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“You ought to. You oughtta know it better than most anyone in this town.”
He nodded, wanted to argue, to reason, to rationalize, but he did know her better than anyone, and he knew that if he made love to Vidalia Brand, he would be destroying her at the very same time. He couldn’t do that to her.
“I’m leaving town tomorrow, Vidalia,” he said. And he hadn’t known he was going to say it until he did.
“Don’t feel like you have to–”
“I have to.” He sighed. “I’ve got some money saved up. There’s a falling down Cantina just this side of the Tex-Mex border going up for auction.”
Her head came up, eyes lighting, her smile genuine. “You’re goin’ into the saloon business?”
“Not like you, but yeah, that’s the plan.”
“You’re gonna do well, Bobby,” she told him. “And I’m not ashamed to say, I’m gonna miss you.”
“I’m gonna miss you too,” he told her. And he thought he meant it a whole lot more than she did.
She held his eyes for a long time, and then she went behind the bar and refilled both their glasses.
That had been twenty-some-odd years ago. And that whole time, he’d never been able to get past the notion that Vidalia Brand was The One. The only woman for him. And for some reason, he just wasn’t meant to have her. Not in this lifetime, anyway.
Maybe next time around, he thought as he stood there looking up at the red and green and blue and white lights of the giant Christmas tree. If there was a next time. He wasn’t the sort of man who had any real convictions about what happened after you died. But he supposed he’d be finding out firsthand in short order. Any time now, according to his doctors.
He sighed heavily, and his breath made a steam puff in the darkness. Then he got back into his pickup and turned it around, driving back toward the former feed store he’d bought at the far end of town. He had the entire thing draped in an exterminator’s tent, so the work going on inside would go unseen until he was ready to make it public day after tomorrow.
He’d made a fortune taking over failing bars, saloons and nightclubs, recreating them into successful hot spots, and then selling them for massive profits. He’d become one of the richest men in Texas. He’d married, had three sons, and neglected them almost as much as John Brand had neglected his daughters. He’d divorced after fifteen years with a woman he had liked at first, disliked later on, but never loved. There was only one woman he’d ever really loved.
It was only a month ago that he’d realized he wanted to leave something more behind than a portfolio stuffed with paper wealth. He wanted to leave his sons something real. Something of him. Something they could be proud of. And he wanted it to be in Big Falls Oklahoma, where he’d been a young man with his entire future ahead of him, who didn’t yet know that he’d never be happier than he was right then. Richer. More successful. Busier. But never happier.
Seeing Vidalia again had been a bonus to coming back here. But it hadn’t been his only reason. He intended to breathe his last in Big Falls, the closest thing to a hometown he’d ever had.
But his main reason for coming back here now was because he wanted to spend one more Christmas in Big Falls. Christmases had been magical here. Vidalia and her little girls always made them so special, even when he’d just been a lonely drifter handyman with no family to call his own. Three Christmases, he’d been invited to share in the holiday meal with the Brands. Three Christmases when John Brand had seen fit to be elsewhere. Even poor, Vidalia had given her girls holidays to remember. Meaningful, sparkling, magical holidays full of love and laughter.
He wanted his boys to experience a holiday like those ones he remembered, just once. He’d been too busy getting rich to give them any of those. And according to his doctors, he should just about have enough time left to make that happen.
CHAPTERTWO
An hour later, after closing time, Vidalia stood in the cold rain, looking across Main Street at what used to be Milner Feed & Grain. The big building was wearing an “I’m being exterminated” sort of disguise. Maybe it really was an exterminator’s tent covering the entire place. Vidalia wouldn’t know, having never seen one. Bugs only tended to be a problem in big cities, where there wasn’t room for them to live outdoors where they belonged. She’d seen big city life. Never lived it. If she had, she figured she’d have most likely run screaming for this particular corner of Oklahoma. The northwestern part, where there were mountains, and where there was weather. They got a little snow once or twice over the course of an average winter. She wondered again if they would this year. Snow for Christmas...that would be something, wouldn’t it?
She almost asked God to send her some, but then she couldn’t quite do it. She’d sinned. She’d sinned in a big way, and she had never made that sin right. And while she’d managed to push it to the back of her mind for a good many years, it was front and center, now. She didn’t feel she had any business asking God for anything.
Sighing, she pushed the dark thoughts aside and got back to the moment at hand. There wasn’t a lick of traffic on the slick, shiny ribbon of road that unfurled in either direction. The sheen of rain on the blacktop was the only way to tell the difference between the road and the night itself. There wasn’t another car around, either. And she’d left her own a football field away, before she’d got here. The former feed store was right on the edge of town. Vidalia lived five miles beyond the other end of town, back the way she’d come. The OK Corral, her best friend for the past more-years-than-she-cared-to-count, was on the opposite end of Main.
Her hair was getting wet. She should’ve brought a hat. But she hadn’t had one with her at the Corral, and she’d come directly here from there. Probably because she was afraid she’d lose her nerve if she went home first. It would be too easy to just go to bed and try to forget about....
About Bobby.
Not that she would’ve been able to.
Nope, Bobby Joe McIntyre was on her mind. And in her town. And it hadn’t taken too much algebra to figure out why. He’d made his millions buying out saloons, rebuilding them into something huge and gaudy and soulless, and then selling them again. There were no out of business saloons in Big Falls. Not right now, anyway. But there was one former feed store, auctioned off for taxes months ago, that had suddenly come to life underneath an oversized tent. And there were strangers in town. Oh, they were careful, showing up only a few at a time to shop or use the Post Office. But there were a lot of them. She’d been keeping track. No less than twenty new faces had appeared on the other side of her mahogany bar in the past few weeks. Working men, hardly a female among ‘em.
Until she’d seen Bobby, she’d assumed it was some PR stunt by whatever corporate giant was going to try to put up a chain store where the feed and grain used to be. There’d been good-natured debate among the locals about what it would be.
But the minute she’d seen Bobby’s still sinfully sexy backside walking away, it had hit her. It was a saloon. That was his business. Big, flashy, city-slickin’, modern mockeries of old west clichés. He was in this town to put her out of business.
And playing on that one night, and what had happened between them–almost happened, as far as he would ever know–to keep her too flustered to notice what was happening right under her nose.
She would be damned if she was going to take this sitting down.
