A Promise at Bluebell Hill (8 page)

To her surprise, he didn't even look through the window himself, only nodded.

“That makes sense,” he said. “Where would you like to go?”

She rubbed her hands together, trying to think of restaurants while wondering if he wasn't quite as rigid as she'd thought. He didn't seem reluctant to change his schedule, after all.

“What are you up for?” she asked. “Mexican? Japanese? Italian?”

“You choose.”

“A polite man,” she said, sliding her arm into his without thinking. “Oh, sorry. Forgot who I was with.”

“No problem.”

In that brief moment before she let go, she felt the warmth of his body, the hard muscles beneath his casual jacket and shirt, and inhaled another intoxicating whiff of his citrus aftershave. “You must think that an old-­fashioned thing to do, take a man's arm.”

He studied her. “Maybe. Makes you seem like an old-­fashioned girl, and I haven't gotten that impression so far.”

She laughed. “I'm not sure that's a compliment.”

He blinked at her. “I certainly didn't mean to disrespect you.”

“Now who's old-­fashioned? Honestly, I'm not offended. And I guess I'm not old-­fashioned, owning my own business and being single. Said like that, I seem like a modern woman. How about you?”

“Am I a modern woman?” he shot back.

Surprised and delighted by this glimpse of a sense of humor, she took his arm again. “I think I'm starting to like you, Travis Beaumont. I'd say let's have a good steak, but you've probably eaten in the Main Street Steakhouse plenty of times since it's right in your hotel.”

“You would be right.”

“Then let's go to the Halftime Sports Bar. It'll be crowded, but if I bore you, you can watch a game.”

He shook his head. “Monica, you don't bore me.”

She gave his arm a squeeze and smiled up at him.

It was early enough that they got a table right away although their waitress, Linda, gave Travis a second look and Monica a wink. The building had been a saloon for over a hundred years, and it still had the original carved wooden bar. The walls were paneled and covered in sports memorabilia between flat screen TVs. Neon signs filled each window.

Monica wasn't certain she'd have Travis's attention in such a busy place, the way his eyes continually scanned the crowd, but she imagined his behavior was ingrained after the military and now the Secret Ser­vice. He probably had to be paranoid all the time.

“If you like BLTs,” she said, when they had their menus and ice water, “you'll want to try theirs. It's their specialty.”

He closed his menu. “Done.”

She did the same, smiling at him. “You know, Travis, you've done a background check on me, so it only seems fair that you talk about yourself.”

“A background check doesn't tell you any details about the person, mostly about what she
hasn't
done.”

“I'll answer questions if
you
will.”

“You can try,” he said.

He almost sounded . . . teasing. She enjoyed looking into those deep blue eyes across a table, knowing she had his complete attention. But, then, he was very good at that.

“So do you have family?” she asked.

“An ex-­wife, if that counts. No kids. She's in the Secret Ser­vice, too.”

“That must be awkward.”

He gave that faint smile. “I don't think that was the reason we failed. But I do have closer family, three sisters, all younger than me.”

“You must have played the overprotective big brother really well.” She gave an exaggerated shudder.

“Two of them wanted that from me. The other one wanted to do everything I did, even when it meant building army forts in the woods near our house. And she's four years younger than me, so you can guess I didn't enjoy her most of the time.”

Monica grinned. “I like her already. So you played a lot of war games when you were young?”

He shrugged. “I like to be in command.”

She shivered and pressed her thighs together at the sexual thoughts that simple sentence aroused in her. Not the time for it, so she went back to a safe topic. “Maybe your sister didn't like following your orders. What's she do now?”

Travis seemed to straighten with pride. “She's in the Marines.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Wow! She really did want to be just like you.”

He lowered his gaze to the table briefly, and she thought there was some kind of pain inside him that he didn't want her to see. She didn't press it, not when he was finally revealing a bit of himself to her.

They paused to give Linda their drink and food order, and Monica wasn't surprised he had a Coke rather than a beer. She was lucky he deigned to have dinner on the job, let alone a drink.

“Well, Kelly's not just like me,” he continued. “She enlisted right out of high school although I thought she should go to college like I did. Being an officer just makes everything easier.”

“Girl who knows her own mind. Is she still in?”

“She is. That made it tough for me to leave when my enlistment was up, but she'd have been furious if I didn't follow what I wanted to do because of her.”

“And I agree. Why did you leave the Marines—­I mean, why did you want to join the Secret Ser­vice?” She lowered her voice on the last words.

Again, he gave her that faint, barely noticeable smile, but it was almost a grin on him. She felt proud every time she could get any sort of reaction out of such a carefully guarded man.

They both leaned back while Linda put down their drinks. Monica had ordered an iced tea.

“I felt like something was missing with my life in the Marines,” he continued after taking a long sip of his Coke. “You won't be surprised, but my revelation had something to do with the former president. He was almost assassinated when he was visiting my battalion in Afghanistan. It was downplayed.”

“And I bet you helped save his life.”

“Details are classified,” he said.

But he didn't quite meet her eyes, and she knew he'd probably risked his life jumping right in to help.

“That was when I realized I didn't just want to protect the country but the commander in chief himself. It was a challenge I couldn't stop thinking about. When my enlistment was up, I resigned and applied to the Secret Ser­vice. Not that they take you right away, I still had to jump through hoops and prove myself.”

“Even with your record?”

“Everyone is rigorously tested and interviewed.”

“Makes sense. What was your first assignment?”

“Nothing exciting. I was in the Denver Field Office for a ­couple years, handling bank fraud and computer-­related crime.”

She was in Denver at least a half dozen times a year—­she could have passed him on the street. No, she'd have remembered him.

“Then I was transferred to CAT—­counterassault team—­which was a lot more like my work in the Marines. I can't say much about it except CAT are the guys carrying weapons in black SUVs in the presidential motorcade. CAT agents distract if the president's detail needs to get him away.”

Distract? Now that could mean a whole lot of things.

“And now I'm with the advance team.”

“Preparing for the president's trips,” she said. “So is the next step of your career guarding the president herself?”

He nodded. “Presidential Protective Detail. I'm hoping my work here will get me one step closer.”

She took a deep breath, glad for Linda's interruption with their giant BLTs. If she thought too much about the widows' protest, she might feel guilty, and she had nothing to feel guilty about. The Double Ds were allowed freedom of speech, and Monica herself would make sure nothing bad happened that would interfere with Travis's job.

After swallowing a mouthful, he said, “Great BLT. But now let's talk about you.”

She took a quick bite of hers, wondering how she could compete with his exciting life. Her small-­town world was the life he'd escaped after growing up.

 

Chapter Seven

T
he sports bar was warm with ­people, the sound of laughing voices, and the background drone of sports on TV, but Travis didn't have any problem concentrating on Monica. He had a problem concentrating on anything
else
when he was with her.

She was too easy to talk to, too easy to confide in, and he'd had to remember his various oaths before revealing too much. That was a rarity for him since he'd spent his adult life keeping the secrets of his country.

Her beauty was a distraction, those large eyes that saw too much, the way her hair was as free and uncomplicated as she seemed to be. He liked the curve of her lips and thought too often about kissing her.

She interrupted his thoughts with, “But you haven't told me about your other sisters.”

And that made it obvious she didn't want to talk about herself, which intrigued him even more.

“One is a teacher and the other an architect. The teacher is married with a two-­year-­old, and the architect has a girlfriend, but Montana frowns on gay marriage. My parents are both alive and healthy. Your turn.”

“You know, you're a hard act to follow,” she admitted, setting down her sandwich and eyeing him.

“I have such an exciting family?”

“You've had such an exciting life. Mine must look absolutely dull in comparison.”

He found himself leaning toward her and speaking honestly in a low voice. “Monica, there's nothing dull about you. I wish there were.”

She leaned toward him as well. “I think that's another compliment. Although every compliment you give is pretty unusual.”

He stared into her brown eyes, and he could only think of the warmth of hot coffee on a cold winter's day. She'd be just as welcome and even more satisfying. There was something so genuine and fun-­loving about her, and that kind of woman never tolerated someone like him for long. But he wouldn't be in Valentine for long.

He straightened and lifted his sandwich again. “You're procrastinating.”

“It's just a pretty basic story, nothing with exciting highs and lows, like yours. I have a brother named Dom who's a food broker, and fraternal twin sister, Missy—­Melissa—­who's a correspondent on CNN. Have you seen her?”

“I don't watch a lot of TV, but I imagine I would have noticed someone who looks like you.”

“We're not identical.”

“But you're sisters.”

She blinked. “Yeah. Close sisters. She's my best friend—­along with a ­couple girls in town, one of whom is Emily at Sugar and Spice.”

“You're getting distracted from your family.”

“You're really nosy.”

He eyed her intently. “So it's only nosy when other ­people do it?”

She blushed. “Well . . . you have me there. But you've heard all the major stuff about my sister and brother. Dom still lives here, so you might end up meeting him. And as for my parents”—­she hesitated a little too long—­“they're alive and healthy just like yours. They live here, too.”

He stared at her a moment, tempted to ask more, then took a bite of his sandwich. She released her breath. He could tell she really didn't want to talk about her parents, and he wasn't about to pry into something that made her uncomfortable.

He washed his sandwich down with a swig of Coke, then said, “So why choose flowers as a career?”

“They're beautiful, they make ­people happy,” she said, her shoulders lowering as she relaxed. “And I'm lucky enough to have a gift for design—­enhanced by all the classes I took, of course.”

“But how did you know you liked working with them? You could have grown a garden if it was just about looking at them.”

“A lot of it was because of my Grandpa Shaw. He moved in with us after my grandma's death when I was a little girl because he was too ill to live on his own. He was a pretty cool guy, and he lived until just before I went off to college. He'd been a bellman at the Hotel Colorado, and my grandma a maid. They met there. He didn't just believe in equal rights—­he marched for it. Great guy.”

That made him think of the local protest against the hurried spa construction. But that was different, of course, and it was about old women, not young ones who owned their own business and probably had to chase guys away. He urged her on with his sandwich.

“Can you believe they saved enough to put my dad through college?” she asked. “Pretty impressive. But anyway, we read to each other, played cards and board games. Missy would write him stories, and I would draw him pictures of flowers because he used to garden before he became ill. He told me all about plants, long discussions about them. As I got older, I did start my own garden, just so he could advise me. He'd watch from the window although on some days he made it to the back porch.”

He watched her expression soften, her gaze lose focus, as she looked into her happy past. Their childhoods hadn't been too different although they'd focused on different things.

“In the winter, we potted so many plants inside that Dom used to say it was a jungle in the house,” she mused. “Anyway, as I went through high school, I wondered what to do about my love of flowers and thought maybe I should go into interior design, as if beautifying homes was what I wanted. Thank goodness I took a lot of business courses, too, because it didn't take me long to realize it was only the flowers I wanted to beautify with, nothing else. So that's when I knew. Luckily, the previous owner of my shop took me on each summer. When I graduated, he was ready to retire, and I bought the business—­or I went into major debt for the business,” she corrected herself, wearing a crooked grin. “Not as exciting as saving the president's life, I bet.”

Without thinking about it, he put his hand over hers. “But satisfying to you. You're happy. I think I keep waiting for the next thing, hoping it will finally make me happy.”

Where the hell had that come from? Monica's eyes grew large. He released her immediately, and she didn't try to hold on. He signaled for the check. The silence could have been uncomfortable, but Monica seemed fine with it.

After Linda left it on the table, Monica said, “So now you know all about me.”

“I don't think so, but I guess I'm not entitled to more since I'm only treating you to a meal for my own benefit.” But he'd touched her, and her skin had been so warm, so soft, and it made him wonder if the rest of her skin would feel the same.

“What benefit is that?”

He put a ­couple bills on the table. “I'm going to use your knowledge of local contacts for the good of the country, after all.”

She stood up. “All right, have it your way. Oh, speaking of flowers, I thought of a question, but I'll ask you when we get outside.”

They weaved through the tables that had grown crowded while they'd eaten. Travis saw all the curious gazes he drew, the recognition when they spotted Monica, the smiles, the waves, the arched brows aimed from her to him. Small towns, he thought, shaking his head. He didn't miss that recognition. He liked anonymity in his job.

Out on the street, they walked side by side for the block it took to reach Sugar and Spice. The sun had already set behind the mountains although nightfall was still several hours away.

“Travis, you know I'll be doing the flowers for the wedding, right?”

He nodded.

“It's going to be a massive job, all done at the last minute. I spent a lot of today making plans, and, soon, I'll be ordering the flowers. Can you make sure your other agents stay out of my way while I'm working? I imagine they'll be in the front window, of course, and—­”

“The front window on your second floor. Do you work up there?”

“Oh. I live there.” She blinked at him in surprise, as if it hadn't occurred to her they'd be invading her personal space.

“I'm sorry I didn't explain in detail. When you do this for a living, you start assuming everyone realizes you need a higher vantage point for this kind of observation post. Will you still give us permission?”

“Of course. I just have to rearrange what I was thinking.” She looked thoughtful.

“Don't worry, I'll make sure it's painless for you.” He anticipated needing to stop in at her apartment, and the thought of squeezing another appointment into his crowded schedule didn't bother him as much as it should.

As he opened the door to Sugar and Spice for her, Monica said, “I'm not one of those girls who skips desserts, and Em makes the best. She's totally self-­taught although she had some guidance from our friend, Heather Armstrong, who was trained in culinary school in San Francisco. You might meet her, too—­she's doing the catering for the wedding shower.”

“I'll meet her on paper anyway,” he said.

Monica smiled. “Background checks. Right.”

The smell of cinnamon was powerful as they entered the cheerful bakery. Travis saw small tables and chairs to the right, a long counter to the left with glass display cases below, showcasing cakes and pastries. Large glass coolers at the back displayed even more tempting desserts. A rear door probably led to the kitchen. Springtime flowers decorated strategic spots, and he thought Monica might have had a hand in that.

There were only a few customers, and two elderly women waiting on them from behind the counter, one whose hair was obviously dyed red and the other with the biggest blond wig he'd ever seen outside Nashville. They wore aprons that said,
WE PUT T
HE HEAT IN SWEET
, and he raised an eyebrow in surprise.

Monica leaned close to him, and he looked down at her.

“Those are some of my surrogate grandmas, Mrs. Thalberg and Mrs. Palmer. They live in the Widows' Boardinghouse.”

“I've heard of them.”

She did a double take, and he thought she looked . . . nervous. Interesting. Of course, their protesting past wouldn't be any secret to her.

“I can't believe the widows need background checks,” she said.

“No, not yet anyway. But a bridal shower held in their home is on the schedule. Even though the president won't be here in time to attend, we will be looking into everything that has anything to do with the wedding.”

Then the door to the kitchen swung open, and a young, pretty woman entered. She had strawberry blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and eyes that perfectly illustrated “bright blue.” She was short, but with great curves, and she, too, wore one of the signature aprons over khakis and a pink top.

She smiled warmly at Monica, and Travis immediately sensed the bond between them. He might not be a man who showed his emotions, but he felt them in others.

Monica hesitated and glanced at the women behind the counter, as well as their customers.

“Travis Beaumont,” she said, “meet Emily Thalberg, owner of Sugar and Spice.”

Monica had remembered not to reveal his whole identity in front of a crowd, and he appreciated it. Emily took his hand in a firm grip, smiling up at him guilelessly but with interest, too. She glanced again at Monica with some unseen form of communication. “So nice to meet you, Mr. Beaumont.”

“Travis is fine,” he said.

She nodded. “Did you two eat dinner already?”

“Just came from the Halftime,” Monica said. “BLTs.”

Emily briefly closed her eyes as if the memory needed to be revered. But then his sisters seemed to worship their food, too.

“Sounds delicious,” Emily said. “But I bet you could use dessert.”

Monica rubbed her hands together. “Definitely. Travis, Em has lots to choose from. Let's go browse.”

Browsing put him in proximity to the older women, who didn't hesitate to introduce themselves, letting Emily step in to take care of another customer.

The redhead wore tasteful makeup to help disguise her age, but her hands looked like she'd worked hard her whole life.

“I'm Rosemary Thalberg, Emily's grandma-­in-­law.” She shook his hand with a firm grip.

“So you're associated with the Silver Creek Ranch?” he asked.

Her eyes brightened with pleasure. “You've heard of it?”

“Yes, and I took a drive near it when I had some free time. Beautiful countryside.”

“Thank you. My son and his wife and kids run it now. Though I may be retired, I like to work part-­time for Emily.”

She turned to the other old woman with the blond wig, who, beneath her apron, wore a dress covered in colorful cupcake images. He didn't think he'd ever seen that kind of pattern before.

“This is Renee Palmer,” Mrs. Thalberg said. “Her grandson Adam works on my son's ranch.”

Mrs. Palmer took his hand in both of hers and held it extra long while she studied him, wearing a broad smile. “I'm so glad to meet you,” she said, her Western accent strong. “It's been a while since Monica's brought a fellow around. The pickin's were slim around here when she was younger—­she had to resort to lookin' for rich young men in Aspen.”

Hiding his smile, he glanced at Monica, who closed her eyes and gave a soft groan.

“I was a teenager, Mrs. Palmer. Everyone does stupid things when they're a teenager.”

“Renee, leave the poor girl alone,” Mrs. Thalberg said.

“So what stupid things did you do with the opposite sex, Mr. Beaumont?” Mrs. Palmer asked slyly.

“You don't need to answer that,” Monica quickly said, then sent a beseeching glance at Emily. “We just want to pick out dessert.”

But he gave the widow's question serious consideration. “I grew up in a small town, too.”

“Look what you have in common,” Mrs. Thalberg said to Monica.

Monica's grimace was supposed to pass as a smile, he guessed. He didn't mind if ­people thought he was interested in her—­it might prove helpful as he got a feel for everyone. And spending time with her was hardly a hardship.