is. We have a McDonald’s by the highway, right? It’s not just the widows—everyone wants the locals to benefit the most from tourists. And what tourists will be drawn by chain restaurants and stores they can find anywhere?”
Emily smiled. “So you’re not talking about censorship or favoritism.”
“God, no.”
“You know I didn’t mean to imply that your grandmother would be a part of something so . . .”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell her what you were thinking,” he said in a confidential tone.
She rolled her eyes.
“She’s sharp as a tack, my grandma.” He shook his head. “She deals with the paperwork of the committee, handling the behind-the-scenes stuff, preparing the grants for the committee and the investors. Mrs. Palmer, in all her Western-drawl glory, is the public face, the one at every opening, the one who delivers the good news and the bad.”
“Why does that not surprise me?”
He grinned. “Mrs. Ludlow handles the legalities, attending the mayor’s press conferences, or sitting in on corporate board meetings, anything involved with the investors. Those three women are pretty formidable when they’re all together. Once, they chained themselves to a broken-down old house that had been a mining-town brothel.”
“No!” Emily clapped her hands to her cheeks, eyes wide with humor.
“The mayor wanted to tear it down, but they claimed it stood for women’s history since Chinese immigrant women had been the original whores—uh, prostitutes.”
“Good thing you corrected yourself. I can’t hear naughty words.”
He didn’t want to like her, but he couldn’t help himself. “I was a teenager at the time, but I can still remember Mrs. Ludlow calmly setting her walker to one side and putting manacles on her wrists.”
She laughed aloud, and he saw more than one man look her way appreciatively.
“So what happened to the building?” she asked. “Surely they didn’t drag three old women away.”
“Nope, they came up with a grant that enabled the building to be renovated into a B&B down by Silver Creek. It’s called Connections now.”
“Connections?”
“The B&B is one of the ways we’re connected to Valentine’s past.”
They smiled at each other, and he felt his own begin to fade as he contemplated the joy in Emily’s eyes. A man could look at that every day.
She slapped her hands on her thighs as she rose to her feet. “I think it’s time for you to go, cowboy. I have work to do, and I suspect those cows need you, too.”
He followed her back inside the restaurant and through the kitchen. He saw again the holes in the walls. “You going to hire someone to repair all this?”
At the back door, she turned and put her hands on her hips. “Why does everyone ask that? I’m a hard worker.”
“No offense, but there’s some skill involved.”
“What I don’t know, I’ll learn, so thanks for your concern.”
He passed her to go out into the rear hall. Without even touching her, he could feel the warmth of her body, smell the faint hint of floral perfume beneath the odor of Spic and Span. Whatever he told his brain, his body was paying attention to other signals.
“Tell Scout I missed seeing him,” Emily said, holding open the door to the alley.
She was a dog lover, too. Nate took the steps down to his truck before he could linger, but Emily had already shut the door.
Emily locked the alley door behind Nate and locked away any more thoughts of him. She was glad the awkwardness was finished. Well, most of it. She returned to the front of the restaurant and stood near the door’s glass window. Though she still kept the shutters drawn because of the mess, she could see out enough to admire how the town had made the best of its location and history. The perfect example was the Hotel Colorado just across the street, where a steady stream of cars loaded and unloaded near its front door. She imagined that the preservation-fund committee might have had an active part in that, too. Except for her own building, she hadn’t seen a business on Main Street that looked in need of repair; but then again, she hadn’t walked the side streets, something she’d have to rectify. It was hard to make the time when she needed to finish the building before she could get on with her life.
She idly wondered about the donors to the preservation fund and their opponents, the people against bringing in tourism. Which side did Nate really come down on? His family was well entrenched, and it would be