Throw in a pair of skintight jeans, a black leather jacket and a go-to-hell attitude, and the uptight citizens of Coldwater had naturally assumed he was the root of all evil. He didn’t let them down.
Out of pure mischief, he committed a few minor infractions around school during his first few weeks, then dated a few of the more kiss-and-tell girls. Gossip took care of the rest. For the next year he got blamed for everything from graffiti on the water tower to Angela Putnam’s period being late. And he didn’t care enough to try to set anyone straight. Only his grandmother had known better, but even her reputation hadn’t been able to salvage his. With the exception of the girls who swooned at his bad-boy image, the townspeople would have voted him most likely to turn up on a post-office wall. And that’s why, at eighteen, he’d burned rubber on his way out of town, catching the best view of Coldwater he’d ever had—the one in his rearview mirror.
And now he was going back.
He followed the gentle curve of the two-lane blacktop, passing tin barns and mobile homes alternating with fields of cotton and corn and an occasional paint-starved farmhouse with a pickup truck out front. This corner of nowhere was home to people who didn’t know there was a world beyond it. But he knew. He knew how a kid from nothing could leave a place like this and make something of himself. At the same time he burned with anger at how everything that same kid had fought so hard to gain could be ripped out from under him in the blink of an eye.
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
