Kitabı oku: «Real Vintage Maverick», sayfa 3

Cody looked down at her in silence for a long moment. For a brief second, she thought that he was just going to let go of the sign, climb down off the ladder and walk away.

But then, uttering an unintelligible noise—at least she couldn’t make any sense of it—Cody turned his attention to what had brought him up here in the first place. With an amazingly accurate eye, he hung the sign exactly in the middle, directly over the doorway. He did it without bothering to measure first, without resorting to any sort of gauges and without asking her for any visual guidance from her vantage point.

The man had a fantastic eye, she thought. It was obvious that he was a natural. One of those incredibly gifted souls who could build an entire building using a bent spoon, a wad of chewing gum and a set of popsicle sticks. He was creative without even knowing that he was. She was more convinced than ever that she had chosen the right man as her inspiration. He obviously came with fringe benefits—and muscles, she noted.

Her stomach seemed to tighten of its own accord.

Catherine stepped back, admiring the sign. “That’s absolutely perfect,” she pronounced as he came back down the ladder.

He didn’t bother looking up at his handiwork. Instead, he merely said, “I know.”

That sort of statement reeked of conceit, and yet, she realized, the man wasn’t conceited, nor did he actually sound that way. Instead, what he sounded was self-assured. He was a man who knew his limitations—if he actually possessed any—and he was obviously fairly comfortable in his own skin.

That, she knew, wasn’t often the case. Most people were usually hounded by insecurities, whether large or small.

“Must be nice,” Catherine couldn’t help commenting to him.

Again Cody raised a quizzical eyebrow as he looked at her, waiting for some sort of explanation or further elaboration.

“What is?” he finally asked when she didn’t elaborate further.

Her eyes met his. She consciously banked down the shiver that rose within her. “Being so confident.”

“Not a matter of confidence,” Cody told her. “Just a matter of knowing what I can and can’t do.”

She thought that was one and the same, but it was obviously different to him.

Be that as it may, she had no intention of getting into a discussion with Cody over this. She didn’t want this cowboy—who really did come across like the genuine article to her—to think she was trying to challenge him or trip him up. He seemed just perfect the way he was and she was fairly certain it would help business along for her if she could tap into this man’s likes and preferences. There had to be a lot more like him around here, right? And she wanted her merchandise to appeal to people with his sensibilities and preferences.

Cody took the ladder and returned it to the back room, pausing next to her just for a moment to ask, “Got anything else you need hung up?”

Catherine smiled as she shook her head. “Not at the moment,” she replied.

In response, he nodded his head and continued on his way. He replaced the ladder where he had found it, along with the hammer.

“I would, however, like to get your input on a few things,” she said, raising her voice so that it followed him into the back room.

He didn’t answer until he came out again. “Well, I’m here, might as well use me. Ask away,” he told her.

Might as well use me. Now there was a straight line if ever there was one, she couldn’t help thinking as she bit her tongue to keep quiet.

Instead, she beckoned Cody over to the counter where she had her laptop up and running. She’d set it up the minute she’d come in this morning, thinking to get a little online shopping done whenever she felt like taking a break. She had all the sites bookmarked.

“I’ve been looking through some eBay auctions of things I thought would be perfect for the shop,” she told Cody.

“So get them,” he advised.

“I’d like a second opinion,” she told him honestly. And that second opinion was where he came in. That was the deal.

“Why?” he wanted to know. “Don’t you trust your own judgment?”

“Yes I do,” she said. “But it’s always good to have reinforcement.”

He considered her words. The woman wasn’t headstrong, but she wasn’t wishy-washy, either. He found himself nodding in silent approval of this woman he’d just barely met.

Catherine Clifton was a good blend of various personalities, he thought. She was definitely different from most of the women he had interacted with since Renee’s passing. It wasn’t that he was in the market for another wife—one heartache in his lifetime was more than enough for him—but hell, at his age he wasn’t looking to up and join a monastery, either.

Only problem was, most of the women around here fell into two groups. The first group was mainly concerned with trivial things—things like what outfit or hairstyle looked best on them. Mindless things. And then there was that other group. The women who made no secret of the fact that they felt he was “broken” and they knew just how to “fix” him.

He wasn’t about to let that group get their hands on him, not by a hell of a long shot, he thought. He wasn’t “broken,” at least, not in a way that any of them could even begin to heal, and he wasn’t lonely, either. At least, not lonely enough to take up with any of those women for more than a couple of days or so. After that, he just lost patience with them, preferring his own company or the company of his horses to being subjected to endless, mindless chatter that somehow always managed to work the phrase “How do I look?” into the conversation.

Any conversation.

Looking at Catherine now, he couldn’t help wondering if ultimately she was going to fall into one of those two categories. He was probably wrong, but he had a hunch that she wasn’t.

A larger part of him felt that it really didn’t matter either way.

But just the smallest part of him hoped that he was right.

Chapter Four

“You planning on selling used clothes in the store, too?” Cody wanted to know when she showed him some of the things she’d acquired.

While the main focus of the shop was going to remain on vintage pieces of furniture, Catherine thought that bringing in a few items of clothing might actually draw in more potential customers and provide her clientele an eclectic selection to choose from. She intended to display the clothing in the same section of the shop that Cody had found the fringed coin purse he’d sent to his sister.

“They’re not used,” Catherine corrected, employing a euphemism. “They’re pre-owned.”

Cody snorted. “Fancy words,” he said, dismissing the term she’d substituted with a wave of his hand. Whatever she called them, if someone had worn them before, the clothes were still used.

To his surprise, Catherine didn’t argue. “Yes, they are, and they’re meant to convey a different image,” she told him. To show him what she meant, she opened up a large cardboard box. Inside were the various articles of clothing that she had managed to collect so far. “Everything in here has been cleaned, pressed and, in some cases, mended,” she allowed. “But they’re not rags,” she quickly specified, guessing what was going through Cody’s mind. She raised her eyes to his face. “Every item in here has a story. Every castoff has potential.”

Cody realized that she was looking at him and not at anything in particular that she had inside the box. For a second, he was going to ask her if she was trying to tell him something, then decided he was probably reading far too much into her tone.

Glancing at the contents of the box, he saw a brightly beaded shirt and a multicolored scarf that would have looked more at home around her neck lying right on top of the pile of clothing.

He fingered the scarf for a second. Soft, he thought. Just like her skin.

Now how the hell would he have known that? A little unnerved, he let the scarf drop back into the box.

“So this is going to be like a thrift shop?” he asked, trying to get a handle on what her actual intent was.

A thrift shop tended to suggest rock-bottom prices, and she was going for an image that was a little more exclusive than that.

“No, it’s not going to be that inexpensive,” she explained with a smile. “I’m thinking more along the lines that one man’s ‘junk’ can turn out to be another man’s treasure.”

Cody rummaged a little deeper into the box, then laughed shortly. There was nothing exactly impressive to be found in there.

A hint of amusement was evident in his eyes when he looked at her. “Kind of stretching the word ‘treasure’ a mite, aren’t you?”

She didn’t quite see it that way. “It’s like that saying about beauty being in the eyes of the beholder,” Catherine pointed out. “You never know what might appeal to a person.” And then she smiled broadly at him. “Which is what I have you for.”

Cody looked at the woman he’d struck a bargain with. Maybe he needed to rethink this arrangement a bit. Since she had given him that purse for Caroline in exchange for his so-called services, he felt obligated to give her something in return. But at the moment, that wasn’t as easy as it might have sounded to an outsider. The truth of it was, he really had very few “likes” himself. For him it had always been more of a case of just “making do.”

Cody felt it was only right to try to explain that to her. “I’m a simple man, Catherine,” he told her. “If you’re waiting for me to get excited about something, you’ve got a long wait ahead of you.”

There was that shiver again, Catherine thought as it shimmied up and down her spine. That wonderful/strange sensation that insisted on undulating along her back as if she was anticipating something.

Something from him.

Pressing her lips together, Catherine did her best to block the feeling. To ignore it and just focus on the business at hand.

Still, she couldn’t help saying, “I’m sure it’ll be worth waiting for when it finally happens.”

Damn, but there was something about this woman, Cody caught himself thinking, the thought flashing across his mind completely out of the blue. Something that stirred up his insides like one of those food processors he’d seen demonstrated once. All without any warning.

And when she tilted her head just like that—as if that could help her understand something—the sun wound up getting caught in her hair and he could see reddish streaks lacing through it.

Warming his blood.

Warming him.

And, yeah, by God, tempting him, he silently admitted.

Maybe he should just kiss her and get it over with, Cody thought, doing his best to be pragmatic. That way, maybe his thoughts would finally stop going where they didn’t belong and he could get back to focusing on “paying up his debt” to her. He didn’t like being beholden to anyone, even someone as pretty as Catherine.

For just the tiniest split second, he debated acting on the thought. Debated kissing her purely for practical reasons.

He even leaned into her a little. And once he did, he started to go through the rest of the motions. His eyes held her prisoner just as much as hers managed to hold him in the same cell.

His lips were almost touching hers—

And then the bell over the doorway went off, splintering the moment. Breaking the mood.

Announcing the presence of another person entering their private space.

Acute discomfort, laced through with a prickly dose of guilt, had Cody taking a step back away from his intended target before he looked in the direction of the offending doorway.

“I thought you said you were closed,” he said to Catherine, his tone dark.

It almost sounded like an accusation, Catherine thought, even as she tried to figure out exactly what had just happened here—and what hadn’t happened.

“I am,” she finally answered, the words emerging from her lips in slow, confused motion.

“But she’s not closed to family,” the person walking into the shop cheerfully declared. The smile in the young woman’s voice was only rivaled by the one on her face. “Are you, Cate?”

A wave of disappointment washed over Catherine, although she wasn’t altogether certain why or what it was that she was disappointed about. It took her a moment to catch her breath.

Belatedly, she looked toward the source of the cheery voice and identified the young woman for Cody. “C.C.”

“Well, at least you still recognize me.” Her youngest sister laughed. “That’s hopeful.” She looked pleased with the observation. Stepping forward as she took the muffler off from around her neck, C.C. put her hand out to her sister’s friend. “Hi, I’m the cheerful sister.” She cocked her head the exact same way that Catherine did. “And you are?” She waited for the man to identify himself.

“Just leaving,” Cody replied gruffly, a feeling of uncustomary awkwardness invading him. It was a strange feeling and he couldn’t say that he much cared for it.

“Well, Mister ‘Just Leaving,’” C.C. said, tongue in cheek as she made her request, “please don’t do it on my account. I just dropped by to see how things were going and to ask my big sister if she needed a hand for a few hours.” Her grin grew to almost huge proportions as her eyes swept over the man she’d seen standing almost intimately close to her sister. “You obviously don’t,” she concluded, turning toward Catherine. There was blanket approval in C.C.’s eyes—as well as admiration and perhaps just the tiniest touch of envy. “You seem to be doing just fine.” Her eyes all but danced as she turned toward the door again. “I’ll just leave you two alone and—”

“No, stay,” Cody said. It was very close to sounding like an order. “I was just going.”

The grin—or was that a smirk, Cody wondered—remained as Catherine’s younger sister seemed to take careful measure of him.

“You didn’t look as if you were just going when I came in,” she told him. “From where I was standing, you looked like you’d just arrived.”

If that was a riddle, he had no time to untangle it. He missed the very annoyed look that Catherine shot at her sister. Glancing at C.C., he mumbled something that sounded like “nice meeting you” without any conviction whatsoever and then addressed Catherine. “I’ll be seeing you,” he told her with a nod of his head.

A few strides toward the door and then he was gone.

“I sure hope so,” C.C. murmured under her breath as the door closed again. The tiny bell needlessly announced his departure. Turning on her heel to look at her sister, C.C. declared with no small enthusiasm, “If you’re stocking those in the store, I’ll take twelve.”

“C.C.—” There was a warning note in Catherine’s voice.

“Okay, okay,” C.C. relented. “I’m being greedy. I’ll take ten.” Seeing her older sister’s frown deepen, she stopped teasing. Kind of. “Who was that masked man?” she wanted to know. “He was absolutely, blood-pumpingly gorgeous.”

There was no point in telling C.C. that what she’d just said made no sense. There were times when her youngest sister lived on a planet all her own.

So instead, Catherine simply said, “That was Cody Overton.”

There was a great deal more to this man than just a name, C.C. thought. Her sister might not be aware of the sparks of electricity she’d just seen flying between them, but she definitely was. It’s a wonder neither one of them had any of their skin singed.

“And?” C.C. wanted to know.

Catherine looked at the younger girl, completely confused. “And what?”

C.C. looked at her closely, as if she was attempting to delve into her sister’s mind. With absolutely no luck at the moment. So she asked, “And have you been holding out on us?”

“Holding out?” Catherine repeated, at this point very thoroughly confused. There was no “holding out.” Her life and what she did was an open book. A boring one, granted, but an open one nonetheless. She had no idea what C.C. was talking about.

C.C. gravitated toward the box of clothes that Catherine had just opened. Her attention was instantly captivated by the top two items, each of which she took out and held up for closer examination. She definitely liked what she saw.

“You know, like a secret lover,” C.C. elaborated absently. Holding the beaded shirt against herself, C.C. smoothed it down into place. She tried to imagine what it would look like coupled with her favorite pair of jeans. It would definitely turn heads, she concluded. Holding the shirt up, she asked Catherine, “Hey, you give discounts to relatives?”

Pressing the blouse against her upper torso, C.C. went in search of a mirror or some sort of shiny surface to give her an idea what she looked like in the shirt.

“Only if I don’t disown them,” Catherine fired back. And then she softened just a little. “Seriously, what are you doing here?”

“‘Seriously,’ I came to help out for a few hours,” C.C. told her again. And then a touch of remorse entered her voice. “I didn’t mean to break something up.”

“You didn’t,” Catherine quickly assured her.

C.C. laughed, shaking her head. Was her sister in denial—or just trying to pretend nothing was going on for her benefit?

“You obviously weren’t paying attention,” she chided, then tossed in an accusation for good measure. “You’ve been holding out on me.” Rather than be annoyed, C.C. was delighted with this turn of events. “Have you known him long?”

Catherine was completely speechless at the way her youngest sister could jump to conclusions without any sort of real input at all. She made it sound as if there was something going on—and there wasn’t.

“A couple of hours,” she finally told her sister, hoping that was the end of it.

But this was C.C. and the “end” was a long way away, Catherine thought with a mental groan.

“Looked like he knew you a lot better than that,” C.C. commented, putting the shirt on the counter before going on to explore the rest of the box’s contents.

Catherine deliberately took the faded, flared jeans out of C.C.’s hands. She didn’t want her sister “buying” the entire contents of the box. Knowing C.C., what she’d get was a series of IOUs that C.C. would conveniently forget about and that she herself would have no intentions of collecting on. Family was family through thick and thin and sales receipts.

“How is it you don’t get a nose bleed from jumping to conclusions like that?” Catherine asked her matter-of-factly.

Rather than answer, C.C. cocked her head as she eyed Catherine again. She had no intentions of having her sister distract her. Something was up—and she had a pretty good idea what that something was all about.

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” C.C. declared in a pseudo-cultured voice.

“What the ‘lady’ is desperately trying to do is keep from strangling her youngest sister to death,” Catherine countered between clenched teeth.

She loved everyone in her family more than words could possibly begin to describe, but there were times when they—collectively and individually—got to be just too much for her. That was when she’d engineer a mini-getaway—sometimes all she needed was a few hours alone. But this time, she had a feeling she might need just to “disappear” for more than an hour—or five.

Despite the threat—obviously an empty one, C.C. thought—she didn’t back off. For one, she was having far too good a time with this. For another, she knew that Catherine didn’t even yell, so murder seemed as if it would be a little out of her comfort zone.

“Am I getting too close?” C.C. asked her.

“To your own demise?” Catherine shot back, then added a confirmation. “Yes.”

For a second, C.C. did back off, but only to study her subject. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this before.” For C.C. there was only one conclusion to be drawn. “You must really like this guy.”

Catherine’s slender shoulders rose and then fell again in a dismissive shrug. “He’s just a cowboy—”

“Yeah, I know.” C.C.’s voice was almost dreamy as she talked. “I really thought he’d mount his horse and go riding off into the sunset. Where have you been keeping him all this time?” she wanted to know, refusing to believe that Catherine had just stumbled across this man a matter of hours ago, the way she’d alluded.

Catherine sighed. Her sister was a hopeless romantic and ever since Calista had announced plans for her upcoming wedding, C.C. had gone off on some impossible tangent, seeing potential grooms behind every tree and rock. She was surprised that the girl hadn’t eloped with someone by now.

Surprised and grateful, Catherine added silently before tackling C.C.’s overly fertile imagination one last time.

“Once and for all, C.C., I haven’t been ‘keeping’ Cody anywhere. He walked in here three days ago, looking to buy a birthday present for his sister. When he spotted a fringed coin purse, I decided to make him a trade—I’d let him have the coin purse for free in exchange for his opinion on a few items I was going to be carrying in the shop.” She could see by the expression on her sister’s face that C.C. just wasn’t buying into this. Damn, but that girl could be stubborn. “I thought I’d try to appeal to his demographic,” Catherine tacked on, feeling almost helpless.

“So what you’re saying is that you’re planning on only selling to hopelessly sexy cowboys with killer eyes?” There were dimples winking in and out of the corners of her mouth as she made no effort to keep the amused grin off her lips.

For now Catherine threw in the towel. “Why don’t you see if Calista needs help with her wedding plans?” she suggested forcefully.

“I’d rather stay here and torture you,” C.C. told her with a straight face. But when she saw the exasperated look that entered Catherine’s chocolate eyes, she held up her hands in protest. “Okay, okay, I’ll cease and desist, I promise.” And then a serious look flitted across her face as she said, “But I am sorry.”

Okay, what was this about? “About what?” she asked aloud.

Wasn’t Catherine paying any attention? “That I walked in at the wrong time. From where I was standing, it looked as if your so-called ‘Mr. Demographic’ was just about to kiss you—and would have if I hadn’t picked just then to come barging in.”

If she were being honest, Catherine would have had to admit that she’d been pretty certain that he was going to kiss her just then. But then, maybe this had all worked out for the best anyway.

“That’s just your imagination,” Catherine insisted, wanting the book to be closed.

Rather than continue the argument, C.C. merely shrugged. “Okay, if you say so, Cate. But I was serious when I said that I came here to help you out in the store for a little bit. I don’t have to be anywhere for a few hours and I thought you might want some help sorting all this stuff. Unless, of course, you want to save it for Mr. Strong, Silent Type,” C.C. amended.

Instead of answering, Catherine went into the back room. When she emerged again, she was armed with a large feather duster. The moment she was close to C.C., she placed the feather duster into her sister’s hand.

“Here, if you really want to be useful, start dusting from the back to the front,” she instructed. “I don’t think this place has had a once-over since before Jasper Fowler got arrested.”

“That’s an awful lot of dust,” C.C. commented.

“I know,” Catherine agreed sympathetically. “So I guess you’d better get started if you want to finish before next Easter.”

C.C. saluted her with the feather duster. “Your word is my command, Cate.” She grinned as she looked around. “This really is pretty exciting,” she agreed. “When are you opening for business again?” she asked as she started dusting.

Catherine thought of her target date. It was breathing down her neck. How did it get to be so late in the month? “Too soon,” she murmured.

“Well, if you don’t think you’ll be ready in time, you could always ask Mr. Delicious Cowboy to come riding to your rescue.”

“Just dust,” Catherine ordered, pointing to an area that was completely obscured by dust.

Her sister laughed and saluted with the hilt of the duster. “Yes’m.”

Catherine nodded her head and smiled at C.C.’s “obedient” response. She had to admit, she liked the sound of that. Especially after all these years.

“You’re finally catching on, C.C.,” she told her sister.

“I could say the same thing about you,” she heard C.C. murmur under her breath.

About to make another comment, Catherine decided to hold her piece instead. A great deal more would get done in the store in the long run if she just pretended not to have heard C.C.’s last reply.