Sweet Vidalia Brand Read Free Page A

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.
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