Chapter Fifteen
Donovan picked up the call on the fourth ring. “I got your note. Not sure I agree with your hiring practices though.”
“You don’t have to agree. You just have to do what I say.”
That was certainly clear enough.
“Want to tell me why I need to hang around here until Arnie’s grand opening?”
“No, you’ll find out soon enough. Want to tell me who my daughter has been seeing besides you?”
“No. I’m sure if you don’t already suspect, you’ll find out soon enough.”
The crime boss chuckled. “You have more guts than brains, you know that?” He did. Malcolm was quiet for a moment. “She serious about this man?”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” Donovan said with a sigh.
He wasn’t about to tell Malcolm about the baby.
He didn’t want to tell the man anything.
If he’d thought he could just get in his car and drive away, he would have.
Maybe he would’ve taken Goldie with him.
“She might be honest with you if she thought you really cared.”
“Are you sure you’re in a position to be offering relationship advice?” Knowing he wasn’t expected to answer, he remained silent. “Arnie tells me that you’re playing up to Goldie Shaw, making her old boyfriend Max Lander jealous.”
Was it that obvious? “It’s just a job, nothing personal. Goldie failed to mention the boyfriend is the sheriff, but I’m sure you know that as well.”
“You think that’s relevant?” Malcolm asked.
“I do, if my distracting the sheriff is a benefit to anyone we know. If that’s the case, then I’m doing a hell of a job.”
“Maybe you’re smarter than I give you credit for.
” The crime boss chuckled again, seemingly amused that Donovan had figured out at least part of why he wanted him to stay in Dry Gulch until Arnie’s grand opening.
“Make sure he stays distracted. I don’t want you doing too good of a job and getting them back together. ”
He heard confirmation but something more in Malcolm’s voice. “If you tell me what you’re planning, maybe I could—”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. You’re a minor player on this stage. You don’t want to be eliminated before the show even begins.”
The message was clear. He was to keep Goldie busy and the sheriff more worried about her than what was already going on under his nose at the café.
Donovan had probably been too cocky, but he told himself that Malcolm expected it from him. He didn’t want to disappoint. “What’s in it for me?”
“You get to live.”
He hadn’t needed Malcolm to tell him that, but it cleared up something just the same. Whatever the man was planning, it was big enough that the crime boss had not just involved him—but the man’s only daughter. “How long is Lolly staying?”
“She’s not staying.”
He wondered about that as the line went dead. Lolly had at least two secrets that she was keeping from her father. Donovan had to wonder how many more there might be.
JOSIE HAD BEEN expecting the sheriff to stop by. She’d known it was just a matter of time before he came to her about Goldie. What she hadn’t expected was to see Max looking so drawn and unhappy. He’d lost weight, but it was the hollow look in his eyes that broke her heart.
She had wanted to shake some sense into him for months but knew matters of the heart were complicated. Also, she’d never met anyone more stubborn than Max Lander. She couldn’t force him to see reason. He’d have to find that himself.
“Sheriff,” she said, motioning to a chair across from her law office desk.
He had removed his Stetson, balancing it on his knee as he teetered on the edge of the chair as if not planning to stay long. “I need your help. I’m worried about Goldie.” She lifted a brow and bit her tongue. “I need you to tell me what is going on with her.”
“Don’t you think you should ask her?”
“You know I’m the last person she’d tell anything.
First, she sells her café out of the blue and now she has something going on with this Donovan Cole guy.
” He raked a hand through his hair. “She said everything she’s done was to prove that I still loved her.
What was she talking about? What else has she done? ”
Josie sighed. “You didn’t bother to ask her?”
“She marched off before I could, not that I suspect she would have told me anyway. She’s so…angry.”
“Can you blame her?”
He wagged his head, dropping his gaze to his boots. “You don’t have to tell me what a fool I’ve been, all right? I’m worried about what she’ll do next.”
“So am I,” Josie admitted.
“I tried to warn her about Donovan. I fear she’s in over her head. It’s bad enough that Donovan Cole comes from an old money family that’s now broke. His only source of income as far as I can tell is from romancing women with money.”
He stood to pace her small office.
“His most recent girlfriend was Lolly Mandeville, the daughter of crime boss Malcolm Mandeville. So, what is he doing here in Dry Gulch, apparently romancing Goldie? Even with the sale of the café, she isn’t going to have the kind of money he’s used to.
Then I discovered Goldie paid Donovan’s hotel bill in advance of his showing up here. Why would she do that?”
Cordell, she thought with a curse. Of course he’d told his brother. “For the same reason she put the café up for sale,” Josie said. “She felt she had to make one final attempt to see if you still loved her by paying Donovan Cole to make you jealous.”
Max stared at her. “She…hired him?” That Goldie would do something so desperate, so dangerous… He stumbled to a chair and sat down hard before putting his head into his hands again. “I drove her to that?”
“She came up with the idea on her own, but she was desperate, Max,” Josie said.
Had he thought Goldie would just wait forever for him to realize he couldn’t live without her?
Now he feared he’d waited too long. He couldn’t bear another moment without her back in his life.
But he also couldn’t have chosen a worse time to tell her how he felt.
He had criminals in town planning what he believed was a bank job.
But if Donovan’s cover was acting as Goldie’s boyfriend, it was best if the man didn’t suspect Max was on to him and Arnie.
He lifted his head as a wave of relief rushed over him. “So, Goldie’s not in love with Donovan?”
“Well, she wasn’t when she hired him. Can’t say how she feels about him now though.”
The opposite of relief felt like a bucket of ice water in the face. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“Whatever you do, you can’t let Goldie find out that you know she hired Donovan to make you jealous.”
He nodded. “I’m scared Goldie’s gotten herself in the middle of something bad and I’m not sure exactly what it is, only that it could be dangerous.
Telling her how I feel right now…” He shook his head.
“I really doubt she would believe me, let alone forgive me. Worse, it could put her in even more danger.”
All he could think about was how he was going to stop all of this before it really was too late.
DONOVAN WASN’T SURPRISED to find Lolly’s car still parked in front of the hotel. What he needed to know was how long she planned to stay in Dry Gulch and why. He found her in the hotel bar downstairs. She glanced over at him as he took the stool next to her and ordered a beer.
“When did you start drinking beer?” Lolly asked with a frown.
He gave her an impatient look. “Why are you still in town? Lolly, if you know what your father’s up to—”
“Right, he tells me everything,” she said with a huff. “I have no idea, and I can’t read his mind. If I was clairvoyant, I would have known you’d run out on me.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
After a sip from her drink, she turned to study him. “I know you don’t want any part of whatever my father has planned. So why are you still here? If you run, I doubt my father will come after you.”
He took a drink of his beer, wondering the same thing.
“It’s the woman, isn’t it? The woman who came to your hotel room.”
His feelings for Goldie aside, he knew he should have bolted long before this. He was small potatoes. Maybe Malcolm wouldn’t track him down. Except he had a bad feeling that’s exactly what the crime boss had done here in Dry Gulch. Why else would he buy Arnie a café here?
Donovan feared he’d inadvertently put the target on the town and himself.
Either way, the man had him right where he wanted him, literally.
“I have a bad feeling about whatever is going down on the day Arnie holds his grand opening at the café. I wish I knew what it was.” If he did know, would he leave Goldie and this town to fend for themselves and make a run for it?
Lolly was silent for a moment. “Only two things interest my father. Making money, which equates to power, and getting even with those he feels are disloyal.” She looked over at him. “Have you been disloyal, Donovan?”
He felt a chill snake the length of his spine. He felt like he was in Malcolm’s crosshairs, but even the man had said he was just a minor player in this. “How about you, Lolly? Have you been disloyal, or maybe someone you know?”
Scarlet burned at her cheeks as she picked up her drink and made a rude dismissive sound. Her bravado slipped though as her hand with the glass wobbled a little.
He looked away to take a long draw on his beer. He couldn’t worry about Lolly. If anyone could take care of herself, it was her. As for Goldie, he had a bad feeling that he’d also put her in danger by taking the job she’d offered him.
“What’s your plan?” he asked Lolly, motioning at her stomach. She wasn’t showing yet, but he’d seen other changes in her slim body. He suspected she was at least three to four months along.
“Are you making me an offer?” she joked.
“You know I had to leave when I did. I knew the baby wasn’t mine, but I wasn’t sure your father would believe me before he had me killed and dumped in a ditch somewhere.” He met her gaze. That flush was still in her cheeks. “I assume you planned to say it was mine. Am I wrong?”
She dragged her gaze away to run a finger along the rim of her drink glass. He hoped it was nonalcoholic. “You aren’t wrong. I was trying to buy myself time.”
He looked at her more intently. “Time for the father of the baby to step up? Or time for something else?” He had a bad feeling it was the latter. “He does know about the baby, right?”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, not looking at him.
“You know, if you had told me…” Donovan looked over at her. “Or just asked me…”
“You would have agreed to pretend to me my baby’s daddy?” She scoffed at that.
“Not pretend.” Their gazes met and held for a long moment. “You’re right. I’d make a lousy father for your baby. You know, if I were you,” Donovan said after they had sat in silence for a few moments, “I’d get out of town as quickly as I could.”
“Yet you are still here,” she said. “Don’t worry, I won’t mess up whatever it is you have going with your blonde.” She eyed him critically for a moment. “You aren’t really serious about her, are you?”
He laughed, but it had a false ring to it. “You should be more worried about your love life than mine.”
“It’s like that, huh?” Lolly asked, but she was smiling.
He returned her smile, thinking how quickly his life had changed.
He hadn’t realized how deeply he could get in with the crime family or how fast. Nor could he shake the feeling that whatever was coming to Dry Gulch was some kind of pissing match between Luca and Malcolm.
While he’d like to think it had nothing to do with him, he worried that if things went south, he’d be the one taking the fall.
Finishing his beer, he slipped off the stool. “If I don’t see you before you leave—”
“Oh, I suspect you’ll see me since we’re both staying in the same hotel,” she said with a predatory smile. “I plan to stay around for the grand opening of Arnie’s.”
Yes, he thought, she was too much like her father.
He didn’t trust either one of them. But he could see that Lolly wasn’t just curious about what was going to happen at Arnie’s grand opening.
She planned to be right in the middle of it.
Her father wasn’t going to like it. He just hoped her plan didn’t involve him. Or Goldie.
“Take care of yourself and…” He looked at her slight baby bump before raising his eyes to her again. “Remember, it’s not just you anymore.”