This was supposed to be her day off, but obviously someone hadn’t gotten the memo.
The old phrase about there being no rest for the weary ran through her head as she opened the door.
“You ready or do you need a few more minutes?” Brett asked.
He looked even more causal than usual, with faded jeans and a denim work shirt, both of which looked as if they had been through the wash a few too many times and adhered to his body as if they sensed they’d fall apart otherwise.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” he guessed from the look on her face. With everything that had been going on these past couple of days, he could see how that had happened.
Rather than answer in the affirmative and admit that it had slipped her mind, she twisted her alibi into a question of her own. “You still want to take me to your ranch?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” he asked her, then added, “Unless you don’t want to go for some reason.” He wasn’t about to force her, but at the same time, Brett had to admit that he’d been looking forward to spending a little time with her without the demands of his job—or hers—getting in the way. “Up to you,” he told her, leaning one broad shoulder against her doorjamb as he waited for her to think it over.
Instead of turning away or retreating into her apartment, Alisha remained there for a moment, thinking over the option he’d just given her. Since he’d kissed her that night at the clinic, she’d been a little afraid of what she’d felt, as well as somewhat leery of being alone with this man.
But at the same time, in the tradition of a moth moving around a flame, she knew she was more than a little drawn to Brett.
How about a lot drawn?
All the more reason not to be alone with him, ’Lish. You don’t want to make the same mistake twice.
The problem with having a little voice that spouted common sense in your head, she’d discovered, was that the voice could easily be either ignored or overridden.
She did both.
“I’m ready,” she told him, then glanced down at what she was wearing. Maybe not so ready, she decided. “I just need another minute or so. I’m not really sure what to wear,” she confessed.
She looked fine to him just the way she was, he couldn’t help thinking. “Any way you’re comfortable is all you need to keep in mind,” he told her, adding, “You’re overthinking this. Forever isn’t a formal kind of town. We don’t notice outfits so much as we notice the person who’s in them.”
The way he was looking at her had her fighting a blush—and losing. To cover for herself, Alisha said, “Spoken like a true man. Women notice clothes.”
“Well, since you’re going to be the only female there, I don’t think you have much to worry about.” His eyes seemed to caress her as they passed over her again, as if inspecting what he’d just accepted. “You wouldn’t have anything to worry about standing in a crowd of women and wearing a burlap sack.”
Brett, Alisha couldn’t help thinking, seemed to be able to say all the right things at just the right time.
Talk is cheap, remember?
She did remember. Remember that she’d gone this route before, with Pierce. She’d believed his stories, his lies and his initial protestations that he loved her.
This man wasn’t Pierce. Pierce had only been in love with what he saw looking back at him in his mirror. He counted first, last and all the spaces in between. So far, she hadn’t seen any evidence of that sort of egomania on Brett’s part. On the contrary, he seemed to put everyone else first.
But then, Brett might have just been a better actor than Pierce had been.
Give the man a chance. He might surprise you.
“Something wrong?” Brett asked her. “You look like you’re having some sort of a mental argument with yourself.”
His intuitive assessment startled her—but she managed to recover nicely.
“No mental argument,” she assured Brett—okay, she was lying, she admitted to herself, but under the circumstances, she could be forgiven the small white lie. She didn’t want to let him in on her vacillation—or the fact that she felt as attracted to him as she did.
Right, like he can’t guess.
With effort, she blocked the voice that seemed bent on tripping her up. “I’m just doing a quick mental check to make sure I’m not forgetting something.”
Brett decided that she needed a little encouragement. The woman really needed to unwind a little. That was something that Dan had had to learn as well once he’d committed to Forever, he recalled.
“Nathan’s recuperating at his friend’s house, and the clinic’s closed,” Brett pointed out. For now, Nathan and his wife were taking a time-out, and Nathan needed his rest. “Looks to me like you’re pretty free.”
She didn’t want to seem too eager. “There are things I have to consider that you don’t know about,” she told him primly.
He inclined his head. “Fair enough. What’s the verdict?” Brett asked, instinctively sensing that if he pushed in any way, she’d push back, dig in and stay home. If nothing else, working at Murphy’s had taught him how to read people and act accordingly. Alisha needed to come around on her own.
“That you’re right,” she answered him after a beat. “I’m free to leave.”
There was a stillness in her voice that instantly alerted him. Were those nerves he detected? Was she nervous about spending time alone with him? Was the very thing he was looking forward to frightening her for some reason?
He’d begun to think of her as fearless, especially after he’d witnessed the confrontation between Alisha and Nathan’s wife. Maybe at bottom, when it came to personal matters, she wasn’t quite so fearless after all.
He did want her to enjoy herself as much as he just wanted to enjoy having her with him today. But he wasn’t going to enjoy himself if she was uneasy during the whole time.
“Would you feel better if I had one or both of my brothers come along?”
The offer surprised her. That she was afraid of the feelings she might have for him was one thing. The fact that he thought there was fear involved on her part was quite another.
Alisha squared her shoulders like a young prizefighter about to go into the ring. “Why would I want that?”
“So you could feel more at ease,” Brett answered simply.
“At ease?” she echoed. “Are you saying you think I’m afraid of you?” she challenged, indignation gleaming in her eyes.
“I’m saying I want you to enjoy the day on the ranch,” he told her amicably, avoiding answering the question directly, “and I’ll do anything I need to in order to ensure that you do.”
He could word it any way he wanted to, but she knew what he was actually saying, and she wanted to make it clear to him that he was wrong—even if he wasn’t entirely.
“I am not afraid of you,” she emphasized.
He nodded, seemingly accepting her at her word. “Good. Then let’s go.”
“Absolutely.” With that, Alisha walked out of the tiny apartment first.
Brett followed her, waited until she locked her door and then resumed walking behind her as they went down the narrow stairs. He hung back just enough to be able to watch her descent and to enjoy the view of that descent. He especially savored the way her hips moved from side to side.
It was a great deal like watching poetry in motion, he realized, his eyes never straying from the view.
It made him rather sorry that the stairway wasn’t twice as long.
Turning around at the base of the stairs, Alisha looked at him, noting the expression on his face. “Why are you smiling like that?”
His sense of self-preservation had him quickly manufacturing a neutral answer. “Just looking forward to spending the day with you, Lady Doc. Just looking forward to spending the day.”
Alisha had a feeling there was more to it than that, but she decided that it might be wiser to keep that thought to herself.
Chapter Fourteen
“This is all yours?” Alisha finally asked, breaking the silence.
They had been driving for a while now, and Brett had gone through a parted, partially rotting gate about fifteen minutes ago. She wasn’t much when it came to judging distances, but that had to have been at least several miles back.
Accustomed to living in an area comprised of tall buildings with glimmers of grass every so often—usually pushing their way through cracks in the sidewalk—even after five weeks out here, this was a whole new experience for her. Here there was nothing but grass—and the occasional tree—no matter which way she looked. And the sky, she had to admit, was incredible, so blue that it almost hurt to look at it.
“Technically, that’s what the will said,” Brett answered. The ranch house was coming into view in the distance. He drove toward it. “But I’m sharing it with my brothers.”
Somehow, she would have expected nothing less of him. She had come to realize that family was very important to Brett. Alisha caught herself thinking that her father would have liked him. A lot.
Now, where had that come from? she wondered defensively.
“Very generous of you,” she told him.
He shrugged off the compliment—if that was the way she had meant it. With Alisha, because of the tone she used so often, he was never quite sure if she was being serious or sarcastic.
“Well, if it’s one-third each theirs,” he told her, “they’ll be more willing to pitch in and help out when I need them.”
Because she’d been raised to always strive for goals, to never just sit back and let things be, she assumed he had some sort of a plan for this ranch he’d inherited.
“So what are you going to do with it?” she asked.
He laughed shortly. What he intended to do with all this was still a mystery to him.
“Haven’t a clue,” he admitted. “Raise cattle on it or maybe horses. Or I could farm it—the soil’s pretty rich.”
“Are you considering selling it?” she asked.
“Why?” he asked with a grin. “Are you considering buying it?”
She was startled by the question, and it took her a second to answer coherently. “Oh, no, I’m not.”
She didn’t want to mislead him; it was just that if she’d inherited property like this, the first thing she would have thought of was selling it. But then, she hadn’t grown up in these wide-open spaces. Maybe being a landowner appealed to him more than running that saloon of his.
“Right now, this is all just a big question mark to me,” he told her, gesturing at the view before them. “About the only thing I do know is that the ranch house on it needs a lot of work.”
He glanced at her to see if she was going to make a comment. The glance turned into a gaze. Her profile was even more striking in the morning light than it was inside his saloon with only the artificial light to enhance her features.
Damn, but she was beautiful, he caught himself thinking.
“Aren’t you supposed to be looking at the road?” Alisha asked, pointing to the windshield and what lay beyond it.
“I checked the road,” he drawled. “Don’t worry. It’s not going anywhere.”
With the road wide open in front of him, there was very little danger of his running into anything as long as he checked periodically that there were no stray animals making a mad dash toward his truck’s grillwork.
Alisha could almost feel his eyes studying her. Her adrenaline rose a notch, sending the blood rushing through her veins.
Had she made a mistake, agreeing to come out here like this with him?
“What’s the matter?” she asked a little too casually, trying to cover up the fact that having him look at her like that made all sorts of things inside her grow skittish. “Didn’t I get all the soap off my face this morning?”
“Your face is perfect,” he told her softly. “Just like the rest of you.”
Wow, she thought; if she’d been younger and more impressionable, that would have had her dazzled and floating at least five inches off the ground. But no more.
“I’m from New York, Murphy,” she told him as crisply as possible. “Nobody sold me a bridge all the years that I lived there.”
He knew what she was saying, that she thought he was just flattering her in an attempt to seduce her. It was more complicated than that, although the thought of seducing her was exceedingly appealing.
“Not trying to sell you a bridge, Lady Doc,” he told her mildly. “Just telling it like it is.”
She did what she could to steel herself off from his golden tongue.
“Where are you taking me, really?” she asked, doing her best to mask the butterflies that were wildly flapping their wings in her stomach.
“To see the ranch house,” he answered simply, even though he knew she’d figured that part out for herself. “I thought I’d get your opinion.”
She looked at him, confused. He’d mentioned that when he’d first asked her. Was he actually serious? Her opinion?
“Hate to break this to you, Murphy, but I know nothing about ranch houses.”
“You can still tell if something looks like it’s worth saving.” It wasn’t a question; it was a matter-of-fact statement. “But that’s not the only reason I asked you to come out with me.”
“Oh?” Here it came, she thought, bracing herself, wondering if this was where a really nice guy suddenly turned into a demanding male.
Brett nodded. “I just wanted to spend a little time alone with you before word started to spread.”
What was he talking about? For a second, her mind was blank. Was he referring to the fact that he’d kissed her, and she had willingly kissed back? Did that somehow set her apart? She sincerely doubted it, not in this day and age, not even in a small town like Forever.
Alisha stared at him, not knowing what to make of what he had just said.
“By now,” he went on to explain for her benefit, “everyone in town undoubtedly thinks you’re a hero—or heroine, if you prefer.”
For some reason, his words brought a sense of relief to her. “Why would they think that?”
“Well, you did save Nathan’s life,” Brett pointed out.
That part was true, but she was a doctor. It was what she was supposed to do, what she was trained for. There were no special accolades for that.
“I just did what any other doctor would do. My job,” she emphasized.
The fact that she wasn’t trying to make what she did come off heroic acted in her favor. He liked her modesty. Hell, he was realizing that he liked everything about her.
“The point is, we don’t have any other doctor. Dan’s hurt, so he couldn’t have operated, and if you weren’t here, we would have had to get Nathan over to Pine Ridge pronto. Pine Ridge is roughly fifty miles away. In the condition Nathan was in, the trip there with all its bumps and what have yous would have probably caused that appendix of his to explode on him. The upshot of it is that he would have most likely been dead by the time he arrived at the hospital. So, pure and simple, that makes you the heroine of the tale,” he concluded, slowing down his truck.
“No,” Alisha contradicted him, “that makes you a very imaginative man. It was no big deal.” Although, she had to admit, if only to herself, that she was very satisfied—as well as gratified—with her own performance. Until that night, she had either assisted in the more difficult surgeries or performed a handful of very simple, by-the-book surgeries. Nathan’s surgery had been way more complicated and taxing. Performing that appendectomy by herself, even under Dan’s watchful eye, made it official. She was a real doctor now, she thought with pride.
�
�It is to Nathan,” Brett was saying. He finally came to a stop, having pulled up in front of a weather-beaten, single-story ranch house that was badly in need of some tender loving care—and soon. “We’re here,” he announced needlessly.
Alisha managed to maintain a straight face as she asked, “How can you tell?”
“A sense of humor,” he noted with approval. “Good. You’re gonna need one if you decide to stay on in Forever.”
Did he think she was still debating that? She’d just assumed that everyone thought she was staying on. The thought had made her feel somewhat trapped when she let it—as well as feel guilty if she decided to take off. The truth of it was, Brett’s approach left her more inclined to consider staying in Forever. It wasn’t freedom she required as much as the option of freedom.
She caught herself smiling.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” she told Brett as she unbuckled her seat belt. “I’ll need a sense of humor no matter where I am.” Getting out of the passenger side, she took a closer look at the outside of the ranch house. The paint was curling off in sections. “You weren’t kidding, were you?” she marveled. Stepping clear of his truck, she surveyed the house slowly. The view didn’t improve. If anything, it grew worse.
Brett shut his door and came around to her side. “About?”
She gestured toward the unhappy building. “The house needing work.”
The structure was desperately in need of not just a fresh coat of paint, but it also appeared to be badly in need of structural repair. The sun had baked parts of the exterior, causing it to deteriorate to the point that there were sections that looked as if all she had to do was blow on them, and they would just disintegrate right before her eyes.
“Actually,” she decided, “if the inside is as bad as the outside, I think you might be better off starting from scratch.”
He’d already toyed with that idea, but he pretended that this was the first time he’d faced that option. “You mean just knocking it all down and building something brand-new?”
She nodded. Hands on her hips, she scrutinized the entire exterior.
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