them, then nodded cannily at Cade. “Go ahead. Choose four. If you pick out all the aces, I’ll lay out an extra thousand for tonight’s gaming. And maybe lend you my overcoat, too.” An amused look. “You seem to have lost yours.”
Cade didn’t take the bait. He didn’t want to discuss giving his warm overcoat to the grimy-faced child sharper in the Morrow Creek alleyway. “I don’t need any more of your money.” Not yet. “Besides, the odds of choosing all four aces in a row are—”
“Inordinate. I know. That’s the point.” With a leisurely gesture, Blackhouse summoned Adams, his valet. “Do it.”
“Fine.” Exasperated, Cade flipped up four cards.
In short order, a queen and three aces stared up at him.
“See? Just as I thought.” Blackhouse pointed. “Not all four aces, that’s true, but still a good enough draw to prove I’m right. You should be delighted.” Yawning, Blackhouse selected a postmarked envelope from the silver tray that Adams offered him. He tossed it in front of Cade. “By the way, this letter from your brother arrived this morning. I hope Judah is well?”
Cade nodded, still boggling at his chosen cards. Turning up three aces was unbelievable. “His leg should be almost healed by now.” Distractedly, Cade frowned. “You must be double dealing.”
Blackhouse scoffed. “I’m not double dealing. I’m not trimming cards. I’m not even wearing a holdout, despite my enthusiasm for collecting such things.” He spread his arms, showing he was free of mechanical cheating devices. “It’s you, Foster. Just you. Your usual good luck has clearly returned.”
Dubiously, Cade regarded the cards. Like most sporting men, he believed in superstition. It was foolhardy and unreasonable not to. A man needed all the breaks he could get. But this…
“I think it must be your reformer who did it,” Blackhouse opined. “She’s your lucky charm. That’s the only explanation.”
Lucky charm. Cade could use one of those, especially now.
Still filled with disbelief, he scowled at the cards. He didn’t want to agree with Blackhouse. He didn’t want to believe in luck alone. But with no other leads readily available….
“Well, there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” Cade asked. “That’s to find my ‘lucky charm’ and see what happens.”
Then he threw on a necktie, grabbed his suit coat and hat, and went in search of his very own private do-gooder and (potential) good-luck charm.
God help him, he seemed to need her.
When Violet glimpsed the town newcomer, Cade Foster, from across the room at the charity kitchen she’d organized with the help of Grace Murphy and her ladies’ auxiliary club, she knew she had to be imagining things…which wasn’t altogether surprising, given how preoccupied she’d been since yesterday.
All afternoon long, even while ladling up soup and passing out bread donated by Molly Copeland’s popular bakery, Violet had relived last night’s dance at the Grand Fair. She’d recalled Cade Foster’s smile. She’d remembered his features. She’d contemplated his intriguingly muscular personhood and sighed over his eyes. She’d even envisioned herself seeing him again.
So a part of her wasn’t at all surprised to catch sight of him there. The rest of her knew that she should pinch herself—especially when Cade Foster spied her, raised his hand in a masculine greeting, then determinedly headed in her direction.
“Yes!” someone whispered nearby. “It’s definitely him!”
“Did you see them dancing together?” someone else added.
“I saw her leave him standing heartbroken on the dance floor!” a third gossip added in breathless tones. “Imagine that! Plain Violet Benson, the minister’s daughter, having the cheek to turn her back on a man who’s willing to dance with her!”
Well. Being the subject of such vaguely uncharitable gossip took some of the fun out of things, Violet thought. That was a new and unwelcome experience for her—one she’d helped Adeline through a time or two, though. Besides, she retorted to herself silently, she hadn’t left Cade on the dance floor. She’d gone to fetch her father—it was an entirely different thing. Tightening her hold on her soup ladle, she went on watching Cade approach.
Plainly, he was close enough to hear everything her fellow helpers were saying, Violet realized. Because almost imperceptibly, he angled his head toward that chatty clump of gossips, flashed them a brief but brilliant grin, then kept right on going.
Collectively, the three women swooned. For herself, Violet only stood there with her ladle at the ready. This, she realized with another flutter of excitement, might be her chance to fly!
Cade Foster might be her chance to dance through every part of her life—her chance to have some fun. It was exactly what she’d yearned for at the Grand Fair last night. Violet certainly didn’t have much to lose by trying something new. So that’s exactly what she meant to do—beginning right now, with Cade.
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.”
