Harlequin American Romance November 2014 Box Set: The SEAL's Holiday BabiesThe Texan's ChristmasCowboy for HireThe Cowboy's Christmas Gift

by Tina Leonard

  She looked at him incredulously. Was he actually saying what she thought he was saying? “And what, I should stay with you?”

  “And my brothers,” Finn tacked on for good measure.

  “Even better,” she murmured to herself, rolling her eyes. If she gave him the benefit of the doubt, best-case scenario, the man thought he was being helpful. She told herself to keep that in mind. “I realize that appearances don’t count for very much in this day and age,” she began, “but it wouldn’t look right, my staying with my crew foreman in his house. Look, I’m not an unreasonable boss to work for, but there are certain lines that just shouldn’t be crossed. You’ve got to know that,” she said, searching his face to see if she’d made an impression on the cowboy.

  Finn ran the edge of his thumb ever so lightly along the area just beneath each of her eyes. Initially, she began to pull back—then didn’t.

  There it was again, she realized, that lightning, coursing through her veins. Immobilizing her.

  “Only lines I’m worried about seeing are the ones that are going to be forming right here, under your eyes, because you didn’t get enough sleep,” Finn told her in a low voice that made her scrambled pulse go up several more notches. “And that’ll be in large part because of your fifty-mile, round-way trip from Pine Ridge to Forever. Seems like a lot to sacrifice just for appearances’ sake.”

  Finn dropped his hand to his side. “C’mon, Ms. Carmichael, we’re both adults,” he coaxed gently. “Adults handle situations. Nothing’s going to happen if we don’t want it to.”

  If. He’d said if. Not because but if. Was that a prophesy?

  Only if she let it become one, Connie silently insisted.

  She supposed, in the interest of being here very early—Emerson had promised that the machinery she required to begin the excavation would be here first thing in the morning—finding a place in town to crash for the night was the far more practical way to go. And while staying with Miss Joan seemed to be an acceptable concept, the older woman seemed the type to subject to her a battery of questions. And Connie would feel obligated to answer in repayment for the woman’s hospitality.

  That was an ordeal she would definitely rather not face.

  She slanted a glance toward the man standing beside her.

  “What would your brothers say about your impulsive burst of hospitality?” she asked, covering up the fact that she found herself suddenly nervous with rhetoric.

  Finn shrugged, as if she’d just asked a question that was hardly worth consideration. “Brett wouldn’t say anything because when he knocks off for the night, which is pretty damn late, he usually goes home to the ranch house you saw me working on. Lady Doc stays there, as well, whenever she gets a chance. So Brett’s not even in this picture if you’re worried about what he thinks,” Finn guaranteed. “As for Liam, well, Liam doesn’t exactly think,” he said with a dismissive laugh.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, doing her best to be tactful in her inquiry.

  The last thing she wanted to do was insult someone in Finn’s family.

  “Liam’s just plain challenged—challenged by anything that’s not a musical note in a song he had a hand in writing. In other words, what I’m trying to say is that if you’re not shaped like a guitar, there’s little chance that he’d even notice you, even if you stripped down buck naked and pretended you were the dining room tablecloth. On second thought,” he amended, taking another look at the woman beside him, “maybe he’s not really that far gone yet.”

  “As intriguing as that sounds,” Connie began, but got no further.

  Seeing his advantage, Finn pushed to the goal line. “Take me up on the offer. You’ll be driving yourself plenty once this thing is in full swing. I can tell just by looking at you,” he said, surprising her. “This might very well be your last chance to take in a deep breath and relax. If you don’t want to listen to me telling you this as a friend, then maybe you’ll listen to the man you’re paying to head up your crew and tell you the way he sees things.”

  Connie stared at him for a moment, confused. “But that’s you.”

  The smile he flashed at her cut right through the cloud of confusion that threatened to swallow her up. “Exactly,” Finn agreed. “And the way I see it, your getting a good night’s sleep is more important than you worrying about what a couple of people may—or may not—say about you staying at my house,” he underscored.

  Having laid out his argument, he took a step back. He had a feeling that crowding this woman was not the way to go.

  “Final decision,” he told her, “like with the project, is ultimately yours. But I’d like to think you’d respect my opinion and give it its due consideration. Otherwise, there’s really no point in you hiring me. Think of it this way,” he added, suddenly coming up with another argument in his favor. “You wouldn’t have any objections to staying in the same hotel as I was in, right?”

  “Right,” she agreed warily, waiting to see where this was going.

  “Well, then think of my house as a hotel,” he told her, adding with a grin, “a very small, rather limited hotel.”

  The man really knew how to use his words. To look at him, she wouldn’t have thought that he could actually be so persuasive.

  “Bed-and-breakfast inns are larger than your house,” she told him.

  “So, after your hotel is completed, I’ll see about adding on some extra rooms to the house,” he told her. “You can think of it as a bed-and-breakfast inn in the making,” he added with a wink.

  She felt something flutter inside her chest and told herself it was just that she was tired. Her reaction had nothing to do with the wink.

  “My clothes are all at the hotel,” she suddenly remembered, which, in her book, should have brought an end to this debate.

  She should have known better.

  Finn took a step back and regarded her thoughtfully for a moment. “Lady Doc’s about your size, as is Dr. Dan’s wife. One of them can lend you something to sleep in. The other can give you a change of clothes for tomorrow. And once we get the assignments straightened out for the day, I can send someone over to Pine Ridge to get the rest of your clothes.” He grinned at her. “See? Problem solved.”

  And just possibly, a brand-new one started, she couldn’t help thinking.

  “So you’ve taken care of everything, just like that?” she asked out loud.

  There was a note in her voice Finn didn’t recognize, but he had a hunch that weather watchers would point out that it might have to do with a coming storm. He quickly got ahead of it—just in case.

  “What I’ve done—just like that—was make suggestions,” he told her. “You’re the one who makes the final decisions and ultimately takes care of everything,” he concluded, looking like the soul of innocence.

  It was Connie’s turn to look at him for a long moment. And then she nodded, suppressing what sounded like a laugh. She gave him his due. “Nice save.”

  Finn did not take the bait. “Just telling it the way it is,” he countered.

  Connie merely nodded, more to herself than to him. She definitely didn’t want to spend the rest of the evening arguing—especially unproductively. Instead, she silently congratulated herself on going with her gut instincts. She’d made the right choice putting Finn in charge of all the others. If the man could pull off this side-step shuffle effectively with her, he could do it with anyone. After all, she had seen something in him from the very first moment she laid eyes on him, and it wasn’t that he had looks to die for. It was a vibe she got, a silent telegraphing of potential that felt so strong, it had taken her a few minutes to process.

  But just for a moment, she had to deal with his suggestion not as his boss, but as a woman. Looking at him intently, silently assuring herself that if he was selling her a bill of goods, she’d be able to tell, s
he had one more question for him.

  “And you’re sure neither one of your brothers—wherever they might roam—won’t mind my crashing at their place—and don’t tell me again that they won’t be there. It’s their place. That counts for something.”

  “They won’t mind,” he assured her with feeling.

  “Okay, I’ll stay in town,” she agreed in pretty much the same tone that someone agreed to have a root canal done. She only hoped she wouldn’t wind up regretting a decision of so-called convenience.

  “In the interest of full disclosure,” Finn went on, “I just want to warn you that neither one of my brothers—or I—are exactly good at housekeeping. I mean, it’s livable and all that,” he was quick to add, “if you don’t mind dirt, grime and dust like you wouldn’t believe.” He looked a little embarrassed as he added, “Lost civilizations have less dust piled on top of them than some of the rooms in this house.

  “The place is in sturdy condition,” he went on to assure her. “Either that, or the dust is acting like the glue that’s holding all this together,” Finn told her with a hearty laugh.

  Connie couldn’t help wondering just how much of what the cowboy was telling her had more than an ounce of truth in it. Instead of repulsed, she found herself intrigued. Now she wanted to take a tour of this place where he had lived his entire life, just to see if it was in the less-than-savory condition he was describing.

  “Remind me not to put you in charge of the new hotel’s travel brochure,” Connie told him with a shake of her head.

  “I don’t think you’re going to need someone to remind you of that.” And then it hit him. They were about to walk out of Murphy’s, and Finn caught hold of his boss by the arm. He didn’t want to lose sight of her until he had gotten at least this part straight. “Wait, are you saying that I managed to convince you?” he asked her, genuinely surprised. “You’ve decided that you’re staying in Forever tonight?”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Connie answered—and then she paused. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about the offer.”

  “No way,” he told her with enthusiasm. “You won’t regret this,” he promised.

  She didn’t know about that. Part of her already was regretting her decision. As a rule, while she remained friendly and outwardly approachable, she didn’t really get too close to the people who essentially worked for her. The reason for that was that she never knew if they were being friendly because they liked her—or because they were using her to get to her father.

  Not that that approach ever really worked, since her father could never even come close to being accused of being a doting father.

  She looked at Finn, hardly believing that she’d actually agreed to allow him to put her up for the night. “So, is this the part where you go asking your friends to donate their clothes to me?”

  “No, that comes a little later,” he told her. “This is the part where you look up at the sky, say something about being awestruck over how there looks as if there’s twice as much sky here as in places like Houston or Los Angeles, and I agree with you—even though I know it’s not true. Then I tell you that if you see a falling star, you have to pause and make a wish. Sound too taxing?” he asked her, a hint of a smile on his face.

  They had stopped walking again and were standing, in her opinion, much too close, at least for her comfort.

  This was a mistake. A big one.

  But if she suddenly announced that she had changed her mind about staying the night in his guest room, she’d seem flighty—worse than that, she’d seem as if she was afraid, and she’d lose any chance she had at commanding respect—from him and most likely, from the rest of the men working for her.

  Her only recourse was to brazen it out.

  Heaven knew it wouldn’t be the first time.

  “No, I think I can handle making a wish if I see a falling star,” she told him.

  “Well, then I’d say you’ve got everything under control.”

  Finn watched her for a long moment, thinking things that he knew he shouldn’t be thinking. Things that would probably get him fired before he ever began to work on the project. But there was something about the woman, a vulnerability despite the barriers she was trying to rigidly retain in place, that reached out and spoke to him. It brought out the protector in him.

  He wondered what she would say if she knew. Probably, You’re fired.

  “It’s going to be fine,” Finn told her.

  Startled, she looked at him. “What?”

  Connie wished she had as much confidence in her succeeding as Finn apparently had—if she was to believe what he’d just said.

  But you don’t have everything under control, do you?

  She felt another knot tightening in her stomach.

  This had to be what opening-night jitters felt like for actors, she theorized. It felt as if everything was riding on this.

  “I said it’s going to be fine,” Finn repeated. “For a second you looked as if you were a million miles away—and you were frowning, so I thought maybe you were worrying about the site. I have to ask—you always this nervous before a project?”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that her emotions were none of his business, that she hadn’t hired him to subject her to countless questions, but that would really be starting out on the wrong foot, and he did seem genuinely concerned.

  “No, I have to admit that this is a first.”

  He nodded, giving her the benefit of the doubt. “You’ve hired on a good bunch of people, and they’ll work hard to deliver whatever it is you need done,” he assured her, then asked, “Anything I can do to help squelch your uneasiness?”

  She smiled at him. “You just did it.”

  “Good to know,” he told her.

  They were outside the saloon now. Finn had gently coaxed her over to the side, out of the way of any foot traffic. He directed her attention toward the sky, pointing to a cluster of stars.

  “Look.” He indicated a constellation. “Isn’t that just the most magnificent sight you’ve ever seen?” he asked.

  To oblige him, she looked up when he told her to. Ordinarily, before tonight, the thought of a heaven full of stars did nothing for her. But looking up now, at Finn’s request, she found herself at first interested, then deeply moved. The vastness spoke to her—and she could relate. Relate to feeling isolated, desolate and alone.

  Shake it off, Con, she ordered herself. Sentimental and sloppy isn’t going to build the future. It’s not you, anyway.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked again.

  She couldn’t very well pretend to be indifferent. Because she no longer was.

  “Yes,” she agreed, “it is. It kind of takes my breath away.”

  She heard him laugh. When she looked at him quizzically, he merely said, “I know the feeling.”

  Except that when he said it, he wasn’t looking at the sky. He was looking at her.

  She told herself to ignore it, that she was misreading him. But even so, Connie could feel herself growing suddenly very warm despite the evening breeze.

  Growing very warm and yearning for him to kiss her.

  That’s the alcohol talking, a voice in her head insisted. But she had only had the one drink, a short one at that, and she could hold far more than that and still remain lucid and steady.

  It wasn’t the drink. It was the man. But that was an admission she intended to take with her to the grave.

  “I think we’d better get going,” he told her. “The whole idea of you staying in town was for you to get extra rest—and if we stay out here like this any longer, I might wind up doing something that’s going to cost me my job before I ever set foot on the construction site.”

  Her cheeks heated up and for just a second, she felt light-headed and giddy, lik
e a schoolgirl. She hadn’t experienced this sensation even when she had been a schoolgirl.

  But the next moment, she regained control over herself and willed the moment to pass. “You’re right. Let’s get going.”

  Chapter Ten

  “If you need anything,” Finn told her almost an hour later as they stood on the second floor of his house, “I’m just down the hall.” He pointed to the room that was located on the other side of the small bathroom he had already shown her.

  Suddenly bone-tired, Connie nodded, murmuring, “Thanks.”

  They had stopped on the way to his home to borrow the things that she needed in the way of clothing for tonight and tomorrow. Finn couldn’t think of a single other thing she needed to know at this point, so he began to withdraw from the room.

  “Okay. Then I guess you’re all set. See you in the morning,” he told Connie.

  Again she nodded, softly repeating the last word he’d just said, as if in agreement. “Morning.” With that, Connie retreated into the room that he had just brought her to.

  Closing the door, Connie took another, longer, closer look around what he’d referred to as the guest room. It looked even smaller now than it had at first glance, barely the size of her closet back home. Perhaps even smaller. There was enough space for a double bed, one nightstand with a lamp and a very small dresser.

  The closet itself, which curiosity prompted her to check out, was large enough to accommodate less than half the clothing she’d left at the hotel in Pine Ridge.

  Yet from the way Finn had talked about the house as they drove over to it, she got the impression that this small, cramped house had seen a great deal more happiness and love than her father’s seven-thousand-square-foot-plus mansion ever had.

  There was a kind of worn-down-to-the-nub warmth emanating from the sixty-three-year-old, two-story house that was sorely missing from the place where she had grown up and still vaguely thought of as home.

  She found herself envying Finn and his brothers a great deal.