he asked.
“Famished, actually.”
“I hope you like burgers.”
“Not unless they come with fries.”
“Then you, my fine lady, are in luck,” Grant Wade said as he turned off the engine. “Though you will have to sit across from me.”
“I’ll manage somehow,” Paxton returned.
The café was nearly empty this time of day. A few small tables ringed a linoleum patchwork floor and three faded red booths hugged the windows. The only waitress in sight, dressed in faded jeans and an apron, eyed them curiously when she and Grant slid into a booth. After Grant returned the glance, the waitress ambled over.
“I guess I’m conspicuously foreign,” Paxton said when their order went in.
“This is a place for regulars. Anyone new is suspicious.”
“Maybe she likes you. She’s staring.”
“Nope. Shirleen is just curious. She has imprinted with...” He stopped there without finishing the strange remark.
“Does that mean she’s engaged to someone?” Paxton asked.
Her cowboy nemesis took a swig of the iced tea Shirleen had brought over. “Yep. Western slang for people coupling up.”
Paxton didn’t share how much she might have liked to couple up with Grant Wade after first laying eyes on him, since that wasn’t going to happen. She hoped to get the paperwork signed and be back on a plane.
They ate in silence, an unspoken truce, of sorts, with the curious waitress looking on. Grant didn’t seem to notice the scrutiny, but Paxton couldn’t get much of her burger down. She was relieved when Grant took care of paying the bill. By the time they headed for the truck, evening was settling in with a pink glow on the horizon.
“It’s quite beautiful,” she said, staring at the landscape for a few minutes before getting into the truck. “I had forgotten about that. Maybe I was too young to notice.”
“You remember being here?” Grant Wade asked.
“I remember a few small things. Mostly unimportant stuff.”
“Like pretty sunsets?”
She nodded. “Yes. Like that.”
“There’s no place better for showy horizons than this one,” he said.
“Not even in Texas?” she asked, testing her new theory on Grant Wade being that former Texas Ranger.
“Similar, but not the same,” he replied, opening her door and playing the gentleman card well. He added, “You know about Texas?”
Paxton shrugged.
“Know thine enemies?” he suggested.
“Hopefully you aren’t one of them.”
“Hopefully not,” he agreed, waiting for her to climb in. “We just shared fries.”
More silence ensued as they drove to the edge of town. What more was there to say without getting back into the argument over the property? Grant had asked for time to consider everything she had suggested. That was fine, if he didn’t take too long.
“I’d like to go there tomorrow,” she finally said when a tiny motel on the edge of a wide expanse of desert came into view.
“Back to Maryland?”
She shook her head. “Desperado.”
He took a beat to reply. “I’m not sure that would be a good idea.”
“You’ll be driving over my property every time you go in or out of that old town. I think you owe me a look, don’t you?”
His hesitation wasn’t subtle.
“I can always rent a car,” she persisted. “I wouldn’t be trespassing if I stopped at the gate. I won’t bother the ghosts.”
When he offered no comment, Paxton got the impression Grant Wade might be hiding something out there in the desert that he didn’t want anyone to discover. Had he found gold?
“You said valuable,” she noted.
He glanced at her.
“You mentioned that my father left you something valuable.”
“Did I?”
She waited him out, wondering what kind of actual reason there could be for keeping her away from the old town. Maybe Grant was planning on reopening Desperado as a tourist attraction and didn’t want to mention that. Perhaps his deal with her father had been to make the old place live again and earn Grant Wade, former Texas Ranger, a decent living. If so, the deal was terribly shortsighted, since everyone involved had to realize that no one could reach Desperado without her permission granting the right-of-way.
Surely her father’s lawyer would have pointed out to Grant that buying her out would be to his benefit? The truck had stopped without her noticing. Grant got out, took her bags from the back and again came around to open her door.
“Small and cheap,” he said with a nod to the motel.
Funny, Paxton thought. That’s exactly what she felt like as she watched Grant Wade enter the lobby of the two-story U-shaped building ahead of her. Small and cheap. She’d sell the land for a song if it meant getting back to her life without taking Grant Wade up on whatever emotion he hid behind those sunglasses.
Reluctantly, she followed Grant to the lobby, trying hard not to stare at the way his jeans emphasized his magnificently compact backside and how his auburn hair, badly in need of a trim, brushed his shirt collar. Taking stock of those things made her uneasy. Still, she had to assess her opponent and hope that the best person would win this argument.
As the hot wind caressed her face, Paxton felt even stranger, in a déjà-vu kind of way, as if it wasn’t actually possible for a person to get over their beginnings.
She looked at her feet, then tipped her face toward the motel’s neon sign. Her gaze flicked to the light of the lobby’s open doorway, filled at the moment by Grant Wade. He was waiting. But what, exactly, was he waiting for—the woman to tag along behind him, or the completion of a deal in his favor?
Maybe she was just projecting her own thoughts on the matter, because, damn it, the man was messing with her sense of justice. Grant Wade, in the flesh, suddenly seemed like the perfect guy to manage a ghost town in the Old West.
And he was looking at her in that way he had, making her feel as though she was the only woman in the world on his mind.
What did Paxton think he was going to do with the old ghost town?
Grant had taken to swearing under his breath and did so repeatedly in honor of the situation he found himself in now as he stood on the threshold to Paxton’s room. Half the space in that room was taken up by a bed, and in a perfect world, he and Paxton might have worked through their differences on top of it. Of course, they weren’t going to do any such thing. He had to get in and get out without lingering.
Cautiously placing one boot inside, then the other, Grant set Paxton’s bags down on the carpet. With his hands now free, he thought seriously about reaching for her and got the feeling she might have been willing to have that happen.
Then again, maybe not.
Besides, he was needed elsewhere.
Open curtains at the window allowed the evening moonlight in. That light was a reminder that he’d need to be on guard again tonight for the return of the slippery rogue he hadn’t been able to catch in the months before. His pack would already be prowling