Bank.” She pointed to the jewelry store behind her. The orange-red brick of the former bank building looked yellowed in the night against its limestone base. The light emanated from the arched lunette glass doors over a cracked sidewalk where the enormous four-story structure had settled deeply into the ground for more than a hundred years. “They tried to take off with $70,000—which is worth about a million today.”
“When was that?” Janson asked. “The Old West?”
Her eyes darted to the infuriating Janson Styles. Rosa clung to him like a spider monkey, and for the hundredth time that night, Mollie wondered what their relationship was. He certainly hadn’t been dating her a month ago during that bachelor auction, but the elegant Molinero ring on her finger showed that their date tonight was anything but casual. Mollie took a steadying breath. “They had a Model T,” she reminded him, “so not the Old West.”
His brow furrowed. If he was working out the math in his head just to correct her on what the true inflation would be on the $70,000, she’d lose it. Instead he shrugged. “I’m starting to think that their ’20s were a lot better than ours.”
For once she agreed with him, but she scowled anyway, anything to fight the attraction she felt sizzling between them. “Well, I think the gangsters would disagree with you after what happened to them. Eureka Springs doesn’t take kindly to arrogant know-it-alls who think they know better than everybody else.”
“Maybe Eureka Springs needs to give more people a chance,” he said.
Wait. Was he bringing up her rejection again? Where did he get off calling her Eureka Springs, anyway? “Maybe Eureka Springs doesn’t want to.” She cringed at how stupid that sounded and tried to amend it. “Eureka Springs knows better, okay? He’d have to prove that he was the kind of man Eureka Springs needed.” Her throat felt tight when Janson’s attention locked on her. Mollie would have to be as dead as the ghosts she talked about not to notice his beautiful eyes studying her like—like what? Almost like he wanted to get rid of everyone else around them and take her in his arms.
That was crazy. Stop this, Mollie! He’s on a date! The last person she wanted to be was someone who got in the way of a healthy relationship—not that she had the skills to flirt anyone away from someone as seductive as Rosa. Mollie groaned. Forget about him! “So the thing is that they made a fatal mistake...” she tried again.
“Who, the bank robbers?” he asked. “Or Eureka Springs?”
“The bank robbers.” She’d never had such a hard time telling this story before. “The bank robbers seriously underestimated Eureka Springs.”
“Oh, these sound like the Watchers! They do not trust newcomers.” Rosa laid her head against Janson’s shoulder, her eyes sparkling with interest.
Another stab of jealousy ran through Mollie. Tonight had to be a record for turning that particular shade of green, and for a man who didn’t see her that way. She really needed to wrap up this ghost tour. She should finish off the tale of the bank robbers and take the group to the catacombs and cut things short. No one would complain. The lumbering bodyguard behind Janson clearly wanted to be anywhere but here, and the shorter, leering one would be better off at the Yellow Dragon picking up chicks, not Mollie. Rosa only wanted time alone with Janson, who’d basically said he thought the tour was a waste of time. Yeah, cut this short.
She took a deep breath. She was a professional. “The bank robbers got sloppy, you see. They knew Eureka Springs went home for a lunch break at twelve, so they set their watches to come at 12:05, but when they walked in that morning and saw the bank was full of people, the robbers realized their watches were an hour off.”
“So taking the bank could’ve worked then?” Janson said. “Eureka Springs isn’t that tough.”
How had this somehow turned into a metaphor about her? “Oh Eureka Springs is tough,” she assured him. “The teller pushed a silent alarm that went to a bank up the street and to the Basin Hotel at the bottom of the hill and everybody got their guns out and came running. Someone shot at the getaway car. The young kid driving it had no idea what he was doing, so they caught him right away.” The town always had a blast doing the reenactment of the shootout every year