Courted by the Texas Millionaire

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.