“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? “I don’t even know who you are.”

“I’m not dangerous, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she told him.

As if 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.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said.

Cowboy for Hire

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

To Dianne Moggy, for being nice enough to call and reassure me.

Thank You.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

There had to be more.

There just had to be more to life than this.

The haunting thought echoed over and over again in Constance Carmichael’s brain as she sat in her father’s dining room, moving bits and pieces of chicken marsala around on her plate.

Her father was talking. But not to her—or even at her, as was his custom. This time his words were directed to someone on the other end of his state-of-the-art smartphone. From what she had pieced together, someone from one of his endless construction projects. Carmichael Construction Corporation, domiciled in Houston, Texas, had projects in different stages of completion throughout the country, and Calvin Carmichael thrived on the challenge of riding roughshod on all of his foremen.

The table in the dining room easily sat twenty. More if necessary. Tonight it only sat two, her father and her. She was here by mandate. Not that she didn’t love her father, she did, but she had never been able to find a way to bond with him—not that she hadn’t spent her whole life trying. But she had never been able to approach him and have him see her as something other than the ongoing disappointment he always made her feel that she was.

Calvin Carmichael didn’t believe in pulling any punches.

Rather than sharing a warm family dinner, Connie had rarely felt more alone. She felt utterly isolated—and distance was only part of the reason. Before the call came in, her father had insisted that she sit at one end of the table while he sat at the other.

“Like civilized people,” he’d told her.

He was at the head of the table and consequently, she was at the foot—with what felt like miles of distance between them.

If merely sharing a meal had been her father’s main objective, it could have been more easily attained than this elaborate command performance. Connie was aware of restaurants that were smaller than her father’s dining room. She’d grown up in this enormous house, but it had never felt like home to her.

She watched Fleming, her father’s butler, retreat out of the corner of her eye. It was no secret that Calvin Carmichael enjoyed with relish all the perks that his acquired wealth could buy, including not just a cook and a housekeeper but a genuine English butler, as well. The latter’s duties included serving dinner, even if the only one at the table was her father.

Connie sighed inwardly, wondering when she could safely take her leave. She knew that if her sigh was audible, her father would make note of it. Moreover, he’d grill her about it once his phone call was over, finding a way to make her feel guilty even if he was the one at fault.

Sitting here, toying with her food and watching her father, Connie felt a numbing malaise, a deadness spreading like insidious mold inside her. Surrounded by wealth, able to purchase and own any object her heart desired, no matter how extravagant, she found she desired nothing.

Because nothing made her happy.

She knew what she needed.

She needed to feel alive, to feel productive. She needed to accomplish something so that she could feel as if she finally, finally had a little of her father’s respect instead of always being on the receiving end of his thinly veiled contempt.

“You’re not eating. I invited you for dinner, you’re not eating. Something wrong with your dinner?”

Connie looked up, startled. Her father had been on the phone for the past twenty minutes, but the slight shift in his tone made her realize that he had ended his conversation and had decided to find some reason to criticize her.

Connie lifted her shoulders in a careless, vague shrug. “I’m just not hungry, I guess,” she replied, not wanting to get into an argument with the man.

But it seemed unavoidable.

“That’s because you’ve never been hungry. Had you grown up hungry,” Calvin stressed, “you would never waste even a morsel of food.” Crystal-blue eyes narrowed beneath imposing, startlingly black eyebrows. “What’s wrong with you, little girl?” If the question was motivated by concern, there was no indication in either his inflection or his tone.

Little girl.

She was twenty-seven years old, and she hated when her father called her that, but she knew it was futile to say as much. Calvin Carmichael did what he pleased when he pleased to whomever he pleased and took no advice, no criticism from anyone. To render any would just get her further embroiled in a heated exchange. Silence usually won out by default.

“Haven’t I given you everything?” Calvin pressed, still scowling at his only daughter. His only child according to him. He had long since disowned the older brother she had adored because Conrad had deigned to turn his back on the family business and had struck out on his own years ago.

Connie looked at her father for a long moment. This feeling wasn’t about to go away, and if she didn’t say anything, she knew it would only get worse, not to mention that her father wouldn’t stop questioning her, wouldn’t stop verbally poking at her until she told him what he claimed he wanted to know.

As if he cared.

“I don’t want to be given anything,” she told her father. “I want to earn it myself.”

His laugh was belittling. “Earn it, right. Where’s this going, little girl?”

She pressed her lips together for a moment to keep from saying something one of them—possibly both of them—would regret. Her father didn’t respond well to displays of emotion.

“I want to helm a project.” It wasn’t really what was bothering her, but maybe, just maybe, it might help squash these all but paralyzing doldrums that had infiltrated her very soul.

“You? Helm a project?” Piercing blue eyes stared at her in disbelief. “You mean by yourself?”

She tried not to react to the sarcasm in her father’s voice. “Yes. My own project.”

He waved a dismissive hand at her. “You don’t know the first thing about being in charge of a project.”

Anger rose within her, and she clutched to it. At least she was finally feeling something. “Dad, I’ve worked for you in one capacity or another for the last ten years. I think I know the first thing about being in charge of a project—and the second thing, too,” she added, struggling to rein in her temper. An outburst would only tilt the scales further against her.

Her father was a formidable man, a man who could stare down his opponents and have them backing off, but she was determined not to allow him to intimidate her. She was fighting for her life—figuratively and, just possibly, literally.

Calvin laughed shortly. But just before he began to say something scathing in reply, his ever-present cell phone rang again.

To Connie’s utter annoyance, her father answered it. It was time to leave, she decided. This “discussion,” like all the others she’d had with him over the years, wasn’t going anywhere.

But as she pushed her chair back and rose to her feet, Connie saw her father raise a finger, the gesture meant to keep her where she stood.

“Just a minute.”

She wasn’t sure if he was speaking to her or the person on the other end of the call. His next words, however, were definitely directed at her.

“Forever.” For a moment, the word just hung there, like a single leaf drifting down from a tree. “Let’s see what you can do about getting a project up, going and completed in Forever.”

Something in her gut warned her she was walking into a trap—but she had no other choice. She had to do it—whatever “it” turned out to be.

“What kind of a project?” she asked warily.

Her father’s attention already appeared to be elsewhere. “I’ll have Emerson give you the particulars,” he said in an offhanded manner, referring to his business manager. “Just remember, little girl, I started with nothing—I don’t intend to wind up that way,” he warned her, as if he was already predicting the cost of her failure.

Adrenaline was beginning to surface, whether in anticipation of this mysterious project or as a reaction to her father’s condescending manner, it was hard for her to tell—but at least it was there, and she was grateful for that.

“Thank you,” she said.

But her father was back talking to the person on the other end of the cell phone, giving that man his undivided attention.

She had a project, Connie thought, savoring the idea as it began to sink in. The world suddenly got a whole lot brighter.

Chapter One

“I can’t believe what you’ve done to the place,” Brett Murphy said to Finn, the older of his two younger brothers, as he looked around at what had been, until recently, a crumbling, weather-beaten and termite-riddled ranch house.

This morning, before opening up Murphy’s, Forever’s one and only saloon, he’d decided to look in on Finn’s progress renovating the ranch house he had inherited from one of the town’s diehard bachelors. And though he hadn’t been prepared to, he was impressed by what he saw.

“More than that,” Brett added as he turned to face his brother, “I can’t believe that you’re the one who’s doing it.”

Finn never missed a beat. He still had a lot to do before he packed it in for the day. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” he asked. He’d been at this from first light, wrestling with a particularly uncooperative floorboard trim, which was just warped enough to give him trouble. That did not put the normally mild-tempered middle brother in the best frame of mind. “I built you a bathroom out of practically nothing, didn’t I?” he reminded Brett. The bathroom had been added to make the single room above the saloon more livable. Until then, anyone staying in the room had had to go downstairs to answer nature’s call or take a shower.

Brett’s memory needed no prodding. It had always been a notch above excellent, which was fortunate for his brothers. It was Brett who took over running Murphy’s and being financially responsible for them at the age of eighteen.

“Yes, you did,” Brett replied. “But don’t forget, you were the kid who always wound up smashing his thumb with a hammer practically every time you so much as held one in your hand.”

His back to Brett as he continued working, Finn shrugged. “You’re exaggerating, and anyway, I was six.”

“I’m not—and you were twelve,” Brett countered. He inclined his head ever so slightly as if that would underscore his point. “I’m the one with a head for details and numbers.”

Finn snorted. It wasn’t that he took offense, just that their relationship was such that they took jabs at one another—and Liam—as a matter of course. It was just the way things were. But at bottom, he was fiercely loyal to his brothers—as they were to him.

“Just because you can add two and two doesn’t make you the last authority on things, Brett,” Liam informed his brother.

“No, running Murphy’s into the black pretty much did that.”

When, at eighteen, he had suddenly found himself in charge of the establishment, after their Uncle Patrick had died, he’d discovered that the saloon was actually losing money rather than earning it. He swiftly got to work making things right and within eight months, he’d managed to turn things around. It wasn’t just his pride that was at stake, he had brothers to support and send to school.

“Look, I didn’t swing by to squabble with you,” Brett went on. “I just wanted to see how the place was coming along—and it looks like you’re finally in the home stretch. Liam been helping you?” he asked, curious.

This time Finn did stop what he was doing. He looked at Brett incredulously and then laughed. “Liam? In case you haven’t noticed, that’s a box of tools by your foot, not a box of guitar picks.”

Finn’s meaning was clear. Of late, their younger brother only cared for all things musical. Brett still managed to get Liam to work the bar certain nights, but it was clear that Liam preferred performing at Murphy’s rather than tending to the customers and their thirst.

“I thought Liam said he was coming by the other day,” Brett recalled.

“He did.” Finn’s mouth curved. “Said watching me work inspired his songwriting.”

“Did it?” Brett asked, amused.

Finn shrugged again. “All I know was that he scribbled some things down, said ‘thanks’ and took off again. I figure that he figures he’s got a good thing going. Tells you he’s coming out here to help me then when he comes here, he writes his songs—and calls it working.” There was no resentment in Finn’s voice as he summarized his younger brother’s revised work ethic. For the most part, Finn preferred working alone. It gave him the freedom to try different things without someone else second-guessing him or giving so-called advice. “Hey, Brett?”

Brett had wandered over to the fireplace. Finn had almost completely rebuilt it, replacing the old red bricks with white ones. It made the room look larger. “What?”

“You think our baby brother has any talent?” he asked in between hammering a section of the floorboard into place.

“For avoiding work?” Brett guessed. “Absolutely.”

Finn knew that Brett knew what he was referring to, but he clarified his question, anyway. “No, I mean for those songs he writes.”

Brett could see the merit in Liam’s efforts, especially since he wouldn’t have been able to come up with the songs himself, but he was curious to hear what Finn’s opinion was. Since he was asking, Brett figured his brother had to have formed his own take on the subject.

“You’ve heard him just like I have,” Brett pointed out, waiting.

Finn glanced at him over his shoulder. “Yeah, but I want to know what you think.”

Brett played the line out a little further. “Suddenly I’m an authority?” he questioned.

Down on his knees, Finn rocked back on his heels, the frustrating length of floorboard temporarily forgotten. Despite the fancy verbal footwork, he really did value Brett’s take on things. Brett had been the one he’d looked up to when he was growing up.

“No, not an authority,” Finn replied, “but you know what you like.”

“I think he’s good. But I think he’s better at singing songs than he is at writing them,” he said honestly, then in the next moment, he added, “But what I do know is that you’ve got a real talent for taking sow’s ears and making silk purses out of them.”

Never one to reach for fancy words when plain ones would do, Finn eyed him with more than a trace of confusion.

“How’s that again?” he asked.

Brett rephrased his comment. Easygoing though he was, it wasn’t often that he complimented either of his brothers. He’d wanted them to grow up struggling to always reach higher rather than expecting things to be handed to them—automatic approval readily fell into that category.

“You’re damn good at this remodeling thing that you do.”

Finn smiled to himself. Only a hint of it was evident on his lips. “Glad you like it.”

“But you don’t have to work on it 24/7,” Brett pointed out. Finn had immersed himself in this huge project he’d taken on almost single-handedly. There was no reason to push himself this hard. “Nobody’s waving a deadline at you.”

“There’s a deadline,” Finn contradicted. He saw Brett raise an eyebrow in a silent query, so he stated the obvious. “You and Lady Doc are still getting married, aren’t you?”

Just the mere mention of his pending nuptials brought a wide smile to Brett’s lips. Just the way that thoughts of Alisha always did.

Until the young general surgeon had come to town, answering Dr. Daniel Davenport’s letter requesting help, Brett had been relatively certain that while he loved all the ladies, regardless of “type,” there was no so-called soul mate out there for him.

Now he knew better, because he had met her. Not only was she out there, but he would be marrying her before the year was out, as well.

“Yes,” Brett replied. “But what...?”

Finn anticipated Brett’s question and cut him short. “This is my wedding present to you and Lady Doc—to say thanks for all the times you were there for Liam and me when we needed you—and even the times when we thought we didn’t,” he added with a touch of whimsy. “And this is, in a small way, to pay you back for staying instead of taking off with Laura right after high school graduation, the way she wanted you to.

“In other words, this is to say thanks for staying, for giving up your dream and taking care of your two bratty younger brothers instead.”

While Finn and Liam were aware of Laura, he had never told them about the ultimatum she’d given him. Had never mentioned how tempted he’d been, just for a moment, to follow her to Los Angeles. All his brothers knew was one day, Laura stopped coming around.

He looked at Finn in surprise. “You know about that?”

Finn smiled. “I’m not quite the oblivious person you thought I was.”

“I didn’t think you were oblivious,” Brett corrected him. “It was just that you saw and paid attention to things the rest of us just glossed over.” His smile widened as he looked around the living room. Finn had outdone himself. “But seriously, this is all more than terrific, but this is our ranch house,” he emphasized, “not just mine.”

Finn looked at him and shook his head in wonder before getting back to work. “You bring that pretty Lady Doc here after you’ve married her and she finds out that she’s sharing the place with not just you but also your two brothers, I guarantee that she’ll walk out of here so fast, your head’ll spin clean off.”

He might not be as experienced as Brett was when it came to the fairer sex, Finn thought, but some things were just a given.

“Now, I don’t know nearly as much as you do when it comes to the ladies, but I do know that newlyweds like their own space—that doesn’t mean sharing that space with two other people. Liam and I’ll go on living at the house. This’ll be your place,” he concluded, waving his hand around the room they were currently in as well as indicating the rest of the house.

“But the ranch itself is still ours, not just mine,” Brett insisted.

“Earl Robertson left it to you,” Finn stated simply. The man, he knew, had done it to show his gratitude because Brett had gone out of his way to look in on him when he had taken sick. That was Brett, Finn thought, putting himself out with no thought of any sort of compensation coming his way for his actions.

“And I’ve always shared whatever I had with you and Liam,” Brett stated flatly.

Finn allowed a sly smile to feather over his lips, even though being sly was out of keeping with his normally genial nature.

“I see. Does that go for Lady Doc, too?”

Brett knew that his brother was kidding and that he didn’t have to say it, but he played along, anyway. “Alisha is off-limits.”

Finn pretended to sigh. “It figures. First nice thing you have in aeons, and you’re keeping it all to yourself.”

“Damn right I am.”

Finn changed the subject, directing the conversation toward something serious. “Hey, made a decision about who your best man is going to be?”

Brett was silent for a moment. He’d made Finn think he was debating his choices, but the truth of it was, he’d made up his mind from the beginning. It had been Finn all along.

“Well, Liam made it clear that he and that band of his are providing the music, so I guess you get to be best man.”

His back to Brett, Finn smiled to himself. “I won’t let it go to my head.”

“Might get lonely up there if it did,” Brett commented with affection. He glanced at his watch. “Guess I’d better be getting back or Nathan McHale is going to think I’ve abandoned him,” he said, referring to one of Murphy’s’ two most steadfast patrons.

Finn laughed. “Wonder how long he’d stand in front of the closed door, waiting for you to open up before he’d finally give up.”

Brett began to answer without hesitation. “Two, maybe three—”

“Hours?” Finn asked, amused.

“Days,” Brett corrected with a laugh. The older man had been coming to Murphy’s for as many years as anyone could remember, motivated partially by his fondness for beer and most assuredly by his desire to get away from his eternally nagging wife, Henrietta. “I’ll see you later tonight.”

Finn nodded. “I’ll be by when I get done for the day,” he said. He was back to communing with another ornery section of floorboard before his brother walked out the front door.

* * *

CONNIE HAD DECIDED to just drive around both through Forever and its surrounding area to get a general feel for the little town. For the most part, it appeared she’d stumbled across a town that time had more or less left alone. Nothing looked ancient, exactly, and there were parking places in front of the handful of businesses rather than hitching posts, but all in all, the entire town had a very rural air about it, right down to the single restaurant—if a diner could actually lay claim to that title.

She’d been amused to see that the town’s one bar—how did these cowboys survive with only one bar?—had a sign in the window that said Hungry? Go visit Miss Joan’s diner. Thirsty? You’ve come to the right place. That had told her that there was obviously a division of labor here with territories being defined in the simplest of terms.

Given its size and what she took to be the residents’ mind-set, Connie doubted very much if a place like this actually needed a hotel—which, she had a feeling, had probably been her father’s whole point when he had given her this project, saying if she wanted to prove herself to him, he wanted to see her complete the hotel, bringing it in on time and under budget. The budget left very little wiggle room.

“Newsflash, Dad. I don’t give up that easily,” she murmured to the man who was currently five hundred miles away.

Challenges, especially seemingly impossible ones, were what made her come alive. At first glance, the sleepy little town of Forever needed a hotel about as much as it needed an expert on wombats.

It took closer examination to see that the idea of building a hotel had merit.

Connie could see the potential of the place forming itself in her mind’s eye. She just needed the right approach, the right thing to play up and the hotel-to-be would not only become a reality, it would also be a success and eventually get its patrons.

But it wouldn’t get anything if it wasn’t first built, and she had already decided that while she could have materials shipped in from anywhere in the country that could give her the best deal, to get the structure actually built, she was going to use local talent, so to speak.

She naturally assumed that living out here in what she viewed as the sticks made people handy out of necessity. Unlike in the larger cities, there wasn’t a range of construction companies, all in competition with one another, all vying for the customer’s money. Driving down here from Houston, she had already ascertained that the nearest town, Pine Ridge, was a minimum of fifty miles away. That alone limited the amount of choices available. If anything, out here it was the unhandy customer who wound up searching to find someone to do the work for them.

Just like faith, the right amount of money, she had learned, could move mountains.

She had no mountains to move. But she did have a building to erect, and in order not to be the outsider, the person who was viewed as invading their territory, she would need allies. In this particular case, she needed to have some of the men from Forever taking part in making the hotel a reality.

Granted that, once completed, the hotel would belong to the Carmichael Construction Corporation until such time as they sold it, but she had to make the locals feel that building the hotel would benefit the whole town as well as provide them with good-paying jobs during construction.

Connie knew the importance of friends; she just didn’t exactly know how to go about making them.

But she had done her homework before ever getting behind the wheel of her vehicle and driving down here.

As she drove around now, Connie thought about the fact that on the other side of the town, located about ten miles due northwest, was a Native American reservation. She couldn’t remember which of the tribes lived there, but perhaps they would welcome the work, along with Forever townspeople. Given the local state of affairs, who wouldn’t want a job?

So, armed with her GPS, Connie was on her way there. She was driving slower than she was accustomed to for two reasons: one, she didn’t have a natural sense of direction, and she didn’t know the lay of the land and two, she wanted and needed to get to know this land she was temporarily camping out on.

The reservation was her destination, but something—instincts perhaps—made her closely scan the immediate area she was traversing.

Which was when she saw him.

At first she thought she was having a hallucination, a better-than-average morning fantasy that could easily trigger her latent libido if she let it. The trick to being a driven woman with not just goals, but also the taste of success tucked firmly under her belt, was the way she responded to things that needed life-long commitments. It required—demanded, really—tunnel vision. Eye on the prize and all that sort of thing.

Even so, Connie slowed her pristine, gleaming white BMW sports car down to an arthritic crawl as she stared at the lone figure in the distance.

No harm in just looking, she told herself.

Even at this distance, she could easily make out that the man was around her own age. She was keenly aware that he was bare-chested, that his muscles were rippling with every move he made and that, pound for pound, he had to be the best-looking specimen of manhood she had seen in a very long time.

Moving closer, she could see that perspiration covered his body, causing practically a sheen over his chest and arms.

At first she wasn’t aware of it, but then she realized that her mouth had gone bone-dry. She went on watching.

He didn’t seem to be aware of the fact that he was under scrutiny. The worker turned his back to her and went on doing whatever it was that he was doing. She couldn’t quite make it out, but it had something to do with construction because there were tools on the ground, surrounding an empty tool chest.

As she continued observing him, Connie saw that the man appeared as if he not only knew his way around tools, but he also definitely seemed comfortable working with his hands.

It came to her then.

He was just the man she was looking for to be her foreman, to act as her go-between with whatever men she wound up hiring to do the actual work. Watching him, she couldn’t help wondering how well someone who looked like that would take instructions from a woman.

Or was he the type who didn’t care who issued the orders as long as there was a guaranteed paycheck at the end of the week?

Enough thinking, start doing, she silently ordered herself.

The next moment, she turned her vehicle toward the cowboy and drove straight toward him.

Chapter Two

He’d been aware of the slow-moving, blindingly white sports car for some time now. It was a beauty—much like the woman who was driving it.

But unlike the woman behind the wheel, the vehicle, because of its make and model, stuck out like a sore thumb. Regardless of the season, Forever and its outlining area didn’t see much through traffic. Every so often, there was the occasional lost traveler, but on the whole, that was a rare occurrence. Forever was not on the beaten path to anywhere of interest, except perhaps for the reservation and a couple of other tiny towns that had sprung up in the area. On its way to being a ghost town more than once, the town stubbornly survived despite all odds. Like a prickly-pear cactus, Forever, a few of the much older residents maintained, was just too ornery to die.

The owner of the sports car, Finn decided, had to be lost. Nobody driving that sort of a vehicle could possibly have any business being in or around Forever. Even Dan, the doctor who had initially come to town out of a sense of obligation mixed with a heavy dose of guilt, hadn’t been driving a car nearly that flashy and unsuitable for this terrain when he’d arrived.

As the vehicle came closer, Finn tossed down his hammer and approached the car. The woman, he couldn’t help noticing, was even better-looking close up than she was at a distance.

“You lost?” he asked her, fully expecting her to sigh with relief and answer “Yes.”

She didn’t.

Instead, she shook her head and said, “No, I don’t think so.”

Finn regarded her thoughtfully. “In my experience, a person’s either lost or they’re not. There is no gray area.”

The woman smiled at him. “Didn’t think I’d find a philosopher all the way out here.”

“It’s not philosophy, it’s just plain common sense,” Finn told her.

To him, so-called philosophers referred to the gaggle of retired old men who got together every morning and sat on the sun-bleached bench in front of the general store, watching the rest of the town go through its paces and commenting on life when the spirit moved them. He was far too busy to indulge in that sort of thing.

“Well, if you don’t need directions, then I’ll get back to my work,” he told her. The woman was clearly out of her element, but if she didn’t want to talk about what she was doing out here, he wasn’t about to prod her. Lost or not, it was strictly her business.

“I don’t need directions, but I do have a question.” She raised her voice as if to get his attention before he began hammering again.

Finn turned back to face her. She looked rather fair. He could see a sunburn in her near future if she didn’t at least put the top up on her car. Skin that fair was ripe for burning.

“Which is?” he asked casually.

“Did you build this yourself?” The woman got out of her car and crossed to the freshly rebuilt front steps of the house.

Thanks to Brett, honesty had always been at the core of his behavior. His older brother expected and accepted nothing less than that. Anyone can lie, Brett maintained, but it took a real man to tell the truth each and every time, even when it wasn’t easy.

“No,” Finn replied. “The ranch house was already here. I just changed things around a little, replaced what needed replacing, added a little here, a little there—that kind of thing,” he told her simply.

He made it sound as if he’d hammered down a few loose boards, but one look at the exterior told her that the man with the impossibly appealing physique had done a great deal more than just that. The structure looked brand-new. She knew for a fact that this part of the state was hard on its buildings and its terrain. Summers could be brutal, and they left their mark on practically everything, especially structures. The ranch house she was looking at had been resurfaced, replaced and renovated—and recently.

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 show 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 again, 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.

Crystal-blue eyes swept over the sea of faces, taking preliminary measure of the men in the saloon. “I need a crew of able-bodied men to help me build a hotel,” she answered.

“Build a hotel?” an older man in the back echoed incredulously. By the way he repeated the proposed endeavor, it was obvious that a hotel was the last structure he would have thought the town needed. He wasn’t alone. “Where you putting a hotel?”

Connie answered as if she was fielding legitimate questions at a business meeting. “The deed says it’s to be constructed on the east end of town, just beyond the general store.”

“Deed? What deed?” someone else within the swelling throng crowing around her asked.

Connie addressed that question, too, as if it had everything riding on it. She had learned how not to treat men by observing her father. He treated the men around him as if they were morons—until they proved otherwise. She did the exact opposite.

Employees—and potential employees—had her respect until they did something to lose it.

“The deed that my company purchased a little less than three weeks ago,” she replied, then waited for the next question.

“Deeds are for ranches,” Nathan McHale, Murphy’s’ most steadfast and longest-attending patron said into his beer, “not hunks of this town.”

Connie shifted her stool to get a better look at the man. “I’m afraid you’re wrong there, Mr—?” She left the name open, waiting for the man to fill it in for her.

Nathan paused to take a long sip from his glass, as if that would enable him to remember the answer to the newcomer’s question. Swallowing, he looked up, a somewhat silly smile on his wide, round face.

“McHale.”

“Don’t worry about him, missy. Ol’ Nathan’s used to being wrong. The second he steps into his house, his wife starts telling him he’s wrong,” Alan Dunn, one of the older men at the far end of the bar chuckled.

Nathan seemed to take no offense. Instead, what he did take was another longer, more fortifying drink from his glass, this time managing to drain it. Putting the glass down on the bar, he pushed it over toward the bartender—the younger of the two behind the bar.

Connie noticed that the latter eyed his customer for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to cut the man off yet. She knew that she definitely would—and was rather surprised when the bartender decided not to.

For all his girth and folds, McHale looked like a child at Christmas, his eyes lighting up and a wreath of smiles taking over his rounded face. He gave the bartender who had refilled his glass a little salute as well as widening his appreciative smile.

Using both hands, he drew the glass to him, careful not to spill a single drop. Then, just before he took his first sip of his new drink, McHale raised it ever so slightly in a symbolic toast to the newcomer. “You were saying?”

“I was saying—” Connie picked up the thread of her conversation where it had temporarily stopped “—that my construction company has purchased the deed for a section of the town’s land.”

“You here to see if the town wants to buy it back?” Brett asked, curious.

There’d been complaints from time to time that there was nowhere to stay if anyone was stranded in Forever overnight. But things always got sorted out for the best. The sheriff enjoyed telling people that was how he and his wife, Olivia, had first gotten together. On her way to track down her runaway sister, Olivia’d had no intentions of staying in Forever. Her car had had other ideas. She’d wound up relying on the hospitality of the town’s resident wise woman and diner owner, Miss Joan.

“No,” Connie replied patiently, “I’m here to build a hotel.”

“A hotel?” It was someone else’s turn to question the wisdom of that. Obviously, more than one person found this to be an odd undertaking. “What for?” the person asked.

“For people to stay in, you nitwit,” the man sitting on the next stool informed him, coupling the sentence with a jab in the ribs.

“What people?” a third man asked. “Everyone around here’s got a home.”

Connie was ready for that, as well. She’d read up on Forever before ever setting out to see it. She knew her father wouldn’t have given her an easy project. That had never been his way.

“Well, if there’s a hotel here,” she said, addressing her answer to the entire bar, “it might encourage people to come to Forever.”

“Why would we want people to come here?” the man who’d asked her the question queried again. “We got all the people we know what to do with now.”

Several other voices melded together, agreeing with him.

Connie was far from put off, but before she could say anything, the good-looking man she’d seen this afternoon beat her to it.

“She’s talking about the town growing, Clyde,” Finn pointed out. “You know, progress.”

Connie fairly beamed at the bartender, relieved that at least someone understood what she was trying to convey. “Exactly,” she cried.

“Hell, progress is highly overrated,” Clyde declared sourly. He downed his shot of whiskey, waited for it to settle in, then said, “I like this town just fine the way it is. Peaceful,” he pronounced with a nod of his bald head.

This was not the time or the place to become embroiled in a hard sell. The land officially now belonged to her father’s company, thanks to some negotiations she had not been privy to. That meant that the decision as to what to do or not do with it was not up to the people lining the bar.

Be that as it may, she was still going to need them, or at least some of them, to help with the hotel’s construction. That meant she couldn’t afford to alienate any of them. Besides the fact that local labor was always less expensive than bringing construction workers in, hiring locals always built goodwill. There wasn’t a town or city in the country that hadn’t felt the bite of cutbacks and didn’t welcome an opportunity to obtain gainful employment, even on a temporary basis.

This was not the first project she was associated with, although it was the first that she was allowed to helm on her own. She already knew she was going to need a few skilled workers, like someone who could handle the backhoe, and those people would be flown in. But as for the rest of it, the brawn and grunt part, those positions she hoped she would be able to fill with people from in and around the town. The one thing she knew she could count on was that extra money was always welcomed.

Connie raised her voice, addressing Clyde. “I promise not to disturb the peace.” For good measure, she elaborately crossed her heart. “I came here to offer you jobs. I need manpower to help me make this hotel a reality.”

This time it was Kyle Masterson who spoke up. He hired out to some of the local ranchers, but he had never been afraid of hard work. “What kind of money we talking about?”

She made eye contact with the big man. “Good money,” she responded in all seriousness.

“How much?” Brett asked, trying to pin her down not for himself, but for the men who frequented Murphy’s, men he knew were struggling with hard times and bills that were stamped past due.

“Depends on the level of skills you bring to the job,” she replied honestly. “That’ll be decided on an individual basis.”

“Who’s gonna do the deciding?” another man at the bar asked.

The question came from behind her. Connie turned to face whoever had spoken up. They were going to find out sooner or later, might as well be sooner, she thought. “I am.”

“Big decisions,” the man responded with a laugh. He eyed her in clear amusement. She obviously looked like a slip of a thing in comparison to the men she was addressing. “You sure you’re up to it, honey?”

Connie had never had any slack cut for her. Her father had made sure that she was treated like a crew member no matter what job she was doing. The fact that she was willing to—and did—work hard had not failed to impress the men, even if it seemed to have no effect whatsoever on her father.

Connie looked the man asking the question directly in the eye and said with no hesitation, “I am. Are you?”

Her answer generated laughter from the other men around the bar.

“She’s got you there, Roy. Looks like you better make nice if you want to earn a little extra for your pocket,” the man next to him advised.

“It’ll be more than just a little extra,” Connie was quick to correct. “And if you work hard and get this project in on time and on budget, everyone on the project will get a bonus.”

The promise of a bonus, even an unspecified one, never failed to stir up positive goodwill, and this time was no exception. Snippets of responses and more questions furiously flew through the air.

“Sounds good!”

“Count me in.”

“Hey, is the bonus gonna be as big as the salary?”

“You calculating that by the hour or by the day?”

Finn had stood by, holding his tongue for the most part. The woman doing the talking had intrigued him right from the start when she’d first approached him this morning. Since his bent was toward building, anyway, he figured that he might have to do a little negotiation with Brett to get some free time in order to get involved on this construction project.

But he didn’t see that as being a problem. Brett was fairly reasonable when it came to things like this. He’d given Liam a lot of slack so he could practice and rehearse with his band. As far as older brothers went, a man would have to go to great lengths to find someone who was anywhere near as good as Brett.

“Looks like you’ve got them all fired up and excited,” Finn commented to the young woman as he checked her glass to see if she needed a refill yet.

“How about you? Do I have you all fired up and excited?” she asked, going with his wording. Connie shifted the stool to face him. The man was still her first choice to head up the work crew. The other men might be good—or even more capable—but so far this so-called bartender’s handiwork had been the only one she’d seen firsthand.

But the moment she phrased the question, she saw her mistake.

Finn had every intention of giving her a flippant answer, but there was something in her eyes, something that had him skidding to a grinding halt and reassessing not just his answer, but a hell of a lot of other things, as well. Things that had nothing to do with tools and construction.

The woman on the stool before him probably had no idea that she had the kind of eyes that seemed to peer into a man’s soul while making him reevaluate everything that had happened in his life up to this singular moment in time.

A beat went by before he realized that she was still waiting for him to respond.

“Yes,” he answered quietly, his eyes on hers. He found he couldn’t look away even if he wanted to—which he didn’t. “You do,” he added in the same quiet tone.

Despite the surrounding din, his voice managed to undulate along her skin and lodge itself directly beneath it.

It took Connie more than a full second to come to, then another full second to find her voice and another one after that to realize that her mouth and throat had gone bone-dry. If she said more than a couple of words, they could come out in a comical croak, thereby negating whatever serious, or semiserious thing she was about to say.

Taking the drink that was on the bar before her, she emptied the glass in an effort to restore her voice to its initial working order. Tears suddenly gathered in her eyes as flames coasted through her veins. She’d forgotten her glass contained whiskey, not something less potent.

“Good,” she managed to say without the word sticking to the roof of her mouth. Taking a breath, she willed herself to be steady and then completed her sentence. Nothing could interfere with work. She wouldn’t allow it to. “Because I have just the position for you.”

Most likely not the same position I have in mind for you.

The thought, materializing out of nowhere, took Finn completely by surprise. He was extremely grateful that the words hadn’t come out of his mouth. It wasn’t his intention to embarrass either himself or the young woman.

But he found that he was having trouble banishing the thought out of his head. The image seemed to be all but burned into his brain. An image that was suddenly making him feel exceedingly warm.

Finn focused on the hotel she had been talking about. This represented the first move toward progress that had been made in Forever in quite some time.

“What kind of a position?” he asked her out loud, rubbing perhaps a bit too hard at a spot on the bar’s counter.

“Is there someplace we can talk?” she asked him.

Finn thought of the room that was just above the saloon. Initially, their uncle Patrick had lived there when he’d owned and operated Murphy’s. On his passing, it had been just an extra room that all three of them had sporadically availed themselves of if the occasion warranted it. Currently, however, Brett’s fiancée was staying there, but only when she wasn’t working—or staying with Brett at the ranch. The clinic was still open, which meant that the room would be empty.

But Finn didn’t feel comfortable just commandeering it—besides, Brett would undoubtedly have his head if he found out.

The next moment, Finn felt he had come up with a viable alternative. “Have you had dinner yet?” he asked the woman.

“No.” She had been so worked up about this project, so eager to get it going, that she had completely forgotten about eating.

“Then I know just the place we can talk. Brett,” Finn called, turning toward his brother. “I’m taking my break now.”

Motivated by his interest in anything that had an effect on the town, Brett had discreetly listened in on the conversation between Finn and this woman. He appeared mildly amused at his brother’s choice of words. “You planning on being back in fifteen minutes?”

“A couple of breaks, then—plus my dinner break,” Finn added for good measure.

“You already took that, don’t you remember?” Brett deadpanned.

“Then my breakfast break,” Finn shot back, exasperated.

Brett inclined his head. “That should work,” he told Finn. “Just don’t forget to come back,” he called after his brother as Finn made his way around the bar.

Escorting the woman through the throng of patrons, most of whom were now keenly interested in what this newcomer to their town had to offer, Finn waved a hand over his head. This signified to Brett that he had heard him and was going to comply—eventually.

“Where are we going?” Connie asked once they made it through the front door.

“To dinner,” Finn repeated.

“And that would be—?”

Finn grinned. “At Miss Joan’s,” he answered.

“Miss Joan’s?” she repeated. The name meant nothing to her.

“The diner,” Finn prompted. “It’s the only restaurant in town.”

For now, Connie corrected silently. Plans for the hotel included a restaurant on the premises.

But for the time being, she thought it best to keep that to herself.

Chapter Four

Since she had already ascertained that it was the only so-called restaurant in town, Connie had initially intended on checking the diner out after she left Murphy’s. But seeing the cowboy who had, she admitted—although strictly to herself—taken her breath away—both because of his craftsmanship and his physique—she’d temporarily lost sight of the plan she’d laid out for herself to round out her first day in Forever.

The bartending cowboy opened the door for her and she stepped into the diner. Connie scanned the area, only to discover that everyone in the diner was looking right back at her.

Before taking another step, she unconsciously squared her shoulders.

Inside the brash, confident young woman who faced down all sorts of obstacles, beat the heart of a shy, young girl, the one whose father had always made her feel, through his words and through his actions, that she wasn’t good enough. That she couldn’t seem to measure up to the standards he had set down before her.

Even though he had told her, time and again, that she was a source of constant disappointment to him, Calvin Carmichael had insisted that, from the relatively young age of fourteen, his only daughter replace her late mother and act as a hostess at the parties that he threw for his business associates.

It was while acting as hostess at those very same parties that she developed her polish and her poise—at least on the surface. Only her father knew how to chip away at that veneer to get to the frightened little girl who existed just beneath that carefully crafted surface.

To be fair, her father had been just as demanding of her brother, Conrad. But Conrad had been far more rebellious than she ever was. He absolutely refused to be bullied and left home for parts unknown the moment that he turned eighteen.

She would have given anything to go with him, but she was only fourteen at the time, and Conrad had enough to do, looking after himself. He couldn’t take on the burden of being responsible for a child, as well.

At least that was what she had told herself when he’d left without her.

So Connie resigned herself to remaining in her father’s world, desperately treading water, determined to survive as best she could. Not only surviving, but vowing to one day make her father realize how wrong he’d been about her all along. It was the one thing that had kept her going all this time.

The only thing.

Was it her imagination, or were the occupants of the diner looking at her as if she were some sort of an unknown entity?

She inclined her head in her companion’s direction, lowering her voice to a whisper. “You weren’t kidding about not many tourists passing through this town. These people really aren’t used to seeing strangers walking their streets, are they?”

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

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