“Hurry up, man!” Connor called.
“Right,” Eli said, tossing the word over his shoulder as he battled through the brush, sticks breaking beneath his boots as he headed toward the calf, who was attempting a getaway. “I’ll just speed this along.”
“I don’t want you to get your ass trampled.”
“Well, neither do I,” Eli growled.
Eli lunged for the calf, and as he did, the mother started to charge in their direction.
“Hell!” Connor dodged to the side and the mom nudged at him with her head, bellowing and generally trying to intimidate him. He sidestepped her next attempt at butting him.
Eli turned his focus back to the calf and grabbed him, fitting the applicator to his ear and punching as hard and secure as he could, holding the animal’s neck and head still with one arm while he finished the job with the other.
“Got him!” He released the little black calf, who now had a yellow tag on his ear and seemed none the worse for wear.
“Then haul ass,” Connor said, moving through the trees and back to his horse. Eli did the same, and fortunately the cow was now just focused on her baby, who was making a low bawling sound.
“He’s playing it up now.” Connor wiped his forearm over his brow. “Trying to make his mom even madder.”
“I don’t think she could possibly get much madder,” Eli said, trying to catch his breath.
“Probably not. I’m going to ride back out for a minute,” Connor told him. “Just to check everything over. You want to meet me back at the barn?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Eli mounted his horse again and rode back toward the barn. One of the ranch hands, a high school kid Connor had hired to help with menial stuff, looked up from mucking stalls as he entered.
“Hey, Mike,” Eli said. “Mind taking care of Sable for me?” He got off the horse and patted her neck.
“Got her,” Mike said.
“Great, thanks.” Eli walked around the barn, Connor’s most prized acquisition. They’d poured all the money from their father’s life insurance settlement into it.
Eli braced one hand on the solid wood wall, arching backward. Damn. He had a hitch in his back. He was too young to get old.
And he had to work a shift for the force in the morning, which meant he didn’t have time to be sore. Double duty was a bitch. But he couldn’t ever give up either job.
Connor lived and breathed the ranch, but Eli appreciated the break.
Because, when it came right down to it, he’d rather chase bad guys than be chased by a damned cow.
Though, being sheriff potentially meant doing a lot more paper pushing, and a bit less bad-guy chasing. But it also meant the chance to effect some good change in the county. Sure, some of it was down to the fact that he was a control freak, and the chance to take total control of the filing system was almost irresistible, and some of it was even ambition, but mainly he wanted to be sheriff because he loved Copper Ridge and the surrounding areas. And serving in law enforcement was the best way he could think of to show that love.
He heard a loud crash, followed by several more crashes and a shrill curse word. He started toward the noise without even thinking, because that was what he did. If there was something wrong, he went toward it, not away from it.
He walked down the path toward the din. Toward the Catalog House. And he already knew that whatever he was going to find there was going to make him very, very grumpy.
When he came through the trees he saw her, across the driveway in front of Kate’s truck. Sadie was standing at the end of it, holding a bundle of crown molding or trim of some kind that had to be ten feet long at least. And in front of the tailgate, down by her feet, were various pieces of hardware and what had probably been a light fixture before it had met an untimely demise on the gravel driveway.
And here was the distraction he just didn’t need.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Oh.” Her head whipped up, her blue eyes wide for a moment, before they narrowed, her expression turning into a scowl. “You have to stop sneaking up on me. I’ve been in town less than twenty-four hours and I think you’ve scared a grand total of twenty-five minutes off my life.”
“Somehow I think you’ll be fine without them.”
“Says you. That’s an entire sitcom’s worth of life you just cost me. Now my plans of watching one final episode of Friends before I go to meet my maker are completely dashed.”
“Do you need help?” he asked patiently.
“Do you ever laugh? Because that was funny.”
“Rarely. Not as rarely as my brother. But rarely.”
“Maybe it’s a male Garrett thing. Your sister is more fun than you are.”
“So much fun that you stole her truck? Are you already adding to your list of felonies?” Eli asked, making his way over to the truck and surveying the small disaster around Sadie’s feet.
“You of all people should know I was never charged with a felony, Deputy Pedantic, so let’s not be dramatic.”
“Just looking out for my sister.” And he meant it. Because Kate was too sweet. Too trusting. And Sadie was someone he couldn’t predict. The combination made him nervous.
“Kate stopped by and offered her pickup truck. Because she’s very, very nice.”
“Too nice,” he said, still looking over the items that had spilled out onto the ground. “And you figured you’d unload this all by yourself?”
“Well, the trim isn’t heavy. It’s just unwieldy. But I didn’t realize the guys had packed my bags up against the gate, and they had one tangled in the trim and... Anyway, I had a momentary disaster, and I have a broken pendant light. But it will be okay.”
“I could help.”
“Helping me wouldn’t make you burst into flame?” she asked.
“Depends. Are you planning on lighting something else on fire?”
She let out a growl. “I told you. I did not light anything on fire. I knocked a lantern over. There is a difference.”
“You started a fire. It was an accident, but you did, in fact, light an entire barn on fire.”
“I feel like intent should matter here.”
“All right, then, I intend to help you. Maybe you could stop trying to make everything so difficult and let me get to it.”
* * *
SADIE WATCHED, AND tried not to let her mouth hang open, as Eli came closer, shirtless and muscular and just im-damned-possible not to stare at. He had dirt on his chest. His hairy, masculine, muscular chest.
He’d looked so clean in that uniform of his. Like he ironed it directly onto his body so that it would form straight to his physique and never wrinkle. And he looked good in it.
But never had she imagined that there was something so raw and manly underneath it all. He was downright...rough and uncivilized beneath all that law and order.
She suddenly realized she was staring. Pretty much at his nipples. It didn’t get more horrifying than that.
She cleared her throat and looked back up at him. Met his brown eyes, which was the socially acceptable thing to do.
“Thank you,” she said.
And all her good intentions fell like a Jenga tower when he grabbed the middle of the trim and crown molding bundle she was holding and lifted it up, out of her hands, to hoist it over his shoulder.
“Where do you want it?” he asked.
Her brain was taking in too much stimulus to compute the exact question. He was standing there, every muscle outlined to perfection by the stance and the weight of the items he was holding. He just looked so damned capable. Standing there and holding things that had been almost impossible for her to manage, like they weren’t anything at all.
Actually, that part was really freaking annoying.
But it looked great. And she couldn’t refrain from letting herself have a little moment. One where she admired the strength in his chest, the sharp, defined lines in his stomach. And down beneath those abs, a per
fectly flat plane with deep grooves on either side of it that disappeared beneath the low-slung waistband of his jeans.
She almost had to bite her own fist to keep from whimpering.
What the hell was wrong with her? She didn’t lust after guys she didn’t like. Anymore. Sure, she’d lusted after him—mildly, until he’d arrested her. But she’d grown up since then.
She liked it simple, she liked it happy. She liked nice men who wanted a sweet, easy relationship, and when that wasn’t easily available, she did without.
She’d been without for a while, so she was clearly just having a weak moment on the physical desire front. And hey, that happened. But that didn’t mean she was going to do anything about it. Most especially not with Eli Garrett. No, thank you.
She wasn’t a fling girl anyway. Mainly because the idea of getting naked with a total stranger was not at all appealing. She always got to know a guy before she hopped into bed with him. And getting to know the guy made it not a fling, but a relationship.
And if relationships were not, at present, a happening thing, flings weren’t a happening thing ever. Ergo, sex was not a happening thing for her.
Ergo his abs had just killed 65 percent of her brain cells.
“Just...the porch is good,” she said, walking backward, her eyes still trained on him. She grabbed one of the plastic bags, which was lying, tipped and spilled, on the tailgate, and bent, her eyes still on Eli as he turned and started walking toward the house.
His butt.
Oh, my.
Yep. She’d just crossed over into shameless ogling and she didn’t even care. Didn’t mind even a little bit that she didn’t even like the guy.
Why not look at him for a minute? The fact was, thrills were few and far between for her. Connor might be just as hot. She might ogle him next.
But he wasn’t here. So for now she would just take a moment to note the way the denim cupped Eli’s muscular, rounded...
“So...you gonna nail this up or what?”
It took her a full second to realize “nail this up” wasn’t a euphemism for a sex act.
“The molding?”
“Yes,” he said, setting it down across the porch.
She scrambled to pick everything up, avoiding the broken pendant light and gathering the rest of her odds and ends. “That was the plan. There’s a nail gun in the shed. At least, I think Connor had that on the list. He left me a list.”
“Decent of him.”
“He’s been sort of the invisible man since I arrived. He left instructions, but I haven’t seen him.”
“Yeah, well, he’s like that. Actually—” he bent down to straighten up one of the trim pieces and she cocked her head to the side and watched the muscles on his back shift and bunch “—he didn’t tell me anyone was coming to rent the place.” He straightened. “Let alone signing a long-term lease and spending the next five years running a bed-and-breakfast on my damn property.”
“It’s sort of a shared property. If you want to be technical.” She scurried up toward the porch, her bag in hand.
“Right. So how is it you’re going to install all this? And why are you installing all this?”
“I want the trim to match. Obviously over the years some things were replaced at different times and some of it doesn’t match. The wood in here is beautiful and I don’t want anything detracting from it.”
“But even the replacement molding is older than...we are. It might as well be original.”
“Well, no, it might as well not be, because if it were, it would match. It gets accolades for age but I’m still replacing it.”
“So you’re going to put this cheap-ass stuff in there?”
“It is not cheap-ass! Look at how much of my budget is devoted to this and you will see just how not cheap-ass it is. It’s very nice, actually. And if all you’re going to do is insult my molding, then...get off my porch.”
He crossed his arms and leaned against the railing. “I don’t think I will. It’s my porch. You’re just leasing it.”
“I have rights!”
“It’s a bed-and-breakfast. What if I want to make a reservation?”
“It’s not open yet.”
“It could open faster if you didn’t want to replace perfectly good molding.”
She sputtered, her comebacks all jumbled around because...biceps. And forearms. And things. Why was he so distracting even while he was annoying? Why did it seem like the annoying only made it all more interesting?
She had no idea what was wrong with her. She needed some wine. A bottle of wine. And for him to go away. She was done with her thrills. She was on thrill overload. She was clearly giddy with the thrills and had crossed over into crazy town.
“What else do you have in the bag?” he asked.
“Things,” she said.
His dark eyes narrowed. “What kinds of things?”
“Things of a home-improvement nature. Which I will use to improve this home.”
“What the hell does it need improving for?”
She huffed and stalked to the front door, fishing the key out of her purse before pushing the door open. “Come in and see for yourself.”
She walked in ahead of him, trying not to be overly conscious of just how big and masculine and there he was.
“Look,” she said. “And by that I mean really look, like someone who’s never seen this place before, and not like someone who loves it because it’s sentimental.”
“Who said it was sentimental?”
“Obviously it’s sentimental. You’re attached to molding.”
“I just don’t like change,” he said, the words coming out stilted.
“Oh, really?”
“There’s an order to things,” he muttered. “It’s easier to keep track of them that way.”
She waved a hand. “Well, I love change. It’s what makes life interesting.”
“Which begs the question why you’re back here. Committed to five long years...”
“Because there’s no place like home. I’ve been all over the country and I’ve never been anywhere that felt like Copper Ridge.”
He paused, studying her far too intently for her liking. “How long did it take you to get that response down so perfectly?”
Anger sparked through her. Because he had her number. “Are you saying my response seems rehearsed?”
“Yes. Very. Why are you really here?”
Oh, damn him. “Because. It was time. Because... I was tired of feeling like I was running away.”
“From?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Things.”
“Same things you got in that bag?”
“Yep. Nuts, bolts and other assorted crap.”
Toby chose that moment to come padding down the stairs and into the kitchen.
“You have a cat,” he said, “in the house.”
“Yes,” she said. “Where else am I going to keep my cat?”
“The barn.”
“You don’t keep a friend in the barn. Well, maybe you keep your friends in the barn. That could be why you don’t have any friends.”
“I have friends.”
“I haven’t seen any.”
“You’ve seen me at work and at home.”
“And I’ve seen nary a friend. Are they in the barn now?” She made her eyes round and looked at him in mock horror.
“None of my friends shed. And they don’t leave dead animals on your carpet.”
“Neither does Toby. I don’t think he’d kill a mouse. He’s too civilized for that.”
“A cat that won’t kill mice? That just sounds worthless to me.”
She shot him a dirty look and scooped Toby up from his position by the table. “You can’t have it two ways. Either it’s bad for him to leave dead animals lying around, or it’s bad for him to not kill things.”
“I like it when cats kill things. Outside.”
“Then have your cats the way you want them. I’ll have mine the way I want
him. And I will have matching molding. We’re just going to have to disagree on the fundamentals of life. Big surprise there, right?”
“Good point.”
“Well. Good. Glad we’ve come to that...conclusion.” She set Toby on the table. “So...now I need to get back to work.”
“You honestly think you’re going to do all this alone?”
“Yes. I am. I’m a hard worker and I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty.”
“I thought you were a therapist.”
“Was.”
“Didn’t you listen to people for a living?”
She blew out an exasperated breath. “Listening is hard work, I’ll have you know. It’s why so few people do it. And anyway, I have the desire to finish all this work, and one thing you should know about me is that when I set out to do something, I get it done, okay?”
“Well, I’ll look forward to seeing you get this done.”
“Yeah, well, I look forward to you putting a shirt on,” she said.
The words hung between them and she tried not to pull a face and reveal just how embarrassing they were to her. Because, damn it all, she was trying to pretend that she hadn’t noticed. And she was pretty sure she’d been managing to hide the whole I’m-helplessly-checking-you-out thing from him, too. Except now she’d gone and shown she was disturbed by it.
Bah.
He cocked his head to the side. “This bothers you?”
“No.”
“Then why did you say...?”
“Because. Because this is a place of business.”
“I thought you weren’t open.”
“I’m not, but...still.”
He leaned in and she caught his scent—sweat and skin. Man. And the want, the need, grabbed her around the throat and shook hard, unwilling to let her go. She should move. She should stop breathing him in.
But she couldn’t think about what might come next. Because her brain was totally blank.
All she could do was stare. At his lips. At the square cut of his jaw. It was dusted with stubble now, not clean like it had been yesterday. Yes, today he looked more out of order in every way, and she had to admit, it was interesting. Fascinating. Dangerous.
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