Free Lisa Plumley by The Honor-Bound Gambler Page A

utmost importance, too. But from a secular, practical perspective, everyone liked to mingle. It was as simple as that. Church provided the best possible place to deepen old friendships and forge new ones, which was precisely what Violet had been doing ever since the gambler Cade Foster had left her standing in her own hallway, all flushed and breathless and feeling as hot as a Thursday afternoon in July.
    I’d be happy if you’d rub up against me some more, sugar , she remembered him saying in that low, rumbly, undeniably shiver-inducing voice of his. But this time, move a little slower, please. I want a little more time to enjoy it .
    Heavens! Just thinking about their encounter now—in Sunday service, of all places, while her father droned on with his sermon!—made Violet feel all... tingly inside. She hadn’t realized exactly how close she’d gotten to Cade in that hallway. She’d been too busy wondering about him, trying to understand him, searching for a reason that explained his odd resistance to her plans to help Tobe. Who was doing just fine now, by the way.
    After a hasty glance at the boy—who for today was being watched over by sweet Miss Mellie Reardon, one of her friends, and seemed to be enjoying all the attention—Violet reclasped her hands, then thought about Cade some more. She believed she was right about his having spent time in an orphanage. He’d been too distrustful of foundling homes to dismiss the idea outright.
    But why? Why would Cade be so cynical about a place that only existed to help forlorn and abandoned children? She couldn’t think of a single reason. For a man who’d lectured Violet about the need for hopefulness, she decided, Cade seemed in miserably short supply of it himself. In the end, he hadn’t even been able to believe in his own gambler’s superstition.
    If this is good luck...I don’t much like how it feels .
    Well, that was doubtless because Cade hadn’t experienced its full effect yet! He certainly hadn’t given her a fair chance as a lucky charm, Violet thought in her own defense. At the rate things were going, he might never do so. She hadn’t so much as clapped eyes on Cade since he’d left her house the other night.
    She knew he was still in town. Morrow Creek’s tireless gossipy grapevine—and all her friends, besides—had kept her informed of that much. But Cade hadn’t returned to ask for Reverend Benson’s blessing of their supposed “courtship” and attendant lucky-charm scheme, and Violet hadn’t sought out Cade herself, either.
    Why should she? she asked herself as she shifted in her seat. Word had gotten out about the dinner she and Cade had shared. The knowledge that the mysterious new sporting man in town had paid a deliberate social call on plain, unremarkable Violet Benson had already perked up her prospects considerably.
    Exactly as their dance at the Grand Fair had done, their convivial dinner had provoked new curiosity about Violet among the menfolk in town. They’d paid her more attention of late than ever before. She was trying not to become too foolishly accustomed to their interest. But it was thrilling, all the same.
    Not as thrilling as Cade was, she’d admit. But still...
    Unable to properly describe why Cade’s attention was so much more stimulating than the attention of other men, Violet was saved from continuing the effort by the one thing that never failed her: good works. It was time to pass the collection basket, and Violet was responsible for doing so.
    Turning her thoughts to that duty, Violet made her way to the back of the church. Her fellow congregants smiled at her; her father’s familiar voice comforted her. She wasn’t sure that his gambling winnings had wound up in the church’s charitable offerings, as she’d insisted to Cade, but she felt hopeful they had.
    She stood at the backmost pew, then offered the collection basket to the first congregant. He put in his contribution. The basket passed from hand to