“Pardon, ma’am,” Danny said, raising his voice a little to catch her attention. She turned and he stopped. Hells no. “Clover?”
She smiled, her perpetually red lips looking as lush and kissable as they had been during that rodeo summer. The one where he’d won his buckle, lassoed a beauty queen and lost his virginity.
“Hello, Danny,” she said, a light drawl in her voice. “I heard you were mayor here. Congratulations.” She smiled again. Not the real one he’d come to love, but the staged one that stretched her lips, lifting her cheeks but never reaching her bluebonnet eyes.
“Why?” he asked, not exactly sure what he meant.
“Good investment.” She turned back to the paperwork.
Danny wouldn’t be dismissed this time. He’d let her take the lead when they’d been teens because she was older than him by two years. He’d seen her as a woman of the world. Not now. Not all of these years later. He wasn’t a horny sixteen-year-old with more hormones than brains.
“What exactly do you plan to do with the properties?”
She continued to sign where the official from the county tax sale office pointed but didn’t answer.
“I’m mayor and chair of the revitalization committee,” he added. True, though the “revitalization committee” was just him. He wanted Angel Crossing to thrive and he had plans that built on some of the changes that were already taking place. He didn’t want any of that to be ruined.
Clover nodded but didn’t turn. He was starting to get annoyed. He didn’t expect her to fall all over herself for an old boyfriend or even because he was mayor. He did expect her to be courteous enough to answer his very legitimate questions. He wasn’t moving until she did. Folding his arms over his chest, he stared at her...hat—not her jean-clad rear and long legs. It didn’t look like she starved herself anymore. Her mother had been big on her daughter becoming a model for her clothing line, so Clover had watched every morsel that passed her lips. He remembered her almost drooling while he’d eaten a greasy, powdered-sugar-covered funnel cake. It had taken the enjoyment out of eating it.
Slowly, deliberately, he thought, she put down the pen and took the papers before turning to him. Her expression was pleasant even without her wide smile. “What did you need, Danny?”
“I don’t need anything. I would like to know your plans for the properties, strictly as an official of the town.”
“I don’t think so.” She looked him in the eye, nearly his height in her impractical pink cowgirl boots, matched to her cowgirl shirt—probably one of her mother’s designs. She looked the same, yet different. A woman grown into and comfortable with her blue-blood nose and creamy Southern-belle skin.
“There must be some reason you won’t share your plans.”
“It’s business, Danny. That’s all. You were bidding against me. You must have your own plans.” There was a question in there somewhere.
“I’m mayor. Of course I have plans. But you work for a clothing designer, don’t you?”
“I understood you only became mayor because you lost a card game.”
That damned story. It had gotten picked up by a bunch of papers and repeated on a ton of websites. “Not exactly.”
She smiled politely. Waiting.
“The vote for mayor was a tie and we drew cards to decide the winner.” He didn’t need to tell her that he’d been a write-in candidate as a joke. He could have turned it down, but by then he’d decided to step away from bull riding while he was at the top of the profession—he’d just won his champion buckle. That was what he’d told the reporters. It was true enough. He’d had his place in Angel Crossing and the town seemed as good as any to put down roots after years on the road. Anyway, who wouldn’t want to be mayor, he’d thought at the time, imagining all kinds of cool things he could do.
“Drawing cards. That’s very Wild West, isn’t it?”
“I guess. But I’m still mayor.”
“Well, it was nice to see you, Danny.” She turned from him before he could say anything else. Damn. What was he going to do now? He watched Clover walk away. A beautiful sight, as it always had been. Tall, curvier than she’d been at eighteen and proud. He knew she worked for her mother. A friend of a rodeo friend had told him that years ago, thinking he’d be interested. He hadn’t been.
Now, though, what she was up to was important to Angel Crossing. He wasn’t the big dumb cowboy who was led around by his gonads anymore. He was a responsible adult who had a town to look after.
* * *
CLOVER KEPT HER head high and her steps confident as she walked away from Danny. She could feel his eyes on her. She refused to acknowledge that she knew he was watching. She definitely didn’t want him to know that the corner of her heart still ruled by her teenage self liked his denim-blue gaze on her.
Clover disciplined her thoughts by going over the numbers and how these properties fit in with the ones that Van Camp Worldwide already owned. The buildings were slated for demolition, despite their sturdy brick walls. Most places in Angel Crossing were made of wood or adobe, but not these. What had Danny planned for them? Didn’t matter. They were hers...well, VCW’s.
She walked to the small, fully furnished house she’d rented—simpler than staying at the hotel nearly half an hour away or in Tucson. There used to be an old grand dame of a hotel in Angel Crossing, but it had closed years ago and sat empty, beginning to sag and rot. The town had little future on its current path. It would end up like the other Arizona ghost towns, a place on the map that tourists visited hoping to see spirits of the Wild West.
Next on her to-do list was finding the owners of six other key properties. She had done what she could from New York, but she needed to go to the courthouse in Tucson to start pulling records. She got in her rental car and fired up the GPS, telling her phone to call her brother, Knox, so she could speak with him about the purchase and any other issues he might know about, having worked for their father for years.
It took extra rings for her brother to answer, but he was willing to talk.
“Make sure the attorneys go through the deeds and the town’s regulations with a fine-tooth comb,” Knox said around a yawn. It was early, early in Hong Kong. “They’ll assume they’re a bunch of yahoos and blow off a full review.”
“I’m on my way to Tucson to check on the ownership of the other properties. I should be able to straighten that out by the end of the day. I think the purchases will be completed faster than we’d calculated. Good thing because this town is definitely on a downward slide.”
“What about the mayor?” Knox asked. She could picture her dark-haired brother squinting at his phone because he’d left his glasses somewhere.
There was more to the question than what sat on the surface.
“You mean, what’s it like catching up with an old boyfriend? We were kids. He’s just a retired bull rider and accidental mayor of a dying town.”
“You might be interested to know that he’s been buying properties along the main street—Miner’s Gulch.”
“That explains why he was bidding against us today.”
“Interesting. Do you think he’s a front man for another company?”
Clover was getting used to the suspicion and worry that ran through VCW. “I doubt it. I don’t see Danny Leigh allowing himself to be used that way, but I’ll have New York check into it if you think it’s important.”