Julia grinned. “‘Yes, Liam,’” she echoed, “‘I’d like to see you, too.’”
His eyes were smiling as he regarded her. “Nice to know we’re of like mind,” he told her. And then a bemused expression came over his face as he cocked his head ever so slightly.
Was he waiting for something more? Or having second thoughts about what he’d just said? “What’s wrong?” She wanted to know.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he told her. The grin was back and it grew wider. “I just never realized that you’ve got dimples. Two tiny ones,” he went on. “Right there. And there.” He lightly passed his forefinger along first one dimple, then the other, one at either corner of her mouth.
The moment his finger touched her skin, Julia could feel the longing beginning all over again, spreading a blanket of fire all along her body.
Abruptly he dropped his hand to his side.
When he saw her raise her eyebrow in a silent question, he explained, “I think I’d better stop touching you when we’re out in public—because that might lead to kissing you and you wouldn’t want people talking about you.”
“I never cared about what people had to say,” she told him honestly. There were people who were given to gossip and those who couldn’t care less. Her friends wouldn’t care and the others didn’t matter.
“I do,” he told her solemnly.
“Bad for your reputation?” she asked, curious.
He surprised her by saying, “No, bad for yours.”
Julia blinked. “You’re worried about my reputation?” she said incredulously.
He was accustomed to people talking about him because of his penchant to love ’em and leave ’em. Talking about Julia, though, was another thing entirely. He felt protective of her. Another new feeling for him. Being with Julia ushered in a series of “firsts,” he couldn’t help thinking.
“One of us should be.”
Damn him, Julia thought.
Despite all of her silent lectures to herself, she could feel it happening. Could feel herself falling in love with Liam even though she knew there was no future for her in his life.
Falling for Liam was just about the worst possible mistake she could make.
And even though she knew that what he was saying to her was a line—he sounded so sincere, that just for a moment, she allowed herself to believe him.
He wanted to see her. She hugged that thought close to her heart.
“Why don’t you come by my place tonight and I’ll make you dinner?” she suggested.
Liam smiled and suddenly her immediate world seemed to light up. “I’d like that,” he told her.
Not half as much as I will, Julia thought.
“I’d better be getting back,” she told him. “Before my mother starts wondering what happened to me.”
“If it came to that, I think she’d probably have a pretty good idea,” Liam suggested. He turned his attention to what she’d said earlier. “What time tonight?”
“Eight?” It was more of a question than a statement. “It’ll be after I close the store.”
“Eight it is,” he repeated with a nod. “Oh, and, Julia?” he called out just as she turned away.
She stopped and started to turn around to face him again. “Yes?”
Liam had crossed the short distance she’d managed to create between them and was right behind her as she turned, catching her off guard. The next moment he surprised her further by brushing his lips against hers.
Right where anyone could see them.
He grinned down into her face. “I figured it was okay,” he teased, “since you don’t care about people talking.”
At this point, there were no other people in the world besides the two of them. For two cents she’d grab him by his shirtfront, pull him down to her level and kiss him long and hard.
She didn’t do it. Not because of the people who were around, but because she knew that kissing him that way wouldn’t satisfy her, it would just make her want even more. So she struggled to control herself as best she could.
“I don’t,” she murmured.
And then she was gone.
But as she hurried away, she could feel Liam’s eyes on her.
Watching her.
Julia was grinning fit to kill by the time she walked back into the Superette.
*
The next afternoon found the Two Moon Saloon filled to capacity with people.
Unlike in some towns and larger cities, where meetings were conducted in auditoriums that echoed with apathy and little else, apathy did not have a seat here in the saloon in Horseback Hollow. Everyone prided themselves on taking a keen interest in civic affairs as well as in matters that affected the town’s welfare. They’d come to realize that the concept of growth was more enticing than maintaining a status quo no matter how quaint that status quo might be in some people’s eyes.
The meeting had been going for over an hour and when the mayor had thrown open the floor for a final discussion before the vote was taken, a number of people had come up to the makeshift podium in front of the bar to express their thoughts about the proposed restaurant.
Some spoke a little, others spoke more. And then the mayor turned toward Julia and asked if she had anything further to add.
She banked down her nervousness—this wasn’t the time to indulge herself—and said that she did.
Coming up to the podium, she looked out at the sea of faces and told them what was in her heart.
“In this day and age,” Julia said as she addressed the people at the meeting, “if a town doesn’t grow, it shrinks and the outcome of that is obvious. Horseback Hollow means too much to all of us for us to watch it wither away on the vine.
“However, our choices have to be made carefully. We can’t just jump at the first offer that comes our way without examining all sides. Everything should always be examined and that includes weighing the pros and cons of inviting Wendy and Marcos Mendoza to bring their restaurant here to us.
“I know some of you are worried that we’d be sacrificing our way of life, become too ‘citified’ and so give up the warm, friendly atmosphere we all grew up with. That’s exactly why we wouldn’t bring in a chain discount store, or some big-name drugstore that cares more about profit than service. I can personally tell you that the Mendozas are good people and they’re associated with good people. I’m referring to the Fortunes. The latter have no desire to use this town, pick it clean of its assets and then move on to do the same to another town.” She paused for a moment to allow her words to sink in—and to take a breath.
“If we welcome them here, they will treat Horseback Hollow the way they treat Red Rock—like it was their home. And to insure that that is never lost sight of, they’ve asked me to be their assistant manager,” she told the people she considered to be her friends and neighbors.
A murmur of approval went up.
As she spoke, Julia glanced more than once in Liam’s direction. Each time she crossed her fingers behind the podium, hoping for a positive response.
To her relief, Liam appeared to be comfortable with what she was saying, unlike the first time when he’d walked out of the meeting when he saw that the preliminary vote was going her way.
When she was finished—having spoken longer than she’d intended—Julia left the floor open to any dissenters who wanted to air their last-minute thoughts. But there weren’t any when the mayor called for any further comments or discussion before the vote.
“Well, if nobody else has anything further to say,” he announced, “then I guess it’s time to take the final vote. All in favor of the Mendozas’ restaurant being built here in Horseback Hollow, raise your hands.”
When a sea of hands went up, the mayor dutifully counted each and every one of them.
From the looks of it, it appeared that most of the people there welcomed the restaurant’s construction. But bound by rules, the mayor called for a show of hands from those who opposed the restaurant being built in
town.
“All opposed?” Several hands, totaling no more than nine, went up. He counted out each one.
“I guess it’s settled then,” the mayor told his constituents fairly confidently. “Looks like the ayes have it,” he said to the people assembled in front of him. Then, raising his voice, he declared, “The measure to build a new restaurant here in Horseback Hollow is passed,” and banged down the gavel to make it official.
“Meeting’s adjourned,” he announced needlessly since everyone was getting up anyway, talking to their neighbor, calling out across the aisles. It was obvious that despite the few dissenters, everyone appeared to have been won over by the idea of having a brand-new enterprise make a home in their town.
To a person, they looked forward to the pick up in business that was sure to occur as a by-product of the restaurant’s location.
Having taken a seat in the rear of the saloon so as not to call attention to himself, Liam had quietly taken in the proceedings as they’d unfolded. He knew that he’d surprised a few people by not speaking up when opposing viewpoints were requested.
Maybe he’d even surprised himself, as well.
The fire he’d felt initially in his belly concerning the matter eluded him now, having died out in the face of other things.
Talking to his father the other day had made him take a second look at his own feelings about being connected to the Fortunes. While he doubted that out-and-out jealousy had been behind his initial reaction to the discovery that his mother was one of them, he was willing to admit that he might have been more than a tad unreasonable, allowing his view of the situation to be tainted and made prejudicial by what he thought the Fortunes were like rather than finding out the truth of the matter for himself.
But he had to admit that the lion’s share of what had actually changed his mind for him about the matter was Julia herself. If someone like Julia could be so in favor of an issue, then that issue deserved, at the very least, closer scrutiny.
With that in mind, he’d done a little research of his own into the matter by talking to Gabriella, Jude’s fiancée. Gabriella, a Mendoza herself, had nothing but good things to tell him about the Fortunes, as well as her cousins. Julia was right.
The couple behind the new restaurant—not to mention the Fortunes themselves—were good people. And Wendy Fortune Mendoza was related to him and so she was family in the best possible sense of the word, he supposed.
Liam was not so naïve as to think that just because someone was family that automatically made them good people. He’d seen enough of the other side of that coin to know that was definitely not a given.
But these people liked to give back to any community they were part of and he liked that.
Ultimately he had a gut feeling that this restaurant that Julia was championing would be good for Horseback Hollow. Just as he had a gut feeling that Julia was the one woman he could see himself sharing forever with.
That had never been on his agenda. He’d just assumed that he would always remain free and untangled, able to go from woman to woman and dally for as long as it suited him, then just move on when the whim hit.
And now all he wanted was to be tangled up with her. Permanently.
Last night’s lovemaking was still fresh in his mind. The mere thought of it sent his pulse up to a higher rate. But he didn’t want to just look forward to their next evening together, the next time they made love together. He wanted to know that he could look forward to forever, that she would always be there whether he was thinking about the next evening, the next week, the next year or the next decade.
The more he reflected on it, the more he knew that she was the one for him.
He supposed, now that he thought about it, that this was what love, what being in love, felt like. Wanting one person to be part of your forever and wanting them to want you to be part of theirs.
Who would have ever thought he could feel this way? Liam marveled, swallowing a laugh that would only call unwanted attention his way. This was Julia’s victory and she deserved to bask in it.
Flushed, thrilled, now that the meeting was adjourned and the vote was part of the town’s history, Liam watched as Julia plowed her way through the milling bodies within the saloon to reach him.
She was positively glowing, he thought.
Liam slipped his arm around her the second she reached him. “Victory looks good on you,” he told her, brushing his lips against her cheek. All he could think about was whiling away the night lost in her embrace and making love with her.
“You’re not mad?” she asked, peering up into his face. She was surprised—not to mention relieved—that he was taking defeat so well.
“How can I be mad about something that makes you look so happy?”
But the din in the saloon had risen by several decibels as people were trying to out-shout each other. Unable to hear him because of the noise, Julia shook her head and pointed to her ear, indicating that she hadn’t heard him.
Liam merely laughed, pulled her a little closer to him. Bending over her ear, he said, “Let’s get out of here.”
That, she heard, as a wide grin blossomed over her lips. His suggestion was music to her ears. Julia was more than willing to follow him anywhere he wanted to go.
Chapter Fourteen
Julia felt as if she was literally walking on air and was seriously entertaining the idea of putting rocks in her pockets to keep from just floating away like a helium party balloon gliding on the wind.
It was the day after the vote and she was standing in front of what in a larger town would have been referred to as a vacant lot. At the very front of the lot was a sign driven into the ground by a wooden stake.
It was a large, no-frills sign that proclaimed the vacant lot to be only temporary because this site had been chosen as the “Future Home of The Hollows Brasserie.”
I did it, Julia thought with no small enthusiasm or pride.
She had gotten everyone in town to come around and see how advantageous it was to have new business, new blood, come into Horseback Hollow. And because the restaurant was now destined to become a reality, she was going to finally—finally—realize her dream of running a restaurant and being, for all intents and purposes, in charge of its kitchen.
Granted, she wanted to run her own restaurant, but she knew that the path from here to there required a great deal of patience as well as baby steps. She was more than prepared to execute both, learning everything she could as she went. And this was really a very large step in the right direction.
That part of her future looked rosier than it ever had before.
As for the other part, well, Julia was fairly certain that the words to describe how happy she was hadn’t been created yet.
She and Liam had gone to his ranch after the meeting last night and she’d cooked a meal for him—something she’d created on the spur of the moment out of things she found he had as leftovers in his refrigerator. She’d been inspired as she chopped and stirred and blended, but she really had no idea how her creation turned out because halfway through the preparations, she gave up trying to concentrate on what she was doing on the stove. Her mind kept insisting on wandering because of what Liam was doing to her with his hands and with his lips.
Between his caresses and his kisses, she’d gone from being a creative, independent young woman who had just experienced a major victory to a woman who had become all but completely liquefied.
Certainly unable to stand with any sort of demonstrable balance.
The only thought in her head at that point was that she wanted him. She gave up chopping, gave up stirring and blending and barely had the presence of mind to turn off the stove before she gave herself completely up to Liam and the magic that was him.
Last night it was as if they had both tapped into some secret source of energy because the lovemaking went on and on, encompassing the entire night.
Oh, there were breaks in between, but they were so small, they hardly counted.
What counted was that he wanted her as much as she did him. Even after having been with one another almost every night for two weeks, he hadn’t grown tired of her, hadn’t made love once or twice and then just rolled over to fall asleep. His energy seemed boundless, coaxing the same from her.
Consequently, as she stood admiring the sign that she assumed either Mayor Osgood or possibly even one of Marcos Mendoza’s employees had put up, she felt both exhausted at the same time that she felt utterly exhilarated.
She had to be getting back to the Superette, Julia silently told herself. She wasn’t the assistant manager of the still-to-be-constructed restaurant yet and until she was, her mother needed her to be working at the family business.
But Lord, Julia thought, sporting a huge smile, she did like looking at this pristine, sleek sign and its whispered promise of things to come in the very near future.
As she stood there, various people had passed by, taking note of it, marveling at how fast the sign had gone up and wondering out loud whether the restaurant would be built just as quickly.
Some sounded excited about the proposition, some seemed to be oblivious to its implications and still others were not overly ecstatic about the idea.
Such as the last duo she heard talking.
“‘Future Home of The Hollows Brasserie,’” a low voice behind her read out loud to his companion. “What the hell is a Brass-y-yearie?” he mocked.
Julia was going to answer, but the man’s friend did it for her.
“I think that’s a restaurant where you don’t have to order no food just to be able to order a drink.”
“Huh,” the first man snorted. “We already got that. It’s called the saloon,” the man said, referring to the Two Moon Saloon, where they had all voted yesterday. It was obvious by his tone of voice that he was not impressed and would rather the whole thing just go away.
That was his right, Julia thought, but she was very glad he and his friend were not in the majority.
“Guess the Two Moon ain’t snooty enough for the Fortunes,” the first man said. “And I bet that Liam was ticked off that his little plan didn’t work.”
LASSOED BY FORTUNE Page 13