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When she looked at him again, she’d somehow managed to retrieve that confidence that had always defined Violet Osborne, a girl whose dreams had been too big for a town like St. Valentine. And to have to come back to a place she’d worked so hard to get out of …?
From the rear of the office, Davis heard the door opening, letting in the sound of laughter from the guests he was supposed to be hosting. Then it closed.
Violet heard it, too. “I should let you go.”
But he didn’t want that. Dammit, just seeing her again …
It brought back so much. It made him want to know if she saw the changes in him.
She offered one last, tentative smile, then moved toward the door. The sway of her hips under her pants caught Davis’s eye before he forced his gaze away.
She spoke over her shoulder, hand on the doorknob. “I just wanted to congratulate you—all the things you’re doing and have done for St. Valentine. All the things you’ve accomplished. Even my dad’s been saying good things about that.”
“Your dad complimented me?”
“I wouldn’t call it complimenting, exactly. More like he was sticking up for you. He got into it with a few ex-miners once, and he pointed out that you didn’t bring on that safety investigation—it was him and a few others who opened their mouths when your mother ignored their concerns after the accident.”
Davis only wished that everyone in town felt the way her dad had, even if he knew the man had never liked him much, with Davis being the privileged Jackson whose family owned the mine.
And when his exposé forced a closure … Well, that left every miner but the whistleblowing ones against him. Especially the younger guys who’d been hired away by his mother to work the family’s natural gas operation near Houston. It was as if they didn’t realize that Davis’s mom had primarily hired them on merely as an apology for what had gone down at the mine.
How anyone could’ve forgiven her was a mystery to Davis. After all, back when his father had owned the mine, safety had been the highest concern. His mom hadn’t agreed. After his death, she’d become a big fan of money—or what she saw as security—first and foremost.
Back then, Davis had just purchased the Recorder, and he’d published articles about the mine based on his interviews with the whistleblowers, even though that hadn’t kept one worker from nearly dying after he’d been buried in a trench while installing a drainpipe.
Then Davis had stepped up his investigation, and many folks had blamed him for the Mine Safety and Health Administration coming in. The federal organization cited inadequate procedures throughout the mine, and his mom had decided to shut down under the pressure, offering natural gas jobs out by Houston instead.
After that, the west side of St. Valentine had felt like a ghost town. And, to Davis, it’d felt doubly so with his mom. She’d accused him of writing that exposé because of a rebelliousness that had started when he’d blamed her for getting Violet to leave.
Maybe he had been driven by a need to show his mom that she couldn’t control him, as well as a true sense of doing right for the town he’d loved enough to come back to in the end.
Violet dared to wander nearer to him, to lay a hand on his arm. The heat of her touch seared his skin.
Did she feel it?
He pulled away, cursing himself for caring.
She didn’t move, and for an instant, he thought this might be the prelude to them finally saying something meaningful.
But he could see the thoughts turning in her mind. She already had everything planned out: get back on her feet with the waitressing gig, leave the town that had always looked down on her for being uppity the minute she could afford to.
The back door opened again, footsteps on the wooden planked floor …
Davis stood from the desk as Mayor Neeson and his daughter, Jennifer—a dark-haired flirt in a red dress who grinned at Davis—came into the room. She was delicately holding the stem of a champagne glass in one hand while eyeing Violet, who eyed her right back.
“Coming out for dessert anytime soon?” the mayor asked Davis, ignoring Violet altogether.
His hackles rose, just as they’d always done when he’d seen the rich kids at school dismiss Violet and her ambitions so carelessly.
Why now, though?
“Ray,” Davis said, “you remember Violet Osborne?”
The mayor merely nodded to her. Jennifer instead focused on Davis as if Violet didn’t even exist.
He’d had a few good times with Jennifer, and that must’ve given her the idea that he would be on her side. But he wouldn’t let himself be that petty.
When Jennifer saw that she was alone in this, she shot a bored glance to Violet. “This is the last place I ever expected to see you again.”
Violet didn’t say a word. Instead, her shoulders stiffened.
“What brought you back?” Jennifer asked. “Did the bright, shiny world eat you up then spit you back out here?”
Davis was too busy feeling the punch of those words to notice Violet’s immediate reaction.
“Jennifer…,” he said.
He heard Violet mutter an “It was good to see you, Davis,” just before she turned and walked out of his office, dignified, seemingly in no hurry, although he could bet she only wanted to run.
Violet felt as if she were burning up under the waning July sun as she walked as quickly as she could down the wood-planked sidewalk of Amati Street.
Mortified. Leave it to Jennifer Neeson to be the first to take a shot at her. If there was a better example of how a miner’s kid with ambition didn’t have a chance at breaching this town’s social divides, Violet would be hard-pressed to find one.
She knew that she deserved some comeuppance for her attitude back before she’d left town. She’d been prepared for it. That didn’t mean it stung any less, though.
The dusky, heavy warmth of the afternoon took her over as she continued walking. But the prickly discomfort wasn’t only coming from the weather—it had a lot to do with seeing Davis again, too.
Her body swarmed with a need she hadn’t felt in such a long time—hot, rushed, breathless.
The boy who’d brought out the fun part of her … The guy who’d thought her ambitions were admirable … Davis had been everything to her at one time, and it had taken eons to push the hurt away.
Maybe it had never even left …
When she’d strolled by the newspaper office tonight, she hadn’t intended to go inside. She’d been going in that direction, anyway, and the curious part of her had only wanted a peek inside the Recorder. Little had she known that he would be standing right there, as if waiting for her the entire time.
And when she’d seen him …
It was as if every bone in her body had turned to liquid, flowing downward, inward, swirling with so many emotions that she hadn’t been able to identify them until now—disappointment at what had happened all those years ago. Surprise that Davis might just remember every bit of it. Exhilaration at seeing him again.
Back then, when Davis had first invaded her newspaper staff, she’d dismissed him. He’d worn expensive leather jackets, nice shirts—a wardrobe that probably cost what her father made in a week at the Jacksons’ mine.
But Davis had intrigued her, too. And, somehow, while they’d spent all those hours after school working on the paper, the sparring between them had turned into a few deep conversations. She’d seen beyond a rich boy into a guy who shared her intellectual curiosity about the world she longed to be a part of outside St. Valentine. She’d told him about her great-aunt Jeanne and all the stories she’d given to Violet while growing up—travels to Paris, London, cities that never slept and offered so much more opportunity than this speck of a town.
And then, when he’d first kissed her … their relationship had taken a serious turn. Until the day his mom had come to her and told her that Davis would never take any relationship seriously—especially not with a girl like Violet. That he was even seeing girls on the side right now and she shouldn’t bank her future on him.
But the man Violet had seen today seemed serious enough. His shoulders were wider, his chest broader, his legs even longer than she remembered. And there was something in his gaze that was harder than it’d been before.
She reminded herself that he’d let her go, just as much as she’d gone. He had told her that his mom was lying about the other girls and she’d genuinely believed him, but she’d already done the damage by even asking if the words were true. It had taken merely a split second to destroy what they’d found that summer—so quickly that she’d wondered for a long time just how real their love had even been, and if they’d been much too young to know what love was.
Had all those questions only been a way of distancing herself from the anguish, though?
Right now, as her chest constricted, she wasn’t sure.
The Queen of Hearts Saloon was up ahead, surrounded by the dirt road and weathered buildings. A few burros—descendants of the original silver-mining beasts of burden—lingered by the whitewashed church with its stained-glass windows. The folks up in Old Town had grown so used to them over the years that they took it upon themselves to feed them, and the tourists loved them.
She was just coming to the jewelry store when she heard hard boot steps on the boardwalk, felt a hand on her arm.
Her breath hammering from her lungs, she could only spin around and gape at Davis as he loomed over her—the jet-setting cowboy with the carefree dark blond hair and ice-blue eyes and fancy suit.
“What are you doing?” she asked, as he led her into a nearby alley, where no passersby could see them.
“I’m doing what I should’ve done the second you came into my office.”
Here it was—the moment she had known was coming. Why had she thought she could get away with seeing him again without any consequences? All she’d wanted to do was get the awkwardness over with, knowing she was bound to run into him sometime.
“I’m here,” he said, his hands planted on his hips, making him more imposing than she’d ever remembered, “to clear the air, because it sure didn’t happen back there in the office.”
She thought of how Mrs. Jackson, with her crisp red suit and her coiffed, bleached hair, had been waiting for Violet in the library parking lot that day, after one of her trysts with Davis in the woods out back, where it was private. They’d been so intent on keeping their relationship from their families in particular, because her dad, a miner, would’ve flipped, grumbling about selfish, greedy rich people and how Davis would only drop Violet when he was done with her. And Davis’s mom? She was as biased as they came against “the less fortunate.”
Sometimes Vi had even wondered if Davis himself liked to maintain their secret because he was afraid of public opinion, but then she’d tell herself she was crazy, that he was nothing like his mother.
Violet rested against the beaten wood wall, resigned. If he wanted to clear things up, they could do that. It was better than having to tiptoe around him for the next couple of months.
“If you want to rehash everything,” she said, “we can do that.”
“I never got a good answer about why you left.”
All right, then. “When your mom said that this ‘thing’ between you and me wasn’t going to last, she sounded so reasonable about it. She said that it’d be foolish to throw away my scholarship on a summer fling.” Violet took a second, waiting for her runaway heartbeat to catch up, then said, “And when she said you were seeing—”
“Other girls. You know that wasn’t true.” Davis said it with an edge that he tamped down by gritting his jaw, looking away, as if his old anger had been rekindled, undying.
She searched for words, finally finding them. “What do you want me to do now, Davis? What would make you feel better?”
His jaw tightened. “Nothing.”
His gaze was tortured, as if there were a thousand things he wanted to say but wouldn’t.
A vibration—a warmth that whirled and just about took her under—consumed her. She’d tried for so long to never be affected by what anyone in this town thought or said, but here she was, thwarted by that very thing—and it was from the man who’d affected her so acutely all those years ago.
She couldn’t let down her defenses in front of him, especially now, when she needed the protection from what everyone thought or said the most.
Besides, who were they to each other anymore? She knew that he’d moved on—she’d heard stories from her mom, gossip. She’d seen the way Jennifer Neeson had glanced at him, as if they knew quite a bit about each other. He obviously hadn’t shut himself away, heartbroken, because of her.
But he wanted to clear the air.
He exhaled roughly, then started to walk away, even though the air was still as thick as steam.
“You were just as confused as I was that day,” she said on a choked note, stopping him. “I saw it in you. You were hurt that I was questioning you, but all I needed to hear was that you hadn’t looked at another girl since we’d started seeing each other.”
“I thought you already knew that.”
She swallowed, her throat one big ache. “I was a kid, and your mom knew I’d be rattled by what she told me.”
“You should’ve known that you changed everything about me, Vi.”
When she glanced up, she saw more yearning in his eyes.
But then it disappeared.
He adjusted his burgundy silk tie, then started to leave again, as if they had finally knotted up their loose ends.
“I only wanted you to know that,” he said.
She could barely nod.
Then after a pause in which she thought he was going to tell her—what? What could he say now?—he moved out of the alley, turning the corner, out of sight.
But not out of her heart or mind.
Chapter Two
Down the street, Violet heard laughter through the swinging doors of the Queen of Hearts, and she headed for the saloon before she made a fool of herself and went running after Davis.
They’d supposedly cleared the air, so why muddle it again?
She kept telling herself this as she walked inside the building, looking straight ahead, feeling the heavy stares of the group of elderly ladies—the knitting club—who met at the table under the rustic wagon wheel light fixture; the collection of old men at the bar who nursed mugs of beer under the whirring ceiling fans; the just-turned-twenty-one crowd who considered drinking at the Queen of Hearts in Old Town a tradition until they moved on to the newer bars in the more modern part of town.
Violet knew that she should risk a smile at them—after all, she’d be waiting on them for the first time tonight—so she tried it.
They all looked away.
Her face heated as she went to the back room, donning her old-fashioned red-and-white-striped half-apron.
“There she is!” Mom rushed up to Violet, standing on her tiptoes to give her a kiss on the cheek.
She smelled like rose perfume. Violet had always remembered that scent, even when she’d been away. It reminded her of when her mom’s hair had been red, not a premature gray.
“Ready for some Friday night action?” Mom asked.
“I’m hoping for it.” And so was the bank account that had dwindled during the months when she’d relied on it during a job hunt that had never borne fruit. It’d also suffered from the money she’d invested in the saloon after her parents had bought it with the last of their savings, plus all the times she’d put in more money to keep the bar and grill afloat during off-season months.
When her father came in, resplendent in the type of outfit a bartender might’ve worn in the late ‘20s, back when old Tony Amati had settled in what would become St. Valentine, she gave him a great big hug.
“Together again,” he said, patting her on the back.
“I’m glad to be with you,” she said.
He grinned right before he retreated to the main room’s bar and her mom took over in the kitchen.
