by Stacy Finz
But Joe had cajoled, and the barn was just sitting there, collecting dust. Clay didn’t give two shits about the stuff in it—the antiques, the rugs, the pictures that Jennifer had purchased in one fell swoop from a design center showroom in San Francisco. The McCreedys had been living in these mountains since the gold rush. He slept in the same bed where his great-grandmother gave birth, ate off the same wake table that his ancestors brought with them on a ship from Ireland. His family’s history is what mattered to him, not some meaningless bric-a-brac with a hefty price tag.
So he’d finally relented to Joe. Cattlemen helped each other, and Joe would’ve done the same thing for him. Clay only hoped he wouldn’t live to regret his decision. He had enough responsibilities without Emily turning into a high-maintenance tenant.
At least she wasn’t much to look at. Plain old mousy, if you asked him.
Granted, he was close to six-three, but she barely reached his chin. He liked statuesque women, long and leggy. Charitably, he would call Emily scrawny. Maybe, just maybe, she was hiding a voluptuous figure under all those baggy clothes. But Clay sincerely doubted it. In his experience, women liked to show off their assets. God knew Jen had—like a grand champion at the county fair, strutting all those USDA prime cuts. Especially the ones he’d paid for.
He couldn’t even remember the color of Emily’s hair; only that it hung around her face like a dead animal. Her eyes were a nice shade of blue, though. Just devoid of any signs of life—no twinkle, no spark. Not quite cold, just detached.
“Thank you, Joe,” he said aloud, and meant it from the bottom of his heart.
Because the last complication Clayton McCreedy needed in his life right now was another hot-looking woman.
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Copyright © 2014 by Stacy Finz
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First Electronic Edition: October 2014
eISBN-13: 978-1-60183-338-9
eISBN-10: 1-60183-338-5
First Print Edition: October 2014
ISBN-13: 978-1-60183-339-6
ISBN-10: 1-60183-339-3