Real Vintage Maverick

by Marie Ferrarella

  And for no particular reason at all, it occurred to her that this man looked like the real deal. A cowboy. A real vintage cowboy.

  Was he? Or had she managed to bump her head without knowing it and was just hallucinating?

  Their eyes met and held for a timeless instance. Only the pounding of Catherine’s heart finally managed to sufficiently rouse her.

  “Thank you,” she finally whispered.

  Doing his best to focus and gather his exceedingly scattered wits about him, Cody heard himself asking, “For what?”

  Catherine let out a long, shaky breath before answering. “For catching me.”

  “Oh.” Of course that was what she meant. What did he think she meant? Cody nodded his head. “Yeah. Right.”

  The words emerged one at a time, each containing a sealed thought. Thoughts he couldn’t begin to convey, or even understand.

  Cody cleared his throat, then realized that he was still holding the woman in his arms. He should have already released her.

  Feeling awkward—he hadn’t spontaneously reacted to a woman in this manner since his wife had died—he set her down. “Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be,” she told him. “I’m not.” I’m not sorry at all. “If you hadn’t caught me just then, I might have broken something—either some of the merchandise or, worse, one of my bones.”

  The fact that if he hadn’t come in just now, her attention wouldn’t have been thrown off and she very well could have remained perched on the ladder was a point Catherine had no desire to bring up. Thinking of him as her hero was far more pleasant.

  Rather than comment, the tall cowboy merely nodded his head in acknowledgment. At the same time, he began to back away.

  “Didn’t mean to trespass,” he murmured by way of an apology. He reached behind him for the doorknob, ready to make his getaway.

  “You’re not trespassing,” Catherine was quick to protest. She didn’t have the heart to chase out someone who could actually buy something in the store. “It’s just that I haven’t exactly gotten the store ready for customers yet. But you can stay if you like.”

  If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn that her tone was almost urging him to stay. And she had shifted her body so that she was now standing between him and the front door.

  Cody glanced around the store, still mulling over her initial protest. “Looks okay to me,” he told her. “Actually, it looks a mite better than it used to look when that old guy owned it.”

  Catherine was eager to bring out the shop’s better features and play them up so that she could attract actual customers rather than just the pitying or dismissive glances that the store had been garnering before she’d bought it. After the former owner had kidnapped Rose Traub, the people in Thunder Canyon had deliberately shunned the store. And from what she’d heard, before then the clientele was almost as ancient as some of the antiques that were housed here. She wanted to change that as well. She wanted all age-groups to have a reason to drop by and browse.

  Fowler wasn’t in the picture anymore, having been sent to prison, and the shop was something that she wanted to take on as a project, something that belonged to her exclusively. After a lifetime of being the go-to person, the main caregiver in a family of eight and always putting everyone else’s needs ahead her own, it occurred to Catherine that time—and life—was slipping by her. She needed to make her own way before she woke up one morning to discover that she was no longer young, no longer able to grab her slice of the pie that life had to offer.

  Since this sexy-looking cowboy seemed familiar with the way the store had been before she’d taken over, Catherine made a natural assumption and asked, “Did you come in here often when Mr. Fowler owned it?”

  “No,” he told her honestly. Antiques had never held any interest for him. And they still didn’t, except that he knew his sister liked them. “But I walked by the store whenever I was in town and I’d look in.”

  Mild curiosity was responsible for that. He might not look it, but Cody had made a point of always taking in all of his surroundings. It kept him from being caught off guard—the way he had when Renee had become ill.

  “Oh,” Catherine murmured. All right, the place had held no real attraction for him, at least it hadn’t before. But he’d walked in this morning. Something had obviously changed. “Well, what made you come in today?”

  She glanced over her shoulder to see if there was anything unusual out on display that might have caught the cowboy’s eye. But nothing stood out for her.

  Cody wasn’t sure what this gregarious woman was fishing for, but he could only tell her the truth. “I’m looking for a present for my sister. Her birthday’s coming up and I need to get something into the mail soon if it’s going to get there in time.”

  Okay, she wasn’t making herself clear, Catherine thought. Desperate to hone in on a reliable “X-Factor,” she tried again.

  “Why here?” she pressed. “Why didn’t you just go to the mall? There’re lots of stores there.” And heaven knew a far more eclectic collection of things for someone to choose from.

  The expression that fleetingly passed over the cowboy’s tanned face told her exactly what he thought of malls.

  But when he finally spoke, he employed a measured, thoughtful cadence. “I haven’t put much thought into it,” he readily admitted. “I guess I came here because I wanted to give Caroline something that’s genuine, that isn’t mass-produced. Something that isn’t in every store from New York City to Los Angeles,” Cody explained.

  He looked around the shop again, but not before discovering that it took a bit of effort to tear his eyes away from the shop’s new owner. Close up, the talkative young woman didn’t really look like Renee, but there was an essence, a spark, an unnamable something about her that did remind him of his late wife. So much so that even as he told himself that he really should be leaving, he found himself continuing to linger on the premises.

  “The stuff in this store is...” His voice trailed off for a moment as he searched for the right word. It took a little doing. For the most part, Cody Overton was a man given to doing, not talking.

  Catherine cocked her head, waiting for him to finish his sentence. When he didn’t, she supplied a word for him. “Old?”

  “Real,” he finally said, feeling the word more aptly described what he was looking for. “And yeah, old,” he agreed after a beat. “But there’s nothing wrong with old as long as it’s not falling apart,” he was quick to clarify.

  Catherine smiled. She liked his philosophy. In a way, it embodied her own.

  And then, just like that, an idea came to her.

  Her eyes brightened as she looked up at the cowboy that fate had sent her way. This could be one of those happy accidents people were always talking about, she thought.

  But first, she needed to backtrack a little. “I’m sorry, I completely forgot my manners. My name’s Catherine Clifton,” she told him, putting her hand out. “I’m the new owner,” she added needlessly.

  Cody looked down at her hand for a moment, as if he was rather uncertain whether to take it or not. He wasn’t a man who went out of his way to meet people. Even an extremely attractive woman. He kept to himself for the most part.

  But again, there was something about this woman that pulled at him. That nudged him. After a beat, he slipped his hand over hers.

  “Cody Overton.” He felt it only right to tell her his name since she had given him hers.

  He watched in mute fascination as the smile began in her eyes, then feathered down to her lips. “Pleased to meet you, Cody Overton,” she said. “You’re my very first customer.”

  “Haven’t bought anything yet,” he felt obligated to point out.

  The man was obviously a stickler for the truth, she couldn’t help thinking. She liked that. Moreover, she could really use someone like that, someone who would tell her the truth no matter what.

  She paused a moment, wondering how the man would react to what sh
e was about to propose.

  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

  Catherine felt good about this. The sparkle in her deep, chocolate-colored eyes grew as she dove in. “Cody, how old are you?” she wanted to know.

  The question caught him completely off guard. The last time he recalled being asked his age like that, he’d been a teenager, picking up a six-pack of beer for his buddy and himself. At the time, he’d figured that his deep voice and his height would make questioning unnecessary. He’d assumed wrong.

  He fixed the young woman with a look, wondering what she was up to. “If you’re planning on asking customers their age, once word about that gets out, I don’t think you’re going to have too many of the ladies coming in.” And everyone knew that it was women, not men, who liked this old furniture and knickknacks.

  “I don’t care how old they are,” Catherine protested. “I mean, I do, but I don’t—” She stopped abruptly, realizing that she was getting tongue-tied again. Taking a breath, she backtracked. “I’m trying to appeal to a certain dynamic—a certain age-group,” she corrected herself, not wanting this rugged cowboy to think she was trying to talk over his head. But what she’d just said didn’t sound quite right, either. “Let me start over,” she requested. Taking a deep breath, she paused for a second before plunging in again. “What I want to do is attract a certain age-group—younger than the people who used to come into the store—so I thought if I could maybe pick your brain once in a while, find out what you think of some of the merchandise, it might help me improve sales once I open.”

  If possible, the woman was making even less sense to him than before.

  Hell, if she was trying to find out what would attract guys like him, all she had to do was look in the mirror, Cody couldn’t help thinking. Because, confusing though she seemed to be every time she opened her mouth, this new shop owner was a damn sight easy on the eyes. If she stood in the doorway—or near her show window—that would definitely be enough to bring men in on the pretext of shopping.

  But, curious to see if there was something more to what she was suggesting, Cody asked, “Why would you want to pick my brain?” His taste was plain and, if it were up to him, he wouldn’t have set foot in here in the first place.

  In answering his question, Catherine didn’t go with the obvious: that there was something compellingly fascinating about this vintage cowboy who had strolled into her shop just in time to keep her from breaking something vital. Instead, she gave him something they could both live with.

  “Because what you like is what would appeal to other people in your age bracket.”

  He’d never thought of himself as being like everyone else. Not that he saw himself as unique, just...different. The gadgets out there that held such fascination for men—if he was to believe the occasional commercial he saw—held no interest for him. He was a man of the earth, a plain, simple man who’d never felt the need to be part of the crowd or to join anything at all for that matter.

  With a shrug, he finally got around to answering the initial question she’d put to him. “I’m thirty-five.”

  That was about where she would have put him, Catherine thought, feeling triumphant.

  “Perfect,” she declared out loud, stopping short of clapping her hands together. “You’re exactly what I’m looking for. Business-wise,” she quickly qualified in case he got the wrong impression. She didn’t want him thinking she was staking him out for some reason. The last thing she wanted was to chase this cowboy away.

  Cody looked at the exuberant woman for a long moment. He sincerely doubted that he was the type that any woman was looking for, at least not anymore. There was a time when he would have been. A time when he’d been eager to plunge into life, to be the best husband, the best father he could possibly be. A time when he greeted each day with hope, thinking of all that lay ahead of him and Renee.

  But all that had changed once Renee had died. Whatever he’d had to offer in terms of a normal relationship had died and had been buried along with his wife.

  He was tempted to tell her she was wrong in selecting him, but he could see that there was just no putting this woman off. She had a fire lit under her, and if he wasn’t careful, that fire could burn them both.

  Still, he supposed he had nothing to lose by going along with her in this. She’d undoubtedly find his answers boring, but until she did, he could view this as a distraction. God knew he was always looking for something to distract him. Something to block his dark thoughts so that he didn’t have to dwell on just how empty his existence had become and continued to be.

  Eight years and nothing had changed. He was still just going through the motions of living, placing one foot in front of the other.

  “I don’t know about perfect,” he finally said to Catherine with a self-deprecating laugh that sounded as if it had come rumbling straight out of his chest, bypassing his throat, “but if I can help—” he shrugged “—sure.”

  If possible, her eyes brightened even more. It made him think of the way a satisfying, steaming cup of hot coffee tasted on a cold winter’s day.

  “Really?” Catherine pressed, this time actually clapping her hands together as if he was some magical genie who had just bestowed the gift of three wishes on her.

  Cody shrugged again in response to her question. “Why not?” he said even as a part of him whispered a warning that he had just taken his first step on a very narrow ledge. A step that could result in his tumbling down into an uncharted abyss at a moment’s notice.

  All things considered, he supposed that there could be worse things.

  Chapter Two

  “So exactly how is this going to work?” Cody asked her after a beat. As a rule, he wasn’t a curious man, but in this case, he had to admit that this woman had managed to arouse what little curiosity he did possess. “Are you going to be showing me pictures of the stuff you’re thinking of selling at the store, or what?” Before she could answer the question, Cody felt it only fair to inform her of something. “Think you should know right from the start that I’m really not too keen on broken-down old furniture.”

  As far as he was concerned, furniture didn’t have to be fancy, but it had to be functional—and not look as if it belonged in some garbage heap.

  Catherine laughed. “That’s good, because neither am I.”

  She was still feeling her way around as to the kind of focus she wanted to bring to the shop. Right now, she was pretty much making it up as she went along.

  Catherine wondered if admitting that to this down-to-earth cowboy would be a mistake. Would it make him think less of her? Or would he just dismiss her present indecision as a “woman thing”? An inconsequential whim on her part? She realized that it would bother her if he did.

  His expression registered mild surprise. Cody looked around at the showroom. Everything here was way older than he was. If it wasn’t for the fact that Caroline had a weakness for this kind of thing, he would have just called it all “junk” and dismissed the whole place out of hand.

  If this woman was really being on the level with him and felt the same way he did, that brought up another question. “Then what are you doing with this store?”

  “Changing its image,” Catherine answered without hesitation.

  How was she going to do that with the things she had to work with? “To what?” he wanted to know.

  “To a shop that sells vintage items, whether it’s clothing, books, furnishings, whatever.” It was a slight matter of semantics she supposed, but there was still a difference.

  One she was apparently going to have to explain because Cody moved back his Stetson with his thumb and squinted at the merchandise in the immediate area. “Just what’s the difference between something being an ‘antique’ and being classified as ‘vintage’?”

  That was easy enough, Catherine thought.

  “Price mostly,” she answered with a grin that he had to admit—if only to himself—he found rather engaging.

&
nbsp; Cody rolled her words over in his head, then nodded. He was willing to accept that. But there was something else.

  “Still haven’t answered my first question,” he pointed out. When she raised an eyebrow, silently asking to be reminded, he said, “What do you want with me?”

  I could think of ten things right off the bat, Catherine thought in reply. But out loud she simply said, “I intend to use you for market research.”

  Cody laughed shortly. “Only market I know is the one I go to buy my supply of eggs, milk and bread.”

  That was not the kind of market she meant. “Think bigger,” Catherine coaxed.

  “Okay,” he said gamely. “How about if I throw in a chicken, too?”

  Obviously this wasn’t going to be as simple as she’d hoped. “I’m talking about the general buying market out there,” she explained. “You’re just the age bracket I’m trying to attract.”

  Cody’s eyes met hers. “You ask me, you keep on smiling like that and you’ll attract more than your share of men my age—and older.”

  The remark pleased her, amused her and embarrassed her all at the same time. Not only that, but she could feel her cheeks growing hot. From the way he looked at her, she knew it wasn’t just an internal thing or her imagination. Her cheeks were turning pink. She had an uneasy feeling that her new “researcher” could see the color creeping up into them.

  Great, now he probably thought of her as some naive, innocent little girl playing at being a store owner.

  “I’m not looking for attention,” she told him with feeling. “What I’m looking for are paying customers who are interested in buying what they see.”

  The way he looked at her told Catherine that she was only making matters worse by talking. But she wanted him to take her seriously, to understand that all she was after at the moment was a business arrangement and a little input from him.

  She cleared her throat. “There has to be something that you want—to buy,” she tacked on when she realized that she was still sinking into the grave she had verbally dug for herself. She tried one more time, taking it from the top. “When you walked in here, what were you hoping to find?”