After she signaled to the ponytailed, hippy-goateed cook behind the service window for “the usual,” she fetched a glass, filled it with ice and cola, then gave it to Jared. She propped her foot on a step stool that she’d recently put under the counter to take some of the weight off her feet.
“I’ve got your usual,” she said. “And I suppose you expect service to be extra special because you were such a big shot in the rodeo.”
A shadow seemed to pass over him, yet it disappeared quickly enough.
He glanced around the diner, which was painted in turquoise and looked as if it’d been decorated by the Jetsons when they were in a hearts-and-flowers mood, then changed the subject whip-quick. “Apparently, I came during a lull today.”
All right. So she’d already found out that he was a champion subject-changer months ago. But she had also done her fair share of avoiding a lot of topics ever since she’d left behind what’s-his-name.
Okay, his name was Brett. She might as well take some power back from him and just say his damned name.
Brett the Turd. Turdy Brett. Brett Turdwell. She had a thousand names for him.
“This lull is a nice rest,” she said. “We’ve been on fire around here lately.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s amazing how many tourists can be attracted by a good mystery like Tony Amati’s unsolved death.” Violet and Davis Jackson, the owners of the town’s small paper, had uncovered Tony’s odd, unresolved demise months ago, after Jared had appeared in St. Valentine and excited everybody’s interest with his doppelganger looks. The reporters had been after him for interviews, but he never gave any to them.
He took a drink, then said, “You know, every time I turn on the TV I see St. Valentine and Tony Amati. It’s all over the place.”
“And that’s exactly what Violet and Davis want. So does the chamber of commerce, especially shortly before the Valentine’s Day Festival.” Annette only hoped that the town wouldn’t get too much of a profile.
She couldn’t afford it.
Subtly, she skimmed a hand over her stomach. I’m going to make sure no one knows where we went.
“One would think,” she said, “that you don’t like watching those profiles about Tony and St. Valentine.”
He didn’t say anything, just took another drink of soda, as secretive as ever.
“Okay, Mr. Strong but Silent,” she said, grinning a little, “I guess you wouldn’t be interested in something I dug up about Tony Amati this morning, then, would you?”
Now he put the cola down.
Gotcha.
With a tiny shrug, she went to the back room and dipped her hand in the patchwork purse she’d bought at some dime store back when she’d stocked up on cheap clothing and necessities with the only cash she’d had on hand before lucking into this job. She came out with a rectangular metal box wrapped in bulky oilcloth.
By the time she returned to Jared, he’d tipped his hat back so that she could see all of his face, which might not be considered handsome as much as strong and manly, with a square chin set off with a slight cleft and an eternal five o’clock shadow covering his lantern jaw and his cheeks. He had the type of nose that you’d see on Roman statues and the same type of body, too—hard and muscular, with a strength that made adrenaline fly through her veins.
But that’s how she’d felt when she’d first met Brett, too—the all-American college quarterback and youngest son of the oil-rich Tulsa Cresswell family.
The man who’d raised a hand to her on their wedding day before she’d left him to eat her dust.
She put the package on the counter, but Jared merely stared at it.
“Go ahead,” she said. “It won’t bite.”
Still, he glanced at her as if it might do just that. “What is it?”
“A brand-new car. I was in a giving mood when I bought it.”
That got a chuckle out of him.
Out of patience, Annette unwound the material from around the box, then opened it. She unwrapped more oilcloth from the contents and presented him with the final product.
He looked at the journal, with its hard-crusted covers sandwiching the yellowed, swollen pages.
Annette put it on the counter again. “I like to do some gardening. It’s a calming thing, but...well, that’s not what you want to hear, is it? What matters is that I was digging deep to loosen the soil in a part of the yard I hadn’t been using when I hit something in the dirt.”
“This,” he said.
“A journal. And I peeked inside, just to see what it was, but when I got a load of Tony Amati’s name written on the front page...”
“It’s...Tony’s?”
The question was infused with a quality she’d never heard from this man before—almost a hopeful vulnerability.
Had she and the rest of the townsfolk been wrong about him? Did he have more than a passing interest in Tony Amati?
She lowered her voice, even though Declan the cook was busy in the kitchen, judging from the faint noise of pots and pans. “I rent one of the condominiums they built on Tony’s old ranch property, and I suppose he buried this journal at some point. Who knows why? It could give a reason in that journal, but I didn’t have time to read it before work to find out. I’m curious like you wouldn’t believe, but I thought maybe you should have the honor of looking at it first—”
Jared grasped the book in his big hands and opened it, just as if he’d been waiting for this moment his entire life.
* * *
The first thing Jared saw was a fine scrawl of semi-blurred ink on the front page.
Amati.
And that’s all it said. That’s all it had to say in this town because everyone knew who Tony Amati was, even though no one seemed to have known him well.
He’d been a former Texas Ranger who’d struck oil in the late 1920s, founded St. Valentine and acted as a patron to those who needed jobs. A man who’d lived alone, shut away on his ranch. A taciturn guy who’d died without much more fanfare than a dutiful obituary in the local paper.
Ever since Jared’s initial glimpse of Tony Amati’s picture in the Queen of Hearts Saloon months ago, he’d known that he’d finally found what he’d been looking for all these years—roots, a possible identity.
Maybe even family?
But Jared had no proof of that, just a suspicion, based on the similarity of his and Tony’s faces. After he’d left the rodeo circuit (too old and broken to be busting broncs after he’d tweaked his back during a tumble) and after he’d drifted from ranch to ranch and job to job for three years afterward (too ornery to be content in one place), he hadn’t known where he was going or why. Yet, for once, Tony had given him a reason to linger.
He rested his fingertips on the first page, right by Tony’s last name. He smiled.
Annette’s soft voice floated to him. It was a sound that never failed to stir Jared, whether that was a good thing or not.
“Are you going to read it right now?” she asked.
“I could.”
He looked up at her, and she grinned at him, her deep blue eyes sending those same swirls of heat from his chest to his belly. God, she was a sight, even in a pink waitress uniform and white apron. It was as if she didn’t belong in a diner—she seemed too well-bred for it for some reason he couldn’t put his finger on. She had a way of carrying herself that made him think more of