Black Hills Billionaire Read online

  Jenna and Bess had been having this discussion for weeks—-no, months. Bess made a limp, noncommittal gesture. “I really don’t know if I’m up to it this year, Jenna. The arthritis in my back isn’t helped by standing around taking tickets and playing tour guide to a bunch of tourists.”

  “What arthritis?” Jenna almost asked. So far, not one of her mother’s many X-rays had shown even a hint of arthritic deposits.

  “Well, you know our budget as well as I do, Mom. If I have to hire someone to take your place, there won’t be any money left for the improvements we have slated. Like paving the parking lot.”

  All vibrancy left her mother’s face, making Jenna regret her impatient tone. She could blame her short temper on budget woes, but those were ever present in a small, tourist-oriented business. The real cause was something she didn’t want to talk about. Or think about. Her chase dream had returned last night. An old, unwelcome friend that had been a constant in her life through most of her twenties. It always started with a pleasant, harmless stroll down a busy street but ended in a heart-racing pursuit by a faceless demon whose heavy breathing reminded her vividly of a memory she thought she’d mastered.

  “Sorry,” she said, crossing to the chair where her mother sat. She gave her a hug, gently patting her back as she might a child. “I’m just a little tense because it’s the middle of June and we’re not open. I probably should have hired someone else to fix the broken water line, but I felt so sorry for Walt.”

  Walt Gruen was the plumbing contractor she’d hired. Unfortunately, his college-age daughter had been injured in a car accident a few days after he started the job and he’d had to drop everything to attend to her in Denver. Since he worked alone-–for a fee even Jenna could afford-–there was no one to pick up the slack.

  “I know, dear. But you can’t blame yourself. This kind of thing was bound to happen. I warned your father about taking short cuts, but you know how he was with money.” Bess shook her head. She was one of the special women who gray with such grace and beauty it would be a sacrilege to color her hair. Jenna feared she wasn’t going to be that lucky since she’d inherited her father’s red hair.

  Clarence Murphy had been sixty-four when he suffered a heart attack one morning before leaving for school. Scientist, teacher and mastermind behind the popular summer attraction that had baffled and intrigued visitors for twenty-odd years, his death had been mourned by many.

  Jenna had been a part of the family’s summer business almost from its inception, but her father had sheltered her from one undeniable truth: her mother couldn’t be trusted with money. His widely reputed miserliness may have been prompted by a need to offset his wife’s tendency to spend without reservation. Every day, Jenna felt she understood her father better.

  “I know that’s what you think, Mom, but I can’t figure out why the break happened so long after the frost melted.” Jenna sighed. They’d been over this ground before. The pipe broke and needed to be fixed before they could reopen. Bottom line. “I’d better go. Don’t want to miss the inspector. I’m just sorry I didn’t schedule this for yesterday. Then I could have subbed for Libby today instead of holding down the fort for Char. The Post Office pays better.”

  “But if you hadn’t been working at the teepee, you wouldn’t have met Mr. Bernese Mountain Dog.” Her mother fluttered her eyelashes coquettishly. “Tell me again what he said.”

  Jenna paused hand on the doorknob. She’d never understood her mother’s fascination with Hollywood. Bess had nearly wet herself the first time she heard Cooper Lindstrom was in town, and last night when introduced to a real live producer, she’d gotten honest to goodness stars in her eyes.

  “His name is Shane Something. I only remember that because I knew a guy in college named Shane. Not knew knew, but we had a class together. And, to be honest, this Shane didn’t leave that much of an impression.” Liar. “We barely exchanged two words before Coop showed up asking where he stood with Libby. Your Bernese Mountain Dog slipped away.”

  Bess looked in the direction of the McGannon homes. “And now Libby is getting married. There’s hope for you, yet, honey.”

  Jenna didn’t see the correlation, but she let the comment pass. She was happy for her friend who-–with a little luck-–might get some well-deserved happiness – and the baby she’d gone to such extreme lengths to procure. “Gotta go, Mom. ’Bye.”

  “Wait. Promise me one thing.”

  Jenna held her sigh as she paused in the doorway. “What?”

  “If you bump into the handsome producer, try not to mutter. It’s distracting and makes you appear a little odd.”

  “What on earth makes you think I’ll be seeing him? He and Coop are supposed to be holding open meetings for the townsfolk this week. I’m going to be busy at the Mystery Spot trying to get the plumbing fixed so we can open and start earning enough money to pay our taxes.”

  Her mother’s reply was one Jenna had heard a million times. “I just have a feeling. You’ll see.”

  As always, Jenna wished she’d been born with just a bit less of her father’s pragmatism and a bit more of her mother’s optimism. Maybe then she wouldn’t spend all of her time worrying.

  Shimmering lines bounce off hot pavement.

  Wavy, unbalanced. Like a girl

  Going nowhere.

  Fast.

  “Going nowhere fast,” Shane repeated, as he looked up from the small volume of poetry that Coop had given him.

  Kinda like me yesterday.

  He shook his head, still embarrassed by the way he’d reacted to seeing Jenna Murphy behind the counter of the big teepee. Like an inexperienced schoolboy drooling over the girl of his dreams. He’d come to South Dakota to find her; he just hadn’t expected her to be the first person he bumped into.

  And he hadn’t expected her to be so vivid. Possibly more beautiful than he remembered. Definitely more real than the tragic figure he’d made her into in his mind.

  He pushed the heel of his hand against the uncomfortable pressure behind his breastbone and shifted in the car seat. He didn’t know why he’d never been able to get Jenna out of his head, but she’d definitely been part of his motivation for joining Cooper in Sentinel Pass.

  If he could work up the nerve to contact her.

  He reached around the steering column to turn the key in the ignition. The Cadillac’s dashboard lit up impressively, giving him the pertinent facts of time and outside temperature. He lowered the driver side window a few inches and drew in a deep breath of dewy, pine-scented air.

  He’d been sitting in this car in front of Libby MacGannon’s house for over an hour after dropping Cooper off. Not because he lacked a plan-–Coop had set the ball in motion the night before and people were expecting them to show up at the local restaurant, but Shane knew he’d be worthless until he got this thing with Jenna off his chest. Something he could have done yesterday but didn’t.

  He sighed and slumped down in the wide, comfortable leather seat. Maybe if I’d been better prepared. Had some kind of dialogue scripted in his head. But what do you say to the girl whose life you ruined?

  Hi, Jenna. Remember me? Shane from Art Appreciation class. College. The semester you were raped.

  He groaned and wiped his sweaty palms on his trademark black jeans. What the hell was wrong with him? He wasn’t an inexperienced kid who didn’t have a clue about what he wanted to do with his life. He was a successful television producer, director and screenwriter. He’d made a lot of money at a profession he enjoyed and was good at. Then, he'd taken that money and invested it--some said gambled it--in the stock market. His risk paid off. His shelf full of awards that included an Oscar for his adaptation of a popular novel a few years back was nothing to sneeze at, as his mother might have said. She would have been proud of him. And happy for him. Although he knew his personal life-–or lack of one-–would have concerned her.

  But she’d been gone nearly six years. Six years that had weighed heavily on Shane since her deathbed confession of a secret that probably had shortened her life through the weight of the guilt. Shane also blamed that secret in no small part for the state of his love life.

  He’d lost count of the times he’d drowned his sorrows in a bottle of vodka, wishing for the impossible. That Mom had taken her secret to her grave. Or, even better, that he’d been born an only child.

  Unfortunately, Shane had only to look in the mirror to be reminded of his brother. Adam. His twin. His opposite in every way that counted, though. Or so Shane hoped.

  There were some in Hollywood who called Shane “the monk” behind his back. He often made the club scene but usually alone, unless work was involved. He dated on occasion but seldom took out the same woman twice. Luckily, he lived in a place and time where women enjoyed sex for the same reasons men did and weren’t necessarily looking for a long-term attachment.

  If that made his life seem shallow and superficial, he didn’t really care. He couldn’t name a single person he was trying to impress. He’d cut all ties with Adam after their mother’s funeral. He’d done the same with his father a few months later when the old man married a woman half his age. His father’s act merely confirmed what Shane had always known about his dysfunctional family-–the nucleus was split evenly down the middle. Shane and Mom on one side. Adam and Dad on the other. The gulf between the two factions was wide and deep. And Shane hoped it would stay that way. For Jenna Murphy’s sake.

  He closed the book and studied the cover. Ashes of Hope by Jenna M. Murphy. Deep maroon watermark silk with gold leaf lettering. Elegant and lady-like. A little old-fashioned given the age of the author, but serene. Perhaps to mitigate the austerity of the poems, which, from the dozen or so he’d read, were intense, deeply personal and poignant.


  Coop had given him the self-published treatise as a bribe to get Shane to confess how he knew Jenna, who was Libby McGannon’s best friend. Libby, Sentinel Pass’s postmaster, was the catalyst that had set this whole, unwieldy circus in motion.

  Shane hadn’t intended to blurt out the fact that he recognized Jenna, but seeing her behind the counter of the teepee-shaped gift shop just minutes after arriving in Sentinel Pass had left him badly shaken. And, naturally, that kind of only-in-the-movies coincidence sparked Coop’s curiosity. What Coop didn’t know--and Shane had no intention of sharing--was the fact that Jenna was Shane’s sole purpose for being in the Hills.

  He could have delegated the research part of this trip to any one of a dozen minions, but from Coop’s very first mention of an online ad offering part ownership in a working gold mine in Sentinel Pass, South Dakota, Shane had known his past had finally caught up with him. There simply was no other explanation. Fate? God? Karma? Shane didn’t believe in any of them. But he firmly believed every person was capable of manifesting his or her own reality.

  For the past six years, Shane’s reality had included the ethereal image of a young woman he’d barely known for one short semester in his senior year of college. She haunted him at night. Not the happy, exuberant persona that had attracted him in the first place, but the hollow-eyed ghost of a girl in the back seat of her parents’ car as they took her home weeks before the normally scheduled holiday break. As far as he knew, she never returned to campus.

  That girl was the reason he was here.

  His plan…if you could call it that…was to ease his conscience and, if possible, to make amends.

  He just hadn’t expected Jenna Murphy to be the first person he met when he and Coop pulled into town. But there she’d been-–trademark red hair a dead giveaway. Behind a counter filled with Native American jewelry.

  She hadn’t recognized him. A fact that didn’t surprise him given how much he’d changed since college. He was a different person, really. Short hair. A new name. Lasik surgery to lose the coke-bottle bottom glasses.

  But she was still every bit as beautiful as he remembered…with a few changes. Her gorgeous red hair was shoulder-length instead of all the way to her waist. Now, she was the one with glasses. Small, stylish black frames drew attention to her flashing green-gold eyes, alive with wit and wisdom. She’d laughed a lot back them. Until the night she attended a party and became the victim of date rape. Her attacker was never caught.

  Shane heaved a weighty sigh and reached for the thermal travel mug he’d purchased that morning. He polished off the last gulp. Cold, but to his profound surprise, the brew wasn’t bad – unlike what his mother had passed off as coffee when he’d been growing up in Minnesota.

  In atypical Coop fashion, his friend had rousted Shane at the break of dawn to drive him to the local bakery to buy doughnuts and jelly rolls, which he planned to use as props when he proposed to Libby.

  Shane set the container back in the car’s cup holder and leaned forward to rest his arms on the steering wheel. He wondered how it was going for his friend inside the unpretentious two-story home. There was no outward sign of life, but a dark-haired man-–Libby’s brother, Shane was pretty sure–-had come and gone on foot half an hour earlier.

  There hadn’t been any gunshots. Shane had been listening. Sorta. Mostly, he’d read the words of Jenna’s poetry, trying to catch a glimpse of the girl he’d fallen in love with.

  Well, he’d called what he’d felt “love.” Maybe it was infatuation. Lord knew it was one-sided, completely unrequited. He and Jenna hadn’t exchanged more than a dozen words that semester, but his knees got weak whenever he saw her walking across campus.

  He closed his eyes and smiled. Walking didn’t come close to describing the way Jenna Murphy moved. She danced with barely contained energy, like a happy hummingbird. The first time he saw her he’d assumed she was a theater major because she moved like a dancer and her voice carried as if she’d been trained to project. But he came to realize that was her “tour guide” voice. A by-product of spending her summers working in her parents’ business. A Sentinel Pass tourist trap called the Mystery Spot.

  He’d spent hours constructing elaborate daydreams about visiting her at the place. Although that was before Jenna was attacked and left school. Before he dropped out and moved to California. He hadn’t been back to South Dakota since. Until now.

  According to Coop’s plan that he’d laid out at the town meeting the night before, Shane was supposed to be “mingling with the locals.”

  “Starting, perhaps, with the redhead that made the usually glib and suave Shane Reynard turn into a stammering school boy,” his friend had added, poking Shane with his bony elbow before hopping out of the car.

  Coop had even provided a crudely sketched map to find The Mystery Spot.

  “I heard all about the Mystery Spot from Jenna’s mother, Bess, when I was here before,” Coop had told him. “Apparently, Jenna’s dad was some kind of eccentric college professor with a passion for optical illusions, although everyone pretends the exhibits are part of some scientific anomaly. I didn’t actually set foot inside, but it sounds like a hoot.”

  Shane picked up the oversize sticky note that was attached to the passenger seat and studied the purple felt tip marker scribbles. The funny jittery feeling just under his rib cage started again. Too much caffeine, he figured.

  Or was it from knowing he was about to reconnect with Jenna?

  “I know you said she didn’t remember you from college,” Coop had said before turning in last night, “but I bet she would if you introduced yourself using your family name. That might jog her memory.”

  Shane didn’t doubt that for a minute. After all, it was the name of the man who raped her.

  Chapter 2

  As he followed Cooper’s map, Shane kept one part of his brain on the alert for possible background locations. Production was still weeks off-–awaiting a viable script and cast. Coop, the project’s co-producer, had promised to help write the pilot once he had his personal life back on track.

  For the first time in his life, Shane felt a niggling hint of sympathy for Coop’s late mom, Lena. The woman had had final say on Coop’s career and ran his life as if she were the CEO of it. Lena and Shane had butted heads many times, but he could see how trying it must have been keeping her exuberant, attention-challenged son on task.

  And, in a way, Lena’s death was partly behind Shane’s decision to come here. Helping Coop deal with the loss had stirred up all the feelings--love, hate, guilt and regret--Shane had spent six years trying to master after his own mother died.

  At Main Street, he turned right and was relieved to see a billboard promoting the Mystery Spot. The brilliant yellow zigzag lines against a vivid purple background were almost enough to make a person dizzy.

  “Nice.” He leaned across the seat to take a photo.

  The signs got bigger and more elaborate the closer he got to his destination.

  “Only two miles to the thrill of a lifetime.”

  “Just one more mile to a mind-blowing experience.”

  “Three-hundred feet to the M-spot.”

  That one made him grin.

  Maybe he could work this place into the script. Offer Jenna some ridiculous amount to rent the facility when they started filming. She wouldn’t know the going rate so he could be as generous as he wanted. Needed.

  What is the going rate for conscience absolution these days?

  He stepped on the gas to make the car climb an incline but had to slam on the brakes a few second later. A pair of orange plastic hazard cones blocked his entrance into the Mystery Spot’s gravel parking lot. He leaned forward to read the hand-written notes attached to the markers.

  On the left was “Closed for repairs. Sorry.” The right read: “Really. We are. Please, come again.”

  He somehow knew the sentiments belonged to Jenna. And he believed her. Maybe because of the sad face under “Sorry.” Coop hadn’t mentioned any kind of problems at the place so whatever the issue it must have come up after Cooper left town.

  Feeling both disappointed and slightly relieved, Shane pulled close enough to the cones so his Escalade was off the road, then he put the car in park.