Her Forever Cowboy

by Marie Ferrarella

And if the noise didn’t subside by tonight, she was going to demand her money back and—

  And what? Crawl back to Dan’s and ask him if she could move back into the guest room? She couldn’t do that. It would be too embarrassing. Sure, Dan and his wife had taken the news well, telling her they understood. But if she came back the same day, they’d think she was a loon. She’d be packing up for good before she knew it.

  And going where?

  No, for better or worse, right now she needed to stick it out in Forever. But if she couldn’t, for whatever reason, settle in upstairs, then where?

  Miss Joan’s? She could envision the woman working on her, slowly drawing out every shred of information she had within her.

  Maybe she could sleep in the clinic, Alisha thought, ruling out Miss Joan’s. One of the exam rooms had been converted to a makeshift hospital room where patients who’d had nonthreatening, minor surgery stayed overnight to recover and rest. She could stay there until she figured out her next move, Alisha told herself. All things considered, it couldn’t possibly be as noisy there as what she was currently hearing.

  Having gone up the stairs far slower than she was happy about, Alisha marched toward what was now her apartment and set the suitcases down on the landing just outside the door. As she entered, she was about to demand to know what the hell was going on here when she suddenly had her answer.

  Or at least part of it.

  At the far end of the room, where there had once been a solid wall, there was now a big gaping hole. But instead of daylight coming through, Alisha saw what appeared to be a room or something akin to one beyond the one she was standing in.

  Taking a few steps into the noise-drenched area, she could feel the hammering and the drilling all but reverberating within her body.

  But the increased noise was nothing in the face of what she found herself looking at. Brett and one of his brothers—Finn, was it?—stripped down to their jeans, their bare chests gleaming with sweat, each manning either a drill or a sledgehammer.

  Were they ripping apart her apartment so she couldn’t make use of it? After charging her rent? Why would they do something like that?

  Determined to get an answer, she marched over to Brett and addressed his back in a raised voice. “What are you doing?” When neither he nor his brother turned around to answer her, she surmised that they hadn’t heard her. Small wonder—she could hardly hear herself think, much less talk.

  Rather than try again and vainly shout at the two men, she tapped Brett on the shoulder. She nearly regretted it the next moment when he swung around quickly, startled by the unexpected contact.

  As he turned to face her, he held the hammer he was wielding aloft so as not to accidentally hit her. “Morning,” he said brightly.

  Morning? Was that all he had to say while he was destroying the place she was supposed to be staying in? Was he some kind of maniac?

  “What are you doing?” she shouted at him. Her voice all but echoed around the space because Finn had turned off the drill.

  “What does it look like?” Brett asked cheerfully.

  “Like you’re ripping the place apart,” she accused, trying very hard not to notice that the man had a very tempting rock-hard body, and that it was hardly inches away from hers.

  “Close,” Brett acknowledged. “We’re building you a bathroom.”

  Chapter Seven

  “A bathroom?” she repeated, fairly certain she wasn’t hearing Brett correctly.

  Alisha had an uneasy feeling that the sight of all those hard ridges along his bare chest and incredibly flat stomach was interfering with her ability to process information properly. Moreover, she was having a great deal of difficulty tearing her eyes away from his torso. It was only with a concentrated surge of effort that she managed to raise her eyes to his face.

  For once, Brett wasn’t wearing that sexy, cocky grin, she noticed with relief.

  “You’re building a bathroom up here?” Alisha questioned in disbelief. Just like that? He hadn’t mentioned anything last night. Last night, he’d made it sound as if the facilities downstairs were her one and only option.

  Brett nodded. If he was aware that he was somewhat underdressed for this conversation, he gave no indication.

  “After giving the matter some thought, it didn’t seem right charging you that money without throwing in a basic facility.” He nodded toward his brother—also underdressed, she couldn’t help thinking. “Finn’s pretty handy with tools, so I figured we’d give getting this bathroom in place a shot.”

  That was all well and good, but meanwhile, Alisha thought, she had this gaping hole in her apartment, which negated the whole idea of having this apartment in the first place.

  “And where am I supposed to stay while this is going on?” she asked. Look at something else, ’Lish, she told herself, realizing that her eyes were once more riveted to his gleaming upper body. Look at anything else.

  Easier said than done.

  “Here,” Brett told her, answering her question. “Finn’s building the bathroom in what used to be the saloon’s storage room. It’s not going to interfere with your living here.”

  The hell it won’t, she thought. Alisha looked at the gaping hole again. Maybe she could hang a drape or tape newspapers over the opening as a temporary fix.

  But seeing as how they were doing all this without forcing her to either bargain for a bathroom or pay for it, she didn’t think she had all that much right to complain about the inconvenience or the noise. To do so would seem rather small-minded and petty of her in the face of the Murphy brothers’ generous gesture.

  Forcing herself to look elsewhere again, she murmured, “That’s very nice of you,” to Brett. “Of both of you,” she amended, realizing that she was leaving out the man Brett had just indicated was in charge of the remodeling. She could only pray he knew what he was doing.

  Finn slanted a look in her direction, acknowledging her recognition, then got back to work. Within seconds, the noise as well as the heat was once again enveloping the room—and her.

  The noise was coming from the tools. The heat, however, came from another source and was proving to be far more dangerous to her peace of mind. The heat was being generated by Brett’s and Finn’s bodies as they worked. Muscles tensed and bulged, and their bare chests gleamed with sweat that seemed to be just cascading off their tanned upper torsos.

  She needed to leave. To find somewhere with cooler air, somewhere where she could breathe. The air in what was now her apartment was suddenly in dangerous short supply.

  “I’d better get to the clinic,” she heard herself mumbling.

  Brett stopped swinging his hammer, resting it on the floor before him. There were beads of perspiration all along his brow. Alisha found herself curling her fingers into her palms to keep from reaching up and brushing his perspiration away.

  “What?” he asked, resting on the shaft of the sledgehammer. “I’m afraid I didn’t hear you.”

  “The clinic,” she said, pointing vaguely in the general direction where she assumed the squat, one-story building was situated. “I should be getting to it.” And away from here before I do something incredibly stupid I won’t forgive myself for.

  Brett’s brow furrowed beneath the damp hair plastered on his forehead. “I thought you said you were moving in this morning.”

  “I am. I did.” She pointed toward the two suitcases in the doorway. She’d intended to put their contents away and make herself at home a little. But she definitely couldn’t do that now, not with Brett here like this.

  “That’s it?” he asked, surprised at how little she’d brought.

  Alisha thought of her things, all neatly tucked away in the storage unit halfway across the country.

  “I travel light,” she said, not bothering to mention the rest.<
br />
  “Lighter than any woman I’ve ever met,” Brett readily acknowledged.

  He hefted the hammer again, ready to resume swinging. The demolition part was very nearly finished. Then came cleanup—but right now, that wasn’t his problem. He had to be getting downstairs to get ready for the day’s work soon.

  “I’ll see you later, then,” he told her.

  “Later,” she echoed, nodding her head as she began backing away. Taking a breath, she swung around to face the doorway and quickly vacated the premises, driven away not by the noise but by the spine-melting sight of two half-naked men. Two very impressively built half-naked men. Heaven knew she’d never seen anything in anatomy class that came close to what she had just been privy to. Certainly never anything that had her pulse revving up and launching into double-time the way that it was currently doing.

  It felt cooler to her the moment she got to the landing.

  Alisha just kept going without a backward glance.

  * * *

  “EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT?” Dan asked when he saw his new associate hurriedly throwing on her white lab coat and then slinging her stethoscope around the back of her neck.

  “Fine,” Alisha answered a bit too quickly.

  Dan gestured for her to come in. He closed the folder he’d been making notes in and pushed himself back a little from his desk to study his young associate. “I thought you were going to be settling into your new quarters this morning.”

  “I’m settled.”

  “That quickly?” he marveled. He looked at her more closely.

  “I didn’t have much,” Alisha reminded him, then added, “And I didn’t want to hang around and get in the way.”

  “In the way?” he echoed, puzzled. “In the way of what?”

  She realized that she’d managed to miss a button on the lab coat and began to undo them all. What was wrong with her? She’d seen unclothed patients before. Completely unclothed patients. But none, she was forced to admit, had ever made her spine tingle and her knees threaten to give way.

  “The sledgehammer and the drill,” she answered, rebuttoning her lab coat.

  Dan shook his head. “I don’t...” His voice trailed off, leaving his young associate room to jump in with an enlightening explanation—if she could.

  “Brett and his brother—” She paused, trying to remember his name.

  “Liam?”

  Alisha shook her head as she took the seat in front of him. That wasn’t it. “The other one.”

  “Finn.”

  Her face brightened with recognition. “Yes, that’s him. Finn. Brett and Finn are adding a bathroom to the apartment.”

  Dan absorbed the information and smiled as he nodded. “That just might come in handy,” he commented. “Listen, if you want to go back, maybe help out to make the construction go quicker, I can handle the patient load. After all, I’ve been doing it these last four years. A few more hours won’t kill me.”

  An image of Brett, his chest damp and glistening, flashed through her mind. She could feel herself reacting accordingly just from the memory of him. She definitely couldn’t go back to see the real thing. That was just asking for trouble.

  “No, that’s all right,” she assured Dan with feeling. “I’d rather stay here. Besides, I’d probably just be in the way. What I know about construction could probably fit on the head of a pin—with room to spare.”

  “Well, you’re one hell of a good doctor, and that’s what really counts,” he told her.

  She looked at him, slightly bewildered. It wasn’t that she didn’t welcome the praise, but she hadn’t done anything in the past two weeks to merit that sort of thing. What was he referring to?

  “How could you know that?” Alisha asked. “I’ve only been here a few weeks.”

  Dan smiled. “Well, I could say that I’m a keen judge of character and that I can read things into the way you interact with the patients and what you find significant in their health histories—or I could tell you that I had your file forwarded from the hospital. It makes for interesting reading.”

  “You had my file forwarded?” she asked incredulously. She’d just assumed, the need for a doctor being what it was, that Davenport would have just been glad she was breathing.

  He nodded. “I thought I’d save us both some time if I got to know your work through your previous efforts. That was some call you made in the E.R. with that boy. Considering all the commotion that was going on that night, according to the report, a lot of doctors might have missed that one symptom,” he complimented her, referring to the fact that there’d been a telltale pink line forming around the area that had been cut, a sure sign that an infection had set in.

  “That’s in there?” she asked, surprised. She hadn’t made a big deal of it, just made the notation in the chart and treated the young boy—saving his leg in the bargain, she’d thought with quiet pride.

  “Every last detail,” Dan told her. “You impressed the chief resident, and from what I recall of Gavin Stewart, that’s not an easy thing to do.”

  Alisha stared at him. “You know Dr. Gavin Stewart?”

  He smiled at her. “Actually, he interned under me,” he told her.

  “Small world,” Alisha marveled. Suddenly, she wasn’t quite the outsider she’d been a few minutes ago. They had something in common now beyond their choice of a profession.

  “Not as small as Forever,” Dan said, seeing the humor in the situation.

  “Doctors,” Holly Rodriguez said, sticking her head into Dan’s cubbyhole of an office. Her expression was serious, but not alarmed. Very little alarmed the steadfast young woman. “Marlene Ryan’s here with her son, Zack. I think he’s got a broken arm. Marlene said Zack was trying to be a bronco buster like his dad. Apparently, the horse had other ideas.”

  “Looks like we’re on again,” Dan said, pushing his chair back even farther and rising to his feet. Alisha was quick to follow suit.

  * * *

  IT WASN’T UNTIL more than ten hours later that the clinic was able to close its doors, allowing Alisha to drag her tired body back to Murphy’s.

  Too tired for dinner, she’d passed on both Holly’s and Dan’s separate invitations to join each for dinner with their respective families.

  All she wanted to do was fall face-first on her bed—provided she could get it to stay down—and sleep until she had to get up again for work tomorrow.

  But as she approached Murphy’s, she couldn’t help wondering if she was going to be subjected to the construction noise that she’d heard going on this morning. However, at this point, she had her doubts that it would keep her from sleeping. She was that tired.

  Mercifully, she didn’t detect any drilling or hammering when she opened the door to the saloon and walked in. Only the sound of voices, mostly male, raised in boisterous conversation.

  A good many of the men were lining the bar. She moved past the patrons like a woman in a semitrance, totally unaware that as she passed, she was garnering looks that varied from mildly interested to borderline lecherous.

  The latter was quickly squelched by a glare from Brett, silently putting the offending parties on notice. Brett ran an orderly establishment, which both men and women felt comfortable frequenting.

  “Lady Doc,” he called to her as she passed him. “How was your day?”

  “Long” was all Alisha trusted herself to say as she kept walking.

  “Need a little something to help you unwind?” Brett inquired.

  From where she was, it sounded more like a suggestion. Dog-tired though she was, Alisha recognized that beneath the exhaustion, she was pretty wound up after the lengthy day she’d had. She didn’t remember sitting down after Holly had announced the first patient, which meant that she’d spent more than ten hours straight on her feet.

&nb
sp; Retracing her steps back to Brett, she asked, “What would you suggest?”

  He had a feeling she didn’t realize that she’d just asked him a loaded question. Even tired-looking, Alisha Cordell was a damn gorgeous woman. He had a great many answers to her question that really couldn’t be voiced in public, or even really suggested in private, not at this juncture of their acquaintance.

  But there was no denying that he did find himself exceedingly attracted to her, and if and when conditions were right, he intended to act on that attraction—but not yet and not now. The town needed another doctor more than he needed to explore tempting new regions, no matter how much he wanted to. He did not want to be responsible for scaring her away.

  Brett had to admit, though, that this was the first woman he could recall who had tempted him to this point since Laura Wellington had left Forever—and him—in her rearview mirror.

  To date, Laura had been the only woman he’d ever wanted to marry. The only woman who had made him temporarily forget his responsibilities. He found his loyalties torn and his resolve waffling. What had finally made up his mind for him was Laura herself—but not in any way she had intended.

  His parents were gone, and his uncle had just died, leaving him to fend for himself and his two younger brothers. Laura couldn’t wait to kick Forever’s dust off her feet, and she wanted him to come with her. The moment they graduated high school, she’d been hell-bent on taking off. When he hesitated, she had given him an ultimatum. He had to choose: it was either her or his brothers. At fourteen and thirteen, they would have been turned over to become wards of the county.

  He couldn’t do it, couldn’t let that happen. He chose his brothers, and Laura took off, permanently fading out of his life. He’d hurt some, then just shut down that part of him. Pining away was for people who didn’t have a living to earn, and he’d had three of them to provide for.

  That was in the past now, and in all that time, he hadn’t found anyone he’d been willing to give his heart to. While he had dallied with and enjoyed many women since then, none had ever interested him, had ever moved him, the way that Laura had. He’d been fairly convinced that no one ever would.