Max forced himself to take notes on his tablet because the odds of him remembering the details of this conversation with Natalie Valentine were next to nil. He stared at his notes about her: twenty-nine years old, war-widowed mother of two, wedding-dress designer, owner of the Cimarron Rose Bed and Breakfast in the center of town.
The simple facts didn’t come close to revealing how damned appealing he found her.
“Mrs. Valentine—do you mind if I call you Natalie?”
“That’s fine. Of course.” She scratched a finger along the flour stain on her denim-covered thigh—her empty ring finger. “Actually, I prefer it.”
The flash of pain in her eyes made him feel like an ass for jonesing over another guy’s wife. Even a dead guy. Especially a dead guy. “I appreciate your taking time from your business day to speak with me.”
“I’m still fairly new to the town. Surely there are people better suited than I am to share about the personalities in this area.” Her fitted green T-shirt only made her massive emerald eyes glitter all the more. Her shoulder-length red hair was swept up into an unfussy ponytail. Little pretense. Raw beauty. And those eyes. Damn, they were intrinsically vulnerable and full of heart, yet the tip of her chin spoke of spirit just begging to be uncovered.
He recognized grit when he saw it, a kindred spirit. “I have a different take on you being too new to help. It’s my experience that newcomers can also offer an objective perspective.”
But the stakes were high on this security-consulting gig. Max had been called in by his longtime friend Chelsea Hunt—Chels—to help trace who was waging cybersmears on the good citizens of Royal. Chels had been one of his few true friends back in his early twenties. They’d both been hungry hackers with a bent for justice during a time she ran to LA to get away from her overprotective parents. But Chels had a more cultured upbringing. She’d helped him smooth out his rougher edges as he sought entry into the legitimate business world. She’d believed in him when no one else did. She’d been the sister he’d never had, cheering him on.
So some wannabe troll was hell-bent on destroying the lives of members of Royal’s Texas Cattleman’s Club? The sorry son of a bitch had picked the wrong firewalls to infiltrate. As far as Max was concerned, once a hacker, always a hacker. He was certain he could beat this amateur...or team. He had a hunch it wasn’t one man or woman working alone...
“Mr. St. Cloud—”
“You’re Natalie. I’m Max.”
“Yes, then, um, Max, I’ll try to help, but I’m usually running full tilt at my bed-and-breakfast.” Natalie fidgeted with her simple silver watch, checking the time. “I don’t mean to rush you, but I have dough rising for bread and pastries that I need to check on soon.”
With each breath, her chest rose and fell faster, which happened to draw his eyes to the pink rose logo in an oval between her breasts. The paneled walls with trophies and historical artifacts closed in on him. The space seemed tighter. More intimate.
Mom jeans. A T-shirt. And the thought of tasting pastry filling on her lips.
Seriously?
“I realize your time is precious and I’ll try to make this quick.” Quick? Quickie... Damn, she sent his mind down distracting paths. So much for logical, techie objectivity. “You would be surprised at the details you hear without consciously registering them. And there are impressions gained in passing. You have the heartbeat of the town with your B and B...and with the wedding dresses you make.”
Surprise turned her cheeks pink, her eyes widening and lips parting ever so slightly. “You know about my dresses?”
“I do my research,” he said simply. “Experience with individuals in your line of business leads me to conclude that people talk to you, a lot. They share their life stories—about their children, their dates, their dogs, hell, even their medical history. They even, dare I say, gossip.”
“I don’t think of it as gossip really. I prefer to believe they feel comfortable at my B and B, whether they’re spending the night or just stopping to join in a hot breakfast.” Absently, she fingered her watchband.
“And there’s no counselor-patient confidentiality involved in pastry making and stitchery.”
She laughed, a full-throated, sexy laugh that relaxed stress lines from her pretty face. “Clearly.”
“So I would like to pick your brain about...just impressions.” He hated seeing the smile fade from her lips and her eyes, but he did have a job to accomplish. “I’m not asking you to implicate anyone. It’s up to me to put together a whole picture that points to the culprit or gives ideas for ways to smoke him or her out. So if you’re comfortable just talking...let me do my thing.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Do your thing? Is that computer-tech talk out West?”
Well, hell. So much for the badass-businessman persona he’d cultivated from his street-rat youth. He’d just been taken down a peg by a sassy ginger rocking her flour-stained jeans.
* * *
Nearly a half hour later, Natalie was fairly certain her stomach had more fizzing going on than the air bubbles in her likely overflowing dough back at the bed-and-breakfast.
Max St. Cloud was a man. All man. A testosterone powder keg of sexuality. And after over a year of abstinence, her sex-starved body couldn’t help reacting. Her military husband had died a year ago, and he’d been deployed to the Middle East for eight months when he died in an explosion.
Still, though, while her B and B, the Cimarron Rose, might be open to the public, her heart was officially closed for business. She was one hundred percent devoted to carving out a life for her and her two children. Colby and Lexie were her world now. They’d suffered too much loss and change. She owed them stability.
The insurance money had just barely paid off their debts.
Her husband had left behind an overextended double mortgage on their home in North Carolina. Doctor and therapist bills for her special-needs son were costly, but necessary. Working and paying for childcare had stretched her budget to the limit. She’d feared she would have to cave and move in with her parents for her children’s sake, and then her late husband’s military friend Tom Knox had insisted she move close to his place in Texas so he could help and keep an eye on her.
She hated exploiting his kindness, but truth be told, she wasn’t close with her family in her hometown of Phoenix. So she’d taken Tom up on his offer. Her family had never been supportive of her decision to travel the world with her military husband, and they definitely weren’t supportive of his back-to-back deployments that left her essentially a single parent for years.
The bed-and-breakfast had been a godsend that just sort of fell into her lap—the former proprietor was an older woman who decided to move to California to be with her daughter and had sold it for the right price. Exactly the amount she received on the North Carolina house.
Since four-year-old Colby had recently been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, running the B and B was a perfect fit for being more flexible to meet his needs as well as keeping up with her two-year-old daughter. It allowed Natalie to stay home with the kids and pursue her dreams of designing wedding gowns, and gave her the one-on-one time to work with a trainer for their young golden retriever to become her son’s service dog. Miss Molly had the smarts and the aptitude, and heaven knew, Natalie needed all the help she could get.
All of which left little time for fizzy flutters in her stomach for tall, dark and dangerous.
Natalie gripped the arms of the leather chair in the Cattleman’s Club lounge. “While I want to help, I’m beginning to lose the thread here on your questions. I feel as if we’re covering ground you must already know from your research.”
“I’m digging for nuances.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re a computer techie. Not a detective.” Okay, so she’d