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“Brett? What do you want?”
He looked intensely uncomfortable, but a determined look filled his eyes and made his jaw hard. He ground out, “I’d like to come inside and quit blowing all the cold air in Montana into your living room.”
“Oh.” Dumbfounded, she stepped back. He swept past her, his sheepskin rancher’s jacket big and cozy looking, filled to bursting with muscles and more muscles. What on earth had brought him back here at the crack of dawn? It was barely 8:00 a.m. Hardly a civilized time of day for an unannounced visit! He was darned lucky the cold had already woken her up.
“Are you here to check my pupils again?” she tried.
“No. I brought you something.”
A gift? From Brett Morgan? What on earth? He held out a plastic grocery bag, and she took it, startled at how heavy it was. She peered inside.
A rotary power sander.
“It’s old, but I cleaned and greased the motor last night, and I stopped by the hardware store this morning and picked up new sanding disks for it.”
“I can’t accept this—” she started.
He cut her off briskly. “Then consider it a loan. Do you know how to use it? If you lean on it too hard, you’ll leave swirl marks in the wood. Start light with the pressure and gradually press down harder—” He broke off and reached for the bag he’d just handed her. “Here. Let me show you.”
“I can figure it out—”
He wasn’t listening. He slung down a coiled orange extension cord that he’d been carrying over his right shoulder. “You attach the disks like this…”
In minor shock, she watched as he showed her how to operate the sander. He put the thing in her hands and guided the sander to a broad expanse of paneling. He flipped the switch, and the machine jumped in her hand. Hastily, he put his big, warm hands over hers, steadying the bucking sander. Not satisfied with that arrangement apparently, he stepped behind her and reached around her to put his hands over hers once more.
Her brain went completely blank as his arms surrounded her, and the heat of his body permeated her clothing all down her back. For a millisecond, she enjoyed the sensation of being held and protected. But then fear reared its ugly head, making her go stiff.
Oblivious to her distress, Brett guided the sander across the wall, and the old finish melted away from the wood like butter, leaving fresh, bright walnut exposed, its natural tones a mix of blond and brown. As if that was what she was concentrating on at the moment.
Man. Muscle. Heat. The simultaneous push and pull of attraction and repulsion all but paralyzed her. She could do this. He didn’t mean anything by it. He was just showing her how to sand a wall. Concentrate on the good parts. Like the scent of pine trees and mountain air rising from his clothes. It was as if the Rocky Mountains themselves had swept into her living room. She always had loved the mountains.
Brett’s hands pushed hers back across the wood in a gentle, even swath, magically clearing away another broad strip of old varnish and grime.
“Ohmigod,” she breathed. This thing was going to save her hundreds of hours of tiring, dusty, muscle-aching sanding.
“You’ll still have to do a little hand sanding to get into the crevices of the molding,” he murmured in her ear. His deep voice vibrated down her spine, terminating somewhere near her toes in a little shiver of delight. Ha! No fear that time!
“This is fantastic,” she breathed. She wasn’t sure she was talking about the power sander or about being surrounded by his heat and muscles.
He stepped back, and something deep inside her wailed at his absence. She hushed that needy part of herself sternly and concentrated fiercely on sliding the sander evenly and smoothly over the aged wood in front of her.
“Christ, it’s cold in here. Is your furnace on the fritz?”
She stood back from the wall and switched off the sander. “Actually, I just installed a new furnace last week. It’s the windows that are the problem.”
“Or the lack thereof,” he muttered.
“I was supposed to go pick up some windows in Hillsdale yesterday, but I had to go to the police station instead.”
Brett winced. “Sorry about that.”
“You didn’t try to rob the diner.”
He shrugged but didn’t look convinced. Was he the kind of person who took responsibility for things that weren’t his fault? Well, wouldn’t that be a total reversal from Eddie who never once in his life had been responsible for anything bad that ever happened to him. He’d always had an excuse or a scapegoat other than himself.
In the latter years, that scapegoat had almost always been her. It was her fault his acting career hadn’t taken off. Her insistence on him getting a job that forced him to miss the best auditions. Her selfish need for a place to live that cost him acting job after acting job. Frankly, she wasn’t sure he’d ever had any talent in the first place.
“…my truck to pick up your windows?” Brett was saying.
“I beg your pardon?”
“My truck. Do you want to borrow it?”
“Oh! Uh, no. I wouldn’t know how to drive a truck.”
He snorted. “You’re from Montana and don’t know how to drive a truck? What are you? A city slicker?”
“I grew up in Sunny Creek, not on some dude ranch.”
“Fine. I’ll drive. Where are these windows of yours?” Brett asked briskly.
“You don’t need to help with my windows. I can fit two at a time in my car.”
“That tin can you drive barely qualifies as a car.”
“Don’t be dissing my car, Mr. Cow Pie Kicker.”
“I don’t kick cow pies. We use helicopters to move the cattle on our spread.”
She blinked, startled. “Really?”
“Yeah. Runaway Ranch uses the latest in ranching techniques. Our yield per acre of beef is tops in the nation.”
“Um, congratulations?”
He shrugged. “Not my circus, not my monkeys. My old man and the ranch hands do all the work.”
“Why are you living on the ranch, then, if you don’t work on it?” she asked curiously.
Brett’s gaze went as hard and cold as the sapphires the mountains around Sunny Creek were known for. Huh. She’d hit a nerve, apparently. He strode to the front door, picked her parka off the coat rack and stood there, holding it out expectantly. “You coming?” he asked.
She started forward automatically, conditioned by years with Eddie to jump to that tone of voice. But then she realized what she’d done and stopped in her tracks a few feet out of reach of Brett. “I don’t take orders from anyone,” she declared strongly.
He studied her far too intently for far too long before saying mildly, “Okay. Please let me help you pick up your new windows so you don’t freeze to death in this shack.”
“It’s not a shack!” she exclaimed indignantly.
“What would you call it?”
She looked around at the plastic tarps, paint cans, sawhorses and general chaos. “It’s a work in progress.”
Brett grinned briefly. “An optimist, are you?”
“Not hardly.”
“Had me fooled.”
She shrugged into her coat, which he held out for her, and he lifted it onto her shoulders. If she wasn’t mistaken, his hands lingered for an instant on her shoulders. Not as if he was trying to put any kind of a move on her. More as if he was remembering what it felt like to touch a woman. And then his hands were gone, and she was left frowning to herself. Surely a man like him got all the female companionship he could possibly want.
She slipped as her sheepskin boots, which were cute, warm and left over from happier times, hit the thin layer of fresh snow. Brett’s hand shot out fast to steady her, and she flinched hard as his hand swung toward her. As soon as she was safely upright again, he pulled his hand away from her.
Rats. He was studying her like a bug under a microscope. Thankfully, he made no comment as he opened the passenger door of his truck and helped her climb up into the big truck. Again, his hand pulled back immediately.
“You need better boots,” he commented as he slid behind the wheel.
“I know. I’ve been so busy trying to make the house weatherproof before winter that I haven’t had time to go shopping for any.” And she wasn’t about to tell him that the hundred bucks she would spend on a decent pair of winter boots could better be used to by a few rolls of insulation for the attic.
“Where are these windows of yours?” he asked.
“Hillsdale. Benson’s.”
“The junk shop?” Brett asked.
“It’s an antiques store and salvage yard,” she corrected.
“Right. A junk shop.”
She rolled her eyes and didn’t bother arguing. If she’d learned nothing else from Eddie, it was that men were pigheaded and completely unwilling to listen to reason.
Brett was a good driver, handling the truck with confidence and just the right amount of caution on the wet roads. He was silent, and she was content to let the silence be.
The drive to Hillsdale took about a half hour, and she gradually relaxed into the warmth and quiet. Brett seemed to know where he was going when they reached Hillsdale, so she sat back and let him drive, enjoying being chauffeured for a change.
“Here we are,” Brett murmured as he pulled into the parking lot beside the salvage yard.
She fumbled at the door lock, and before she could get the thing opened, Brett had come around to her side of the truck and opened the door for her. He held out an expectant hand and she stared at it doubtfully. Men’s hands and she didn’t have a great track record together. His palm was calloused and hard. That hand had seen plenty of hard work in its day.
“How’d you get that scar across your wrist?” she asked.
“Knife.”
She flinched. She couldn’t help it. God, she hated knives.
“Caught one in combat. It wasn’t that bad a cut,” he said quickly. Crud. He must’ve seen her reaction to his mention of knives.
She headed into the store, which was cluttered with all manner of antiques, knickknacks, and—face it—junk. “Morning, Vinny!” she called.
“Anna!” a voice called from the back of the mess. “How’s the prettiest girl this side of the Rockies—” The voice broke off as Vinny stepped out of a back room and spied her and Brett.
“I’m fine. Do you still have those windows you said you would hold for me?”
“They’re back here. Follow me.”
She wound along a narrow path through the mountains of junk toward his voice. Brett seemed bemused, staring around like he’d entered an alien world. To a man like him, this place probably was alien.
Vinny led her to a half-dozen window frames stacked in a pile to one side of a warehouse-sized space. “You wanna measure these again?” he asked her.
“If you say these’ll fit my window frames, I believe you,” she answered.
Vinny smiled intimately and sidled closer to her. “Would I lie to you? You’re far too pretty for that.”
He was so awkward she felt sorry for him. It was sweet of him to flirt with her, but she was damaged goods.
He touched her arm lightly, innocently pointing out where to go, but she couldn’t stop the shiver that passed through her. Vinny steered her to one side of the warehouse, and she braced herself out of long habit. The windows. She needed the windows.
Without warning, a big shadow loomed beside her and a heavy arm landed across her shoulders. Brett. “Hey, darlin’. You about ready to start loading up those windows of yours? I have plans for us today, and I want to get this errand over with.” Innuendo lay thick in his voice.
She stared up at him, shocked. What was he doing?
Vinny took a quick step back, scowling up at Brett, who exuded something very male and very dangerous at the moment.
Oh.
One guardian angel to the rescue.
She leaned into Brett’s side and played along. “Can I call on all those big, strong muscles of yours to help me load my windows into your truck?”
Brett grinned down at her. “Only if you’ll give me a back rub later for my troubles.”
“Sure,” she choked out.
That did it. Vinny turned away, his face red, and stomped to the front counter to ring up the sale. Brett’s grin turned lopsided as she slipped out from under his arm.
It took Brett only about two minutes to load all six windows in his truck, layering them with cardboard boxes folded flat to act as shock absorbers and protect the original, heavy glass.
They’d started driving back toward Sunny Creek when Brett asked abruptly, “Why don’t you like men touching you?”
Oh, Lord. Did he have to be quite so observant? “What are you talking about?”
He glanced across the cab at her. “You flinched when Vinny touched you.”
“I didn’t flinch when you touched me,” she retorted.
“You went stiff as a board.”
She shrugged. It wasn’t like she owed him any explanations. Brett let the subject drop, for which she was deeply grateful.
When they got back to her place, Brett offloaded the windows with quick ease, carrying them into her house and depositing four of them in front of her living and dining room windows and one in the kitchen.
“Where do you want this last window?” he called as he came in through the front door.
“I’ll take it.”
“I’m already carrying it,” he retorted. “Just tell me where to put it.”
Men. So bossy. A girl couldn’t tell one anything. “My bedroom,” she huffed.
He barged into her inner sanctum and stopped cold as he stepped across the threshold. Fine. So she liked white lace and pink bows. Shoot her. She was, in fact, a girl. She glared at him defiantly as he emerged from her frilly bedroom, and wisely made no comment.
“Do you have the tools to install the windows?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“Let’s get them into the frames so this place can be properly heated.”
“I can do it myself,” she declared.
“I’m sure you can,” he replied evenly. “But it’ll go faster if we work together.”
He was not wrong about that. She wrestled with the dilemma of accepting the help or going it alone and getting away from his disturbing presence. He took the decision away from her when he ripped down the plywood covering one of the living room windows and a blast of freezing air slammed into her.
Pesky guardian angel!
Brett lifted the window into the frame and looked over his shoulder at her expectantly. “You gonna nail it in place or not?”
Jerk. But a helpful jerk, she mentally conceded.
She had to give Vinny credit. The window was a perfect fit and took practically no shimming or shaving to fit into the slot intended for it. While Brett hammered in the last nails holding it in place, she caulked around it, sealing the opening securely for the first time since she’d lived here.
They unboarded the window openings and installed the remaining windows, working mostly in silence. With each one, her furnace caught up a bit more in its efforts to heat the house. Natural light streamed in for the first time since she’d lived here, and the cave-like gloom retreated. Her spirits lifted along with the temperature.
This house might turn into a livable home, yet. “Thank you so much for your help, Brett. You made that go a ton faster. I owe you huge. Let me pay you.”
He pulled back sharply, looking offended. “Since when don’t neighbors help each other out?”
Ah, yes. The credo of small towns. Spy on thy neighbor, gossip about thy neighbor, but help thy neighbor when they need it. “At least let me take you out to dinner or something.”
Brett stared at her doubtfully.
“Say yes,” she urged him. “Otherwise, I’ll feel guilty for taking advantage of you.”
His frown deepened. Rats. He was going to say no, and she really was going to feel bad about letting him work all morning on her house. “Fine,” he bit out.
Oh, God. Now she was the one with suddenly cold feet. Frostbit. Heck, frozen solid.
A date with Brett Morgan? Cripes. What on earth had she just done?
Chapter 5
How in the hell had he let Anna Larkin talk him into a freaking date? He stood in front of his closet, debating which of his extremely limited supply of decent shirts to wear tonight.
It didn’t mean anything. He had no intention of getting involved with her. She’d neatly maneuvered him into letting her thank him for helping install her windows. That was all. But hell’s bells, he’d polished his cowboy boots for this date of theirs.
He fingered his fresh-shaven jaw and the haircut that he’d gotten down at the barbershop in Sunny Creek before he’d headed back up to his cabin. Why had he felt compelled to get a damned haircut for her? After all, Anna was fully as skittish as he was about relationship stuff. She’d practically had a stroke when he set foot in her bedroom this morning.
Reggie leaned against his thigh affectionately, and he reached down to scratch the dog’s head. “What am I doing, buddy? I know better than to get involved with anyone right now. I’m a mess.”
Worse, the shrinks at the VA hospital hadn’t been able to give him any time frame in which his nightmares might subside or his memory return. Maybe never. They hoped a change in scenery from a hospital room would help the process, but so far, being back on Runaway Ranch hadn’t done anything but make him stir-crazy.
He was an idiot to let Anna talk him into this dinner thing. Public places made him sweat bullets, and the whole notion of being social with anyone panicked him. Although this morning with Anna hadn’t been so bad. Maybe because he sensed that she was as reluctant to deal with other human beings as he was. Hell of a pair they made.
Reggie barked from the living room.
“You’re better than a doorbell, Reg,” Brett commented as he headed for the door. Said doorbell thumped his tail on the floor happily. Brett pulled out a new rawhide bone for the Lab as Anna’s ridiculous little car huffed up to his cabin. Grabbing a coat, he headed outside quickly, lest she try to kill herself on his porch steps again.
Fine crystals of snow were drifting down as he stepped out into the soft darkness. Anna had just gotten out of her car and turned to face him as he jogged down the steps.
“Hey,” she murmured shyly.
“Hey,” he muttered back.
“Looks like more snow tonight,” she commented awkwardly.
“It’s supposed to get colder,” he replied equally awkwardly. “Why don’t we take my truck just to be safe?”
“But then my car will be stuck up here.”
“I can give you a tow down the mountain.”
“That sounds like a lot of trouble,” she said doubtfully.
He shrugged. “It’s better than you ending up in a ravine and freezing to death.”
“Well, when you put it that way…”
He moved to the passenger door of his truck and held it open silently, waiting. She took a step toward him. Another. His heart rate leaped. She was as skittish as a deer, and he stood perfectly still lest he scare her off. Step by step she approached him, and he took deep satisfaction in her hesitant trust.
Smiling a little, he backed up the truck, turned it around and headed down the mountain. They came out of the high valley above the main ranch complex, and the huge stone-and-log mansion his mother had insisted on building a few years back came into sight, a warm, golden jewel glowing against the snow.
“Your family’s home is magnificent,” Anna commented.
“I guess. It’s a house.”
“But not a home?” she asked astutely.
“My family’s complicated.”
She tensed beside him, and he glanced over at her curiously.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “We get along for the most part. We Morgans are just a noisy, rowdy bunch.”
“Sounds awful.”
He shrugged. “It was fun growing up here.”
She didn’t speak, so he asked, “Did you like growing up in Sunny Creek?”
“I had nothing against the town.”
But her childhood hadn’t been happy. Was that why she was so jumpy about men?
Silence fell in the cab of the truck as he turned out of the ranch and onto the main road.
“Why the Army?” she queried, surprising him.
“Mom, apple pie, and patriotism, I suppose.”
“What did you do in the Army?”
His knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. “Kill people,” he bit out.
She stared at him, wide-eyed. Welcome to the monster I really am, he thought bitterly.
“Want me to take you back to your car?” he asked tightly.
A heartbeat’s hesitation, then, “No.” Another hesitation. “I trust you.”
Aw, honey. That’s a mistake. He wished it wasn’t so, but he didn’t even trust himself.
He and his team had been ordered to patrol that stretch of terrorist-infested road. It was their duty to make sure convoys could pass through the area without getting shot to hell and back. But something had gone terribly wrong. That had been no simple improvised explosive device that blew up, killing four of his guys. What the hell had he missed? Had there been intel he’d failed to read? A report by a local liaison that should’ve warned him to expect more than crude IEDs?
If only he could remember exactly what happened. But the ambush was a blank in his mind. The shrinks said it was obscured by battle stress. That maybe someday he would remember it all. Or not.
Everyone hoped that coming home would relax him enough to cut the memory loose. A military board of inquiry was waiting for his testimony—but they wouldn’t wait forever to hear his side of the story. Eventually, they would run out of patience and charge him with dereliction of duty.
He realized he was jerking the steering wheel roughly, barreling along the main road toward town. He took his foot off the accelerator and slowed to a saner pace. It was harder to force his fists to ease up their death grip on the steering wheel.
“Where would you like to eat?” he managed to grind out past his clenched teeth.
“Not Sunny Creek,” she blurted. “There’s a new Italian place in Hillsdale. Want to try that?”
“Sure.” Not Sunny Creek, huh? Was she afraid to be seen with him? Not that he was complaining. Lord knew he wasn’t interested in feeding the local gossip mill.
“What brought you back home to Montana?” he asked curiously.
“I have no idea what I was thinking when I came back here.”
Despair laced her voice, reminding him sharply of that moment in the diner when she’d seemed to long for death. Obviously, she and Eddie had split up. He would have to ask his mother for details. She knew everything about everybody in town.
Anna was silent, pensive even, for most of the drive to Hillsdale. But as he ushered her into a blessedly dark little dive of a restaurant, she smiled bravely at him across the candle in the middle of the table.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
She blinked like she was startled. “I am, actually. You?”
He considered. “I guess I am.” Color him surprised. Since when had he gotten comfortable with her? Maybe when it had dawned on him that she didn’t want a darned thing from him.
The food was average, but given that he didn’t have to cook it, clean up after it and, furthermore, it was the first chicken parmesan he’d had in years, he enjoyed the meal far more than he’d expected to. He and Anna chatted about harmless topics—movies he’d missed in the past few years of being deployed, how bad he thought the coming winter would be this year, where kids they went to high school with had ended up. She conspicuously avoided discussing the fate of her husband.
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