by Teri Wilson
She would have told Ryan she loved him.
It was her one regret. What’s the worst thing that could have happened? If he hadn’t said it back, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. Loving someone was never a mistake. She’d learned that lesson a long time ago from the shelter animals. Love in its purest form was unconditional.
“I need to choose one of these furry little guys to take out for a walk,” Amanda said, glancing from one enclosure to the next. “Do you have any suggestions?”
“I do, actually.” Birdie cleared her throat and nodded to a spot over Amanda’s shoulder. “How about that one?”
Amanda turned around.
The dog that Birdie was looking at wasn’t locked in a kennel. He was standing in the center aisle on short, stubby legs, looking up at Amanda with a furrow in his grumpy little brow. He also had a tiny lace-trimmed pillow secured to his back with something shiny tied to it with a white satin bow.
What was happening?
“Tucker? What are you doing here?” Amanda moved closer so she could scoop the dog into her arms, but as soon as she caught a definite glimpse of the diamond ring attached to the tiny cushion on his back, she froze.
Oh my God.
Then she looked around, because she knew Ryan had to be here somewhere, and he was. He was walking up the center aisle behind Tucker, and Dillon was there too, flashing the same bashful smile that had stolen her heart the first time she’d ever seen him, quietly clutching his plastic dinosaur at the Grille.
“Hi,” she said, choking on a sob.
“Don’t cry, love.” Ryan reached for her, pulling her into his arms and holding her as she gave way to the tears she couldn’t hold back any longer. “I’m sorry. So, so sorry. I should have asked you to stay. I wanted you to stay. I went to find you at the Grille, but Paul told me you’d come to walk dogs. So here we are, and I’m ready to tell you exactly how I feel. I love you with my whole heart. I was just worried I hadn’t changed enough to give you the kind of life you deserve.”
“What?” She sniffed as he cupped her face with his hands and wiped away tear after tear with the pads of his thumbs. “But you have changed.”
“Because you changed me, Amanda. Knowing you has made me a better man, a good man. A good father. And, if you say yes, a good husband too.”
Then he dropped down to one knee right there on the shelter’s concrete floor—this man she’d so recently lost. He was sorry, and he loved her. But perhaps most important, he’d become her home.
“Yes.” She nodded and held out her hand as Dillon tried to untangle the ring from the pillow on Tucker’s back while the dog started chasing his tail.
“Wait! Bunny needs to see this!” Birdie threw her hands in the air and dashed out of the building. “Don’t go anywhere. You can do a reenactment.”
“Don’t worry.” Ryan laughed. “I don’t think we’ll need a reenactment. We might be here a while.”
“Stay still, Tucker,” Dillon said.
Did the petulant little chiweenie listen? Of course not.
And Amanda wouldn’t have had it any other way.
There’s no place like home.
* * *
Look for the next book in the
Furever Yours continuity,
Not Just the Girl Next Door
by Stacy Connelly.
On sale March 2019,
wherever Harlequin Special Edition
books and ebooks are sold.
Keep reading for an excerpt from Claiming the Cowboy’s Heart by Brenda Harlen.
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Claiming the Cowboy’s Heart
by Brenda Harlen
Chapter One
“Oh, no,” Liam Gilmore said, shaking his head for emphasis when he saw his sister Katelyn walk through the front doors of the inn with her briefcase in one hand and a rectangular object that he knew to be her daughter’s portable playpen in the other. The baby was strapped against Katelyn’s body and an overstuffed diaper bag was draped over one of her shoulders. Loaded down with the kid’s stuff, she looked like a Sherpa ready to embark on a mountain trek.
“I’ve got an emergency hearing at the courthouse in half an hour,” she explained, as she dropped the diaper bag next to his makeshift desk and set her briefcase beside it.
“And I’ve got interviews scheduled for this afternoon,” he told her.
“You’ve got a manager, a weekend housekeeper and a breakfast chef—what more does a boutique hotel need?” she asked, as she unzipped the carrying case of the playpen.
Because he couldn’t sit there and watch his sister struggle, he took the portable enclosure from her and opened it up, then clicked to lock each of the sides, pushed down the center support and slid the mattress pad into place. “Andrew decided to take a job in Los Angeles, so I no longer have a manager,” Liam admitted.
“I’m sorry,” Kate said sincerely, as she unbuckled the baby carrier and carefully extracted the sleeping baby.
He shrugged. “Not your problem,” he said. “Just as your requirement for a last-minute babysitter—again—isn’t my problem.”
“And yet I’m willing to help you out, because that’s what siblings do,” she told him.
“Tell me how you’re going to help me,” he suggested.
She pressed her lips to Tessa’s forehead, then carefully laid the sleeping baby down in the playpen.
And maybe his heart did soften a bit as he watched his sister with her little girl, and maybe that same heart had been known to turn to mush when his adorable niece smiled at him, but he had no intention of admitting any of that to Kate, who already took advantage of him at every opportunity.
“By giving you the name of your new manager,” she said.
“Please do. Then I can cancel the interviews I’ve scheduled.”
“Your sarcasm is unnecessary and unappreciated, and if I didn’t have to be in court in—” Kate glanced at the slim silver bangle on her wrist “—sixteen minutes, I’d make you not just apologize but grovel. Since I do have to be in court, I’ll just say Macy Clayton.”
Liam recognized the name. In fact, Macy was scheduled for an interview at two thirty, but he didn’t share that information with his sister, either. “And why should I hire her?” he prompted.
“Because she’s perfect for the job,” Kate said. “She’s been working in t
he hotel industry in Las Vegas for the past eight years, including several as a desk clerk and concierge before she was promoted to assistant to the manager at the Courtland Hotel & Casino.”
“If she had such a great career in Las Vegas, what is she doing in Haven?” he wondered aloud.
“That’s something you’ll have to ask her,” she told him.
* * *
He hated when his sister was right.
And as he looked through the applications on his desk after Kate had gone, Liam couldn’t deny that she was right about the woman she’d recommended for the managerial position.
Macy Clayton was, at least on paper, perfect for the job. Then again, he’d thought Andrew would be perfect, too—and so had the Beverly Hills Vista. Not surprisingly, Andrew had chosen the possibility of celebrity sighting on the West Coast over the probability of boredom in northern Nevada.
Most of the locals had expressed skepticism about his plan; opening a boutique hotel in a sleepy town off the beaten path was a risky venture. David Gilmore had been less kind in his assessment, referring to his oldest son as both a disappointment and a fool.
“Gilmores are ranchers” had been his refrain every time Liam tried to talk to him about the inn. And while it was true that the family had been raising cattle on the Circle G for more than a hundred and fifty years, Liam had been chafing to get away from the ranch for more than fifteen years.
Not that he’d had any specific plans. Not until he’d seen JJ Green affixing a New Price sticker to the faded For Sale sign stuck in the untended front yard of the Stagecoach Inn.
The old, abandoned hotel had been falling apart when Hershel Livingston bought it for a song nearly a decade earlier. The Nevada native had made his fortune in casinos and brothels, but he’d planned to make his home in Haven, one of only a few places in the state where those vices were illegal.
Hershel had spent millions of dollars on the rehab, then abandoned the project just as it was nearing completion. No one knew why, although the rumors were plenty. One of the more credible stories was that his wife had visited Haven during the renovation process and immediately hated the small town. A different version of the story suggested that his wife had caught the billionaire dallying with a local girl.
There were as many variations of this claim as there were single women in town. The only indisputable truth was that Hershel had abruptly ordered his construction crew to vacate the premises, and then he called Jack Green to put a For Sale sign on the narrow patch of grass in front of the wide porch.
The real estate agent got a lot of calls about the property in the first few weeks, but they were mostly local people who wanted to walk through and take a gander at the work that had been done. None of them was seriously interested in buying the inn, because they didn’t believe a fancy hotel could survive in Haven. As a result, interest had faded more quickly than the paint on the sign.
Then, nearly two years ago, JJ Green—now working in the real estate business with his father—slapped that New Price sticker across the weathered sign. More out of curiosity than anything else, Liam had called the agent to inquire and learned that the price had been drastically reduced.
Without any prompting, JJ confided that the elusive Mrs. Livingston had filed for divorce from her cheating husband and was going after half of everything. To retaliate, Hershel was selling off his assets at a loss to decrease the amount of the settlement he would have to pay to her.
Kate had pointed out that the wife could argue fraud and claim half of the fair market value rather than half of the sale price. On the other hand, the property was only worth what someone was willing to pay, and the fact that the old hotel had been on the market for years without anyone making an offer might support Hershel’s decision to slash the price. Either way, Liam wasn’t going to protest the lower number. In fact, after securing the necessary financing, he managed to negotiate an even further reduction before he signed on the dotted line.
Now he was only weeks away from opening, still waiting on deliveries and attempting to schedule the final inspections—and trying to fill unexpected vacancies in his staff.
If Macy Clayton had responded to the original posting, he might have hired her rather than Andrew and not been feeling so panicked right now. Of course, he was making this assumption on the basis of her résumé and his sister’s recommendation without even having met the woman. So while he agreed that she seemed to have all the necessary qualifications for the job, he was going to reserve judgment.
Then she walked in—and his body stirred with a purely sexual awareness he hadn’t experienced in a long while. And in that first moment, even before the introductions, he knew there was no way he could hire her. He also knew that he had to at least go through the motions of the interview.
When she accepted his proffered hand, he felt a jolt straight through his middle as their palms joined. Her skin was soft but her grasp was firm, and he caught a flicker of something that might have been a mixture of surprise and awareness in her espresso-colored eyes when they met his. Her hair was also dark, with highlights of gold and copper, and tied away from her face in the messy-bun style made famous by the Duchess of Sussex before she was royalty.
He guessed Macy’s height at around five feet five inches, though her heeled boots added a couple of inches to that number, and her build was on the slender side, but with distinctly feminine curves. The long coat she wore in deference to the season had been unbuttoned to reveal a slim-fitting black skirt that fell just below her knees and a matching single-breasted jacket over a bright blue shell.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Clayton.” He resisted the temptation to brush his thumb over the pulse point at her wrist to see if it was racing; instead, he let his hand drop away.
“Likewise,” she said.
“Can I take your coat for you?”
“No need.” She shrugged it off her shoulders and draped it over the back of the chair before perching on the edge of the seat. “I have to tell you, I was skeptical when I’d heard that the old Stagecoach Hotel was being renovated and reopened, but based on what I’ve seen so far, you’ve really done a wonderful job with this place.”
“Most of the major renovations were done by the previous owner—I just hired the right people to pick up where he left off,” Liam admitted.
“Well, the actual coach at the back of the lobby is a nice touch,” she noted.
“I thought so, too,” he said. A simple idea that had been a lot more complicated to execute, as the antique carriage had to be taken apart to get it through the doorway and then reassembled inside.
“You’re planning to open in three weeks?” she prompted.
He nodded. “Valentine’s Day.”
Her smile was warm and natural. Friendly. He imagined she’d make the guests feel welcome—which was, of course, what he wanted, but didn’t alleviate his other concerns.
Sexual harassment in the workplace was a serious issue, and Liam had been raised to be respectful of all women. Still, he suspected it would be a mistake to hire a woman who, upon their first meeting, made him think all kinds of inappropriately tempting thoughts.
“Your résumé shows that you spent the last four years working at the Courtland Hotel in Las Vegas,” he noted, forcing himself to refocus on the matter at hand.
“That’s correct.”
“So why did you leave Las Vegas and move to Haven?”
“I moved back to Haven,” she clarified. “I grew up in this town and my parents still live here and—” Her words stopped abruptly, as if she’d caught herself saying more than she wanted to.
“And?” he prompted.
She offered another easy smile and a quick shrug. “And I was ready to come home.”
It seemed like a reasonable response, but he doubted it was what she’d initially intended to say.
He looked at he
r résumé again, skimming through the pages that attested to a wealth and breadth of experience. She’d worked a lot of different jobs on her way up to her most recent position as assistant to the manager of the Courtland Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas: she’d served drinks in a hotel casino, worked as a hostess in the restaurant and even done a stint cleaning rooms.
“Your experience is impressive,” he told her.
“Thank you.”
“But why do you want to work here?”
“Because there are no openings at the Dusty Boots Motel.”
His brows lifted. “Is that a joke?”
The corners of her mouth tipped up at the corners. “Yes, Mr. Gilmore.”
“Liam,” he said.
“I’m not sure it’s appropriate to call my boss by his given name.”
“I’m not your boss,” he pointed out.
“Yet,” she clarified, and smiled again.
Before he could reply to that, he heard a rustling sound in the playpen behind him, followed by a tiny, plaintive voice asking for, “Ma-ma?”
Macy leaned forward in her seat, looking past him to the little girl who’d pulled herself up into a standing position, holding onto the top rail.
“Mama’s going to be back soon,” Liam promised. Hoped.
“You have a beautiful daughter,” Macy said.
“What? No,” he responded quickly. Firmly. “She’s not my daughter—she’s my niece.”
“Then you have a beautiful niece,” she amended.
He looked at the child in question and felt a familiar tug in the vicinity of his heart. “Yeah, she is kinda cute.”
