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He could still taste Catherine on his lips.
The temptation to take her back into his arms was damn near overwhelming.
Cody looked down into her dazed, upturned face. His breathing had yet to return to normal. “If you’re waiting for me to say I’m sorry, you’ve got a long wait ahead of you,” he warned.
Catherine moved her head from side to side—slowly so as not to fall over. “I don’t want you to say you’re sorry,” she whispered.
“Good,” he finally declared. He pulled his Stetson down farther until the brim all but obscured his eyebrows and hid his eyes. “’Cause I don’t know why the hell I just did that, but I know I’m not sorry that I did,” he emphasized.
And then, just like that, Cody turned on his heel and went back to his vehicle.
Dear Reader,
Welcome back to Thunder Canyon, Montana, and the fine citizens of that town who make life there so very interesting. Last time, I got to write about Calista Clifton, one of eight brothers and sisters (perhaps you see a pattern here?). This time around, my book centers on Catherine Clifton’s story. Catherine is the oldest girl and has always been the caretaker in the family (my lord, can I relate to that), sublimating her own needs and dreams in order to care for everyone else. Well, now just this one time, it’s her turn to get something. Jasper Fowler’s neglected antiques store had closed its doors and was up for grabs. Summoning her courage, Catherine took the plunge, buying it with the intention of turning it into not just a place where forgotten antiques were kept to gather dust, but a shop where vintage clothing and intriguing one-of-a-kind items were sold. Catherine was looking for customers. She certainly wasn’t looking for a man to win her heart, but she got both in Cody Overton, a genuine cowboy who was still grieving for his late wife eight years after he’d lost her.
This is a story about two lonely, independent and self-sufficient people who found each other and accidentally wound up filling the void in the other’s life. I hope you like it.
As always, I thank you for reading my book, and from the bottom of my heart I wish you someone to love who loves you back.
Marie Ferrarella
About the Author
MARIE FERRARELLA, this USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author 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.
Real Vintage Maverick
Marie Ferrarella
MILLS & BOON
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To
Stella Bagwell,
who is strong enough
to actually live the life
I can only write about
Prologue
The sound of her laughter filled his head as well as his heart, echoing all through him. Generating within him, as it always did, a feeling of tremendous joy and well-being.
It was one of those absolutely perfect Montana mornings that begged to be pressed between the pages of his memory. Cody Overton tried to absorb it as much as possible, instinctively knowing that it was important he do so.
Very important.
He and Renee were at the state fair—Renee always loved the state fair—and, as always, the love of his life had coaxed him onto one of the gaily-painted horses on the weathered carousel while she had mounted the one right next to it.
“Tame stuff,” Cody had pretended to grumble before they got on—as if he ever could have denied Renee anything. “At least let’s ride the Ferris wheel instead.”
But Renee paid no attention to his protest. His wife absolutely loved riding the carousel; she always had, even when they’d been in elementary school together. He’d teased her that he was surprised she hadn’t insisted on their taking their wedding vows sitting astride two of the horses on the carousel.
Renee had laughed and said that they would have had to wait for the state fair to come through and she hadn’t wanted to delay becoming Mrs. Cody Overton a moment longer than she had to.
She had always had a sense of urgency about living life to the fullest. It never made any sense to him.
Until, sadly, it did.
“Maybe, if we close our eyes and wish real hard, the carousel’ll go faster. C’mon, Cody, give it a try. Close your eyes and wish,” she’d entreated, wrapping her hands around the horse’s pole before her. She was like a ray of sunshine. “Don’t you believe in wishes?”
Not anymore.
The words seemed to silently resonant in his head even as the carousel began to speed up, spinning faster and faster. Just as she’d wished it would.
And as the speed increased, so did the sound of her laughter, until that was all there was, just her laughter overpowering everything else.
And all the while, they were spinning ever faster and faster.
Cody kept trying to see her, to fix his eyes only on his beautiful Renee, but suddenly, he couldn’t find her, couldn’t see her.
Couldn’t see anything at all except a sea of smeared color bleeding into itself.
She was gone.
Twenty-five years old and she was gone.
His soul realized it before his mind did.
He began calling out her name, but nothing came out of his mouth except for an anguished, guttural cry.
With a start, Cody bolted upright in his bed. As always, when this dream came to him, he was covered in sweat and shaking.
The crisp September weather had slipped into the bedroom, thanks to a window he’d forgotten to close, but he was still sweating.
Still shaking.
Still praying it really wasn’t just a dream. That Renee was still alive and with him.
Nurturing a hope that was completely foreign to his very practical, pessimistic outlook, Cody slowly looked to his left, to the spot beside him that had once belonged to Renee.
Aching so badly to see her that it physically hurt. But he didn’t see her. She wasn’t there, as he knew she wouldn’t be.
She hadn’t been there for eight years.
Hadn’t been anywhere for eight years because she’d been dead for eight years. Another statistic to the ravages of the insatiable cancer monster.
His heart had been dead just as long.
At times, Cody was surprised that it was still beating, still keeping the shell that surrounded it alive and moving.
A man with nothing to live for shouldn’t be required to live, Cody thought darkly.
He tossed off the covers and got out of bed despite the darkness that still enveloped the room. He knew it was useless to try to go back to sleep. Sleep was gone for the remainder of the night. If he was lucky, a glimmer of it might return by that evening.
Most likely not.
Slipping on the discarded jeans he picked up from the floor, Cody padded across the bare floor to the window and looked out.
There was nothing to see, just a vastness that spread out before him.
His ranch.
Their ranch.
“Why did you leave me?” he demanded in angry frustration, not for the first time. “Why did you have to go?”
He wasn’t being reasonable, but he didn’t much feel like being reasonable. It wasn’t fair that he had been left behind, to face each day without Renee after she had filled so much of his life before then. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t known her, hadn’t been aware of her. The very first memory he had was of her.
Eight years and he still wasn’t used to it. Hadn’t made his peace with it. Eight years and a part of him still expected to see her walk through the door, or see her standing over the stove, lamenting that she’d burned dinner—again.
He’d never minded those burnt offerings—that was what he’d teasingly called them, her burnt offerings—and he would have been willing to eat nothing else for the rest of his life if only he could see her one more time. Hold her one more time …
He supposed, in a way, that was what the dreams were about. Seeing her one more time. Because they were so very vivid that, just for a moment, Renee was alive again. Alive and the cornerstone of his world.
He wished he could sleep forever, but that wasn’t going to happen.
Cody dragged his hand through his hair and sighed. He might as well get dressed and get started with his day, even if it was still the middle of the night. The ranch wasn’t going to run itself.
“I miss you, Renee.”
His whisper echoed about the empty bedroom just as it did about his empty soul.
Chapter One
It happened too quickly for him to even think about it.
One minute, in a moment of exasperated desperation—because he hadn’t yet bought a gift for Caroline’s birthday—Cody found himself walking into the refurbished antique store that had, up until a few months ago, been called The Tattered Saddle.
The next minute, he was hurrying across the room and managed—just in time—to catch the young woman who was tumbling off a ladder.
Before he knew it, his arms were filled with the soft curves of the same young woman.
She smelled of lavender and vanilla, nudging forth a sliver of a memory he couldn’t quite catch hold of.
That was the way Cody remembered it when he later looked back on the way his life had taken a dramatic turn toward the better that fateful morning.
When he’d initially walked by the store’s show window, Cody had automatically looked in. The shop appeared to be in a state of semi-chaos, but it still looked a great deal more promising than when that crazy old coot Jasper Fowler ran it.
Cody vaguely recalled hearing that the man hadn’t really been interested in making any sort of a go of the shop. The whole place had actually just been a front for a money-laundering enterprise. At any rate, the antique shop had been shut down and boarded up in January, relegated to collecting even more dust than it had displayed when its doors had been open to the public.
What had caught his eye was the notice Under new ownership in the window and the store’s name—The Tattered Saddle—had been crossed out. But at the moment, there was no new name to take its place. He had wondered if that was an oversight or a ploy to draw curious customers into the shop.
Well, if it was under new ownership, maybe that meant that there was new old merchandise to choose from. And that, in turn, might enable him to find something for his sister here. As he recalled, Caroline was into old things. Things that other people thought of as junk and wanted to discard, his sister saw potential and promise in.
At least it was worth a shot, Cody told himself. He had tried the doorknob and found that it gave under his hand. Turning it, he had walked in.
Glancing around, his eyes were instantly drawn to the tall, willowy figure on the other side of the room. She was wearing a long, denim-colored skirt and her shirt was more or less the same color. The young woman was precariously perched on the top step of a ladder that appeared to be none too steady.
What actually caught his attention was not that she looked like an accident waiting to happen as she stretched her taut frame out, trying to reach something that was on a higher shelf, but that with her long, straight brown hair hanging loose about her back and shoulders, for just an instant, she reminded him of Renee.
A feeling of déjà vu seized him and for a moment, his breath caught in his throat.
Balancing herself on tiptoes, Catherine Clifton, the former Tattered Saddle’s determined new owner, automatically turned around when she heard the little bell over the front door ring. She hadn’t anticipated any customers coming in until the store’s grand reopening. That wasn’t for a couple more days at the very least. Most likely a couple of weeks. And only if she could come up with a new name for the place.
“We’re not open for business yet,” Catherine called out.
The next thing out of her mouth was an involuntary shriek because she’d lost her footing on the ladder and both she and the ladder were heading for a collision with the wooden floor.
The ladder landed with a clatter.
Catherine, fortunately, did not.
She was saved from what could have been a very bruising fate by the very person she’d just politely banished from the premises.
Landing in the cowboy’s strong, capable arms knocked the air out of her and, along with it, anything else she might have said at that moment.
Which was just as well because she would have hated coming across like some blithering idiot. But right now, not a single coherent thought completed itself in her head. It was filled with just scattered words and a myriad of sensations.
Hot sensations.
Everything had faded into the background and Catherine was instantly and acutely aware of the man whose arms she’d landed in. The broad-shouldered, green-eyed, sandy-haired cowboy held her as if she weighed no more than a small child. The muscles on his bare arms didn’t even appear to be straining.
A tingling sensation danced through Catherine’s entire body, which was stubbornly heating up despite all of her attempts to bank the sensation—and her reaction to the man—down.
Her valiant efforts to the contrary, for just a moment, it felt as if time had stood still, freezing this moment as it simultaneously bathed her in a heretofore never experienced, all but debilitating, feeling of desire. For two cents proper, using the excuse that this rugged-looking cowboy had saved her, she would have kissed him. With feeling.
Catherine could absolutely visualize herself kissing him.
The fact that he was a complete stranger was neither here nor there as far as she was concerned. Desire, she discovered at that moment, didn’t have to make sense. It could thrive very well without even so much as a lick of sense to it.
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 she 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.
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