“You have to come quick, Sheriff,” she stated breathlessly.
Luke ground his teeth. Her voice was a whine worse than fingernails on a blackboard. He mentally added that to the list of things about Wyla that annoyed him.
“A problem?” In spite of his dislike, Luke was on his feet instantly and reaching for his coat.
“Amanda Bradley and Will Devlin.”
“Again?”
Luke relaxed and sank back into his chair. Amanda and Dev had been fighting for at least two years over the building they owned jointly. Dev operated the Heartbreaker Saloon in his half of the structure, and Amanda ran the Ex-Libris Bookstore in hers. Oil and water. Just like their owners, the two businesses didn’t mix. Dev was determined to buy out Amanda’s half with his Big Draw winnings. Amanda was just as determined not to sell.
“They’re at it worse than ever.” Wyla nodded for emphasis and shed snow onto the office floor. “A real knock-down-drag-out.”
“Come off it, Wyla. Their fights get pretty loud, but I’ve never known Dev and Amanda to exchange blows.”
“They were close to it when I left them. Besides, if you don’t break them up, they’ll freeze to death.”
Luke shook his head in disbelief. “They’re outside? In this weather?”
“In their shirtsleeves.”
He stifled a curse, tugged on his jacket and gloves, and reached for his hat. Seemed like his job more often required saving people from their own stupidity than it did protecting them from criminal elements.
Wyla scurried out the door ahead of him onto Main Street. Luke waded through the drifts to cross Big Draw Drive and headed past the barbershop toward the saloon. The wind practically blew Wyla ahead of him. She’d done her civic duty to alert him to trouble. Now she obviously intended to witness every juicy detail.
Other than Wyla, the street was deserted, as far as he could tell through the blowing snow. Folks in Jester had a healthy respect for the cold. Those who didn’t, didn’t survive. Dev and Amanda must have worked up a real head of steam to ignore temperatures lethal to a brass monkey. Luke could barely make out their arm-waving silhouettes on the sidewalk ahead, but the wind snatched their voices away from him.
He forced himself into a run. He had to get the idiots under cover before they both suffered frostbite and hypothermia.
Just as he came opposite the entrance to the bookstore, a customer, head tucked against the wind, arms filled with books, exited. Luke tried to slow his steps, but his boots hit a patch of ice.
In what seemed like slow motion but actually happened in seconds, Luke slid along the ice. Unable to stop, he slammed into the customer. The impact knocked them both off their feet and sent books flying. Fueled by a surge of adrenaline, Luke reacted instantly. If the woman was elderly, a fall on the ice could mean a broken hip, a potentially fatal injury. He had to break her fall. Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her against his chest, cushioning the blow for her as he landed on his back.
He hit the sidewalk with such force it knocked the breath out of him, but not before he caught a whiff of roses, a familiar fragrance that filled him with nostalgia and overwhelming longing.
Stunned, he lay on the icy sidewalk with the woman atop him, every soft curve melded to him with an intimacy unimpeded by multiple layers of clothing. With her face buried in his neck, her breath warmed his skin, and he detected the lilting sound of her laughter above the howl of the wind and Wyla’s screech of alarm.
Luke had barely drawn air into his lungs to ask if the woman was okay when she lifted her head. Her face hovered inches above his, and the sight knocked the wind out of him again.
Jennifer Faulkner!
Dark blond hair escaped from a knitted cap in seductive wisps that framed a face like an angel’s. Laughter danced in her wide aquamarine eyes—an arresting shade of blue that had always reminded him of a tropical lagoon—and turned up the corners of her mouth into a kissable smile that showcased her delightful dimples. The cold had nipped her cheeks a delicious pink and reddened the tip of her small but perfectly formed nose, which had once sported an irresistible dusting of freckles.
When recognition suddenly lit her eyes, the laughter died in her throat and her smile faded. “Luke.”
She scrambled quickly to her feet and would have fallen again if he hadn’t pushed himself upright and caught her.
“Whoa, not so fast,” he ordered, angry at himself for the longing that filled him, a longing he’d managed to bury for ten years. “Are you okay?”
She pulled her arm from his grasp, and he could have sworn the arctic temperature dropped another twenty degrees.
“I’m fine.” Avoiding his gaze, she began gathering her books.
Dev and Amanda had apparently called a truce long enough to assist. Dev fished one of the books out of a snowdrift, but Amanda yanked it from him, wiped the snow off on the front of her cardigan and slipped it into the plastic bag she retrieved, which sported the distinctive Ex-Libris logo.
Jennifer hurriedly stuffed two more volumes into the bag, and Luke’s keen investigator’s eye couldn’t help noticing the three titles: Maximizing Your Real Estate Sale, Arizona Living and Investing for the Long Term.
He wanted to confront her, to find out if the rumors he’d heard were true, but Amanda Bradley’s shivers and the blue tinge to her lips reminded him of his mission.
“We’re fine here, Amanda,” he said. “You’d better get yourself inside where it’s warm before you freeze to death.”
“Freeze?” Dev said with a snort. “That woman’s got a mad on that could scorch the whole town.”
Luke turned on the bar owner with a glare that had stopped hardened felons in their tracks. “Anger only seems to protect you from the cold, and you’re both prime candidates for frostbite and hypothermia. Now I suggest you each return to your own business before I have to arrest you for public disorderliness.”
The bar owner opened his mouth as if to protest, but another look at Luke’s expression apparently made him reconsider. He pivoted abruptly, an amazing maneuver on the icy sidewalk, and stalked back into the Heartbreaker Saloon without a backward glance.
With a sniff of disdain, Amanda spun on her heel and entered her bookstore, with Wyla Thorne right behind her, likely ready to pump Amanda for all the salient details of her latest battle with Dev.
Luke turned back to the sidewalk, prepared to confront Jennifer, and blinked in surprise.
She had disappeared.
For a moment, he drifted in a strange fugue state, similar to hundreds he’d experienced over the years after awakening from dreams of Jennifer—dreams that had seemed real. However, the ache where his backside had hit the sidewalk convinced him his latest encounter with the woman he’d loved so long ago hadn’t been a dream this time. She’d been tantalizing flesh and blood, smelling of the same rose fragrance she’d used at eighteen, with her former American girl wholesomeness refined to a cool, elegant beauty by a decade of maturity. For a few brief moments, he’d held her in his arms again, and they ached now with the loss of her once more.
He gave himself a mental kick, disgusted that an infatuation from his youth still held a supposedly sensible thirty-three-year-old in its grip. Why was he surprised that Jennifer had disappeared? If she had any feelings at all, she should have been embarrassed to see him, especially since she owed him a heap of explaining about why she’d walked out on him without a fare-ye-well or by-your-leave ten years ago.
Although she’d exchanged Christmas and birthday cards and the occasional letter with his sister, Vickie, he had yet to hear doodley-squat from the woman who’d promised to marry him.
She’d disappeared then, too, just like today.
Like Dev and Amanda, Luke was now working up his own head of steam. Probably Jennifer had gone around the corner to his sister’s house. Just as well. He didn’t need to see her, to have all those old emotions stirred up again, to rub salt in old wounds. Best thing was to forget he’d seen
her at all. Let her grab her granddaddy’s money, sell his farm and hit the road again—apparently for Arizona this time, from the looks of her reading material—without shaking up the peaceful life he’d carved out for himself without her.
Who was he kidding?
Although he tried to attribute the ache inside him to the bitter cold, he’d experienced that same pain in the heat of summer. Why the hell did she have to show up now in Jester? Couldn’t Henry’s lawyer have taken care of the old man’s estate and just mailed her a damned check?
He glanced up to find Amanda peering with a worried expression through the glass door of the bookstore. Wyla hovered behind her like an unshakable shadow, taking in the sight of Jester’s sheriff making a first-class fool of himself, standing in the dangerous cold like an idiot, pining over a lost love and risking the very frostbite he’d warned Amanda and Dev about.
After stamping his feet in an attempt to restore their circulation, he headed diagonally across Main Street and plowed through the drifts to the entrance of the Brimming Cup. Hot coffee and a bowl of Dan Bertram’s famous chili should warm him up.
As Luke pushed through the front door and heard the familiar ring of the bell, the warmth of the large, airy diner enveloped him like a bear hug and another wave of nostalgia engulfed him.
The diner hadn’t changed since Shelly Dupree’s parents opened it in the fifties, except for an update of the country-and-western top ten songs available on the jukebox in the corner. The eatery looked just as it had when Luke had brought Jenny there for Mrs. Dupree’s famous huckleberry pie after a Friday night at the movies. Like the street outside, the diner appeared deserted, except for the cook. There was no sign of Shelly or Valerie, the new waitress who had caused a stir weeks ago by abandoning her baby in Shelly’s diner. Dan Bertram leaned with his arms crossed on the chrome-trimmed, gray Formica counter, scanning an edition of the Pine Run Plain Talker.
Wincing slightly, Luke slid his still-painful back side onto one of the high-backed chrome stools at the counter. At his arrival, Dan folded the paper, tucked it to one side and flashed a welcoming smile.
“You holding the fort?” Luke asked.
“All by my lonesome,” the cook answered. “With this storm blowing, didn’t figure we’d have much business. Suggested Shelly and Valerie stay home and keep warm. They took me up on it. What’ll you have?”
“Coffee and a bowl of chili.”
“Coming up.”
While Dan filled his order, Luke glanced at the newspaper. It was an old issue, and the headline touted the upcoming Founders Day in Jester—held yesterday—reminding Luke of the mystery of the collapsing pavilion. He wrapped his mind around the intriguing problem, glad for anything that drove away thoughts of Jennifer Faulkner.
Dan returned with a thick white ceramic mug filled with steaming coffee and a bowl of chili, topped as Luke liked it with chopped onions and grated cheese.
Automatically, Luke picked up his food and carried it toward his usual spot, the rear booth, the last of six that lined the large picture windows overlooking the street. His thoughts still on the pavilion, he placed the bowl and mug on the table and swung onto the high-backed bench, upholstered in blue vinyl. He was halfway seated before realizing the other side of the booth was already occupied.
“Hello again, Luke. You following me?”
Double-dog damn. Jennifer.
Suspended half in the booth, half out, Luke considered his options. He could move to another table and look like a coward, or he could take his regular seat and prove to Jennifer she no longer affected him in any way.
How you gonna do that, cowboy? his conscience taunted him. Stop breathing?
With a sigh of resignation, Luke settled onto the bench. “Thought you’d headed for Vickie’s.”
“That’s my next stop. I’m waiting for the storm to weaken.”
“Might have a long wait. Don’t you listen to the weather reports?”
She shook her head, and the delicate porcelain of her cheeks flushed. “It’s been too long. I’d forgotten how important weather is out here.”
“Seems like you’ve forgotten a lot of things.” The words rushed out before he could stop them, and he cursed himself silently for giving her any hint that he might still care.
Avoiding his gaze, she glanced around the room. “I haven’t forgotten our—my favorite booth.” She nodded toward his bowl. “Or how good Dan’s chili tastes. Or how his coffee’s so strong you can stand a spoon in it. But it doesn’t seem the same without Shelly waiting tables. I was hoping to see her.”
Jennifer had shed her hat, coat and gloves, and Luke couldn’t help drinking in the sight of her. Instead of the sun-streaked blond ponytail he remembered, her hair had darkened, and she wore it in a sophisticated cut just above her shoulders that complemented the lift of her cheekbones and set off those magnificent aquamarine eyes.
Luke felt his old resentments start to soften at the sight, and he quickly hardened his heart. “Too bad you couldn’t get back to Jester just once to see your grandfather before he died. Must have broken his heart.”
The slash of crimson on her cheeks deepened. “You’ll never know how much I wanted to see him again.”
“Then why didn’t you come?”
She dropped her gaze to her long, slender fingers twined around the coffee mug in front of her. “Couldn’t afford it,” she murmured.
She was lying. In his business, Luke had learned to spot a liar a mile away. From the cut of her clothes, the styling of her hair, he could tell she hadn’t sunk to the poverty level.
“Bus tickets are cheap,” he said pointedly. “And Finn Hollis tells me you were in Europe when Henry died.”
“That was business, paid for by the company I worked for.”
“Convenient, wasn’t it?” He couldn’t hold back another dig. “Didn’t have to spring the bucks to attend the funeral.”
“I didn’t know.” The anguish in her voice was real. “I would have come, all the way from Europe, if I’d known.”
The torment in her voice almost convinced him, until he remembered. “Yeah, most folks would travel halfway round the world to claim a million bucks.”
Anger flashed in her eyes, creating a hurricane on that sea of tropical blue. “It wasn’t like that. You don’t understand.”
A corresponding flash of temper rose within him. “Damn right I don’t understand. Lots of folks in Jester don’t understand. You want to clue me in?”
She thrust her chin in the air and met his eyes head-on. “I wanted to see Grandpa. I’d just about worked up the courage to make the trip when I saw the papers.”
“The Main Street Millionaires?”
She nodded glumly. “I knew if I came back then, everyone, including Grandpa Henry, would think I’d come just for his money. I was still wrestling over what to do when I returned from Europe and heard Finn’s message.” The hurricane had vanished, leaving a calm sea of tears. “It was too late for me to see Grandpa or attend his funeral.”
Forgotten emotions made Luke’s usually reliable internal polygraph go haywire. Damned if he knew whether she was telling the truth or not, but he didn’t trust her. She’d bamboozled him once. Big time. He wouldn’t let it happen again.
“Too late for the funeral, but not too late for the money,” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
“I’d give it all away to have Grandpa back.” A single tear slid from her eye and rolled down the curve of her cheek.
Luke resisted the urge to reach across the table and brush it away with his thumb. As sincere as she appeared, the facts spoke for themselves. She’d walked out on Henry—and Luke—ten years ago. She hadn’t told Luke why, hadn’t even said goodbye, and if she’d explained her leaving to Henry, he’d kept silent on the reason and taken it to his grave. In all those years, she hadn’t contacted her grandfather or Luke.
Another unsolved mystery.
And if anything drove Luke wild, it was a puzzle that couldn�
�t be explained.
Before he could question her further, Jennifer slipped from the booth and began tugging on her coat. Momentarily distracted by her long, slender legs, attractively encased in denim, he forgot everything but the look of her. Since she was about five foot eight, the top of her head had reached his jaw, and he remembered wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on her hair. He could almost feel the heat of her arms around his waist, the pressure of her face against his chest—
“Sorry I didn’t live up to your expectations.” She had donned her hat and gloves and retrieved her bag of books. “Goodbye, Luke.”
Before he could think of anything to say to keep her there—so he could ask more questions, he assured himself, not because he was enjoying her company—she exited the door in a flurry of snow and gusting wind.
He took a long sip of tepid coffee. Just as well. She would put the farm on the market, collect her money and be gone. With any luck, he’d never lay eyes on Jennifer Faulkner again.
Memory pulled him back ten years to this very booth, with the jukebox wailing in the corner and eighteen-year-old Jennifer, not across the table this time, but snuggled next to him on the seat, while they talked about their future together in Jester.
The next day, Jennifer’s grandmother had died, sending Jenny into grief and shock. She’d said hardly three words to him before or during the funeral. When he’d arrived at the farm the day after the Faulkners had buried Dolly, Henry had met him at the door.
“How’s Jennifer?” Luke had asked, after expressing his condolences to Henry again.
“Gone.”
At first, Luke feared grief had scrambled Henry’s brain, so that the old man had confused his granddaughter with his wife. “Jennifer’s gone?”
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