Courted by the Texas Millionaire. Crystal Green

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ