by Tina Leonard
Connie couldn’t help wondering if that craftsmanship extended to the inside of the building, as well.
There was only one way to find out.
“Could you take me on a tour of the inside of the house?” she asked brightly.
“I could,” the cowboy answered but made no effort to follow through on her request.
“But?” she asked.
She made him think of a stick of dynamite about to go off. He was about ten inches taller than she was, but a stick of dynamite didn’t have to be very big to make a sizable impression.
Just who was this woman, and what was she doing here? “But I don’t even know who you are.”
“I’m not dangerous, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she told him.
Like he believed that.
Finn’s mouth curved ever so slightly, the left side more than the right. He wondered just how many men this woman had brought to their knees with that killer smile of hers.
“There’s dangerous, and then there’s dangerous,” he replied, his eyes never leaving hers.
She raised her chin just a little, doing her best to generate an air of innocence as she assured him, “I’m neither.”
The cowboy continued looking at her. The image of a human lie detector flashed through her mind for an instant. She discovered that breathing took a bit of concentration on her part.
“I don’t know about that,” he said. But the next moment, he seemed to shrug away his assessment of her and said, “Okay, why not? Don’t lean against anything,” he warned before going up the porch steps. “The paint’s still fresh in places.”
She had no intentions of taking away any part of this house on her person. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she told him.
Connie waited for her tour guide to open the front door. If the inside looked nearly as good as the outside, she was ready to be blown away.
“After you,” the cowboy told her once he’d opened the front door.
Connie crossed the threshold, taking it all in at once.
She hadn’t missed her guess. The inside of the house was simplistic and all the more captivating for that. It was a house that emphasized all things Western, with just the right touch of modern thrown in to keep the decor from being completely entrenched in the past.
There were only a few pieces of furniture. For the most part, the house was empty, but then, she hadn’t asked to come in just to see the furniture. She was looking to take stock of the workmanship firsthand.
She hadn’t been wrong.
This cowboy did have a gift for bringing things together—and apparently, a knack for knowing just when to back off.
“How long have you been working on this?” she asked, wanting as much input from the man and about the man as she could get.
“Awhile,” Finn replied vaguely, as if wondering just what her end game was.
* * *
WHILE THIS WOMAN had apparently been taking stock of the house as he went about showing her around the two floors, Finn did the same with her. So far, he hadn’t come to any useful conclusion. She hadn’t really volunteered anything except a few flattering comments about his work. He still had no idea what had brought her to Forever, or even if she meant to come to Forever, or was just passing by on her way to somewhere else.
“Awhile,” the woman repeated, going back to what he’d said about his timetable. “Does that mean six months or six years or what?”
“Awhile means awhile,” he replied in a calm voice, then added, “I’m not exactly keeping a diary on this.”
“Then you’re just doing this for fun?”
“Not exactly.” Because he could see that she intended to stand there, waiting, until he gave her some sort of a more satisfying answer, he told her. He saw no reason not to. “It’s a wedding present.”
“For your bride?” she guessed.
Finn nearly choked. He didn’t intend to get married for a very long time. Possibly never.
“No,” he denied with feeling. “For my brother. It’s his wedding.”
“And this is his house?” she asked, turning slowly around, this time taking in a three-hundred-sixty-degree view. No doubt about it, she thought. The work done on the ranch house was magnificent.
“He says it belongs to all three of us, but Earl Robertson’s will left it to him.” And as far as he and Liam were concerned, this was Brett’s house.
“Honor among brothers. That’s refreshing.”
He thought that was an odd way to phrase it. “Don’t know one way or the other about refreshing. Do know what’s right, though, and this house is right for Brett and Lady Doc.”
“Lady Doc?” she repeated, slightly confused.
“That was the nickname my brother gave Alisha when she first came to Forever. Alisha’s a doctor,” he told her by way of a footnote. “Look, lady, I’d love to stand around and talk some more—it’s not every day that we see a new face around here—but I really do have to get back to work.”
The woman raised her hands in mock surrender, showing the cowboy that she was backing off and giving him back his space. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to take you away from your work.”
Having said that, she turned on her heel and headed back to her vehicle.
As he watched her walk away, Finn found himself captivated by the way the woman’s hips swayed with every step she took. It also occurred to him at the same time that he didn’t even know her name.
“Hey,” he called out.
Ordinarily, that was not a term Connie would answer to. But this one time, she made an exception. People acted differently out here. So rather than get into her car, Connie turned around and looked at him, waiting for the cowboy to say something further.
Raising his voice, Finn remained where he was. “You got a name?” he asked.
“Yes, I do,” Connie replied.
With that she slid in behind the steering wheel of her car, shut her door and started up her engine.
Always leave them wanting more was an old adage she had picked up along the way, thanks to her grandfather. Her grandfather had taught her a great many things. He had told her, just before he passed away, that he had great faith in her. The only thing her father had ever conveyed to her was that she was a huge and ongoing source of disappointment to him.
Her grandfather, she knew, would have walked away from her father a long time ago. At the very least, he would have given up trying to please her father, given up trying to get him to take some sort of positive notice of her.
But she was too stubborn to give up.
Knocked down a number of times for one reason or another, she still got up, still dusted herself off and was still damn determined to someday make her father actually pay her a compliment—or die trying to get it out of him.
* * *
CONNIE SPENT THE rest of the afternoon driving around, getting marginally acquainted with the lay of the surrounding land. She took in the reservation, as well—if driving around its perimeter could be considered taking it in. She never got out of her vehicle, never drove through the actual terrain because even circumnavigating it managed to create an almost overwhelming sadness within her.
Her father had been right about one thing. She was a child of affluence. The sight of poverty always upset her. But rather than fleeing and putting it out of her mind, what she had seen seemed to seep into her very soul. She could not imagine how people managed to go on day after day in such oppressive surroundings.
It also made her wonder why the reservation residents didn’t just band together, tear some of the worst buildings down and start fresh, putting up something new in their place.
Not your problem, Con. Your father issued you a challenge. One he seemed pretty confident would make you fall flat on your face. It’s up to you to s
how him once and for all that he’s wrong about you. That he’s underestimated you all along.
* * *
THAT THOUGHT WAS still replaying itself in her head when she finally drove back into Forever late that afternoon. She was hungry, and the idea of dinner—even one prepared at what she viewed to be a greasy-spoon establishment—was beginning to tempt her.
But as much as she wanted to eat, she wanted to finish up her homework even more.
In this case, her homework entailed checking out the local—and lone—bar to see the kind of people who hung out there. She wanted to meet them, mingle with them and get to know them, at least in some cursory fashion. She was going to need bodies if she hoped to get her project underway, and Murphy’s was where she hoped to find at least some of them.
Right now all she knew was that her father had purchased a tract of land within Forever at a bargain price because no one else was interested in doing anything with it. A little research on her part had shown that the town was deficient in several key departments, not the least of which was that it had nowhere to put up the occasional out-of-town visitor—which she just assumed Forever had to have at least once in a while. That particular discovery was confirmed when she went to book a hotel room and found that the nearest hotel was some fifty miles away from the center of Forever.
The hick town, her father had informed her through Emerson, his right-hand man, needed to have a hotel built in its midst. Giving her the assignment, her father washed his hands of it, leaving all the details up to her.
And just like that, it became her responsibility to get the hotel built for what, on paper, amounted to a song.
Her father had hinted that if she could bring the project in on time and on budget—or better yet, under budget, he might just take her potential within the company more seriously.
But she needed to prove herself worthy of his regard, of his trust. And until that actually happened, he had no real use for her. He made no effort to hide the fact that he was on the verge of telling her that he no longer needed her services.
Connie had every intention of showing her father just what a vital asset she could be to his construction conglomerate. She also promised herself that she was going to make him eat his words; it was just a matter of time.
Stopping her vehicle behind Murphy’s, Connie parked the car as close to the building as she could. The gleaming white sports car wasn’t a rental she was driving, it was her own car. She wasn’t superstitious by nature, but every good thing that had ever happened to her had happened when she was somewhere within the vicinity of the white sports car. It was, in effect, her good-luck talisman. And, as the embodiment of her good fortune, she wanted to keep it within her line of vision, ensuring that nothing could happen to it.
She intended on keeping an eye on it from inside the bar.
However, Connie quickly discovered that was an impossibility. For one thing, the bar’s windows didn’t face the rear lot.
Uneasy, she thought about reparking her car or coming back to Murphy’s later, after dinner.
But then she reminded herself that her car had a tracking chip embedded within the steering wheel. If her car was stolen, the police could easily lay hands on it within the hour.
Provided they knew about tracking chips and how to use them, she qualified silently. She took measure of the occupants within the bar as she walked in. The first thought that crossed her mind was that the people around her could never be mistaken for the participants in a think tank.
Still looking around, she made her way to the bar, intending on ordering a single-malt beer.
A deep male voice asked her, “What’ll it be?” when she reached the bar and slid onto a stool.
The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but she shrugged the thought away. She didn’t know anyone here. “What kind of beer do you have on tap?” she asked, continuing to take inventory of the room.
“Good beer.”
The answer had her looking at the bartender instead of the bar’s patrons. When she did, her mouth dropped open.
“You,” she said in stunned surprise.
“You,” Finn echoed, careful to hide his initial surprise at seeing her.
Unlike the woman seated at that bar, he’d had a couple of minutes to work through his surprise. It had spiked when he first saw her walk across the threshold. Disbelief had turned into mild surprise as he watched her make her way across the floor, weaving in and out between his regular patrons.
When she’d left the ranch this morning, he’d had a vague premonition that he would be seeing her again—but he hadn’t thought that it would be this soon. He should have known better. The woman had asked too many questions for someone who was just passing through on her way to somewhere else.
“So what are you?” The woman posed the question to him. “A rancher or a bartender?”
“Both,” he said without the slightest bit of hesitation. Around here, a man had to wear a lot of hats if he planned on surviving. “At least, that’s what my brother says.”
“The one who’s getting married,” she recalled.
So, she had been listening. That made her a rare woman, Finn concluded. The women in his sphere of acquaintance talked, but rarely listened. “That’s the one.”
“You have any more brothers?”
“Yeah, he’s a spare in case I wear the other one out.”
The woman looked around, taking in the people on either side of her. The bar had its share of patrons, but it was far from standing-room only. Still, there were enough customers currently present—mostly male—for her to make a judgment.
“Something tells me that the men around here don’t wear out easily.”
“You up for testing that theory of yours out, little lady?” Kyle Masterson proposed, giving her a very thorough once-over as he sidled up to her, deliberately blocking her access to the front door.
Chapter Three
Although he remained behind the bar, Finn’s presence seemed to separate the talkative cowboy from the young woman who had wandered onto Brett’s ranch earlier. Finn was 85 percent certain that Kyle, a rugged, rather worn ranch hand, was harmless. But he was taking no chances in case Kyle was inspired by this woman and was tossing caution to the wind.
“Back to your corner, Masterson,” Finn told him without cracking a smile. “The lady’s not going to be testing out anything with you tonight.”
Kyle, apparently, had other ideas. “Why don’t you let her speak for herself, Murphy?” the other man proposed. “How about it, little lady?” he asked, completely ignoring Finn and moving in closer to the woman who had caught his fancy. “We could take us a stroll around the lake, maybe look up at the stars. See what happens.”
His leer told her exactly what the hulking man thought was going to happen. Amused, Connie played out the line a little further. “And if nothing happens?” she posed.
“Then I will be one deeply disappointed man,” Kyle told her, dramatically placing a paw of a hand over his chest. “C’mon, little lady. You don’t want to be breaking my heart now, do you?” He eyed her hopefully, rather confident in the outcome of this scenario he was playing out.
“Better that than me breaking your arm, Masterson,” Finn informed him, pushing his arm and hand between them as he deliberately wiped down the bar directly in the middle.
Kyle glanced from Finn to the very appealing woman with hair the color of a setting sun. It was obvious he was weighing his options. Women came and went, but there was only one saloon in the area. Being barred from Murphy’s was too high a price to pay for a fleeting flirtation.
“Oh, is it like that, now?” the cowboy guessed.
“Like what?” Connie looked at the man, not sure she understood his meaning.
Amazingly deep-set eyes darted from her to the bartender and then back aga
in, like black marbles in a bowl.
Kyle grinned at the bartender. “Don’t think I really have to explain that,” he concluded. Raising his glass, he toasted Finn. “Nice work, laddie.” And with that, the bear of a man retreated into the crowd.
Brett approached from the far side of the bar. “Problem?” he asked, looking from his brother to the very attractive young woman at the bar. He’d taken note of the way some of his patrons were watching her, as if she were a tasty morsel, and they were coming off a seven-day fast in the desert. That spelled trouble—unless it was averted quickly.
“No, no problem,” Finn replied tersely. As grateful as he was to Brett and as much as he loved and respected him, he hated feeling that his older brother was looking over his shoulder. He wasn’t twelve anymore, and hadn’t been for quite some time. “Everything’s fine.”
“That all depends,” Connie said, contradicting Finn’s response. She had a different take on things, one that had nothing to do with the hulking cowboy and his unsuccessful advances.
Brett looked at her with interest. “On?”
“On how many men I can get to sign on with me,” Connie replied.
The sudden, almost syncopated shift of bodies, all in her direction, plainly testified that the exchange between the young woman and two of the saloon’s owners was far from private. Leers instantly materialized, and interweaving voices were volunteering to sign on with her no matter what the cause.
In Finn’s estimation, it was obvious what the men’s leers indicated that they believed they were signing up for—and tool belts had nothing to do with it.
To keep the crowd from getting rowdy and out of control, Finn quickly asked the question, “Sign on to what end?” before Brett could.