A Weaver Christmas Gift

Casey felt the automatic door closing behind him and he moved across the large blue-lit room to stand behind his associate. Like Casey, Seth collected a paycheck that showed that he worked for Cee-Vid. But also like Casey, his real employer was hidden deep and well beneath that. “This was a simple assignment,” he said. “All Bax had to do was escort the emir’s niece back to college.”

“Without drawing attention to the fact that she wasn’t where she was supposed to be in the first place. Money,” Banyon muttered. “More trouble than it’s worth, if you ask me.”

The emir had plenty of it. His affection for his only sister’s three children was well-known. When whispers of a possible kidnapping attempt had reached him, he’d reached out to Hollins-Winword to discreetly resolve matters.

Casey had two sisters and from them, four nephews and a niece. They were still children but whatever their ages, he knew there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to help keep them safe.

He stepped around Banyon and tapped a few keys on one of the keyboards that surrounded the room. The uppermost screen on the wall in front of them shifted from a satellite image to a photograph of the emir’s niece and nephews. “This isn’t about money. It’s about a power struggle between the emir and his despot of a second cousin. And a whole lot of oil behind them. Where are the other two?”

“Safe behind the walls of their London estate in the loving arms of their mama.”

“At least that’s something. We’ve only got Samira to worry about. Wish to hell she would have stayed in London instead of going out on this mission trip of hers.”

A series of electronic chimes sounded and a moment later, another interior door slid open and the man in charge stepped inside.

To most of the world—including the regular employees of Cee-Vid, who didn’t know anything else was going on beneath the surface—Tristan Clay was merely the brilliant mind behind Cee-Vid.

To a select few, he was close to the top of the food chain inside Hollins-Winword. And to Casey, Tristan Clay was not only his boss but his uncle.

The older man’s piercing blue gaze went straight to the bank of screens. “Where’re we at?”

Protocols were always followed whenever an asset or an operative went off plan. It was easier for Casey to work through them than it was for him to think about Janie’s “plan,” and he nudged Banyon out of the seat and took his position at the controls. “Last contact was thirty-six hours ago.” His fingers started flying over the console, satellites high above the world snapped to attention, and Casey did the only thing in the world he figured he was meant to do.

He kept Hollins-Winword’s own safe.

* * *

“You do realize that if women could just snap their fingers and find the perfect man, the entire chocolate industry might crumble to dust?” Hayley Templeton’s slender fingers hovered indecisively over the opened box of Godiva delectables sitting on top of the gleaming wood bar at Colbys.

Jane wasn’t indecisive at all. She plucked a heart-shaped piece from the box and bit it in half, sighing a little over the explosion of bliss on her taste buds. “I know I can’t just snap my fingers,” she countered. If her digits possessed such magic, she’d have waved them over Casey and he wouldn’t have bothered offering up his friends and associates to put their heads in her matrimonial noose.

He would have given his neck to her willingly.

Instead, he’d bolted.

Just as she’d known he would.

The chocolate suddenly lost its appeal, but she ate the second half of the heart anyway before rinsing her hands at the bar sink and pulling the latest rack of glasses fresh from the dishwasher built into the cabinets below the bar. “Other women manage to find spouses here in Weaver. So why can’t I?”

Hayley finally selected a chocolate and replaced the lid on the gold box. “Get that away from me before I eat the rest.”

“They are your chocolates,” Jane reminded her. Her friend had brought them with her when she’d stopped by the bar and grill that afternoon.

“And I expect you to save me. I haven’t been running with Sam Dawson four times a week only to have a box of chocolates, given to me by a grateful patient, going straight to my hips.” Hayley groaned. “Sam’s a slave driver. You’d think she’d have a little sympathy for her friends.”

Sam Dawson was a deputy with the sheriff’s department. “She gave me a parking ticket the other day. Sam doesn’t have any sympathy for anyone.” Jane took pity on Hayley and tucked away the golden box of temptation before unloading the rack of glasses onto the shelves on the wall behind her. “I think she was just making up for the fact that I kicked her butt in racquetball last week.”

“I honestly don’t know how I ended up with such competitive friends.” Hayley propped her elbows on the bar and glanced around. At three in the afternoon, the place was busy with families having late lunches or early dinners, but the bar itself was quiet.

It would pick up later, though. Friday nights were always packed at Colbys. The establishment had been a Weaver staple since long before Jane had bought it from the family of a friend she’d known since college. Well, she amended mentally, since her ex-husband, Gage Stanton, had staked her purchase of the place.

What was unusual, though, was Hayley stopping in at that hour of the day. Finished with the sparkling clean pilsner glasses, Jane turned back to her friend. “So what’s wrong?”

Hayley ran her hand down the sleek tail of her ponytail. “Who says anything’s wrong?”

Jane shook her head a little. When it came to the town of Weaver, even after several years there, they were still relative newcomers. As was Sam Dawson. But the three of them had all struck up an enduring friendship. She dumped ice into a glass, filled it with diet cola and set it in front of her friend. “You know bartenders are the best listeners. Comes with the territory.”

Hayley pulled a face and reached for the drink. “Counselors are the best listeners,” she corrected her. “My PhD in psychology says so.” She twisted the glass between her fingers. “Just some family dissension. Evidently, after more than thirty years of estrangement, my grandmother has been trying to mend fences with my dad and my uncle, and they’re not having any of it.”

Because the bar was so quiet and the restaurant section had its own complement of servers, Jane pulled up the stool she kept behind the bar and sat down to sip at her own soda. “This is their mom you’re talking about?”

Hayley nodded. “Vivian Archer Templeton.” She drew out the name, then lifted her shoulders. “She lives in Pittsburgh and has been making noises about visiting them in Braden. I think Daddy and Uncle David are wrong and should be more receptive. They didn’t really take kindly to my input. As far as they’re concerned, she’s just a selfish, filthy-rich snob who’ll never change.”

“And Dr. Templeton never goes off duty,” Jane murmured. “Is she really rich?”

“Loaded. She married into it, evidently, when she married her first husband. My grandfather. Steel or something.” Then Hayley seemed to shake off her thoughts. “Back to you and the great husband hunt. Believe me. I completely understand a ticking biological clock.” Her lips twisted ruefully as she patted her chest. “Ticktock, ticktock here, too. None of us are getting any younger. But women these days do have babies without rushing into a marriage.”

“Not me.” Suddenly restless, Jane grabbed a clean bar towel and moved to the far end to start polishing the long wooden surface. “I know society has changed since my mother did it, but that doesn’t mean single parenting is easy. As a family counselor, you would know that more than anyone.”

“True enough.” Hayley rested her elbow on the bar and propped her chin on her hand. “Though your mom didn’t make that choice alone. Your dad walked out on all of you, didn’t she?”

“She made him leave.” And once he was gone, her mother had pretended he never existed at all. Since her parents had never married, doing so had been horribly easy.

Hayley made a soft mmming sound.

Jane pulled out the chocolate box again and waved it under Hayley’s nose. “Stop looking at me like I’m one of your patients or I’m going to open this up again.”

Hayley pushed the box aside. “Fine. Since we’ve established the fact that you can’t just snap your fingers for a husband, what do you plan to do about it?” There was a smile in her eyes as she nodded toward the fishbowl on one end of the counter. “Have a drawing like you do for a free meal?”

“I’ve heard worse ideas.” Jane put away the chocolates again and eyed the bowl where people dropped in a business card or simply a name and phone number, scratched on the back of their receipt, for her weekly drawing. “I wonder if any guys would bother to enter.”

Hayley laughed. “For a chance with you? Half the men in this town—married or not—have probably had a fantasy or two about you.”

Jane grimaced. “I seriously doubt that.” She certainly hoped not. “Kind of an ick factor there, Dr. Templeton.”

“I know who isn’t at all icky.” Her friend smiled slyly. “Casey Clay.”

“I should never have told you about him,” Jane muttered.

Hayley’s smile widened. “If I were your therapist—”

“You’re not.”

“—I would suggest that you think about your feelings where he’s concerned.”

“I have no feelings,” Jane lied. “The man is impossible. He can’t even keep his truck clean. The last time I saw it, he had a pile of junk on the passenger seat that you wouldn’t believe.”

“Good family.” Hayley held up her index finger. “All of the Clays who live in the area are plain old good people.” She held up a second finger. “Well over six feet tall. Exceptional shape.” Her eyes twinkled. “Thick golden-brown hair and gray eyes. In other words, the usual good genes for that particular family.” She held up her third finger. “Intelligent.” Her pinky finger joined the others. “Good sense of humor.” She added her thumb. “Single, heterosexual male. Messy truck notwithstanding, I could go on.”

“Then you date him.”

Hayley laughed softly and glanced around the empty bar before leaning forward over her crossed arms. “You’re the one who’s been secretly sleeping with him for the past year. Seems to me he’d be your best candidate. And you realize if you’re not dating him, someone else will. Isn’t that going to bother you?”

Jane shrugged as if it wouldn’t, even though the very idea of it made her more than a little ill. “What he does isn’t my concern. He’s allergic to commitment anyway. He’ll tell you that himself.” He’d certainly said that exact thing to her more than once. Before they’d ended up in bed together, as well as after.

“You used to say the same thing about yourself.”

“Some allergies cure themselves, I guess. I want a baby.” She also was afraid she wanted Casey, but that was never going to happen. Cutting her losses now would be easier than having to later.

Hayley’s expression turned sympathetic. “I know you do, sweetie. But—” she lifted her hand peaceably “—this is just a little food for thought. Sometimes people will focus harder on a secondary issue in order to avoid dealing with a primary issue.”

“Casey Clay is not my primary issue,” Jane said flatly. “I knew exactly where we stood with each other and that’s why I ended things with him last night.” It was her own bad luck she’d allowed her emotions to creep in where he was concerned. She dragged the fishbowl over and dumped the half-dozen business cards and receipts out onto the bar top. “I can’t be hunting for a husband when I’m sleeping with him.”

She tugged off the card taped to the front of the fishbowl that described the weekly free-meal drawing and turned it over to the blank side. She pulled a pen from her pocket and uncapped it. “So what do you think? Win a free meal with Jane Cohen? Entries open to single men only?”

Hayley chuckled wryly and covered her eyes. “Girlfriend, you are just asking for trouble.”

* * *

“Is she serious?”

At the sound of his cousin’s voice, Casey looked up from the pool table where he was lining up his next shot. Erik was holding the fishbowl that usually sat on the end of Colbys’ wooden bar top.

Casey shrugged and focused on his shot again. “She gives away a free meal every week. Has for a long time. So what?” It was Friday night. Colbys was typically crowded. And even though Casey hadn’t really wanted to meet his cousin here after his encounter with Jane the night before, he hadn’t been able to come up with a good excuse not to. He’d located Bax, the missing asset in Nepal. He and the emir’s niece were no worse for wear, and though Bax hadn’t yet gotten her returned to her London apartment, at least they knew she hadn’t been abducted by her father’s terroristic cousin. For now, things were back on track.

At least in that world.

Casey involuntarily looked over to the bar where Jane was busy pouring out drinks. Her long hair was pulled back in a thick ponytail that swayed every time she turned to grab a glass off the shelves behind her. She was in her usual working garb of black T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots, but the fact that she wore them transformed the ordinary into something extraordinary.

She was a smart cookie. Never missed a thing. So he knew she was well aware of his presence. She just hadn’t bothered to give him so much as a glance.

He, on the other hand, couldn’t stop looking toward her.

He took his shot and sent the balls rolling.

None landed where he’d intended.

“Not just her usual free meal,” Erik was saying. He set the fishbowl on the rail near Casey before leaning over the table with his cue. “Looks to me like she’s shaking up the status quo between you two.”

Erik was the only one who knew of Casey’s involvement with the woman.

Past involvement, he reminded himself, since she’d pretty much kicked him to the curb the evening before.

He dragged his attention away from the smooth curves of Jane’s lightly tanned arms. “She’s over twenty-one,” he said casually. “Free to do whatever she wants.”

“That why your game seems shot to hell all of a sudden?”

He ignored Erik and glanced at the fishbowl.

When the words on the side of it penetrated, he very nearly tore the white index card free of the tape holding it in place.

She certainly wasn’t wasting any time with her husband hunt.

He held up the glass bowl, studying the contents. The damned thing was more than half full. Evidently, adding herself to the free-meal menu had spurred a whole new interest in her drawing.

“She’s out of her tree,” he muttered. Glancing around the bar, he spotted Keith Lambert, who was one of the game designers on the legitimate side of Cee-Vid, whom his uncle had recently hired straight out of school. The young guy, his usual plaid bow tie in place, was sitting in a corner booth with a couple other Cee-Viders. All three of them had their noses stuck in their cell phones as if they didn’t know how to communicate face-to-face.

Casey moved over to their table and plunked the fishbowl in the center of it, startling the young men. He knew plenty of designers who didn’t look as if they needed a good dose of sunshine, but these guys sure did. Collectively, they were pretty much the embodiment of every clichéd computer-geek joke. “Step right up, guys.” He tapped the bowl with Jane’s hand-printed invitation stuck to the side.

Keith squinted through his horn-rimmed glasses as he read the card. Then he craned his neck to look at Jane behind the bar across the room. “Sweet. I hear older women are hotter in the sack.”

Casey’s fingers curled. He’d bet his favorite shirt that Keith had never even kissed a girl, hot or otherwise. The same went for his pallid companions. Jane would make mincemeat of all of them before they ever got to dessert, much less anything after that. “So I’ve heard,” he said blandly. “Might consider stuffing the ballot box to up the odds in your favor.”

Keith’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Cheat?”

“She doesn’t specify one entry,” Casey reasoned. “The only restriction is you have to be single.” He plucked the pen from Keith’s ink-stained shirt pocket and tossed it on the table in front of him. “Go for it, man.”

Keith’s buddies were grinning and nearly bouncing in their booth.

Before he either rolled his eyes or knocked their heads together, Casey returned to his pool game.

But the game was already done. Erik had already cleared the felt. “You owe me twenty,” his cousin said, looking as if he wanted to laugh.

Casey pulled out his wallet and slapped down the money. “Why aren’t you home in the loving arms of your wife, anyway? Wedded bliss already wearing off?” His cousin and Isabella had gotten married the previous year and Casey knew good and well that they were besotted with each other.

“Izzy’s in Cheyenne with Lucy for a few days. They’ve taken some of their students for a dance workshop down there before school starts up next week for the fall.”

Lucy was another of their cousins, and she ran the only dance school in Weaver. Isabella taught a few classes there. “Little girls in tap shoes or big girls in belly-dancing costumes?” He felt his gaze straying back toward the bar but mastered the impulse and picked up his beer mug instead. “Your wife teaches both.”

Erik grinned wryly. “Don’t forget the pole-dancing-for-fitness classes.” He rubbed his jaw. “She actually had me try it, you know.”

Casey nearly dropped his beer. Despite being Tristan Clay’s son, Erik had gone into the ranching side of the Clay dynasty. But even in that, he had to go his own way, choosing to maintain his own brand rather than use the Double-C brand started by their grandfather, Squire, that was already one of the most well-known in the state. His cousin was salt-of-the-earth steady and more than a little old-fashioned, so the image that sprang to mind was one for the record books. “Swinging around on a pole?”

His cousin looked chagrinned. “It’s harder than you think. I fell on my ass. Izzy’s never gonna let me live it down.”

For the first time since Jane’s wanna-baby bombshell, Casey actually laughed. “She’s not the only one. I just don’t want to picture it in my mind. Afraid it’ll do permanent brain damage. What about Murph?”

Murphy had been Isabella’s teenage ward when she’d first come to Weaver. Now she was legally his mother and soon Erik would legally be his father. And Casey could rib the other man—who was his best friend as much as his cousin—about anything under the sun, including his new family, but he knew Erik had never been happier.

Erik grinned. “He was no more successful at it than I was, but you didn’t hear that from me. So what’s Jane really up to?”

Casey hid his frown in his beer and shrugged. He hadn’t shared Jane’s sudden life goal with Erik, mostly because it might lead to discussions he didn’t want to have. “Don’t ask me.”

Erik gave him a disbelieving look, but thankfully let the matter drop. Instead, he waved at the pool table. “Double or nothing?”

“Rack ’em up.” Casey’s gaze started to slide to the bar but he physically turned his back so he was looking toward the front door instead.

He took one last glance toward Keith. He and his buddies were busily stuffing business cards into the fishbowl.

God help them all.

Chapter Three

Jane managed a tight smile before shutting her front door in Prospect Number Three’s face.

The past three weeks—especially the past three Thursday-night dates with Number Three and his predecessors, One and Two—had been abysmal.

Number One, a real estate agent from nearby Braden, hadn’t understood the difference between Thursday and Friday and, after standing her up at the restaurant where she’d arranged to meet him, had instead accused her of standing him up when he’d expected her there the following night. She hoped he handled his real estate transactions with more accuracy.

Number Two was a veterinary technician from right here in Weaver. Nothing really wrong with Two. Except he spent the entire evening talking about his ex-girlfriend, with whom he was clearly still in love. Jane had felt like a matronly aunt, advising him to contact the girl and make things up with her.

And Number Three...

Jane heaved a sigh and leaned back against the door she’d just closed. Number Three might possess some genius intellect, but conversing about anything outside of the video games he designed had been impossible. And then the nitwit had believed she was going to invite him in for some dessert of a very personal variety after the dinner she had paid for.

She wouldn’t have gone out with him at all, because he worked at Cee-Vid, which was too closely connected to Casey, except that Number Three—like Two and One—had won the weekly fishbowl drawing.

The first thing she was going to do when she went to the bar the next day was throw out the fishbowl and all of its contents. If the only way she could get a date was through a drawing, she’d be better off looking into that whole mail-order-husband thing.

She rubbed at the pain between her eyebrows caused by the past ninety minutes of mind-numbing boredom and headed into her bedroom, shedding her knee-length sweater dress as she went. It was still relatively early, and she was too keyed up to relax. So she changed into jeans and a bright red turtleneck and headed back out to Colbys.

She’d throw out the fishbowl when she got there.

Her assistant manager, Merilee, had worked for Jane long enough not to show her surprise when she walked in the door on what was supposed to be her night off. Jane went straight to the glass bowl and dumped the contents in the trash, along with the card displaying the “rules” of the drawing. Then she stuck the bowl beneath the counter and glanced around the sparsely occupied tables.

She didn’t want to acknowledge what she was really doing: looking to see if Casey happened to be around playing pool. The pool tables were his primary interest where Colbys was concerned. Far more than any libations that she offered in the bar or food that they served in the restaurant.

But the tables were quiet.

“Everything all right?” Merilee asked when Jane sighed a little.

“Just fine.” Jane grabbed a bottled water, then pushed through the door to the storeroom, where all the shelves were neatly packed with supplies. She went into the minuscule office squeezed between the storage room and the draft cooler where her beer kegs were housed and threw herself down on the squeaky chair behind the beat-up metal desk.

But instead of opening the water bottle or booting up her computer, she picked up the photograph of her sister that sat in a wood frame on the corner of the desk. Julia was cuddling her infant son, Drake, and Julia’s husband, Don, was cradling them both in his arms. Happiness radiated from their eyes.

Jane rubbed her thumb over the picture glass, melancholy weighting her down. Julia, who now lived in Montana, was two years younger than Jane. She and Don had been married only eighteen months, though they’d been sweethearts since high school.

Would Jane’s marriage to Gage have been more successful if they hadn’t gotten married so quickly, while they’d still been in college, where they’d met?

She rubbed her forehead again and set down the picture frame.

Melancholy. She hated it.

Annoyed with herself, she started up the computer and drank down half of the water while waiting for it to chug to life. For the past year, ever since she’d made the mistake of asking him for a little help with the recalcitrant thing, Casey had been after her to let him upgrade her system.

And you’ve only resisted because you wanted to do it yourself. He wanted to take over, and you balked.

During that first consultation, instead of fixing the computer, somehow or other, they’d ended up having sex in the storeroom after Colbys was closed down for the night.