Her Favorite Maverick

by Christine Rimmer

  And behind the local Crawfords came Max and six big men who looked a lot like him—including the tall, blue-eyed cowboy who made Sarah’s heart beat faster and her cheeks feel much too warm. The Crawford clan took seats around a long table in the center of the room.

  Lily whispered, “Max Crawford and sons, am I right?”

  “How did you guess?” Sarah asked wryly.

  “Everyone says they’re all really good-looking.” Her friend sipped more wine. “Everyone is right.”

  “Now that I think about it, Logan mentioned that there was some kind of family get-together tonight.”

  “A Crawford family reunion,” said Lily. “Who’s the cute little girl?” She gave a slight nod toward the blonde sprite who’d entered with Logan and his family.

  “That would be Wren,” said Sarah. “Her dad is Hunter Crawford. He’s sitting to her left. Logan told me that Wren’s mom died shortly after she was born.”

  “How sad.” Lily was silent for a moment, kind of taking it all in. “Hmm...”

  Sarah focused on her friend and tried really hard not to let her gaze stray to Logan. “Hmm, what?”

  Lily tipped her head toward a table on the far side of the dining room. Viv and Caroline sat there, along with three other women who lived in town—single women, Sarah was reasonably sure. As Sarah watched, Viv turned in her chair and spoke to a woman at the next table over. Interestingly enough, that table was women-only, too.

  Lily said, “Looks to me like Viv and Caroline’s dating service is very much open for business.”

  * * *

  Logan sat down at the table full of Crawfords, ordered a glass of eighteen-year-old Scotch and tried not to think about Sarah.

  He noticed the wedding planners right away, as well as the pretty women at the table with them and at the next table over. Apparently, the wedding planners were already on the job providing potential brides for him and his brothers.

  And his father, who had somehow ended up sitting next to him, was looking right at him. When Logan met Max’s eyes, his dad winked at him. Logan gave his dad a flat stare—and then turned to face the other way.

  Viv came over just to say hi. Max introduced her to Knox, Finn, Wilder and Hunter. She exchanged a few words with each of them, said hello to the local Crawfords and then rejoined the women.

  Logan sat back and sipped his drink slowly as Nate Crawford explained how he and a few other movers and shakers in town had created Maverick Manor so that Rust Creek Falls would finally have a resort-style hotel.

  When Nate finished his story, Finn, who was twenty-nine, fourth-born after Xander, got up and went over to where all the women sat. Viv introduced him to each of the women. He nodded and chatted them up a little before eventually wandering back to his seat. Wilder, last-born, rose a little later and strolled over to introduce himself, too. No way was Wilder ever going to let himself get tied down to one woman. But all the pretty ladies would have to find that out for themselves.

  Logan’s dad just couldn’t leave it alone. As Wilder took his chair at the table again, Max leaned close and pitched his voice low for Logan’s ears alone. “Yep. Lots of fine-looking women in this town. Take your pick, son. Viv will introduce you.”

  Logan didn’t bother to answer. He just turned his head slowly and gave the old man another flat, bored stare.

  Max got the message. He started yakking with Nate’s dad, who was seated on his other side.

  Logan was about to signal for a second Scotch when he spotted Sarah and a red-haired woman sitting in a small, tucked-away corner of the dining room. He wasn’t sure what made him turn halfway around in his chair and glance over there, but when he did, his eyes collided with hers.

  She quickly looked away.

  He should look away, too. But he didn’t. Man, he had it bad. It hurt just to see her. And he was feeling sorry enough for himself at that moment to go ahead and indulge his pain by turning in his chair and staring.

  Yeah, it was rude. But he didn’t care.

  Sarah wore a cream-colored sleeveless dress and her hair was down, soft and smooth on her shoulders. As he watched, the waitress appeared and set a check tray on the table between Sarah and her friend. The redhead whipped out her credit card. Sarah tried to argue, but it appeared that the redhead won. The waitress left to run the card. A few minutes later, she dropped off the tray again on her way to take an order at another table. The redhead signed the receipt and put her card away.

  Any minute now, Sarah and her friend would get up and leave.

  Today, she’d made it more than clear that she refused to get anything going with him. He needed to take a hint, order that second Scotch and let her go. He turned away.

  And something inside him rebelled at the sheer wrongness of the two of them, so acutely aware of each other and trying so hard to pretend that they weren’t.

  Forget that noise. He couldn’t let her go without at least saying hi.

  Logan shoved back his chair.

  Ignoring his dad’s muttered, “Logan. Let it be,” he pushed in his chair and turned for her table.

  In three long strides, he was standing above her.

  She put on a fake smile. “Logan, hi. This is my friend, Lily Hunt.”

  The redhead said, “Happy to meet you,” and actually seemed to mean it. She got up. “I think it’s time for me to go.”

  “Lily,” Sarah protested. “Don’t—”

  Lily didn’t let her finish. “Gotta go. Call me,” she said and then she walked away.

  Logan claimed the empty chair before Sarah could leap up and disappear.

  “This is pointless,” Sarah said—softly, in a tender, hopeful voice that belied her words. She had her hands folded together on the table.

  When he put his palm over them, she didn’t pull away.

  In fact, she looked up at him, finally meeting his eyes.

  Their gazes held.

  The packed dining room and all the other people in it faded into the background. There was no one but the woman in the cream-colored dress sitting across the table from him, the connection he felt to her, the cool, smooth silk of her skin under his hand.

  “How’s Sophia?” he asked as he slipped his thumb in between her tightly clasped fingers.

  A smile tried to pull at the corner of that tempting mouth. “Same as this morning. My mom’s watching her.”

  “Does she miss me?”

  A chuckle escaped her and a sweet flush stained her cheeks. “Stop...”

  “You need to say that with more conviction—or not say it at all.” He pretended to think about it. “Yeah. Say something like, ‘Logan, I’m so glad you’re here and I’ve changed my mind and would love to go out with you any time you say.’”

  “I...”

  “You...?” He succeeded in separating her hands and claimed one for himself, weaving their fingers together. They stared at each other across the table. Her fingers felt just right twined with his, and her cheeks had a beautiful, warm blush on them. He never wanted to let her go.

  “Logan, I do like you. So much.”

  “Which is why you need to spend more time with me. And I don’t mean as my accountant. I mean quality time. Personal time.”

  She drew in a slow, unsteady breath.

  He knew then with absolute certainty that she was going to change her mind, tell him yes. Finally. At last.

  Except that she was easing her hand free of his. “No. It can’t go anywhere.” She rose. “I meant what I said this afternoon. I would really appreciate it if you would please keep it business-only while I’m working for you at the ranch. And right now, I really do need to go.”

  Logan knew when he was beaten. She wasn’t giving an inch and he needed to accept that. “All right. I’m through. See you Monday, Sarah. You can finish setting up the books. And that will be that.”
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  With a tiny nod, she turned and walked away.

  He rose and went back to join the family. The waitress brought him that second Scotch. He sipped it slowly and considered his options, of which there really was only one.

  It was time to wise up, quit playing the fool. Sarah was never giving him a damn break and he needed to stop following her around like a lovesick calf.

  A pretty blonde sitting with the other women at Viv Dalton’s table gave him a friendly smile. He raised his glass to her and her smile got wider. She had dimples and big blue eyes.

  What was that old song? If you can’t have the girl you want—want the girl you’re with.

  Or something like that.

  Chapter Six

  The following Wednesday night, Logan took the blonde, whose name was Louise, out to that steak house he liked in Kalispell. Louise was a nice woman. As it turned out, she worked in Kalispell, teaching high school English. But she had her own little house in Rust Creek Falls inherited from a beloved aunt. She loved dancing, she said, especially line dancing.

  Logan sat across from her and listened to her talk and wondered what it was about her.

  Or more correctly, what it wasn’t about her. She was pretty and friendly, intelligent and sweet. There was nothing not to like.

  Except, well, he just didn’t feel it. Want the one you’re with, huh? Maybe. In some cases.

  For him and Louise, though? Not so much.

  Still, he nodded and smiled at her and tried to make all the right noises while his mind was filled with thoughts of Sarah.

  She’d finished up at the ranch just that day. He wouldn’t be seeing her again until tax time—except for now and then, the way people did in a small town. They would end up waving at each other as they passed on the street or maybe dropping by Buffalo Bart’s Wings To Go at the same time.

  “You’re awfully quiet.” Louise sent him another sweet, dimpled smile and sipped her white wine.

  He was being a really bad date and he knew it. Sitting up a little straighter in his chair, he ordered his errant thoughts back to the here and now.

  Later, when he took her home, Louise asked shyly, “Would you like to come in?”

  He thanked her, said he had to be up before dawn and got the heck out of there.

  Viv called him the next day. She said she’d talked to Louise, who’d reported that she really liked Logan but she just didn’t feel that the “chemistry” was there. Logan had to agree.

  He’d meant to tell Viv that he didn’t need another date. But somehow, before he hung up, Viv had talked him into spending an evening with a girl named Genevieve Lawrence.

  He and Genevieve met up on Friday night—in Kalispell again, at a cowboy bar she knew of. They danced and joked around. Genevieve knew ranch life and horses. She was a farrier by profession. They got along great, him and Genevieve.

  But right away, Logan had that feeling, like she was his sister or something. He could be best buds with Genevieve. But tangled sheets and hot nights with her to help him forget a certain amber-eyed accountant?

  Never going to happen.

  Plus, more than once between dances, Genevieve teased that he seemed like he was a million miles away.

  And he kind of was. He was thinking of Sarah, and ordering himself to stop thinking of her. And then thinking of her anyway. Because dating other people didn’t make him forget the woman he wanted. It just made him want her all the more.

  At the end of that evening, Genevieve gave him a hug and whispered, “Whoever she is, don’t be an idiot. Work it out with her.”

  It was great advice. Or it would have been, if only Sarah wanted to work it out with him.

  When Viv called the next day, he explained that he really wasn’t in the mood for dating. “So I won’t be needing your, er, services anymore, thanks.”

  But evidently, Vivienne Dalton was downright determined to earn her million-dollar payout. Before he hung up, she’d convinced him to try a coffee date at Daisy’s Donut Shop. “It’s a half hour out of your life,” promised Viv. “You get a coffee and a maple bar and if it goes nowhere, you’re done.”

  * * *

  Monday afternoon when Sarah dropped in at Falls Mountain Accounting, her mom was actually not behaving inappropriately behind the shut door of her father’s office. Flo sat at her desk, her hair neatly combed, her shirt on straight. She was smiling, as she always did nowadays, typing away. The waiting area was empty.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  Flo looked up from her desktop monitor with a welcoming smile. “Honey.”

  Sarah went on through to her own office and put the baby carrier, her backpack and laptop on her desk. In the carrier, Sophia was sleeping peacefully. Leaving the door open a crack so she would hear if the baby woke, Sarah returned to the main room, where her mom was now on the phone.

  She picked up the stack of mail from the corner of Flo’s desk and went through it, finding three envelopes addressed to her and setting the rest back down.

  “Dad?” she asked as her mom hung up the phone.

  Flo tipped her head toward Mack’s shut door. “He’s with a client.”

  “Okay, I’ll be in my office if you—”

  “Sweetheart.” Her mom took off her black-framed reading glasses and dropped them on the desk. “I’m just going to ask.”

  Sarah had no idea what her mother could be getting at now. “Uh, sure. Ask.”

  “What went wrong between you and Logan Crawford?”

  Just hearing his name hurt. Like a hard jab straight to the solar plexus.

  “That face.” Her mother made a circular gesture with her right hand, fingers spread wide. “That is not your happy face. Are you ever going to open up and talk to me?”

  “I don’t...” Her silly throat clutched and she hard-swallowed. “I really don’t want to talk about Logan.”

  “Oh, yes, you do. You’re stubborn, that’s all. You always have been. But here’s what I know. A week ago last Friday, Logan’s pickup was parked in front of your house all night. Since then, well, something has gone wrong. The light has gone out of your eyes—don’t argue. Your eyes are sad. They’re full of woe. Then an hour ago, I drop by Daisy’s for a cruller and a coffee and I see Logan sitting in the corner having donuts with some elegant-looking brunette. What happened, honey?”

  “He was out with an elegant brunette?” God. That hurt so much—even though she knew very well she had no right at all to feel brokenhearted that he might be seeing someone else.

  “Yes.” Flo’s tone had gentled. She gazed at Sarah with understanding now. “And yes, it was only coffee and a donut. I can’t say beyond a shadow of a doubt that it absolutely was a date. But, well, sometimes a woman can just tell. You know?”

  “No, Mom. I don’t know.”

  “It’s just that, the two of them together, well, there was a definite ‘datish’ feel about it.”

  “Datish? What does that even mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I just said I didn’t.”

  Flo waved her hand some more. “In any case, seeing your guy with another girl—”

  “Mom, he is not my—”

  “Yes, he is. If he wasn’t your guy, you wouldn’t be so crushed to learn that he had coffee with someone else.” The phone rang.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?”

  “Voice mail will get it. This is more important.” They stared at each other through two more rings. As soon as the phone fell silent, Flo went right on. “Honey, I do understand your fears. You were always so sure of where you were going and how it would be for you. All your growing-up years, while your dad and I were stuck on a treadmill of unhappiness and emotional isolation, I just knew that for you, things would be different.”

  “You did?” Sarah felt misty-eyed that her mom had actually pai
d attention, had believed that Sarah would make a success of her life.

  Flo nodded. “You had a plan and you were going to have it all—a high-powered job you loved, the right man at your side. And eventually, children to love and to cherish.”

  “Well, I do have Sophia, right? Things could be worse.”

  “But they could also be better, now, couldn’t they? You haven’t shared specific details with me, but here you are back at home, single with Sophia. It’s patently obvious that things didn’t work out according to your plan. You’ve been disappointed. Deeply so. But you can’t just shut yourself off from your heart’s desire because you’ve been let down a time or two. If you do that, you’ll end up nothing short of dead inside. Take it from your mother who was dead inside herself for far too many years. Honey, you need to give that man a shot. If you don’t, some other lucky girl is going to snap him right up.”

  * * *

  That afternoon and through way too many hours of the night that followed, Sarah couldn’t stop thinking about the things her mom had said.

  In the morning, she had a nine o’clock appointment with a client out in the valley not all that far from the Ambling A. The meeting took a little over an hour.

  When she finished, she secured Sophia’s seat in the back of her car, got in behind the wheel—and called Logan before she could think of all the reasons she shouldn’t.

  It rang twice. She was madly trying to decide whether to leave a message or just hang up when he answered. “Sarah?”

  All he said was her name, but it was everything. Just to hear the slightly frantic edge to his always-smooth voice. As if he’d missed her. As if he was afraid she’d already hung up.

  “Hey.” Her mind went blank and her heart beat so fast she felt a little dizzy.

  “Sarah.” He said her name like it mattered. A whole lot.