by Tina Leonard
Get it together, Con. You’ve got a full day ahead of you. Save the pity party for later.
Taking care to lock her door, Connie pushed the room’s mismatched chair against it by way of an extra precaution. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Finn, because oddly enough, she did, despite knowing the man for less than forty-eight hours. She’d been taught that taking an extra ounce of prevention was always a wise thing to do—just in case.
That hadn’t come from her father, but was something that Emerson had taught her. The man at one point had worked as her father’s head of security before becoming his general business manager. Emerson had always seemed to be aware of everything. She doubted there was a situation in the world that Stewart Emerson was not prepared to handle.
It never occurred to her to dismiss what he said as being useless or inapplicable. She looked to him for guidance the way one should a father. Emerson was the one who always had time for her.
Her father did not.
Connie remembered changing for bed—donning the nightshirt that Brett’s fiancée gladly lent her. The verbal exchange between them, with Finn in the middle, had been fleeting. To her chagrin, she could barely recall what the woman had looked like.
But then, she was running perilously close to empty. Connie could vaguely remember lying down.
She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she obviously had to have because the next thing she knew, she was looking at the watch she always wore and realizing that it was six in the morning.
Six?
Connie bolted upright. She’d wanted to be up and ready by five. Not because she thought anything actually needed attending to at that time, but because she wanted to be ready—just in case. It was always good to be prepared.
Happily, as far as she knew, everything was proceeding as planned. The necessary machinery was on its way and being delivered by a contractor Emerson had been dealing with for the past fifteen years, Milo Sawyer. Both Emerson and Sawyer knew that failure was not an option for her. Failure would have been worse than death. Emerson had told her that Sawyer took an oath on a stack of figurative bibles that everything would be there when she needed it—if not sooner.
Scrambling, silently lamenting the fact that she needed to sleep as much as she did, Connie was up, dressed and ready in less than twenty minutes.
Her heart kept pace by slamming against her rib cage, reminding her that she was, beneath it all, nervous as hell.
She looked down at what she was wearing. She wasn’t keen on starting her first day on a brand-new site in someone else’s clothes, but apparently she and Forever’s first resident doctor’s wife were the exact same size—just as Finn had predicted—and the woman seemed to think nothing of lending her a pair of jeans and a jersey.
Or so Finn had told her when he’d darted into the doctor’s house and gotten the items for her. It seemed people just gave each other whatever was needed without questioning it. For the umpteenth time it struck her how very different her world was from the world she found herself operating in at the moment.
Moreover, it occurred to Connie, as she glanced in the small oval mirror perched on top of the bureau, that she was wearing something borrowed—the entire outfit—and something blue—the jersey. Not to mention, she also had on something old. Unlike her car, which she laughingly described as her lucky charm, the boots she was wearing were her one real concession to superstition: they were her lucky boots and they hadn’t been considered new in the past fourteen years.
Longer, really, because the boots had once belonged to her mother. Unbeknownst to her father, she’d kept her mother’s boots in the back of her closet and as luck would have it, when she reached her present adult height and weight, she discovered that the boots fit her perfectly. She had worn them on every occasion that something good had happened to her.
Connie sincerely hoped that they would continue exerting their magical influence and make the hotel’s construction come off without a single hitch.
Ready and anxious to begin her day, Connie moved the chair away from the door and pushed it back against the wall where it had been. Unlocking the bedroom door, she ventured down the stairs silently.
Her intention was to slip out of the house and drive over to the site—her car was conveniently parked in front of Finn’s house. But when she came to the bottom of the stairs, the deep, rich smell of freshly brewed coffee surrounded her before she knew what had hit her—followed by the aroma of bacon and eggs, a classic one-two punch if ever there was one.
Unable to resist, Connie glanced toward the only source of light on the first floor at this hour. It was coming from the kitchen.
The debate between following her nose or leaving while there was no one watching her was a short one that abruptly ended when her stomach rumbled rather loudly, casting the deciding vote.
She went toward the light.
Finn was standing by the old-fashioned stove. He glanced over his shoulder in her direction the moment she stepped over the threshold. It was almost eerie, as if he instinctively knew she would come. He supposed that some people would have said they had some sort of a “connection.” He could think of worse things than being connected to a woman who could scramble his insides just with a toss of her flowing, shoulder-length auburn hair.
“You’re up,” Finn declared by way of a greeting.
“So, apparently, are you,” she countered, nodding toward the stovetop. He had three frying pans going at once.
“Everyone gets up early around here. If you don’t, you’re either sick—or dead,” Finn told her matter-of-factly.
“That doesn’t exactly leave a wide range of choice available,” she commented.
He laughed and shrugged before gesturing toward the kitchen table.
“Sit down,” he told her. “Coffee’s hot. I’ll pour you a cup.”
“I can serve myself,” she told him as she crossed to the counter.
She looked around for a coffeemaker, but didn’t see one. But she did notice a coffeepot on the last burner on the stovetop.
Talk about old-fashioned, she thought. Connie dutifully poured the extra-black substance into her cup and retreated back to the table, getting out of Finn’s way.
“Where is everyone?” she asked. She glanced out the kitchen window to see if perhaps one of his brothers was outside, but they weren’t. The small area was desolate.
“Liam’s holed up in his room, working on another song for his band—he decided he didn’t like his last couple of efforts—and I’m guessing that Brett’s over at the other ranch house like I said he’d be.” Finn was smiling as he turned away from the stove. “He likes the job I did renovating the ranch house so much, he decided he wanted to stay there, getting it set up for Lady Doc and him once they’re married.”
Holding the steaming mug of coffee with two hands, Connie made herself comfortable at the table. “Have you thought of taking up that line of work permanently?” she asked.
He frowned ever so slightly, not at her suggestion but over the fact that he had lost the thread of the conversation. “What line of work?”
“Construction, renovations,” she elaborated. “That sort of thing. There has to be better money in it than there is in bartending,” she insisted. Why was the man wasting his time bartending when he could be earning real money?
Finn shrugged indifferently. “I wouldn’t know. So far, I’ve never been paid anything for doing that kind of work.”
Connie stared at him. Had she gotten her information mixed up? “I thought you said you installed a bathroom over the bar.”
“I did,” he confirmed. “But that was for the apartment above the bar—all that belongs to my brothers and me. Seems pretty silly to charge myself,” Finn commented.
“And the ranch house?” she asked, referring to the first time she had seen him.
He’d certainly been working hard that day. Free of charge?
“The same,” he replied. “Besides, I told you, that’s my wedding present to Brett and Lady Doc. I couldn’t charge them,” he said, shooting the mere notion down as beyond ludicrous.
She had no idea that they made men like this anymore. Connie looked at him with renewed admiration. “That’s exceptionally generous of you.”
He shrugged away her comment. “So, how do you like your eggs?” he asked.
“In the chicken,” she quipped.
Finn stared at her. “Wanna run that by me again?” he requested.
She appreciated what he was trying to do, but there was really no need. “I don’t eat eggs,” she told him. “Never have, never will. I just plain don’t like them no matter what you do to them,” she added.
He nodded and said, “Fair enough. Got an opinion about bacon?” he asked, testing the waters cautiously.
There was bacon sizzling in the large skillet on the left back burner. “It smells good,” she was forced to admit.
Finn’s grin hinted of triumph. “Tastes even better,” he assured her. Without waiting for her to respond, he proceeded to place four strips of what looked like perfectly fried bacon on her plate. But that obviously wasn’t enough as far as he was concerned, so since she had vetoed eggs, he gave her other options: “Pancakes, waffles, French toast or...?”
She regarded him with what could be described as innocent confusion. “What about them?”
“Which do you want for breakfast?” he asked patiently.
He’d already gone out of his way more than was required. He might work for her, but there was nothing in the fine print about serving her hand and foot, and she didn’t want him feeling as if this was part of his job description.
“The bacon is more than enough,” Connie assured the man. “I usually have just coffee in the morning, nothing else.”
Finn frowned, obviously displeased with the answer. “You can’t tackle a new day on just coffee,” he told her. And then he seemed to study her for a long minute, as if he was making some sort of a major decision.
It took everything she had to wait him out, but she had a feeling that she could lose him if she began to ask him too many questions. So she did her best to appear patient—even if it was the last thing in the world that she was right now.
He was probably trying to browbeat her into eating. Simple enough fix, she decided. “Okay, I’ll have toast,” Connie finally conceded.
“Just toast?” he asked her.
She stuck to her guns. If she began giving in now, that would carry over to the work site, and she would quickly lose any ground she might have had to begin with. “Just toast,” she confirmed. And quite honestly, she didn’t even really want that.
Finn frowned for a moment longer then suddenly brightened—as if an idea had literally hit him—and went to work. A few minutes later, he deposited two large so-called slices onto her plate.
Stunned, Connie could only point out the obvious. “I agreed to toast. What is that?” she asked. Whatever it was, it was thick, and it was huge.
“Toast,” Finn responded innocently, then a smile slipped through. “Texas style.”
Each piece was the size of three regular slices of bread and together with what she had before her comprised more than a full breakfast in her opinion.
She sighed and shook her head, knowing that if she protested, she would wind up with something even bigger. And she had to admit that the aroma was definitely working its magic on her, arousing her taste buds. For the first time in years, she was hungry enough to eat something for breakfast.
“You know, it works better if you pick up a fork and put the food into your mouth instead of staring at it,” he advised, sitting down opposite her.
He’d put a plate down for himself. Finn’s plate was all but overflowing with bacon, eggs, toast and a sprinkling of hash browns.
Connie could only stare at the heaping plate in complete wonder. “You’re really going to eat all that?” she asked him.
“I need to,” he emphasized. “If I don’t, I’ll run out of steam in a couple of hours—like clockwork,” he assured her.
However, listening to him, Connie sincerely doubted what he’d just said. She’d come to quickly realize that Finn might appear laid-back, but the man was all go all the time.
“Who taught you how to cook?” she asked as she resigned herself to the meal before her.
She half expected Finn to say that he had picked things up while watching his mother fix meals in the kitchen.
He summed it up in one word: “Brett.”
Connie blinked and stared at him. “Your brother?” she asked incredulously.
To her best recollection, her own brother couldn’t boil water. She fervently hoped he’d learned how by now, wherever he was.
Finn nodded, seeing nothing out of the ordinary with what he was telling her. “Everything I know how to do, Brett taught me.”
“Even construction?” she asked, thinking that perhaps she should have approached the older Murphy brother with a job offer, as well—because what she had seen with the ranch house had impressed her no end, and if Brett had had a hand in that, as well...
“Even construction,” Finn echoed. “He taught me the basics. I kind of took off with it on my own after that,” Finn admitted without a drop of conceit. “Brett’s abilities—and vision—kind of went in a different direction from mine,” Finn went on to tell her. “Let me put it this way. Brett can fix a leaky faucet—I can install a new one along with a new sink,” he explained in an effort to illustrate his point. “Besides, Brett was always busy. He didn’t have time to get caught up in anything fancy. He was keeping our family together, especially after Uncle Patrick died. Brett’s the really practical one in the family,” he added, as if that explained everything.
She tried to glean what he was actually telling her. “And that makes you what, the dreamer?”
“No, that’s Liam. He’s the dreamer in the family. Me, I’m just the guy in the middle.” He grinned as he illustrated his point for her. “The guy not too.”
If anything, that made things only more obscure in her opinion. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I don’t understand. Not too...?” she repeated, at a loss as to what that meant or was supposed to illustrate for her.
Finn nodded then went on to give her examples. “Not too practical, not too dreamy. You know, not too hot, not too cold, that kind of thing. Always staying on an even keel, never too much of anything, just enough to satisfy requirements.”
She held up her hand to get him to stop. Was that how he saw himself? That was awful. “You make it sound so bland,” she told him.
Finn laughed softly. “Probably because it is.”
Connie looked at the man sitting across from her for a very long, quiet moment, thinking of the way this man she still hardly knew seemed to stir her in ways that she’d never experienced before.
“Not by a long shot,” she finally told him, though a little voice in her head warned her that she was giving too much away far too quickly.
“You want seconds?” he asked out of the blue. When she eyed him questioningly, trying to comprehend what he’d just asked, he nodded at her plate—which was somehow miraculously empty. When had she eaten everything? “Do you want seconds?” he repeated.
“No. No, thank you. It was all very good, but in the interest of not waddling onto the construction site, I think I’ll just stop here,” she told him, pushing back her plate.
That was when he took her plate from her, put it on top of his own and then carried both to the sink. Connie bit her lower lip, curtailing the impulse to offer to wash them for him.
The next moment, as she watched, he quickly rinsed off both plates and stacked them in the dishwasher.
>
An efficient male, she thought to herself.
She took a deep breath.
It was time.
Chapter Eleven
Looking back at the end of the day, as far as first days went, this had to be the very best one she had ever experienced. The machinery showed up early, as did the men who were to operate it. That meant that excavation and ground preparations could begin right on schedule and even a little bit ahead of it.
Because of the work schedules she had laboriously written up ahead of time, everyone she had hired knew almost from the very beginning exactly what to do and what was expected. Detailed schedules were conspicuously posted in a number of places.
The biggest surprise of the day for her occurred shortly before two o’clock.
Stewart Emerson walked onto the construction site, managing to catch her completely off guard.
Connie had been in the middle of a conversation with Finn, outlining what she hoped would be the project’s progress for that week, when she heard a gravelly voice behind her call out her name.
Stopping in midsentence, she turned away from Finn to see exactly who sounded so much like the man she thought of as her rock.
Her mouth fell open the second she saw him.
“Stewart?” Connie cried in disbelief as the big bear of a man strode in her direction.
As Finn looked on, he watched the rather petite young woman being enfolded and all but swallowed up in the embrace of a man who could have easily doubled as Santa Claus—if the legendary figure had been a towering man given to wearing three-piece suits.
“In the flesh,” Emerson confirmed. “I guess I’d better put you down. The men might not react well to seeing their boss whirled around the construction site like a weightless little doll.” Emerson’s deep laugh filled the immediate area.
With her feet firmly back on the ground, Connie made no effort to put space between herself and the older man. “I wasn’t expecting you. What are you doing here?” she asked.
Finn stood by, wondering who this man was to her. He would have had to have been blind not to notice how radiant she suddenly looked. She was all but glowing and her smile resembled rays of sunshine reaching out to infinity. He’d thought she was a beautiful woman before, but what he’d been privy to before didn’t hold a candle to what he was seeing now. Whoever this man was, he clearly lit up her world.