraud with a passion.”
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