Cole still remembered how it felt to stand on that cold Dallas street in the middle of the night, soot clinging to his skin and heat from the massive blaze fanning his face, watching his half-finished real-estate renovation project—the one that could have made him a millionaire—light up the Dallas skyline like the fires of hell.
And watching his dreams go up in smoke with it.
He came around a bend and headed into the main part of town. He passed Blackwell’s Pharmacy, A New You Dress Shop and Cut & Curl, where a handmade sign advertised twenty percent off acrylic nails on Tuesdays. When he reached Taffy’s Restaurant, he pulled into a parking space next to a slick new pickup. It belonged to Ben Murphy, though he wouldn’t have known that if not for the ancient hound dog hanging his head over the tailgate.
At least the old man had shown up.
Cole stepped out of his car, went to the back of Murphy’s truck and scratched the old dog behind the ears.
“Hey, Duke. I figured you’d be long gone by now.”
The dog licked his hand, and Cole smiled ruefully. Duke was far happier to see him than Murphy was going to be.
He gave the dog one last pat on the head, then turned toward the sidewalk. In the beauty-shop window next door, he saw a skinny brunette with a headful of rollers staring at him. She tapped a big-haired blonde on the shoulder and mouthed, Cole McCallum. The woman spun around, and when she caught sight of him her eyebrows flew halfway up to her hairline.
By the time he reached the door to the restaurant, the beauty-shop window was filled with half a dozen women in various states of beautification, from sopping wet hair to kinky hair to hair sprouting crinkles of silver stuff that looked like aluminum foil.
He couldn’t resist. He turned toward the window and gave the ladies a great big smile.
A dozen eyes widened in unison. In the next second the women turned to each other, their mouths moving at the speed of light, probably repeating legends about him for the gospel truth whether they were actually true or not. Around here, any stranger made people stop and stare. But Cole McCallum, who was once rumored to have made it with the entire cheerleading squad in one night, warranted an all-points bulletin. And no doubt the things they’d read about him lately in the Dallas Morning News had only fueled the gossip.
He went into the restaurant and spotted Ben Murphy sitting in a booth by the far window. The chattering din of the restaurant fell silent as patrons peered over their newspapers or stopped mid-bite to watch him walk across the room. The only sound he heard was a hushed, rapid-fire argument behind the counter, where a trio of waitresses gave him sidelong glances as they tried to determine which took precedence when it came to waiting on a particular table—seniority or station assignments.
Cole slid into the booth across from Murphy and was greeted with a deadpan stare. The old man’s jaw was set in stone, his blue eyes unreadable. All seventy-two of his years were etched into his face, solidified by the harsh Texas sun. He held a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, and Cole couldn’t remember a time he’d seen him without one. Murphy was the closest thing to a grandfather he had by virtue of the fact that he’d married Cole’s grandmother. That was where their relationship began—and ended.
A waitress appeared at the table, and it took Cole a moment to realize it was Mary Lou Culbertson, stuffed into a baby-blue waitress uniform that had probably been a really good fit ten years and twenty pounds ago. She cocked one hand against her hip and slid her other hand along the top of the booth behind him.
“Hey, Cole. Long time no see.”
“Mary Lou.”
“I read about you in the papers. You had a pretty tough time of it, didn’t you?”
“It’s over.”
“Whatcha doin’ back in town?”
“Taking care of a little business.” He flashed her a smile. “How about a cup of coffee?”
“Sure.” She purred the word, as if he’d just asked her to get naked in the back seat of his car. As she sashayed toward the coffeepot, Murphy raised an eyebrow.
“Still charming the ladies, I see.”
Cole didn’t reply. Instead he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out several legal-size sheets of paper. He opened them up and tossed them on the table.
Murphy eyed the papers. “I wondered if you’d be back. Cutting it a little close, aren’t you?”
“According to Edna’s will, as long as I’m married within six months of her death, then stay on the ranch with my wife for six months, the deed goes to me. The way I figure it, I have until Sunday to move in.”
“You thumbed your nose at this six months ago. Said hell would freeze over before you got married and came back to live at the ranch.”
Yeah, and six months ago he’d had money in the bank with big payoffs on the horizon. Now he had exactly nothing. He shrugged offhandedly. “People change.”
“Some do. Some don’t.” Murphy chewed his toothpick. “And some become hotshot real estate investors who solve their problems with a book of matches.”
Murphy’s words slammed into Cole, making anger surge inside him. He struggled to keep his voice in check. “Guess you didn’t read the paper two days ago. My partner was convicted. I wasn’t.”
Murphy shrugged. “So you had a better lawyer.”
A hundred nasty retorts welled up inside Cole’s mind, and it was all he could do to contain them. Nothing ever changed in this town. Nothing.
When he left Coldwater at age eighteen, he’d started renovating tiny, dilapidated houses, making a little money here and there and then rolling it over into bigger and bigger investments. Over the years, he amassed a large portfolio of rental property and a huge stash of cash.
Then, in a move that raised more than a few eyebrows, he and a partner bought Seven-Seventeen Broadway Avenue, a huge turn-of-the-century apartment building on the outskirts of downtown Dallas. The condition of the building left a lot to be desired, and the area was practically an abandoned ghetto, but the building had a period charm unlike any Cole had ever seen. Because of nearby renovation projects along with the growing desire of young urban pioneers for downtown addresses, he decided to take the risk and create luxury condominiums, hoping the yuppies would bite and other investors would follow suit.
Then came the fire.
Cole thought it was the worst thing that could possibly happen, until the blaze was ruled arson and he and his partner became prime suspects. Investigators speculated that they’d gotten concerned that their huge investment in such a questionable area wasn’t going to pay off after all, so they’d torched it for the insurance money.
Cole had spent his last dime on the best attorneys he could buy, trying to convince a jury that he’d had nothing to do with the crime, all the while assuming his partner hadn’t, either. Then it turned out the guy had a mountain of gambling debts Cole hadn’t even known about, which had driven him to set the fire to try to collect the insurance money.
The fury Cole felt the moment he realized his partner’s betrayal was superseded only by the gut-wrenching defeat he felt when he looked at that fire-ravaged lot. Because the fire had been deliberately set, the insurance company hadn’t paid a dime, and Cole was left with nothing but a huge stack of attorney bills and a reputation that was in the toilet. Never mind that he’d been exonerated. The press had been quick to proclaim his alleged guilt on page one, then bury his innocence on page sixteen, and all the doors he’d worked so hard to open in the last ten years had suddenly slammed in his face.
Then