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Smoothing out her apron and inhaling deeply, then exhaling, Violet followed her dad.
People were just starting to trickle in for early-bird dinners, and as Violet took orders, everyone was civil, if not a little cool, to her.
She wished they could see just how much her time away had helped her grow out of the dreamer who’d announced her big aspirations to anyone within range—that she wasn’t merely an arrogant girl who’d thought the town was beneath her.
She was several orders in when Wiley Scott, the former owner and editor of the Recorder, called after her.
“Why, if it isn’t my favorite story chaser!” he said.
“Boisterous as ever,” she said, going over to where he sat at the bar.
They hugged, and if she didn’t know better, she would’ve thought that Wiley was putting out an extra effort to welcome her amid the other cold shoulders.
He held her away from him, giving her a paternal once-over. He was a man who looked far more likely to be at home at a chuck wagon than anywhere else. His silver hair stood up on one side, as if he’d had his hand against that part of his head as he leaned his elbow on the bar.
It was obvious that there was true pride in him as he squeezed her arm. Besides her family, he’d been one of the first people she’d told about the journalism scholarship for the University of California. Such an earned honor didn’t happen to very many miner’s kids in St. Valentine.
“How’re you doing?” she asked.
“I hate retirement. I should’ve never sold the paper to Davis. That’s how I’m doing.”
At the sound of Davis’s name, a tap-tap-tap went off in Violet’s chest. She blushed and hoped Wiley didn’t notice.
“Speaking of which,” he said kiddingly, “I saw you going into the Recorder while I was walking here. You looking for a new job?”
Obviously, her parents hadn’t told him about the layoff yet.
“No.” She fiddled with her ordering pad. “The Times had to cut staff, but something’s bound to come down the pike any time now.” She didn’t add that she hopefully would be back on her feet and in the city long before she even had time to settle at a desk here.
“That’s a real shame, but if anyone can land on all fours, it’s you.” He drained his beer mug. A line of foam clung to his bristled upper lip before he wiped it away with his flannel shirtsleeve. “Too bad you won’t stick around for a place on the Recorder, though. You and Davis made a good team back in the day. I remember how well you two worked together whenever you’d come in to get the school paper printed in the office.”
She thought of standing next to Davis just under a half hour ago, thought of how good he still smelled, like cedar chips, fresh and manly.
Manly. He was a man, no longer a boy, and her body was reacting to that.
She realized it’d been like that, too, back in high school, every time he’d stood close by, leaning over her shoulder while she’d typed up a story.
And she would’ve pretended to ignore him before he’d broken open her emotional dam with one kiss. But, deep down, she would’ve gone weak, her pulse warbling as she wished he would tease her some more. That he would adore her just as much as she did him, even though she would’ve died before admitting it first.
Not that any of it mattered now, even as Wiley gave her a mischievous glance, as if he could tell just what she was thinking.
Obviously, when he’d retired from reporting, he hadn’t left everything behind.
Violet signaled to her dad behind the bar so he’d get Wiley another beer. “Anything else you need?”
He rested a hand on her arm. “Yeah. I need for you to keep that chin up, even as you’re eating humble pie.”
He didn’t have to explain—not when he was sending a loaded look to the rest of the people in the room.
Like her great-aunt Jeanne, Wiley had pumped up all her aspirations. It was just that he hadn’t died and left her with the final advice of Follow your dreams for me, okay? That push had persuaded Violet that she needed to leave this little town and go for it outside someday.
She half smiled at his suggestion. Humble pie. Sounded appropriate for a person who’d returned here temporarily to lick her wounds. But how could she take that first step with everyone, show them that she didn’t hold St. Valentine in contempt as much as they probably thought she did?
Before she could ask Wiley, his gaze widened as he looked at something behind her.
When she turned around, she almost smacked into the wall of a man’s chest.
She looked up into Davis Jackson’s face, his blue eyes unreadable, and her blood began to churn in her veins.
She couldn’t do much more than stare up at Davis, who had loosened the tie from around his neck, giving him a devil-may-care appearance. He’d shocked her with his unexpected presence, and now desire was flaring over her, sending the fine hairs on her arms to standing straight.
She didn’t have to guess what he was seeing in her—her eyes were probably like a fawn in the headlights. And the heat on her cheeks …
Probably couldn’t be more obvious.
As they locked gazes, someone turned on the jukebox, and a Carrie Underwood song brought Violet back to earth.
“Your party’s over?” she asked over the tune as Davis stood by a bar stool next to Wiley.
“I skipped dessert but said my good-nights and closed up the office. The mayor is kindly handling the stragglers in the tents out back.” He glanced around, and a redhead Violet didn’t know gave Davis a look that just about shouted out that he knew her. As in maybe even biblically.
“The night’s still young enough here,” he said, loosening his tie even more as he nodded to the woman. She raised an eyebrow at him then went back to the man she’d been talking to.
Violet was confused. Why had Davis even come to the saloon when he should’ve been avoiding her?
Maybe he was just bent on making some kind of point to her—that he could move on with a social life, and certainly already had.
That had always been his reputation with the girls. But Vi had discovered there was much more to him—a soul filled with longings about the world outside, a boy who missed the father who’d died when he was only four years old.
He was a person who was capable of finding someone to love, even if he seemed to be the last guy who’d ever fall into it….
Wiley got up from his seat, saying something about a trip to the john. Davis hovered, staring down at Vi, even as she tried to avoid his gaze.
She felt it, though, as if he were the only other person in the room. The weight of that stare thrilled her through and through.
“Davis,” she whispered. A warning, slightly panicked because of what he was doing to her—what she couldn’t afford during this temporary detour in her life.
When she finally risked a glance at him, he had that look again—the same fervent one he’d worn after he’d first kissed her all those years ago.
Then it disappeared, as if it’d never happened.
“Whiskey,” Davis said to her, sitting on the stool next to Wiley’s.
He doffed his jacket, leaving her with a view of muscle underneath linen, the hint of tanned skin at his neck.
She tried not to look, even though it was hard not to.
She left him so she could place his order and take care of her other tables, but the entire time she knew he was there, at the bar, watching.
Just as she was about to scream from the tension, her sixth sense tickled her, and she turned around to see a man walking through the swinging doors of the entrance and toward the other end of the bar, near a corner where liquor bottles caught the light.
Another customer in her section, thank God. More reason to keep busy.
To keep away from Davis.
The new guy was wearing a black cowboy hat low over his brow, and he didn’t take it off, even as he slouched onto the stool. He used one hand to pick up a laminated menu and laid the other flat on the wood in front of him, almost as if they’d all gone back in time and he was ready to draw for a gunfight.
But it was only when he tipped back his hat that the room went silent.
“The spitting image,” a customer muttered to his dining partner.
Violet didn’t have to ask what he was talking about—not when she had such clear sight of the thick dark hair over the man’s brow, the coal-black eyes, the rough-and-tumble hardness of a face that she and all the other town folk had seen in many an old picture.
She turned her gaze to the nearby wall, where a grainy photograph of their town founder, Tony Amati, hung.
Thick dark hair, coal-black eyes. Same jaw. Same toughness.
The spitting image, all right. It was downright eerie.
From the way everyone was staring, she could tell that nobody had ever seen this guy before. Who was he?
Her curiosity sharpened, she nonetheless stopped by table three to deliver beverages first, then detoured to table four for their order, running it to her mom, who was cooking at the grill. Then she returned to the stranger’s corner, trying to act as if the entire room wasn’t fascinated by him.
“Hi,” she said, putting on the smiles. “Welcome to the Queen of Hearts.”
“Thanks.” When the man looked up at her, his gaze was dark. Uneasy.
It struck Violet that he knew very well that he was the center of attention. That maybe he had even come in here to accomplish just that.
“Do you need some time to look at the menu?” she asked, pen poised over paper.
“I’ll start with a beer. Bottled.” His voice was raspy, reminding her of a scratched record that someone had unearthed from storage. “Then we’ll go with a buffalo burger, rare.”
“Great.”
He glanced around the room, slowly. Deliberately. “Do all tourists get this much interest from the locals?”
“Not really.” She glanced toward the back of the room, taking care to avoid focusing on Davis, who had his back to her, although she was sure that he was just as aware of her as she was of him.
She fixed her gaze on a photo of Tony Amati hanging near the jukebox. “It’s just that you look like …”
“Who?” he asked casually.
“Tony Amati, our town founder. He goes way back in the history books here.” She cocked her head. “You could be his twin.”
The stranger glanced toward the photo.
“Want to see it up close?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Why not?”
Before she fetched it, she went to the kitchen, handing off her ticket. When she walked out to the bar, Wiley had returned to his seat, hunched over his beer, not saying a word.
Davis caught her by the apron. She stifled a gasp; his hand was near her hip, and the patch of skin under her pants burned with his imprint.
“Who’s that guy?” he asked.
“Don’t know.” She tugged away from him, making it her point to show him that touching her wasn’t allowed, even if they had “cleared the air.”
Her skin was still humming when she left. And to make matters worse, the sensation was spreading along her hip, getting to places that Davis Jackson had no right getting to.
After she fetched the photo from the wall, she got back to the stranger’s table. He seemed to drink in the picture, but she couldn’t get any more than that out of him.
“Tony Amati never had kids, so you couldn’t be a direct descendant,” she said. “Then again, don’t they say everyone in the world has a doppelgänger?”
The stranger narrowed his eyes at the photo. “I suppose we bear a resemblance to each other.”
In spite of all the reading she loved to do, as well as the Founder’s Weekend celebrations, which seemed to honor the town and not the man, Tony had always remained somewhat of a mystery, no matter how much digging she’d done. Evidently, he’d been a private sort who’d never talked about where he’d come from, one who’d reinvented himself out west, as so many others had done. He’d been rumored to be a Texas Ranger and had been wealthy, helping out families in the area. And then there was the matter of his death … the biggest mystery about Tony Amati.
The stranger kept his gaze on the photograph a little longer before handing it back to her. She tried to read him again, but he was like stone, his face etched into a hard-bitten expression that revealed nothing.
She also felt that familiar thrill of a mystery—answers to be chased and caught. She almost even felt just as she used to when she’d gone to her real job every day.
“As interesting as all this is,” he said, “I’m really just passing through this place.”
“Well, it’s good to have you around for however long you’re here …”
“Jared,” he said, offering no more than that.
“I’m Violet, and I’ll be right back with your beer.”
But after she fetched it from the bar, Jared proved very untalkative, settling into his seat, pulling his hat back down over his brow, ignoring the remainder of the stares from the rest of the patrons.
Davis had left the Queen of Hearts long before last call, but that didn’t mean he’d gone home to his ranch on the outskirts of town. He was restless. His mind, his body … neither of them could shut down.
Not with Violet here again.
He’d gone back to the newspaper office, firing up his computer, intending to get some work done. But he kept seeing Violet with her apron around the hips he’d once stroked with his hands, kept seeing her making her way around the bar and grill tonight, chancing smiles at anyone who wasn’t him.
Hell, she’d even seemed more comfortable with that stranger who’d wandered into the saloon.
Davis forced his mind to focus on the Tony Amati look-alike. An idea had sparked in him, in spite of his ridiculous fascination with Violet, and he tried to put all his energies into the distraction now.
Anything to take his mind off her. Anything.
A story about a look-alike such as this stranger would be a hell of an angle for Founder’s Weekend, he thought. The past arises in St. Valentine …
He tried to forget just how personally relevant that thought was as he did a computer search that turned up next to nothing about Tony Amati. Afterward, Davis accessed the digitized archives and skimmed through old editions of the Recorder, just to see if there was anything to keep him even busier.
