Chapter Three
Okay. Jake had surprised himself again. He simply had been going to give Chrissie the box. End of story. So what had happened to the plan?
Why was he sitting across from her in a booth at the Royal Diner happy as a damn clam because little Chrissie looked all pouty and put out?
As usual the diner was packed. It never seemed to matter that the greasy spoon, with its smoke-stained walls, cracked bar stools and chipped countertops, had seen better days. The place stayed popular with the locals for two basic reasons: nobody knew their way around a grill like Manny Hernandez and nobody gave lip like the mainstay waitress, Sheila Foster. A lot of guys came in just to let Sheila rag on them. Himself included.
Montgomery and Gentry belted out a song from the beat-up jukebox as Jake watched Chrissie pick at one of Manny’s burger baskets with all the enthusiasm of a Fear Factor competitor contemplating eating a box of scorpions.
“You don’t like the burger?”
“Do you know how much fat is in one of these things?” she grumbled.
“So why did you order it?”
“I didn’t. You did. I wanted a salad and you said I was too thin and why didn’t I eat something with some substance. So I said fine, I’ll have what you’re having.”
“Oh, yeah.” He grinned. “I forgot.”
Actually he hadn’t forgotten anything. He’d wanted to see her eat something that he figured she would consider sinful. And then he wanted to watch the lady enjoy sinning. Wait until she saw the pecan pie with ice cream that followed his standing lunch order.
He didn’t know why but he was suddenly determined to loosen her up and make her enjoy herself in spite of her determination not to. Not, he told himself, because he particularly cared, but because sometime during the course of this day—okay, if he were being honest, it was long before today—she had started to become a personal challenge to him.
People liked him. Pretty much without exception. Chrissie Travers was the major dissenter. For whatever reason, he wanted to change that.
As a rule, folks liked his teasing. They liked his sense of humor. They liked that he thought life should be lived to the fullest whenever possible because so much in these times was tough to deal with. And they liked that he knew about tough from the trenches. Just as he knew what it was like to face down death and come out on top.
A near-death experience like he’d had five years ago had a tendency to change a man’s outlook on life—it had sure as the world prompted him to want to live the rest of it on terms of his own making. Terms that included squeezing out as much pleasure as possible. Unlike the super-duper-serious Christine Travers, who was his polar opposite when it came to pursuing fun.
So he’d pulled a squeeze play on Chrissie, who really wasn’t too thin or all that difficult to squeeze. He’d said she was thin to get her riled again and see the color rise in her cheeks because she looked so pretty in pink. In fact, despite her spinster-slash-warden suits, which ranged in color from navy blue to black to—God save her—dirt brown, she looked kinda cute just the way she was. Well, cute except for the sourpuss attitude that was going to give her wrinkles before she turned thirty.
The woman was a puzzle. Flat out. And he did love a puzzle. Which probably explained why he kept trying to fit the pieces together.
“So. Tell me,” he said, digging into his own burger, “what do you do for fun?”
She blinked at him as if she didn’t understand the question. “Fun?”
He shook his head, swallowed and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “I’m sensing a severe shortfall in your basic vocabulary here. Lunch. Fun. Do I dare introduce the word play?”
The woman had some expressions. Most of them pinched—as if she was sitting on something prickly and was too polite to take care of the problem in public. What would people think?
He wondered what it was going to take to make her smile. He’d given it a halfhearted effort for five years now and so far he hadn’t hit the magic word, number or combination. Maybe it was time he got serious.
“I thought we were going to talk about your new conditions.”
“Fine. Right. We are.” He bit into his burger and chewed thoughtfully. “First tell me why—no smoke screen this time—that stuff is so important to you.”
She considered him across her uneaten burger and fries. Instead of answering, she asked a question. “You’re a Texas Cattleman’s Club member, right?”
“Right,” he said, popping a fry into his mouth and letting her play this out.
“And Cattleman’s Club members are sworn to certain values. Like loyalty and trust and honor and all that, right?”
He nodded and leaned back on the faded gray vinyl booth, wondering where this was going.
“Then if I tell you something in confidence—something that could affect Royal’s future—you’re sworn to secrecy, correct?”
He matched her pinched-brow scowl. “Absolutely. Of course, to make certain there’s no breach in that confidence, we’re both going to have to swear it in blood. You got a pocketknife on ya?”
She let out a disgusted little huff. “Do you take anything seriously?”
“Not if I can help it. Now, for Pete’s sake, spit it out. If you want me to keep it on the QT, all you have to do is ask.”
“Well, I’m asking,” she said, so sober it was all he could do not to laugh.
“Okay. Consider it done. Now give.”
“You know the Jessamine Golden legend?”
“Some of it,” he said. If you grew up in Royal, you’d heard about Jessamine Golden. It was as staple a part of the town’s history as the feud between two prominent families, the Windcrofts and the Devlins. “She was an outlaw, right? Killed the mayor and the sheriff. Stole some gold. Let’s see…disappeared somewhere around the early 1900s.”
“Right. Okay. Well…the saddlebags?” She leaned in close and lowered her voice.
“Yes?” he said, doing the same. Mostly because it got him a little closer to her and he’d been wondering if that really was gold shot through her pretty hazel eyes. Not only gold but silver, he realized. So that’s what gives them that iridescent color.
And didn’t she have the longest, most lush eyelashes he’d ever seen? Soft as sable, thick as a paintbrush. Why hadn’t he ever noticed that before?
Or her freckles. Cute little angel kisses lightly dusted the rise of her cheekbones and skimmed the bridge of her pixie nose. He was surprised he’d never noticed them before, either. Of course, he’d never been this close. Kissing close, if he were of a notion to steal one, which he might be if he didn’t have a pretty good idea of how she’d react. Those even pearly whites of hers would probably rip into his lip like tiger teeth.
“I’m
