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by Tina Leonard

  Finn’s mouth curved ever so slightly. “Forever’s not exactly on the beaten path to anywhere,” he pointed out. Although, even if Forever was a regular bustling hotbed of activity, he could see this woman still turning heads wherever she went.

  “That’s becoming pretty clear,” Connie whispered to him.

  “Been wondering when you’d finally step in here,” the thin, older woman with the somewhat overly vibrant red hair said as she sidled up to the couple to greet them. “What’ll it be for you and your friend here, Finn?” she asked, nodding her head toward the other woman. “Table or counter?”

  Connie was about to answer “Counter,” but the man the hostess had referred to as “Finn” answered the question first.

  “Table.”

  The woman nodded. “Table it is. You’re in luck. We’ve got one table left right over here.” So saying, the redhead led them over to a table near the kitchen. There was only one problem, as Connie saw it. There was a man still sitting at it.

  Connie regarded the other woman. “But it’s occupied,” she protested. Did the woman think they were going to join the man?

  The woman appeared unfazed. “Hal here finished his dinner,” she explained, indicating the table’s lone occupant. “He’s just a might slow in getting to his feet, aren’t you, Hal?” she said, giving her customer exactly ten seconds of her attention. Then she looked around for the closest waitress and summoned her. “Dora.” She beckoned the young blonde over. “Clear the table for Finn and his friend, please.” She offered the couple just a hint of a smile. “I’ll be back to get your orders in a few minutes. Sit, take a load off,” she encouraged, patting Connie on the shoulder. And then she added, “Relax,” and turned the single word into a strict command.

  Dora was quick to pick up and clear away the empty dinner plate from the table. Within two minutes, Dora retreated, and Connie realized that she and the cowboy were left alone with their menus.

  Connie was only mildly interested in glancing over the menu and that was purely out of a curiosity about the locals’ eating preferences. As always, eating, for Connie, took a backseat to orientation.

  She decided to begin with the very basics. Names. Specially, his name. “That woman, the one with the red hair, she called you Finn.”

  “That’s because she knows my name,” he replied simply. Finn had a question of his own to ask her. “But I don’t know yours.”

  “I didn’t tell you?” The omission on her part surprised her. She’d gotten so caught up in getting her operation set up and hopefully rolling soon in this tiny postage-stamp-size town that common, everyday details had slipped her mind.

  “You didn’t tell me,” Finn confirmed, then added with yet another, even more appealing hint of a smile, “I’m not old enough to be forgetful yet.”

  Not by a long shot, Connie caught herself thinking. Just for a moment, she got lost in the man’s warm, incredibly inviting smile.

  Get back on track, Con. Drooling over the employees isn’t going to get this project done—and it just might mess everything all up.

  One way or another, she’d been lobbying her father for a chance to show her stuff for a while. Now that she finally had it, she was not about to allow something as unpredictable as hormones betray her.

  “My name is Constance Carmichael,” she told him, putting out her hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Ms. Carmichael.” Her hand felt soft, almost delicate in his, he couldn’t help thinking. His hand all but swallowed hers up. “I’m Finn Murphy.”

  “Like the bar?” she asked, trying to fit two more pieces together.

  “Like the bar,” he confirmed.

  “My father’s Calvin Carmichael,” Connie added.

  She was accustomed to seeing instant recognition whenever she mentioned her father’s name. The second she did, a light would come into people’s eyes.

  There was no such light in the bartending cowboy’s eyes. It prompted her to say, “He founded Carmichael Construction Corporation.”

  Still nothing.

  Finn lifted his broad shoulders in a self-deprecating shrug and apologized. “Sorry, ’fraid it doesn’t ring a bell for me.”

  That was when it hit her. “I guess it wouldn’t,” Connie said. “The corporation only erects buildings in the larger cities.” The moment she said it, she knew she had made a tactical mistake. The man sitting across the table from her might take her words to be insulting. “I mean—”

  Finn raised his hand to stop whatever she might be about to say. “Forever is small,” he assured her. “And that leads me to my question for you.”

  Her eyes never left his. “Go ahead.”

  Having given him the green light, Connie braced herself for whatever was going to be coming her way. Something told her that Finn was one of the key players she would need to solidly win over and keep on her side if she hoped to not only get this project underway, but completed, as well.

  “If your dad’s company just builds things in big cities, then what are you doing scouting around someplace like Forever?” It didn’t make any sense to him. He loved the place, but there wasn’t anything exceptional about Forever to make outsiders suddenly sit up and take notice.

  It’s personal, Connie thought, silently answering him.

  Granted, the man was pretty close to what one of her friends would have termed drop-dead gorgeous, but she didn’t know a single thing about him other than he was good with his hands and could tend bar, so trusting him with any part of her actual life story would have been beyond foolish, beyond reckless and definitely stupid.

  Connie searched around for something neutral to say that would satisfy Finn’s curiosity. And then she came up with the perfect response.

  “He’s branching out,” she told him, then fell back on what had always been a sure-fire tactic: flattery. “Besides, there’s a lot of potential in little towns like yours.”

  Though he wasn’t quite sold, Finn quietly listened to what this stunningly attractive woman had to say. For now, he’d allow her to think he’d accepted her flimsy explanation. Since she was obviously sticking around, he figured that eventually, he’d find out just what part of what she had said was the truth.

  Miss Joan picked that moment to all but materialize out of nowhere, a well-worn pad held poised in her hand. “So, you two ready to order yet?” she asked them.

  Finn had barely glanced at the menu, but then, he didn’t really have to. His favorite meal was a permanent fixture on the second page.

  “I am,” he told Miss Joan, “but I don’t think that Ms. Carmichael’s had a chance to look at the menu just yet.”

  Rather than go with the excuse that Finn had just provided her with, Connie placed her menu on top of his and told the woman, “I’ll just have whatever he’s having.”

  “How do you know it’s any good?” Finn challenged, mildly surprised by her choice. “Or that you’ll like it?”

  “I’m a quick judge of character, and you wouldn’t order anything that was too filling, or bad for you. You told your brother that you were coming back to work the rest of your shift. That means that you can’t be too full or you’ll get drowsy,” she concluded. “Besides, I’m not very fussy.”

  Miss Joan smiled in approval, then nodded toward her as she said to Finn, “This one’s smart. Might want to keep her hanging around for a bit. Okay, boy,” Miss Joan said, shifting gears when she saw the slight change of color in Finn’s complexion, “what’ll it be?”

  Finn placed his order, asking for a no-frills burger and a small order of home fries, along with some iced coffee. Miss Joan duly noted his order, then murmured, “Times two,” before she glanced over toward Finn’s companion. She waited for the young woman to change her mind.

  She didn’t.

  About to leave, Miss Joan turned abruptly and
looked at Finn’s tablemate. “Ms. Carmichael,” she repeated thoughtfully.

  “Yes?” Connie considered the older woman, not quite knowing what to expect.

  The light of recognition came into Miss Joan’s sharp, amber eyes. “Your daddy wouldn’t be Calvin C. Carmichael now, would he?”

  “You know my father?”

  She would have expected the bartender and the people around his age to know who her father was. Since he apparently didn’t, she felt it was a given that someone around this woman’s age—someone she assumed had been born here and most likely would die here—would have never even heard of her father.

  “Mostly by reputation,” Miss Joan admitted. She thought back for a moment. “Although I did meet the man once a long time ago. He was just starting out then,” she recalled. And then her smile broadened. “He was a pistol, all right. Confident as all get-out, wasn’t about to let anything or anyone stop him.” Miss Joan nodded to herself as more facts came back to her. “He was bound and determined to build himself an empire. From what I hear now and again, he did pretty much that.”

  Rather than wait for any sort of a comment or a confirmation from Finn’s companion, Miss Joan asked another question, a fond smile curving her mouth. “How’s your mother doing?”

  “She died a little over twelve years ago,” Connie answered without missing a single beat, without indicating that the unexpected reference to her mother felt as if she had just been shot point-blank in her chest. Twelve years, and the wound was still fresh.

  Usually, she had some sort of an inkling, a forewarning that the conversation was going to turn toward a question about or a reference to her mother. In that case, Connie was able to properly brace herself for the sharp slash of pain that always accompanied any mention of her mother. But this had been like a shot in the dark, catching her completely off guard and totally unprepared and unprotected.

  Sympathy flowed through Miss Joan and instantly transformed and softened the woman’s features.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that, dear.” She placed a comforting hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. “As I recall, she was a lovely, lovely woman. A real lady,” she added with genuine feeling. Dropping her hand, Miss Joan began to withdraw. “I’ll get that order for you now,” she promised as she took her leave.

  The woman sitting opposite him appeared to be trying very hard to shut down, Finn thought. He was more than familiar with that sort of reflexive action, building up high walls so that any pain attached to the loss was minimized—or as diminished as it could be, given the circumstances.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Finn said to her the moment they were alone again. “Miss Joan doesn’t mean to come on as if she’s prying. Most of the time, she just has a knack for getting to the heart of things,” he told her gently.

  “Nothing to apologize for,” Connie answered, shaking off both his words and the feeling the older woman’s question had generated. “The woman—Miss Joan, is it?” she asked. When Finn nodded, Connie went on. “Miss Joan was just making idle conversation.”

  Her mouth curved just a little as she allowed herself a bittersweet moment to remember. But remembering details, at times, was becoming harder and harder to do.

  “She actually said something very sweet about my mother. At this point, it’s been so long since she’s been gone that there are times I feel as if I just imagined her, that I never had a mother at all.” She shrugged somewhat self-consciously. She’d said too much. “It’s rather nice to hear someone talk about her, remember her in the same light that I do.”

  Because his heart was going out to her, Finn had this sudden desire to make her realize that she wasn’t the only one who had suffered this sort of numbing loss so early in her life.

  “I lost my mother when I was a kid, too. Both my parents, actually,” Finn amended.

  Despite his laid-back attitude about life and his easygoing manner, to this day it still hurt to talk about his parents’ deaths. One moment they had been in his life, the next, they weren’t. It was enough to shake a person clear down to their very core.

  “Car accident,” he said, annotating the story. “My uncle Patrick took my brothers and me in.” A look Connie couldn’t fathom crossed his face. The next moment, she understood why. “A few years later, Uncle Patrick died, too.”

  Completely captivated by his narrative, she waited for Finn to continue. When he didn’t, she asked, “Who took care of you and your brothers after that? Or were you old enough to be on your own?”

  “I was fourteen,” he said, answering her question in his own way. “Brett had just graduated from high school. He was turning eighteen the following week, so he petitioned to be officially declared our guardian.”

  What he had only recently discovered was that his brother had done that at great personal sacrifice—the girl Brett loved was setting out for the west coast. She’d asked Brett to come with her. Given a choice between following his heart and living up to his responsibility, his older brother had chosen responsibility—and never said a word about it.

  “I guess you might say that Brett actually raised Liam and me—it just became official that year,” Finn concluded fondly.

  He and Brett had their occasional differences, but there was no way he could ever repay his brother for what Brett had done for him as well as Liam.

  Connie laughed shortly. “When I was fourteen, my brother took off.” She said the words dismissively, giving no indication how hurt she’d been when Conrad left her behind.

  “College?” Finn guessed.

  She actually had no idea where her brother went or what he did once he left her life. She hadn’t heard from him in all these years.

  “Maybe.” She thought that over for a second. It didn’t feel right to her. Conrad had been neither studious nor patient. “Although I doubt it. My father wanted my brother to go to college, and Conrad wanted to do whatever my father didn’t want him to do.”

  “Is that why you’re working for Carmichael Construction?” he asked. “Because your father wants you to?”

  Remembering the look on her father’s face when they had struck this deal, Connie laughed at the suggestion. Having her as anything but a lowly underling in the company was not on her father’s agenda. The man was not pushing her in an attempt to groom her for bigger, better things. He was pushing her because he wanted to get her to finally give up and settle into the role of family hostess permanently.

  “Actually,” she replied crisply, “my father doesn’t think I have anything to offer the company. I’m working at the corporation because I want to,” Connie emphasized.

  Reevaluating the situation, Finn read between the lines. And then smiled. “Out to prove that he’s wrong, is that it?”

  It startled her that he’d hit the nail right on the head so quickly, but she was not about to admit anything of the kind to someone who was, after all, still a stranger.

  She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Out to build the very best damn hotel that I can,” she corrected.

  Her voice sounded a little too formal and removed to her own ear. After all, the man had just been nice to her. She shouldn’t be treating him as if she thought he had leprosy.

  So after a beat, she added, “And if that, along the way, happens to prove to my father that he’d been wrong about me all these years, well, then, that’s just icing on the cake.”

  Icing. That was what she made him think of, Finn realized. Light, frothy icing—with a definite, tangy kick to it.

  Finn leaned back in his chair, scrutinizing the woman he’d brought to the diner. The next few months were shaping up to be very interesting, he decided.

  Chapter Five

  “How would you like to come and work for me?”

  The question caught Finn completely off guard, but he was able to keep any indication of his surp
rise from registering on his face.

  Rather than laughing or turning the sexy-looking woman down outright, he decided to play along for a little while and see where this was going.

  “Doing what?” he asked her, sounding neither interested nor disinterested, just mildly curious as to what was behind her offer.

  He’d lowered his voice and just for a split second, Connie felt as if they were having a far more intimate conversation than one involving the construction of the town’s first hotel.

  His question caused scenarios to flash through her brain, scenarios that had absolutely nothing to do with the direction of the conversation or what she was attempting to accomplish.

  Scenarios that included just the two of them—and no hotel in sight.

  She’d never had anything that could be labeled as an actual relationship, but it had been a while between even casual liaisons. The truth of it was, she’d gotten so involved in trying to play a larger part in the construction company, not to mention in getting her father to come around, she’d wound up sacrificing everything else to that one narrow goal.

  And that included having anything that even remotely resembled a social life.

  Just now, she had felt the acute lack.

  The next second, she’d banished the entire episode from her mind.

  Without realizing it, she wet her lips before answering his question. “I want you to head up my construction crew for the new hotel.”

  She might not have been aware of the small, reflexive action, but Finn definitely was. It drew his attention to the shape of her lips—and the fleeting impulse to discover what those lips would have felt like against his own.

  Reining in his thoughts, Finn focused on what she had just said. The only conclusion he could reach was that she had to be putting him on.

  “The fact that I’ve never headed up a construction crew before doesn’t bother you?” he asked, doing nothing to hide his skepticism.