* * *
“Anything I can do to help?”
The deep voice rumbled into her consciousness, making her jump. Catherine looked in the direction of the voice—although there was really no need to. She knew who was asking the question because the sound of his voice had hardly left her head these last few days.
Cody had been on her mind and in her dreams ever since that life-altering kiss in front of her shop the other evening.
She’d tried to busy herself with plans and bury herself in work that was all targeted for her grand opening. But even that wasn’t enough to drown out his presence.
Catherine was beginning to doubt that anything was.
“Help?” Catherine repeated the word as if it was completely foreign to her.
“Yeah. To get ready for that grand opening, or reopening, you’re holding for this store.” He could see how much making the store a success seemed to mean to her and if that was what made her happy, then he wanted to ensure that the grand opening was going to be the success that she was hoping for. “Thought you might need an extra hand or two,” he added as an afterthought.
Just then, the door to the rear storage area opened and three people came in, two young women and a man, all of them looking enough like one another—and Catherine—to make him realize that they had to be related.
Seeing all of them here made him feel slightly out of place, so he lifted a shoulder in a vague, dismissive shrug.
“Or not,” he tossed in. “Looks to me like you’ve already got enough hands.”
He was going to leave, Catherine realized in alarm. Without thinking, she grabbed hold of his arm, her survival instincts kicking in before she could stop herself with any logical thought process.
“Never enough hands,” she told him, recovering. And then she smiled up at Cody. “I could use you for some of the heavy lifting.” It was the first thing that came to her mind and she felt that it might appeal to the machismo in him.
Cody arched one very quizzical eyebrow as he looked at her. Almost everything around them in the shop looked as if it weighed at least a ton. He was strong, but he wasn’t that strong.
“Just what is it that you want lifted?” he asked suspiciously.
“Moved actually,” she amended, pointing to an armoire that she’d spent hours working on in order to return it to its original shine. “I thought that might look better against the far wall.”
Cody regarded the heavy piece of furniture. “I don’t know. I think it might get more attention out in the open right where it is. The customers can’t help but see it when they walk in,” he added for good measure.
“Okay.” Catherine nodded, considering his argument. “I’m open to advice. If you think it’ll be noticed faster this way,” she allowed, “then we’ll keep it right where it is.” She flashed a grin at him, guessing what he was probably thinking. “Don’t worry, I’ve got smaller things to move.”
“Never doubted that you did,” he quipped. “Just point them out and tell me where you want them.”
“Where do you want us?” Craig asked. He glanced at his watch. C.C. and Cecilia had dragged him here to give Catherine moral support. “I don’t have that much time to give.”
“So you’ve said four or five times already,” C.C. cracked.
“But who’s counting,” Cecilia, ever the peacemaker, chimed in. She made sure to suppress the grin that wanted to rise to her lips.
“I’ve got another batch of flyers,” Catherine said, reaching underneath the counter.
After pulling them out she stacked the pile beside the old-fashioned cash register she’d dug up after an extensive search. She wanted to be able to ring up sales on something that was in keeping with the general motif of the shop.
“Of course you do,” C.C. murmured, offering her older sister a tolerant smile.
Catherine divided the flyers into three equal batches, then handed a stack to each of her siblings. “Put them up wherever you see an empty space,” she instructed.
Cecilia looked at the flyers she had in her arms. “You mean there’s actually wall space left that doesn’t have one of these things pasted on it?” She’d already been recruited to hang up flyers earlier in the week.
“Lots of places,” Catherine assured her sister. Then, in case one of them wanted to challenge her statement, she added, “I checked.”
“Well then, let’s get to it, shall we?” Cecilia proposed to her younger sister and older brother, tongue in cheek. She paused to salute Catherine, then left the shop with C.C., ready to post flyers wherever she found an open spot.
Craig was a little slower in his follow-through. Instead, he carefully scrutinized the man his sister had asked him to look into.
The man had to represent her newest project, Craig decided. Once a caregiver, always a caregiver, he thought. And from what she’d had him find out about Cody Overton, the man was a project that would keep her busy for quite some time to come. He hadn’t had the easiest life and it had made him distant and reclusive.
Catherine, he had a hunch, was going to try to change that.
“You’re not giving a batch to your friend?” Craig asked, nodding at Cody.
“I’ve got other plans for him,” Catherine told him, sparing Cody a quick, decisive glance.
I just bet you do, Craig thought.
But out loud he made no quip, saying instead, “Then I guess I’d better get going.” He glanced in Cody’s direction. He was still undecided whether he liked what he saw or not. As the oldest, he felt responsible for all his sisters.
“See you around,” Craig said to his sister’s project. With that, Craig, armed with an armload of fliers, made his way to the front door and left.
Cody took off his hat, laying it carefully on the counter, then rolled up his sleeves one at a time. “What did you have in mind?” he asked, nodding toward the furnishings.
Catherine pointed out a group of bookcases she’d picked up at an estate sale. She had painted them an antique white when the initial old color had defied restoration.
“I’d like those all brought over there.” She pointed to a spot that could easily be viewed through the front window.
As Cody moved the bookcases one by one, she debated whether or not to say anything. But after a moment, she decided that her truthfulness was an asset in this case. She had a feeling Cody could spot a phony—even a well-intentioned phony—the proverbial mile away. “I wasn’t sure if I’d see you here again.”
Cody stopped moving the bookcase and looked at her, surprised by her admission and that she’d thought it in the first place. After all, they weren’t exactly sophomores in high school anymore.
At this point, he was beginning to doubt that he had ever been that young.
“You mean after I kissed you the other night?” he asked.
When he said it out loud like that, it sounded pretty foolish. But she’d started this, so she had no choice but to answer him.
“Well, yes,” she admitted.
He couldn’t read her expression. It had been a long time since he’d felt the need to try to second-guess what another person—a woman, specifically—was thinking. He’d gotten rusty at it and for once, Catherine’s face was not completely animated.
Maybe he made her uncomfortable, Cody thought. “You want me to leave?”
No! But she knew she couldn’t say that, at least, not with the kind of emphasis that had just echoed through her head. It might make him feel hemmed in or smothered. God, but men were so hard to read.
So instead, she forced herself to ask a question. “Do you want to?”
“It’s not about me,” he said pointedly. “It’s about you. What you want. So, do you want me to go?” he asked again.
Her mother had always said that a lady never allows her true feelings for a man to show completely, especially not at the outset. Her mother said that it made a woman look too needy, too accessible, and she lost the air of mystery that was her main bargaining chip.
>
But all those rules, it seemed to Catherine, were for games and she didn’t think that something as important as a person’s feelings should be treated as some sort of game.
So, drawing her courage to her—and desperately trying to still her nerves—Catherine answered Cody truthfully. “No, I don’t. As a matter of fact, I was afraid that you wouldn’t come back at all, not even for Real Vintage Cowboy’s grand opening.”
“Why would you think that?” he wanted to know. He was really trying to understand her reasoning. “Was the kiss really that bad?”
“No,” she whispered, afraid that if she spoke any louder, her voice might quake and give her away. “It was that good.”
Cody stared at her as he took the news in. He wanted to kiss her again. Nothing else had occupied his thoughts since he’d walked away and left her on the doorstep that night.
The pragmatic side of him had wanted to kiss her again to make certain that what he’d experienced wasn’t just a fluke. The free-spirited side of him had wanted to kiss Catherine again just to kiss her again.
He smiled then. One of his rare, starting in the middle and radiating out to all corners smiles that instantly warmed her and went on to warm the room around her as well.
Instead of saying anything, Cody touched her chin with the tip of his finger and raised it just a little, tilting her head back.
And then he brushed his lips over hers.
At first lightly, then again, and again, each time with more intensity, more fervor than the last until the kiss from the other evening was revisited in its full intensity.
She was sinking again—and it was exhilarating, she couldn’t help thinking, grasping on to Cody’s arms to anchor herself as well as to give herself leverage. Leverage she needed in order to rise up on her toes and absorb even more of the kiss than she had the first time around.
Slowly, as Catherine found herself falling into the kiss completely, she moved her hands up until they were around Cody’s neck. Her heart pounding, she held on for dear life.
“Is that some new way to move furniture that I don’t know about?”
The deep voice splintered the moment.
Her heart pounding madly, Catherine pulled away from Cody to see that her brother had returned and was standing there looking at them.
Pushing both her embarrassment and her annoyance over Craig turning up like this aside, Catherine finally found her voice and said, “It’s a new technique we’re trying out.”
Cody felt the corners of his mouth curving in amusement. Who knew the woman could be a feisty little hellcat to this degree?
He was finding more and more about her to like each time he was around her.
“How’s that working out for you?” Craig deadpanned.
“Just fine, thanks for asking.” Catherine redirected the line of questioning to focus on him, not on her or Cody. “What are you doing back so soon? You couldn’t have distributed all those flyers already.” She looked pointedly at the stack of posters he was holding in his hand.
“Sharp as a tack, this one,” Craig commented to Cody before answering her question. “I forgot my tape.” He picked up a roll from the counter and deliberately held it up for her inspection as if it was exhibit A in a trial. “I’ll be on my way now,” he announced. “So you two can get back to trying out your new ‘technique’ again.”
And with that, Craig left the shop for a second time, closing the door behind him.
Humor echoed in Cody’s voice as he said, “Think I might get to like him,” just before he pulled her back into his arms.
Catherine never got a chance to comment on his assessment of her brother. Cody’s mouth had found hers again with no trouble at all.
The rest was a blur.
Chapter Ten
Without meaning to, Cody had upended her life to such a degree that it became increasingly difficult for her to focus on anything else except for the man who had inspired her shop’s new name.
Still, she did have a lot of work left to do and the work was not about to do itself. There was a deadline breathing down her neck. The flyers were out and the grand opening of Real Vintage Cowboy was set for Friday at two, so the shop absolutely, positively had to be ready by then.
That meant that there was still an overwhelming amount of work get done.
She had endless checklists connected to that goal running through her head, and at times, Catherine felt as if she was going in four different directions all at the same time. Each time she started doing one thing, she thought of something else she needed to attend to, another estate sale she wanted to monitor on her laptop, another piece she thought could be improved upon, et cetera.
Consequently, she found herself doing six things at once, completing none because yet another thing demanded her attention.
Catherine began to feel as if she was wearing out from the inside out.
Cody put in as much time as he could spare away from his ranch and the quarter horses he was training. He was lucky in that the two ranch hands who worked for him had been with him since the beginning and knew the routine that was involved as well as he did.
For the first time since Renee’s passing, he found himself actually wanting to leave the ranch rather than using any excuse to hide there. Things, he thought, were definitely changing for him.
And Catherine was the reason behind the change.
Watching her move quickly about the shop brought to mind the image of a propelled ball bearing that had been released in an old-fashioned pinball machine. He shook his head, growing exhausted by proxy.
“You might want to just finish one thing at a time,” he finally suggested.
“I would if I could, but there’s always something else I realize I’ve forgotten to do,” Catherine told him as she raced by Cody on her way to the storage room.
When Cody suddenly blocked her path and took hold of her shoulders, she came to a skidding, abrupt halt. Confused, the look she shot at Cody was ripe with impatience.
Was he trying to make some kind of point?
Now?
“What?” she bit off, then flushed because she realized that she must have sounded like some kind of a shrew. “What?” she repeated, saying the word a little more softly. In both cases, however, her impatience all but vibrated through the word. She didn’t have time for this. She still had eight hundred and ninety-seven things to do before Friday, or at least that was the way it felt to her.
“Slow down a little,” he advised in the same tone he used to gentle an agitated horse.
Easy for him to say. His success or failure wasn’t riding on how well the shop was initially received. She was up against the specter of the previous shop and its far-from-liked owner.
“I can’t,” Catherine insisted, trying to shrug him off. To her surprise, he didn’t remove his hands but kept them—and her—right where they were.
“Slow down,” he repeated a bit more firmly. “Otherwise you’ll wear yourself completely out before you officially open your doors to the paying public. Then all this work will be for nothing.” His eyes held hers, all but hypnotizing her. “Breathe, Catherine, breathe,” he instructed.
When she finally did as he instructed, taking a breath in then slowly exhaling it, she never took her eyes off him.
Cody knew defiance when he saw it.
The smallest hint of a smile curved his lips. “That’s it, in and out. Good.” He slipped his hands from her shoulders, but his eyes continued to hold her in place. “The shop doesn’t have to be perfect, you know. Nothing’s perfect,” he underscored.
“I don’t want it to be perfect,” Catherine protested. She gestured around the shop helplessly. “I just want it to be...”
“Perfect,” he supplied knowingly. “People don’t like perfect, Catherine,” he told her. “It makes them feel even more imperfect than they already are.”
Catherine looked at him for a long moment, clearly surprised. And amused. “I had no idea you were a philosophe
r, Cody,” she said. Maybe she should have called the shop The Philosophical Cowboy, she mused.
Cody inclined his head, amused at her assessment. You don’t know the half of it, Cate.
“Hell,” he said out loud. “I’m a lot of things when I have to be.”
Only after a beat had passed did she decide that Cody was just pulling her leg.
Or was he?
Now that she thought of it, a little homespun philosophy actually seemed to be right up his alley.
“How about if I just shoot for clean and presentable?” she suggested, waiting to see what he’d say.
Cody nodded, then qualified his response. “As long as you don’t wear yourself out. Okay, I’m finished with this,” he said, indicating the large, dapple gray horse that had once been attached to a carousel. Working on it had brought back memories, but none that stopped him in his tracks. He supposed that meant he was making progress. “What’s next?” he asked gamely.
“Next,” C.C. announced, walking into the shop with a bag that had a wonderful aroma emanating from it, “you stop what you’re doing and eat your lunch.” Nodding a greeting at Cody, C.C. held the bag she’d brought up to her sister. “You’ll find a little of everything in there including a hot pastrami sandwich that tantalizingly announces itself way before you even open the bag and look inside,” C.C. cheerfully continued, her sweeping glance taking in both her older sister and the cowboy who had become more or less a fixture in the shop for the last few days.
Catherine frowned. She really didn’t have the time to stop and eat right now. “You make this hard to ignore, C.C..”
Her sister smiled broadly. “That, dear sister, is the whole point.” She addressed her next words to Cody, issuing a command brightly. “If she doesn’t stop to eat, sit on her.”
“Will do,” Cody promised.
Her errand of mercy over, C.C. left the shop, convinced that Cody would look out for her sister. Cody looked at Catherine expectantly. “You heard the lady.”
She had no intention of being ordered around—or intimidated—by her younger sister. “That’s not a lady, that’s my sister. My younger sister,” she emphasized as if that made her argument for her.
Real Vintage Maverick Page 10