Maybe the local men hadn’t been able to glimpse Violet’s charms past Adeline Wilson’s dazzle, it occurred to her, but Cade had. That made him special. That made him worthy of joining her in her newfound quest to spread her wings.
At least that way, when she was Mrs. Sunley’s age, Violet reasoned, she’d have some thrilling memories to look back on.
Oblivious to her hasty decision making, Cade reached her.
“You’re a difficult woman to find.” This time, his smile touched her alone, leaving aside her sharp-tongued cohorts. “I’ve been to the jailhouse, Dr. Finney’s medical office, your father’s church and the schoolhouse—I was told you sometimes volunteer with schoolmarm McCabe. And now here you are in the very last place I thought to look.”
“Well, you always find everything in the very last place you look, don’t you?” Violet couldn’t help staring. She felt defenseless against his charisma, spellbound by his voice, fascinated by his just-for-her smile. With Cade Foster inside it, her charity kitchen suddenly felt much too small and meager. “If you kept on searching after that it would be silly.”
Cade Foster blinked. Then he laughed. “That’s true.”
“You may be glib, Mr. Foster, but I’m sensible.” Violet ladled up some soup for the next recipient. She gave the needy woman a smile, then received a warm thank-you in return. The line of recipients moved up a pace. “As you can see, I’m quite busy here, as well. So if you want to talk charming nonsense to me, I’m afraid you’ll just have to do it later.”
A shared gasp came from nearby. Evidently, her colleagues were still eavesdropping, and they fully expected her to fall at Cade’s feet, lovesick with longing, at the first opportunity.
He gave her another grin. “You think I’m charming, then?”
“And glib. I also said ‘glib.’ Didn’t you hear that part?”
“I heard it. But I don’t think you believe it.”
Violet smiled. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”
“Truly?” Mr. Foster seemed intrigued by that notion, commonplace as it was. He moved closer, nearly shoulder to shoulder with her. “Do you always say exactly what you think?”
“Why not?” Violet stirred her soup. “Don’t you?”
“I’m a professional sporting man, Miss Benson. I make my living on hope and happenstance. Honesty doesn’t enter into it.”
“It seemed to do so last night. Between us.”
At her words, he seemed taken aback. “Well, I was honest with you about not being a desperate man,” Mr. Foster said, “so if that’s what you mean regarding honesty between us—”
“No,” Violet interrupted gently. “I mean that, after we danced, you told me I would be swamped with suitors. That’s what you said. Honestly. I didn’t believe you, but you were right!” Gleefully, she confided further, “After you left the Grand Fair, I went through two more dance cards!”
Alone in her bedroom afterward—with care and no small measure of disbelief—she’d pressed those signature-filled dance cards between her Bible pages for safekeeping. She’d thought they might be her only mementos of that extraordinary night. But now that Cade Foster had arrived, all broad shouldered and fascinating, at her charity kitchen, the world felt ripe with possibilities. Given his occupation, he seemed twice as likely to be capable of satisfying her urge for extra zest in her dutiful, workaday life.
“Two dance cards? You danced that much?” Relief softened his features, lending sparkle to his vivid eyes. “That must have been fun.”
“It was unprecedented,” Violet told him candidly. She handed a hunk of bread to the next recipient. “I’ve never danced so much in all my life! I’m sure it was because of you. By dancing with me last night, you seem to have kindled some sort of curiosity about me, Mr. Foster.”
“The men in Morrow Creek aren’t alone in being curious about you.” Intimately, he lowered his voice. “I am, too. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”
“I’ll only be sorry when it’s over.” Violet sighed, still reminiscing about last night. “Before long, folks in town will forget this, and I’ll be back to cheering up the wallflowers at parties while everyone else…” She paused, belatedly realizing the astonishing admission he’d made. “You? Thinking about me?”
She nearly had to use her soup ladle to close her gaping jaw. The very notion was dumbfounding. And thrilling too!
“Yes. You’re going to be very important to me, Miss Benson. I can feel it.” Pausing to study the visitors to the charity kitchen, Cade Foster stepped into place beside Violet. Adeptly, he handed a bowl of soup and some bread to the next person in line. The poor woman who received it nearly fainted with glee at being served by him. He didn’t seem to notice her obvious ardor. “I’d like to become equally important to you, if you’ll let me.”
Violet flashed him a dubious look. She might be hopeful, but she was not an imbecile. Nor was she especially naive.
“You could have the company of any woman in town.” As proof, Violet gestured to the other volunteers. To a woman, they were gazing swoonily, chin in hand, at Cade Foster’s handsome countenance. All three of them sighed. One waved. “Do you expect me to believe that of all the ladies in town, you are interested in me? I know what I look like, Mr. Foster. As a minister’s daughter, I can’t bring you a fine dowry, either. So—”
“I’m not asking for your hand in marriage.” He seemed disturbed by her rebuttal and maybe a mite perplexed, too. “Is there someplace we can talk about this privately?”
Violet shook her head. As much as she wanted to be more venturesome, she did have obligations to consider. Besides, thinking about adventuring was not the same as doing it.
“Not unless I quit work,” she said, “and that’s—”
Impossible, Violet meant to say.
But before she could, her fellow volunteers interrupted.
“Very easily done!” one of them said.
Chattering and smiling, they stripped Violet of her soup ladle. They untied her apron and smoothed her upswept hair. They filled in her place in line, then all but shoved her forcibly out the door with the gambler. At that, Violet couldn’t help forgiving them their unkind gossip earlier. She wasn’t a woman who held a grudge. No doubt they’d simply been surprised that she’d been so popular with Mr. Foster last night…and today.
That made four of them. Because she was surprised, too.
“Go on!” one of her friends urged cheerfully. “You work all the time! If anyone deserves a break, Violet, it’s you.”
“Yes. Have fun.” Another friend winked. “We’ll take care of everything here. Don’t you worry about a thing. He’s a gambler, isn’t he? So why don’t you take a chance for a change? On him!”
So, with no further avenue of protest available to her and with Cade Foster standing patiently nearby, Violet did just that: she took a chance…on a gambler.
Sitting beside Cade on a narrow bench outside the charity kitchen next to a sweeping ponderosa pine tree and a branching rivulet of the nearby creek, Violet Benson shook her head.
Plainly surprised, she asked, “You want me to do what?”
Cade didn’t answer at first. He simply felt too distracted by what she’d said earlier: I know what I look like, Mr. Foster.
That admission was telling. It was, as Cade was rapidly learning, characteristically direct, too. If he’d been a crueler man,