by Katie Lane
“Stop that,” Evie scolded. “You are not that big, Reba.”
“Yes, I am. I make two of you.” And yet, Valentine had no trouble catching her or lifting her into his arms and swinging her around like she weighed nothing.
“So did he kiss you with tongue or without?” Penny asked.
With. With lots of hot, tempting tongue. “It was just a little ol’ kiss, Pen,” Reba lied.
“But you were still seduced.” Evie smiled. “You just said so.”
“Yes, I was seduced for a split second. Then I realized that a famous author like Valentine Sterling would not be interested in someone like me for anything but a quick roll in the hay. I’ve be there and done that and have no desire to do it again.”
Evie reached across the table and squeezed Reba’s hand. “Not all men are like that dumbass Billy Bob, Reba.”
“With me, they seem to be.”
“What do you mean? Another man treated you badly?”
She sighed. “What man hasn’t? Cal Ripley took me to the drive-in and then dove on me before the opening credits even started. Dougie Huber didn’t even bother with dinner or a movie and took me straight out to Rustler’s Roost and ripped my shirt in his enthusiasm to get it off. And then there was prom night with Alan Stetler, who I thought was safe because he was such a sweet guy who blushed whenever I talked to him. But he turned out to be worse than all the others. I actually had to get him in a wrestling hold to get him to stop. At least Billy Bob acted like he liked me for something other than sex. Of course, after I gave him sex, I found out differently.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about those other guys?”
“Because you had other things to worry about. Like getting pregnant and taking care of a son. That, and I knew you would’ve gone after them and made them pay.”
“Hell, yeah, I would’ve.” Evie’s eyes narrowed. “And I still might.”
“I’m in,” Penny said. “I never did like Dougie.”
Reba laughed. “Thanks for taking up for me, y’all. But I handled those boys just fine without you.”
“Wait.” Evie pointed a finger at her. “Were you the one behind Cal’s broken nose? He told everyone in town that he’d gotten in a fight with a redneck.”
“A redneck woman.”
Evie and Penny laughed and Reba joined in. Even though, at the time, it hadn’t been that funny. But time healed all wounds as her mama liked to say. Although old wounds still left scars. Which was why she had no intentions of adding new ones. Valentine Sterling might be able to sweep her off her feet physically, but she wasn’t going to let him do it metaphorically. She was too smart for that.
“Hey, girls!” Luanne came hurrying up to the table carrying a big shopping bag. “I’m glad I ran into y’all. I have gifts for you.” She reached into the bag and pulled out a bright purple t-shirt that she held up proudly. Across the front in darker purple was a slogan.
Luanne, Texas, a Lovely Place to Live.
“What in the world?” Evie said.
“They’re t-shirts promoting a new town name.” Luanne held the shirt with her chin so she could point to the words. “See how Luanne starts with the same letter as Lovely and Live.”
Penny spoke under her breath. “And lunatic.”
Luanne looked up. “What did you say, Penny?”
“Nothing,” Evie said. “Those are sure nice t-shirts, Luanne, but I don’t think we should change the name of the town to Luanne.”
“Well, why not? It’s better than a lot of names people have been tossing around. And my family did help build this town.”
“So did our family and Reba’s,” Penny said. “And you don’t see us trying to change the name to Gardener or Dixon. Simple should stay Simple, Luanne. All the businesses are named Simple and it would cost way too much to change all the signs in town.”
Luanne wadded up the shirt and put it back in the bag. “Well, I thought I’d have a little more support from my book buddies. But even Raynelle refuses to wear one. She wants the town to be named Lambert just because Miranda was so nice to her when she stopped at the Simple Market to buy some bottled water. As if that’s a good reason to rename the town after her.” She scooted into the booth next to Reba. “So what are y’all talking about?”
Not wanting to share the details of Aunt Gertie’s love letter with the biggest gossip in town, Reba lied. “We were just talking about the boardinghouse’s annual Halloween party and our costumes.”
“I don’t know why you’d be talking about that, Reba. You always come as Miss Melanie from Gone with the Wind. Although I don’t know why you would want to come as that character and not Miss Scarlett.”
“Aunt Gertie is always Miss Scarlett. I’m just happy she doesn’t make me come as Rhett. What are you coming as?”
“Raynelle wants to be Cher and wants me to be Lady Gaga. But if I wore that meat dress Gaga wore to the Grammys, Bud’s hunting dogs would tear me to shreds.” Luanne grabbed one of Penny’s fries. “So are y’all planning on heading to Cotton-Eyed Joe’s afterwards?”
“I need to stay at the boardinghouse,” Reba said. “Halloween night is when all the teenagers get drunk and sneak into the garden hoping to scare their girlfriends with the legend of the boardinghouse ghost. Two years ago, Thomas Tyler threw up in the azaleas. And last year, Aunt Gertie stopped Mary Lou Jones from losing her virginity in the gazebo.”
Penny laughed. “Hey, it’s a right of passage to sneak into your garden on Halloween and go ghost hunting. I did it with my friends when I was sixteen. And to this day, I swear Emma and I saw Granny Dovey’s ghost.”
“Ray and I saw her too the night of Reba’s parents’ retirement party,” Luanne said. “She was dressed all in white with her long black hair flowing behind her. I’m still afraid to go into the garden.”
It seemed that everyone had seen Granny Dovey’s ghost but Reba, and she would give anything to see her grandmother’s ghostly figure trailing through the garden. Or better yet, get some words of wisdom from her grandmother on how to get more people to come to the boardinghouse. But no matter how much Reba talked to her granny, she never got a reply.
“Sweet Lord,” Luanne gasped as she glanced out the window. “If those aren’t two of the finest lookin’ cowboys in Texas, I don’t know who is.”
Reba followed her gaze and saw Cru Cassidy and Logan McCord crossing the street toward the pharmacy. The two Double Diamond boys were a sight for sore eyes. They were both tall, dark, and good-lookin’ as sin in their western wear and Stetsons, and every woman they passed followed them with their eyes. But the cowboys only had eyes for their women. When they saw Evie and Penny through the window, they both smiled—Cru’s impishly charming and Logan’s slow and sensual.
Only a few seconds later, they brought those smiles inside.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” Cru said as he and Logan swept off their hats. He winked at Penny. “Hey, beautiful.”
Penny smiled like she was about to bust from happiness. “Hey, handsome. What are you two cowboys doin’ in town? I thought you were mending fences.”
“We were, but then we got a hankerin’ to see our women.” Cru glanced at Logan who had yet to take his eyes off Evie. “Ain’t that right, Logan?”
Logan nodded slowly before he spoke to Evie. “I thought that when you’re finished here maybe you’d like to drive into Abilene with me. I know you said it was too early to buy cribs, but I thought we could look. I mean, we want to make sure we get a good, sturdy one.”
Evie’s smile said she was the luckiest girl in the world and Reba wasn’t about to keep her friend from the man who made her feel so lucky.
“We’re all finished here, Logan,” she said. “I need to get back to the boardinghouse anyway.”
Logan pulled his gaze away from Evie and smiled at Reba. “Hey, Reba. You must be taking pretty good care of Val. He couldn’t wait to get back to the boardinghouse. Of course, it’s a lot less distracting there than the Double Di
amond.”
“Or maybe it’s more,” Cru said. When Reba glanced at him, there was a definite twinkle in his eyes. Before she could come up with a reply, Evie came to her rescue.
“Stop teasing, Cru.” She slid out of the booth. “I’ll call you later, Reba.”
Penny followed her sister out of the booth and took Cru’s hand. “Come on, Cowboy, let’s go home and mend some fences.”
Once Penny and Evie left with Logan and Cru, Reba made her excuses to Luanne and headed back to the boardinghouse so she could finish her numerous chores. Except when she finally got home, she discovered that most of those chores were finished. The lawn was mowed in nice, even diagonal lines, and when she stepped into the kitchen with the bags of groceries, she found the dishes she’d left in the sink gone and the counters all wiped off.
Before she could even close her mouth, Aunt Gertie spoke from the doorway.
“It was that Double Diamond boy.”
She looked at her aunt. “Valentine did the dishes?”
Aunt Gertie squinted. “I thought you called him Mr. Sterling. Now it’s Valentine?” She snorted. “What kind of a name is that for a man?”
“Valentine was a male saint.” She set the bags on the counter and glanced around. “And Mr. Sterling is looking pretty saintly to me right about now. I can’t believe he did all this. Why would he?”
“There’s only two reasons a man works: for money or a woman. And since Mr. Sterling doesn’t need the money, I’d say he wants the woman.”
Reba didn’t know why her tummy did a little flip. “Don’t be silly, Aunt Gertie.” She started unpacking the groceries.
“I’m not being silly. Can you think of another reason a man would do dishes?”
“Maybe he just wanted to do something nice.”
“Nice would be giving you a compliment. It’s not spending an hour and a half sweating his butt off in the heat of the afternoon mowing an acre and a half of grass.”
Her aunt did have a good point. Okay, so maybe Valentine did want the woman. Or at least the woman’s body. And it would be so easy to fall into bed with him . . . and probably so satisfying. Until he left—then she wouldn’t feel satisfied as much as used. She was damn tired of feeling used. She didn’t just want a man to look at her with lust. She wanted a man to look at her like Logan looked at Evie and Cru looked at Penny. She wanted a man to love her as if she was the light of his life and the center of his universe. If she couldn’t have that, she didn’t want anything.
“Well, he’s not going to get the woman,” she said as she put away the refrigerated groceries. “But he does deserve a thank you. Maybe I’ll make him flourless brownies.”
“What in tarnation are flourless brownies? And if you want to thank him, I wouldn’t do it with your baking.”
“Thanks a lot, Aunt Gertie. My scones weren’t that bad this morning.”
“I wouldn’t know. I stopped eating your baked goods after I almost choked to death on your hard biscuits. How many times do I have to tell you to stop trying to bake and buy your pastry and rolls at the grocery store?”
“People don’t expect a bed and breakfast to have store-bought baked goods.”
“They don’t expect those baked goods to be hard as a brick or tough as leather either.”
“Fine. I’ll pay more attention to my baking.” She carried a bag of canned goods to the pantry and spoke more to herself than her aunt. “Maybe I’ll defrost those steaks in the freezer and grill them as a thank you to Val—Mr. Sterling. I’m sure Mr. Davenport would enjoy a steak as well.”
“You don’t have to worry about cooking for Mr. Davenport. He’s gone.”
Reba left the half unloaded bag of canned goods on a shelf and stepped back out of the pantry. “Gone? But he just checked in this morning.” She narrowed her eyes. “What did you do, Aunt Gertie?”
“I didn’t do a thing. The man just didn’t fit well.”
“Didn’t fit well? What do you mean he didn’t fit well?”
“He was a smoker and much shorter than you.”
Reba shook her head hoping it would help her understand what her aunt was saying. “Okay, so I get we don’t let people smoke in the rooms, but they can smoke out in the garden or on the balconies. And what does being shorter than me have to do with anything?”
“Big women can intimidate small men.”
Reba struggled to understand what her aunt was saying. “Mr. Davenport said I intimidated him?”
“You intimidate a lot of men, Reba Gertrude. Which doesn’t make my job an easy one.”
“What job? What are you talking about?”
Without answering, Aunt Gertie turned her walker around. “Butler is tired. I think we’ll take a little nap before supper.”
Reba watched Aunt Gertie roll out of the kitchen and wanted to scream in frustration. After reading the love letter, she had almost felt sorry for her aunt. But it was hard to feel sorry for an ornery old woman who was going to ruin everything Reba had worked so hard for.
Chapter Eight
After he finished mowing and took a shower, Val had hoped to spend the rest of the afternoon working on his new book. Instead, he’d hopped on the Internet and started searching for information on Sam Sweeney. As a writer, Val was extremely good at doing research. Since his books usually had a detective who was trying to solve a murder, he had spent a lot of time talking to law enforcement agents on how they solved crimes and found suspects. His main source of information had been his friend Lincoln Hayes.
When Lincoln first came to the Double Diamond, he had been a tough, sullen teenager who had scared the hell out of Val. Big and muscular, Linc could fling a bale of hay onto a trailer with one hand, wrestle a steer to the ground, and shoot ten tin cans in a row off a fence with a pellet gun. Which had contributed to him becoming one damned good Texas Ranger. He was the one who had taught Val how to go about finding a missing person by looking through county records and social media.
But the technique didn’t seem to be working now.
Maisy was right. There didn’t seem to be a trace of Sam after he’d left the Double Diamond Ranch. No court appearances. No hospital admissions. No Facebook page. No obituary. The uneasy feeling in Val’s stomach intensified and he didn’t know why. There could be a lot of reasons he couldn’t find any information on Sam. He could’ve moved to Mexico or some other country. He could’ve changed his name. Or he could just be working on some Texas ranch with no Internet. But no matter how much he tried to rationalize, the uneasy feeling remained.
A knock sounded on the door, pulling him away from his search. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand, surprised that it was already seven o’clock. He had wasted an entire afternoon on something that wasn’t even his business when he could’ve been writing. Which explained why he was so snappy when he pulled open the door and saw Reba standing there with a tray.
“I thought I told you that I didn’t need you to bring me dinner anymore.”
Her shoulders stiffened and she glared at him. “And I told you that it wasn’t a big deal if I didn’t have to make something special.”
He looked down at the food on the plate. “Steak? That was on the menu tonight?”
“It’s a special occasion . . . pumpkin harvest.”
His annoyance at the wasted afternoon evaporated, and he grinned. “Liar. This is a thank you for mowing your lawn and doing your dishes.”
She studied him. “Why did you?”
“It was my way of apologizing for running you even more ragged then you already are.” He shrugged. “I like to treat my slaves fairly.”
She bit back a smile. “Well, your slave appreciates it.”
“I appreciate you making me a special dinner.” He took the tray from her, noticing the white daisies in the vase. “Complete with flowers. I don’t think a woman has ever given me flowers before.” He leaned in and took a sniff, then wrinkled his nose.
She laughed. “Shasta daisies are pretty, but don�
��t smell the sweetest.”
“The flowers might not, but this steak does. I’m starving.”
She took a few steps back. “I’ll just go and let you eat.”
He should’ve let her go. But he was finding it harder and harder to do. “Stay and keep me company. I’ve been on my laptop all afternoon and could use some human contact.” At her surprised look, he corrected. “Verbal.”
She hesitated for just a second before she stepped into the room. “Okay, but just for a few minutes. So how is the book coming? By your annoyed tone when you answered the door, I’d say not good.”
He set the tray on the table and then pulled out a chair for her. “I didn’t write this afternoon. Which is why I was so snappy. I wasted my time on the Internet.”
She took a seat. “It can certainly suck you in and make you lose all track of time. Which is why I don’t hop on it until after all my work is done.”
“Smart woman.” He leaned over her to help her scoot her chair in and couldn’t keep from taking a whiff of her strawberry pile of curls. She smelled much better than the wildflowers had. If he could bottle the scent of fresh air and sunshine, he’d call it Reba. She glanced up at him.
“Is something wrong?”
“No. Just woolgathering. It’s the curse of an author.” He moved to his chair and sat down. She watched as he cut into his steak and took a bite as if waiting for his opinion. It was cooked perfectly and again he wondered how she could do so well with cooking and not with baking. “Delicious,” he said.
She smiled with satisfaction before she crossed her arms and rested them on the table. “So what Internet evil sucked all your time this afternoon? Social media or shoe shopping?”
He should’ve just chosen one. Reba didn’t need to hear about his talk with Maisy in the garden or his strange feeling that was probably nothing. But there was something about her cloudless blue eyes that pulled him in and had him telling her the truth.
