Jennifer Greene: Millionaire M.D.

“And I love you. Set a date. Any date you want, Justin.”

In the middle of the warmest, most important moment of his entire life, Justin suddenly froze.

Two nights later, as Justin drove to the Cattleman’s Club, the roads were empty of traffic-and for good reason. Everybody that could be was tucked inside their houses. Sleet poured down in silver sheets; the asphalt was icy-slick and a fierce wind buffeted and blustered around every corner.

Still, when Justin parked and climbed out of the Porsche, he trudged toward the Club’s front door as if he didn’t give a damn if the sleet soaked him or not. And the truth was, he didn’t.

Win was wearing the sapphire engagement ring. And they’d gone home that night to make love until the wee hours. But he’d also jerked awake around four in the morning from a nightmare, and nothing had been the same since. Something was wrong. Bad wrong. With him.

The crazy thing was, everything was right for him for the first time in his entire life. He adored Winona. And the woman he loved more than life itself had freely agreed to marry him. Nine hours out of ten, he was over the moon, feeling as if there was nothing he couldn’t do or conquer or dream. Except that when it came to setting a date for the marriage, he got a lump of ice in his throat the size of an iceberg.

Guys all over the planet were petrified of commitment-but that wasn’t him. Commitment to Win, forever, was exactly what Justin wanted, so this panicked reaction to setting a wedding date made no sense at all. Until he figured it out, though, he was too ashamed and confused to admit to Win that he was having this idiotic problem. Maybe he could hire someone to punch him out? Beat some sense into him? Shake the screw loose from his mind?

“Justin! Good to see you!” Matthew must have been waiting at the door, because he was right there to push it open. But his gregarious welcome changed focus when he saw Justin’s face. “Hell, man. What happened to you?”

“Nothing, just running a little late.” At a glance, he could see that the others were all inside, except for Aaron. Drinks had been served. Typically, Ben had his hands wrapped around a coffee mug while the others had aimed straight for the more serious blood warmers. The familiar scent of whiskey was in the air, as were the smells of leather, wool and a brisk, wood-burning fire. Walking into the Club had always invoked a comfortable male-bonding sort of feeling. It was created to be a place where a man could let down his hair.

But not tonight. Not for him.

Dakota stepped forward with a grin. “Hey, man, sure looks like someone rode you hard and put you up wet.” But like Matthew, when Dakota got a good look at his face, his smile disappeared. “I didn’t mean to joke-you all right? You’re not sick, are you?”

“No. I’m fine, really. Sorry to be so late. Afraid I just had a few days in a row with some grueling long work hours.” That’s what he’d told Winona. He was afraid she hadn’t bought it. And it didn’t appear his friends were buying it, either.

But they had serious issues to contend with tonight, and no one was wasting time on idle chitchat. The first job on their agenda was finding a new hiding place for the emerald and the black harlequin opal. Before the robbery, they’d considered the safe under the historical mission next door to be both symbolic and as secure as any place could be, but obviously they’d been wrong.

Justin fetched a ladder from the back storage room. The others collected a toolbox and the quarter-inch drill and a broom. The job didn’t have to take five minutes, but Justin figured with four men there, it would likely take a good hour.

It took a full hour and a half.

“I’ll do the drilling,” Ben started out by volunteering.

“I can do it.” Matthew stepped forward. “I’m used to doing every type of chore on a ranch. This is nothing.”

Dakota hunched fists on his hips. “Yeah, well, I think we got a good chance of running into trouble. Drilling a hole in the paneling is easy enough, but behind that is straight adobe brick. If we’re not careful, we’re going to end up with a hole the size of a crater.”

If Justin had been in any mood to laugh that night, his friends would have easily induced his sense of humor. All the guys were so literally fearless. Men who’d step up, without hesitation, without expecting thanks or reward, to save a child or an innocent. Each of them had literally pledged to do exactly that as Texas Cattleman’s Club members-and had.

But hell. Get a bunch of guys near a construction project and naturally the four-letter words flew…along with arguments over the right way to do things.

Justin would normally have contributed his useless two cents. Tonight, though, when the small hole had finally been drilled-and the swearing settled down-he climbed the ladder in the front entrance hall. The Club sign-Leadership, Justice and Peace-was lying on its side on the ground. And all of them suddenly turned quiet.

Each took one last look at the black harlequin opal and the emerald, before the two stones were wrapped in white velvet inside a film canister. The drill had made a hole big enough to put the film canister inside, so after that, there was nothing left to do but rehang the sign.

“It couldn’t be more perfect,” Matthew said. “I mean, in the long run, obviously we need to find a more secure vault for the stones. But until we know what happened to the red diamond, this is ideal. Symbolic. Beneath the sign that stands for the stones. We did good.”

“Now if all the other problems connected to the theft and the plane crash were only half this easy to solve,” Dakota said dryly.

They swept, cleaned up, put away the broom and toolbox. Yet all of them ended up back in the front entrance hall. For them the sign had never been a corny symbol, but an echo of the very real vows they’d made to help others when they’d joined the Texas Cattleman’s Club. At the moment, they were all frustrated in fulfilling those vows.

“The more we dive into this mess, the less makes sense,” Dakota groaned.

“Let’s go over what we know,” Matthew suggested. “Nothing’s surfaced to identify Riley Monroe’s killer yet, has it?”

No, it hadn’t-and the red diamond was still missing. As yet, the men had no evidence to link the plane crash to the jewel theft-but the jewel thief positively had to be someone on that Asterland plane flight. Klimt, one of the few who might have given them specific answers about what happened on that plane, was still in a coma. Riley Monroe’s killer was obviously their jewel thief, but the cops had no leads or even ideas on Monroe’s killer yet…and one of the most curious issues in the whole mess was that two stones had been recovered, and not the third. All the Texas Cattleman’s Club directly involved with this-except for Aaron-had gone over the plane with a fine-tooth comb. As had the authorities. As had the two investigators, Milo and Garth, sent by the Asterlanders.

“Well, something has to break,” Matthew said. “Part of the problem is that none of us copes well with frustration. We’re all in the habit of going out and doing something to fix things. Having to wait is partly what’s driving us nuts.”

Dakota concurred. “I also doubt that there’s a gem as notoriously unique on the planet as our red diamond. Which means that it can’t surface anywhere without raising news. Even in the blackest of a black market, it’ll raise a flurry when it shows up-if we don’t find another way to find it first.”

“Yes. The red diamond is really the key to solving the rest,” Ben said thoughtfully, and then, “Justin?”

Justin swiftly turned toward them. “I agree with all of you. It’s just going to take a little more time. None of us have ever accepted failure and we’re not about to now.”