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by Tina Leonard

  Connie shrugged carelessly.

  “There always has to be a first time,” she told him.

  That wasn’t his point. “Granted, but—”

  She wanted him for the job, but there had to be others in this blot of a town who were qualified for the position. What she’d seen at Murphy’s convinced her of his leadership qualities. She was not about to beg.

  “Look, if you don’t want the job, just say so. I’ll understand.”

  He raised his hand to stop her before she could go off on a tangent—or for that matter, leave. When he came right down to it, he’d be more than happy to accept her offer. But there were extenuating circumstances—even if he was to believe that she was really serious.

  “Trust me,” he told her, “it’s not that I don’t want to.”

  If this had been a legitimate offer, he would have snapped it up in an instant. He’d had a chance to compare how he felt when he was working on making something become a tangible reality—first the bathroom for the room above the saloon, and then restoring and renovating Brett’s ranch house. He had to admit that was when he felt as if he’d come into his own, when he felt as if he’d finally found something he enjoyed doing that he was really good at.

  Those were all reasons for him to pursue this line of business—God knew there was more than enough work for a builder in the area.

  But that notwithstanding, Constance Carmichael had no way of knowing any of that. The woman had only been in Forever a few hours, not nearly enough time to orient herself about anyone or anything. Besides, there wasn’t anyone to talk to about the quality of work he did because Brett—and Alisha—were the only ones who would have that sort of input for this woman. As far as he knew, Connie hadn’t talked to either one of them about him—or about anything else for that matter.

  Since she’d seen for herself that strangers really were rare in Forever, her fishing around for workers would have instantly become the topic of conversation.

  He had no doubt that now that they had left Murphy’s, the rest of the patrons were busy talking about the hotel that she had come to build. The skeptics would maintain that the project would never get off the ground because Forever didn’t need a hotel, while the hopefuls would declare that it was high time progress finally paid Forever a visit.

  Every one of those patrons would secretly be hoping that the promise of extra employment would actually find its way to Forever, at least for the duration of this project.

  And he was definitely in that group.

  “It’s just that,” he continued honestly, “I don’t quite understand why you would want me in that sort of capacity.”

  The simple truth was that Connie had good gut instincts, and she’d come to rely on them.

  “When I drove by the ranch house this morning, I liked what I saw.”

  The second the words were out of her mouth, Connie realized what they had to have sounded like to Finn. It was a struggle to keep the heat from rising up her cheeks and discoloring them. She did her best to retrace her steps.

  “I mean, you looked like someone who knew what he was doing.” That still didn’t say what she wanted to say, Connie thought in frustration.

  She tried again, deliberately refraining from apologizing or commenting on her seemingly inability to say what she meant. She did not want this cowboy bartender getting the wrong idea.

  Trying it one more time, Connie cleared her throat and made one last attempt at saving face as well as stating her case.

  “What I’m trying to say is that I was impressed with what you had apparently done with the ranch house you said that your brother inherited.”

  “How do you know what I did and what was already there?” Finn asked.

  “When you’ve been in the construction business for as long as I have, you develop an eye for it,” she told him.

  Finn didn’t bother challenging that outright, instinctively knowing that she would take it as a personal attack on her abilities. But what he did challenge was her timeline, her claim to having years of experience.

  “And just how long have you been in the business?” he asked. “Ten weeks?” he hazarded a guess, given her fresh appearance and her less than orthodox approach to the work.

  Connie’s eyes narrowed. Maybe she was wrong about this cowboy. “Try more like ten years.”

  Finn stared at her. The woman before him was far too young to have had that many years invested in almost anything except for just plain growing up. “You’re kidding.”

  “Why would I joke about something like that?” she asked, not understanding why he would ever think something like that. “I got a job in the company right out of high school, working part-time. What that amounted to was any time I wasn’t in college, working toward my degree, I was on one site or another, learning the trade firsthand.”

  Since she’d brought the subject up, he was curious. “What was your major in college?”

  “It was a split one, actually,” she answered. “Architecture and engineering. And I minored in business,” she added.

  New admiration rose in his eyes as he regarded her. “A triple threat, eh?”

  She didn’t see herself as a triple threat, just as prepared—and said so. “I wanted to be prepared for any possibility.”

  Finn nodded. His opinion of her was taking on a different form. The woman sitting opposite him, seemingly enjoying a rather cheap dinner, was multidimensional. To begin with, she had the face of an angel and the body, from what he could tell, of a model.

  If she wasn’t exaggerating about her background, the woman wasn’t just a triple threat, she was a barely harnessed dynamo.

  “Well, I think you’ve covered that,” he told her with no small appreciation.

  Because of her father, Connie was accustomed to being on the receiving end of a great deal of empty flattery uttered by men who wanted to use her as a way to get ahead with her father. She would have been inclined to say that was what was going on now, but something told her that Finn Murphy wasn’t given to offering up empty flattery—or making empty gestures, either. That put his words under the heading of a genuine compliment.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  Finn leaned across the table. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I’m interested in working for you,” he began. “Exactly what is it that you see me doing?”

  “What I already said,” she told him. “Heading up the work crew.”

  “You mean like telling people what to do?”

  She nodded. “And seeing that they do it,” she added with a hint of a smile. “That’s a very important point,” she underscored.

  This didn’t seem quite real to him. Who did business this way, just come waltzing into town, making snap decisions just by looking at people?

  “And you really think I’m the one for the job by spending fifteen minutes looking at my handiwork on the ranch house?” he asked her incredulously.

  “That and the way you handled yourself at the bar,” she told him.

  “You intend to have me serve drinks on the job?” he asked wryly. In actuality, he had no idea what his job at Murphy’s would have to do with the job she was supposedly hiring him for.

  “The way you handled the men at the bar,” Connie corrected herself, emphasizing what she viewed was the crucial part. “You have an air of authority about you—it’s evident in everything you do. And just so you know, that air of authority doesn’t have to be loud,” she told him, second-guessing that he would point out that he had hardly said a word and when he had, none of the words had been voiced particularly loudly.

  “The upshot of all this is that men listen to you,” she concluded.

  She was thinking specifically of the man who had tried to hit on her at the bar. Finn had made the man back off without causing a scene
of any sort, and she appreciated that—and saw the merit in that sort of behavior—on many levels.

  “When’s this job supposed to start?” he asked. “Brett’s getting married in a couple of months. I can’t just leave him high and dry. He needs someone to run Murphy’s while he and Alisha are on their honeymoon.”

  She assumed that Alisha and the woman he had referred to earlier as Lady Doc were one and the same, although she wasn’t really interested in names.

  “We can make arrangements regarding that when the time comes,” she promised. “Besides, I gather that most of Murphy’s’ business is conducted after six.” She raised a quizzical eyebrow, waiting for his confirmation.

  “Most of it,” Finn agreed. “But not all of it. Brett opens the doors officially at noon, just in case someone really needs to start drowning their sorrows earlier than six.”

  “There’s a third brother, right?”

  “Liam’s more into providing the music for Murphy’s than he is into actually serving the drinks.”

  “But he can, right?”

  Finn inclined his head. “Right.”

  That meant the solution to Finn’s problem was a very simple one.

  “Then you or Brett tell Liam that his services as a bartender are more important than his playing whatever it is that he plays.”

  “Guitar,” Finn prompted. And family pride had him adding, “And he’s pretty damn good. A better musician than a bartender,” he told her.

  That might be so, but in her estimation, this third brother’s talent was not the source of the problem. Apparently, Finn needed a little more convincing.

  “I guess it all boils down to what do you want more? To continue working at the bar, or to stretch your wings and try doing something new, try challenging yourself,” she urged. “Maybe,” she concluded, “it’s time to put yourself first for a change.”

  What she had just suggested he saw as being selfish and self-centered. “That’s not how family works,” he told her.

  “That’s exactly how family works,” she corrected with feeling. “If the members of that family want to get ahead in the world,” she qualified, her eyes meeting his, challenging him to say otherwise.

  For a moment, Finn actually thought about terminating the informal meeting then and there. He debated getting up and walking out, but then he decided that the young woman with the blue-diamond eyes apparently was here on her little mission and that if someone didn’t come to her aid and pitch in, this whirling dervish in a dress would spin herself right into a huge pratfall—and a very painful one at that.

  But first, she needed to be straightened out.

  “I think there’s something you have to realize,” he told her in a slow, easy drawl that belied what he felt was the seriousness of his message.

  “And that is...?” she asked.

  “The people in Forever aren’t really all that interested in ‘getting ahead in the world’ as you put it,” he told her. “If they were, they would have left the area when they graduated high school, if not sooner. We’re well aware that there’s a big world out there, with bigger opportunities than Forever could ever possibly offer.

  “But that’s not what’s important to us,” he stressed, looking at her to see if he was getting through to her at all. It wasn’t about the money or getting ahead; it was the pride in getting something done and done well. “You might find that bit of information useful when you’re working with us.”

  This is a whole different world, Connie couldn’t help thinking. It was totally foreign from anything she was accustomed to. But there was a bit of charm to this philosophy, to this way of viewing things—she just didn’t want that charm getting in the way of her end goal: completing the hotel and ultimately getting it on its feet.

  “I appreciate you sharing that with me,” she told Finn.

  He grinned. He could still read between the lines. “No, you don’t. You think what I’m saying is hopelessly lazy at its worst. Horribly unproductive at its very best.”

  “Fortunately, I don’t have to think about it at all,” she told him, then smiled broadly. “Because I have you for that—” And then she realized that he still hadn’t accepted the job in so many words. “Unless you’ve decided to turn down my offer.”

  “It’s not an offer yet,” he pointed out to her. “It’s only a proposition. To be an offer,” he explained when she looked at him in confusion, “you would have had to have mentioned a salary—and you haven’t.”

  “You’re right,” Connie realized, then nodded her head. That, at least, could be fixed immediately. “My mistake.” She rectified it in the next breath by quoting Finn a rather handsome salary.

  “A month?” Finn asked, trying to put the amount in perspective. She had just quoted a sum that was a more than decent amount.

  Connie shook her head. “No, that’s payable each week,” she corrected.

  Finn stared at her. It was all he could do to keep his jaw from dropping open. The amount she’d quoted was enough to cause him to stop breathing for a moment, sincerely trying to figure out if he was dreaming or not.

  “A week,” he repeated, stunned at the amount of money that was being bandied about. “For someone with no work experience in the field?” he asked incredulously.

  She had to be testing him, he concluded. To what end he had no idea, but nobody really earned that sort of money in a week, not unless they were crooked.

  “You have life experience,” she countered. “That trumps just work experience seven ways from Sunday.”

  Hearing the phrase made him grin.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” He began to wave the matter away, then stopped. What was the harm of sharing this? “It’s just that I haven’t heard that phrase since my mom died. She liked to say it,” he confessed.

  That in turn brought a smile to her lips.

  Small world, Connie couldn’t help thinking. The phrase had been a common one for her own mother.

  “Wise lady,” she said now.

  “I like to think so.” Finn gave it less than a minute before he nodded his head. “She would have liked you,” he told Connie. And as far as he was concerned, that cinched it for him. Besides, it wasn’t like he was signing away the next twenty years of his life.

  Putting out his hand, Finn said to her, “Well, Ms. Carmichael, looks like you’ve got yourself a crew foreman.”

  Connie was fairly beaming when she said to him with relish, “Welcome to Carmichael Construction,” and then shook his hand.

  Chapter Six

  “Well, you two seemed to have come to some sort of an amicable agreement,” Miss Joan noted.

  Having covertly observed the two occupants of the table from a discreet distance for the duration of their conversation, Miss Joan decided that now was the proper time to approach them.

  Not that she was all that interested in restraint, but this was someone new to her, and she wanted to start out slowly with the young woman. Picking up a coffeepot as she rounded the counter, she used that as her excuse to make her way over to their table.

  It was time to see if either of their coffee cups was in need of refilling. High time.

  Pouring a little more coffee into both their cups, Miss Joan looked from the young woman to Finn. They had dropped their hands when she had come to their table and had now fallen into silence.

  Silence had never been a deterrent for Miss Joan. On the contrary, it merely allowed her to speak without having to raise her voice.

  “Anything I might be interested in knowing about?” the older woman asked them cheerfully.

  Connie could only stare at the other woman, momentarily struck speechless. Granted, she was accustomed to her father’s extremely blunt approach when he wanted to know something. The man never beat around the bush.
His demand for information was nothing if not direct.

  However, everyone else she’d ever dealt with was far more subtle about their desire to extract any useful information from her.

  Miss Joan, apparently, was in a class by herself. Polite, but definitely not subtle.

  Since she was in Forever for the singular purpose of getting this hotel not just off the ground but also completed, and to that end she was looking to hire local people, Connie told herself that she shouldn’t feel as if her privacy had been invaded—even though she had a feeling that Miss Joan would have been just as straightforward and just as blunt with her query.

  You’re not here to make lasting friendships—just to get the hotel erected, Connie told herself sternly. Act accordingly.

  So Connie smiled at Miss Joan, a woman her gut instincts told her made a far better ally than an enemy, and said to her, “Mr. Murphy here has just become my first hire.”

  Miss Joan’s shrewd eyes darted from Finn back to the young woman. “You’re looking to hire men?” she asked with a completely unreadable expression.

  Finn could see that Connie’s simple statement could easily get misinterpreted and even once it was cleared up, there would undoubtedly be lingering rumors and repercussions. He came to Connie’s rescue before she could say anything further.

  “Ms. Carmichael is going to be building a hotel in town, and she’s looking to hire construction workers,” Finn told Miss Joan succinctly.

  Miss Joan leaned her hip against the side of the table, turning his words over in her head.

  “A hotel, eh? Something tells me you’ll get the show on the road a hell of a lot quicker if you two stop referring to each other as Ms. and Mr. and just use each other’s given names.” And then she considered the project Finn had mentioned a moment longer. Her approval wasn’t long in coming. “Might not be a bad idea at that, putting up a hotel around here. Give people a place to stay if they find themselves temporarily in Forever for one reason or another.”

  She straightened up then and looked directly at the young woman. “Speaking of which, where is it that you’re going to be staying for the duration of this mighty undertaking, honey?” she asked.