Lone Star Holiday Proposal

One

Nolan rolled to a stop in the parking area at the Courtyard and looked around. The four-mile drive out of Royal had been pleasant, quite a difference from the Southern California freeway traffic that was a part of his daily grind back home.

Home. He grunted. Royal, Texas, was really his home, not the sparsely furnished luxury apartment he slept and occasionally ate in back in LA. But he hadn’t lived here in Royal, or even been back, in coming up on seven years. Even now he’d chosen to check into a hotel rather than stay with his parents. The reminders of his old life and old hopes were still too fresh, too raw. He gave his head a slight shake, as if to jog his mind back on track, and pushed open the door to the brand-new SUV he’d hired for his visit. He alighted from the vehicle, grabbed his suit jacket from the backseat and pulled it on before taking a moment to adjust pristine white shirt cuffs.

The wind cut right through the finely woven wool of his suit. It seemed even Armani couldn’t protect you from a frigid Texan winter breeze. Nor were highly polished handmade shoes immune to the dust of the unsealed parking lot, he noted with a slight grimace of distaste. But when had he gotten so prissy? There’d been a time when even baby spit hadn’t bothered him.

A shaft of pain lanced through him. It still hurt as if it was yesterday. Nolan buttoned his jacket and straightened his shoulders. He’d known coming back would be hard, that it might rip the scabs off wounds he’d thought already healed. But what he hadn’t expected were these blindsiding moments when those old hurts threatened to drive him back down on his knees.

Pull it together, he willed silently, clenching his jaw tight. He’d lived through far worse than these random memories that were all that was left of his old life. He could live through this. It was time to harden back up and get to work.

As private attorney for Rafiq Bin Saleed, Nolan was here to do a job for one of Rafiq’s companies, Samson Oil. He loved his work—particularly loved the cut and parry of entering into property negotiations on behalf of his boss and friend. The fact that doing so now brought him back to the scene of his deepest sorrow was tempered only by the fact that he also got to spend some time with his parents on their home turf. They weren’t getting any younger and his dad was already making noises about retiring. From personal experience working there, Nolan knew that his dad’s family law practice was demanding, but he couldn’t quite reconcile himself to the fact that his dad was getting ready to scale down, or even walk away, from the practice he’d started only a few years out of law school.

Again Nolan reminded himself to get back on track. Obviously he’d have to work harder. Being back home after a long absence had a way of derailing a man when he least expected it—but that wouldn’t earn him any bonuses when it came to crunch time with his boss. He looked around the area that had been christened the Courtyard. The name fit, he decided as he took in the assembly of renovated ranch buildings that housed a variety of stores and craftsmen. His research had already told him that the tenants specialized in arts and crafts with artisanal breads and cheeses also on sale, while the central area was converted into a farmer’s market most Saturday mornings.

To Nolan’s way of thinking, it was an innovative way to use an old run-down and unprofitable piece of land. So what the hell did Rafiq want with it? He knew for a fact that there was no oil to be found in the surrounding area. Hell, everyone who grew up in and around Royal knew that—which kind of raised questions as to what Samson Oil wanted the land for. So far, Rafiq’s quest to buy up property in Royal failed to make economic sense to Nolan.

Sure, he was giving owners who were still battered and struggling to pull their lives together after the tornado a chance to get away and start a new life, but what did Rafe plan to do with all the land he’d acquired?

Nolan reminded himself it wasn’t his place to ask questions but merely to carry out the brief, no matter how much of a waste of money it looked like to him. Rafiq had his reasons but he wasn’t sharing them, and it had been made clear to Nolan that it was his place to see to the acquisition of specific parcels of land—whether they were for sale or not. And that’s exactly what he was going to do.

Regrettably, however, it appeared that Winslow Properties, despite their shaky financial footing, were not open to selling this particular parcel of land. It was up to him to persuade them otherwise. He’d hoped some of the tenants would be more forthcoming about their landlord but so far, on his visits to the stores, he’d found them to be a closemouthed bunch. Maybe they were all just scared, he thought. Royal had been through a lot. No one wanted to rock the boat now.