Sweet Vidalia Brand Read online

  He’d made a fortune taking over failing bars, saloons and nightclubs, recreating them into successful hot spots, and then selling them for massive profits. He’d become one of the richest men in Texas. He’d married, had three sons, and neglected them almost as much as John Brand had neglected his daughters. He’d divorced after fifteen years with a woman he had liked at first, disliked later on, but never loved. There was only one woman he’d ever really loved.

  It was only a month ago that he’d realized he wanted to leave something more behind than a portfolio stuffed with paper wealth. He wanted to leave his sons something real. Something of him. Something they could be proud of. And he wanted it to be in Big Falls Oklahoma, where he’d been a young man with his entire future ahead of him, who didn’t yet know that he’d never be happier than he was right then. Richer. More successful. Busier. But never happier.

  Seeing Vidalia again had been a bonus to coming back here. But it hadn’t been his only reason. He intended to breathe his last in Big Falls, the closest thing to a hometown he’d ever had.

  But his main reason for coming back here now was because he wanted to spend one more Christmas in Big Falls. Christmases had been magical here. Vidalia and her little girls always made them so special, even when he’d just been a lonely drifter handyman with no family to call his own. Three Christmases, he’d been invited to share in the holiday meal with the Brands. Three Christmases when John Brand had seen fit to be elsewhere. Even poor, Vidalia had given her girls holidays to remember. Meaningful, sparkling, magical holidays full of love and laughter.

  He wanted his boys to experience a holiday like those ones he remembered, just once. He’d been too busy getting rich to give them any of those. And according to his doctors, he should just about have enough time left to make that happen.

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  An hour later, after closing time, Vidalia stood in the cold rain, looking across Main Street at what used to be Milner Feed & Grain. The big building was wearing an “I’m being exterminated” sort of disguise. Maybe it really was an exterminator’s tent covering the entire place. Vidalia wouldn’t know, having never seen one. Bugs only tended to be a problem in big cities, where there wasn’t room for them to live outdoors where they belonged. She’d seen big city life. Never lived it. If she had, she figured she’d have most likely run screaming for this particular corner of Oklahoma. The northwestern part, where there were mountains, and where there was weather. They got a little snow once or twice over the course of an average winter. She wondered again if they would this year. Snow for Christmas...that would be something, wouldn’t it?

  She almost asked God to send her some, but then she couldn’t quite do it. She’d sinned. She’d sinned in a big way, and she had never made that sin right. And while she’d managed to push it to the back of her mind for a good many years, it was front and center, now. She didn’t feel she had any business asking God for anything.

  Sighing, she pushed the dark thoughts aside and got back to the moment at hand. There wasn’t a lick of traffic on the slick, shiny ribbon of road that unfurled in either direction. The sheen of rain on the blacktop was the only way to tell the difference between the road and the night itself. There wasn’t another car around, either. And she’d left her own a football field away, before she’d got here. The former feed store was right on the edge of town. Vidalia lived five miles beyond the other end of town, back the way she’d come. The OK Corral, her best friend for the past more-years-than-she-cared-to-count, was on the opposite end of Main.

  Her hair was getting wet. She should’ve brought a hat. But she hadn’t had one with her at the Corral, and she’d come directly here from there. Probably because she was afraid she’d lose her nerve if she went home first. It would be too easy to just go to bed and try to forget about....

  About Bobby.

  Not that she would’ve been able to.

  Nope, Bobby Joe McIntyre was on her mind. And in her town. And it hadn’t taken too much algebra to figure out why. He’d made his millions buying out saloons, rebuilding them into something huge and gaudy and soulless, and then selling them again. There were no out of business saloons in Big Falls. Not right now, anyway. But there was one former feed store, auctioned off for taxes months ago, that had suddenly come to life underneath an oversized tent. And there were strangers in town. Oh, they were careful, showing up only a few at a time to shop or use the Post Office. But there were a lot of them. She’d been keeping track. No less than twenty new faces had appeared on the other side of her mahogany bar in the past few weeks. Working men, hardly a female among ‘em.

  Until she’d seen Bobby, she’d assumed it was some PR stunt by whatever corporate giant was going to try to put up a chain store where the feed and grain used to be. There’d been good-natured debate among the locals about what it would be.

  But the minute she’d seen Bobby’s still sinfully sexy backside walking away, it had hit her. It was a saloon. That was his business. Big, flashy, city-slickin’, modern mockeries of old west clichés. He was in this town to put her out of business.

  And playing on that one night, and what had happened between them–almost happened, as far as he would ever know–to keep her too flustered to notice what was happening right under her nose.

  She would be damned if she was going to take this sitting down.

  But of course, she had to make sure.

  Drawing a deep breath, she hunched her shoulders, stepped out from under the leafless tree that she’d been trying to use as an umbrella, and jogged across Main Street and around to one side of the building. Then she stood there with her back against the canvas tent, looking at the night and the parking lot and the road.

  It was quiet as a churchyard and cold enough to raise goose bumps on the Devil’s backside.

  Okay, it’s now or never .

  The main entrance to the feed and grain used to be right about where she was standing. So she crouched low, lifted the tent, and ducked underneath. And then she stood there between the brown slab wood siding and the canvas, fumbling in her jacket pocket for the flashlight she’d brought from the saloon.

  The main entrance was no longer where it had been or it would’ve been in front her nose. She shone the light up and down the siding, and realized by its gleam that it wasn’t wood at all. It was some kind of plastic made to look like slab wood. Didn’t that just figure? Make believe wood for a make believe saloon, if her theory panned out.

  She moved the flashlight further until it gleamed on a great big window a few feet away. So she edged that way, thinking that from the outside she must look like a giant tick on a barn-sized hound dog.

  There, now she was in front of the big window. She cupped her hands around either side of her face and tried to see inside, then had to cup the flashlight in one fist and press it flush against the glass to light the inside a little bit. But its beam didn’t go far enough.

  She was frowning, squinting, and frustrated, when she heard the distinct sound of a shotgun working a shell into the chamber. Pump-action, if she wasn’t mistaken. And she wasn’t.

  “All right, Mister, I’ve got you in my sights,” Bobby said. “You come on out from behind that canvas nice and slow. And put your hands up just as quick as you can manage. Understood?”

  “Yeah,” she said. And she didn’t waste a lot of time obeying.

  She lifted the tarp and poked her head out from underneath it, and before she even got upright, was blinded by a flashlight beam.

  “Vidalia? Is that you?”

  She pressed her lips. “Yeah, Bobby, it’s me. Put the light down, will you? Shotgun too, if the barrel’s still pointed my way.”

  “Son of a–”

  “Watch the language, Bobby.”

  The flashlight moved away, but the damage was done. She was blinking like a mole as his long, tall silhouette strode across the street toward her. Bastard was wearing a duster, of all things. A duster and that Stetson from earlier. H
e couldn’t have a little mercy? She was ashamed but wasn’t about to hang her head because of it. God knew she’d done worse things. That was the problem.

  She kept her chin high, looked him right in the eyes when she could finally see them.

  “You care to tell me what you’re doin’, sneakin’ around my place in the middle of the night, Vidalia?”

  He’d never called her Vi. Always Vidalia. She’d loved that about him. “You just answered your own question.”

  “Huh?” The light came up again. She blocked her eyes with a hand and he lowered it.

  “What am I doin’? I’m sneaking around your place in the middle of the night.”

  “Don’t be a smartass.”

  She shrugged. “I figured out what you were up to as soon as you left the Corral and my head stopped spinning.”

  His even, white smile appeared so suddenly she thought he’d turned the flashlight back on. “I made your head spin?”

  “Don’t change the subject. I know what you’re up to, Bobby. I just came out here to make sure. Figured I should give you the benefit of the doubt till I’d seen proof.”

  “So this is you giving me the benefit of the doubt.”

  She nodded, standing her ground. Her ridiculous-sounding, but utterly true ground.

  “You could’ve just asked me what I was doing in town, you know.”

  “I asked you. Twice. You gave me a non-answer both times.” She shrugged and reached the spot where he stood, looking up into the rain and into his eyes.

  He took off his Stetson and put it on her head. “Ask me again.”

  “What are you doing in town?”

  He took his time about looking at her face before he finally nodded, twice, slow. “Didn’t you see?”

  “Nope. You started bellering at me just as I got a good look through that window. Scared me so bad I almost dropped my flashlight.” She looked at him, looked close, just as he’d done to her. Her eyes had finally adjusted, so she could see the cut of his jaw. It was a really nice jaw, wide and square, although at the moment it was set a little tightly for her taste.

  “Can I buy you a drink, Vidalia Brand?”

  “Corral’s closed.”

  “I know.” He took her by the elbow and led her toward the front of the place. Then he unzipped a doorway in the canvas and led her through, and then through a great big set of double arching doors behind it.

  The entryway was huge, with coatracks and benches, and dead center, a set of batwing doors that put her own to shame, their wood all tooled and then the cuts painted gold. Some would call it elaborate. She would call it gaudy.

  That was when she knew she’d been right. And he left her for a moment, and went through them. Flipping a switch, he flooded the place with light.

  Vidalia pushed through the swinging doors and took a long, slow look around. There were round tables, antiqued to look old. There were chandeliers made out of elk racks. There was a three sided hardwood bar three times as long as the one in the OK Corral, with high standing saddle shaped seats all the way around. It was backed by a mirror the entire length of it, behind racks and shelves for bottles and glasses and pitchers. There was a pizza slice shaped stage at the front right corner of the place, a dance floor the size of a basketball court. Half of one anyway. And the coolest mechanical bull over in the corner.

  And beside the stage, a player piano. It looked like an antique, not a replica. Wow.

  She didn’t know whether to tell him how amazing the place was or kick the man where he would know he’d been kicked.

  Instead, she turned and looked up and right into his eyes, put her hands on her hips and tapped one foot, awaiting his explanation.

  Bobby couldn’t think straight with Vidalia’s big brown eyes looking up into his. Her expression was probably supposed to be fierce, but all he wanted to do was kiss it right off her pretty face. God, he’d missed her, ached for her, though he’d buried it so deep it had just become a vague sense of dissatisfaction with everything in his life. His marriage, his sons, his wealth. No matter how much he did, it was never enough to fill the hole she’d left in his heart.

  “It’s...a saloon,” he said.

  “I can see it’s a saloon,” she replied. “Of sorts.”

  “I’m calling it The Long Branch.”

  “No one under fifty even remembers Gunsmoke anymore, Bobby.”

  “That makes it even better. A little obscure. The kind of thing the kids will Google.”

  “It’s a second saloon in a one-saloon town. You came here to put me out of business.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Hell, come ‘ere.” He walked her across the big dance floor toward the stage. There were red velvet curtains on either side of it, held back by golden cords. “The OK Corral is a place for the locals, where they can relax and drink and get some bar food at great prices. You agree with that description?”

  She pursed her lips, lowered her head, saying nothing, not giving him an inch.

  “The Long Branch is more of a tourist attraction.”

  “We don’t have tourism in Big Falls. Has it really been so long you don’t know that?”

  “They have tourism in Tucker Lake, and that’s only a few miles east. And there are a half dozen Ghost Towns within a seventy-mile radius, all of them doing steady business. This is gonna become a regular stop for those same tourists. It’ll bring business to everyone in Big Falls, you included. We’re gonna have floor shows, waitresses dressed as saloon girls. Every now and then we’ll have some actors come in and shoot the place up, then be rounded up and arrested by a Marshall Dillon type. Lots of special effects to make it seem real. You know how some places do mystery dinners? We’ll be doing Dime Novel dinners. And I mean full dinners, with a well-staffed kitchen and one of the best chefs in the state. Here, take a look at the menu.” He took hold of her arm, but she tugged it away as he led her back to the bar. He walked around behind it, plucked a menu from a stack, and set it, open, in front of her.

  She sighed, but slid up onto a saddle shaped barstool and looked down at the menu. Then she blinked slow and looked up at him again. “I can’t really–”

  “Here. Use mine.” He’d already had his bifocals in hand, and he set them on top of the menu.

  She picked them up, red in the cheeks—which was a good look on her, he thought. Then she put them on and looked at the menu. He did too. And he didn’t need his glasses, because he knew it by heart. Cowboy burgers. Six-gun steaks. Great big racks of ribs with the sweetest, tangiest barbeque sauce he’d ever tasted. Fried chicken. Mashed potatoes and gravy. It was old fashioned food, stick to the ribs food. Cowboy food. Food they didn’t serve far and wide anymore. But prepared by a gourmet chef with prices befitting his skill.

  She shifted her eyes a little, then they widened. “Your prices are on the uppity side, don’t you think?”

  “Like I said, I’m not trying to compete with you. The floor show’s free. But we gotta cover expenses.”

  She closed the menu, slid it back across the bar to him. “Still and all, it doesn’t change what you did. You flattered me. Turned my head, to be honest. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’m not in the habit of ducking the truth. I was feeling giddy as a school girl when you gave me those cow eyes and pretended you’d been missing me all these years. But it was just some two bit, side-winding dirty trick.” She slid off the stool. It was a little drop to the floor, but she managed to make it with dignity.

  “Um, you shot me down, Vidalia.”

  “Well what earthly difference does that make?”

  She started walking toward the front door.

  Thinking fast, Bobby grabbed the remote from its holster on the inside edge of the bar, aimed and fired. The lights dropped down low, the bulbs taking on a flickering quality, like gas lamps. She stopped walking, looking around in surprise. He hit another button and music came up—Conway and Loretta singing Lead Me On. And Vidalia turned toward him with a “You don’t think that’s gonna work, do yo
u?” expression on her pretty face.

  He jumped up onto the bar, sliding on his denim clad backside right across it, and jumping clean off the other side. Then he strode right up to her, slid one arm around her waist, and clasped her hand in the other one.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” She didn’t pull away.

  “Aside from pulling a hamstring with that bar-jumping thing I just did to impress you, you mean?”

  She tried not to smile. She was fighting it with everything in her. “Yeah, aside from that.”

  “I’m testing out my new dance floor.” He nudged her into motion, and she fell right into step with him, following his steps without a single falter. So he got a little fancy, giving her a spin, followed by a dip, then pulling her back up again and holding her a little closer than before.

  She laughed when he did that. Tipped her head back and laughed, and when she brought her eyes to his again, he got stuck there. This was magical, what was sparkling between the two of them, he thought. It was just like that night so long ago.

  And then he remembered his situation. This wasn’t fair to her.

  The song ended, and he let her go. “I’m real sorry I offended you, Vidalia. And I admit, I did walk into the Corral with the intention of asking for your advice and assistance with this new venture of mine. But the minute I saw you again, it wasn’t business at all anymore.”

  She lowered her head, and he couldn’t tell in the dim light, but he thought she was thinking.

  “Your dance floor works just fine,” she said at length. “I can’t remember the last time I waltzed around a barroom.”

  “I remember the last time I did,” he said. “With you, in the Corral. To that same song.”

  She shot him a look and he knew she remembered as well as he did. Maybe she was surprised that he did, though.