Page 164 of Love Bites

NEARLY DEPARTED IN DEADWOOD

CHAPTER1

Deadwood, South Dakota

Monday, July 9th

The first time I came to Deadwood, I got shot in the ass. Now, twenty-five years later, as I stared into the double barrels of Old Man Harvey’s shotgun, irony was having a fiesta and I was the piñata.

I tried to produce a polite smile, but my cheeks had petrified along with my heart. “You wouldn’t shoot a girl, would you?”

Old Man Harvey snorted, his whole face contorting with the effort. “Lady, I’d blow the damned Easter bunny’s head off if he was tryin’ to take what’s mine.”

He cocked his shotgun—his version of an exclamation mark.

“Whoa!” I would have gulped had there been any spit left in my mouth. “I’m not here to take anything.”

He replied by aiming those two barrels at my chest instead of my face.

“I’m with Calamity Jane Realty, I swear! I came to …”

With Harvey threatening to fill my lungs with peepholes, I had trouble remembering why I’d driven out to this corner of the boonies. Oh, yeah. Lowering one of my hands, I held out my crushed business card. “I want to help you sell your ranch.”

The double barrels clinked against one of the buttons on my Rebecca Taylor-knockoff jacket as Harvey grabbed my card. I swallowed a squawk of panic and willed the soles of my boots to unglue from the floorboards of Harvey’s front porch and retreat. Unfortunately, my brain’s direct line to my feet was experiencing technical difficulties.

Harvey’s squint relaxed. “Violet Parker, huh?”

“That’s me.” My voice sounded pip-squeaky in my own ears. I couldn’t help it. Guns made my thighs wobbly and my bladder heavy. Had I not made a pit stop at Girdy’s Grill for a buffalo burger and paid a visit to the littleHensroom, I’d have a puddle in the bottom of my favorite cowboy boots by now.

“Your boots match your name. What’s a ‘Broker Associate’?”

“It’s someone who is going to lose her job if she doesn’t sell a house in the next three weeks.” I lowered my other hand.

I’d been with Calamity Jane Realty for a little over two months and had yet to make a single sale. So much for my radical, life-changing leap into a new career. If I didn’t make a sale before my probation was up, I’d have to drag my kids back down to the prairie and bunk with my parents … again.

“You’re a lotpurtierin this here picture with your hair down.”

“So I’ve been told.” Old Man Harvey seemed to be channeling my nine-year-old daughter today. Lucky me.

“Makes you look younger, like a fine heifer.”

I cocked my head to the side, unsure if I’d just been tossed a compliment or slapped with an insult.

The shotgun dipped to my belly button as he held the card out for me to take back.

“Keep it. I have plenty.” A whole box full. They helped fill the lone drawer in my desk back at Calamity Jane’s.

“So that asshole from the bank didn’t send you?”

“No.” An asshole from my office had, and the bastard would be extracting his balls from his esophagus for this so-calledgenerous referral—if I made it back to Calamity Jane’s without looking like a human sieve.

“Then how’d you know about my gambling problem?”

“What gambling problem?”

Old Man Harvey’s eyes narrowed again. He whipped the double barrels back up to my kisser. “The only way you’d know I’m thinking about selling is if you heard about my gambling debt.”

“Oh, you meanthatgambling problem.”

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