Real Vintage Maverick

So, she’d finally settled on a new name, he thought, looking at the freshly painted sign. Real Vintage Cowboy. It was all in tall capitals and printed in eye-catching silver paint.

Cody rolled the name over in his head a couple of times, then nodded to himself. If nothing else, it was a definite improvement over the store’s previous name. He’d never quite understood why anyone would want a “tattered” saddle anyway.

Telling himself it was time to get a move on, Cody wound up remaining just where he was. He glanced up and looked through the bay window into the showroom rather than moving back to his truck.

Inside, Catherine was cleaning up a storm, just as she had been doing for the last two days. Although her sisters had initially offered to pitch in and help, she’d stubbornly turned them down. This was something that she was determined to manage on her own.

This way, whatever happened, success or failure, it would be hers alone.

But there were times—such as now when every bone in her body seemed to be protesting that it had been worked too hard—that she felt that perhaps she’d been a wee bit too hasty in summarily turning down her sisters’ offer that way.

So when she saw Cody looking in, her heart all but leaped up in celebration. The cavalry had been sighted. Now all that was needed was to pull it in.

Wiping her hands on the back of the jeans she’d decided were more fitting to the work she was doing than the long flowing skirts that she favored, Catherine hurried to the door and quickly pulled it open.

“Hi!” she greeted him with no small measure of enthusiasm, beaming at Cody. “C’mon in,” she urged with feeling.

Not waiting for him to make up his mind or to—heaven forbid—turn her invitation down, Catherine grabbed hold of his wrist with both hands and pulled him into the shop. She quickly shut the door behind him in case he was having second thoughts about their arrangement and wanted to leave.

Turning toward the shop behind her, she waved her free hand about. “It’s beginning to shape up, don’t you think?”

Cody looked around. To be completely honest, he was rather vague about exactly what the place had looked like two days ago, but he could see that she had painted the walls a rather soothing light blue. He assumed that she had done it because he saw a few light blue splotches of paint on her jeans.

Cody slowly nodded his approval, mainly for her benefit. His mother had taught him not to hurt people’s feelings if he could possibly avoid doing it, and Catherine seemed rather eager to hear a positive reaction. That being the case, it cost him nothing to give it.

“Looks good from where I’m standing,” he told her. Glancing down, he could see that she’d buffed the wooden floors as well. Had she been at this nonstop these last two days?

Well, at least the woman wasn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty, he mused.

Taking a quick look around, he saw the back of the sign through the window. He brightened because at least there was something he could actually comment on. “Saw the sign outside. Is that the new name you picked out for the store?”

“You mean Real Vintage Cowboy?” she asked to make sure he wasn’t referring to anything else.

When he nodded, Cody saw a strange, unfathomable smile curving her mouth. It piqued his dormant curiosity to some extent.

It piqued a little more when she told him, “Well, you’re actually responsible for that.”

The furrow above his nose deepened as he sought to understand what Catherine had just said. He was certain he hadn’t suggested a name like that to her. He hadn’t suggested any name at all that he could remember. She had to have him confused with someone else.

“Me?” Cody said incredulously, staring at her. “I don’t understand. How?”

Again, he found the way the corners of her mouth curved intriguing—and completely captivating. “That was what I thought you looked like. A vintage cowboy. The more I thought about it, the more I began to think that it sounded like a good name for the store. So you inspired the name,” she concluded brightly. “I guess you could say you’re my muse.”

“What the hell is a muse?” Cody wanted to know. He thought of himself as a plain man, given to speaking plainly. This sounded like some kind of doubletalk to him.

She took no offense at his tone, although she would have thought that he’d be flattered. But then, there was no second-guessing men. Growing up with her bothers had taught her that.

“A muse is something or someone who inspires another person creatively,” she told him.

He was having a hard time making the connection. He looked around the store and shook his head. It didn’t make any sense to him.

“And I make you think of dusty old junk that people want to get rid of?” Cody asked her, not sure whether to be amused by this or offended.

Given his tone of voice, Catherine was instantly worried that he was taking offense and she didn’t want him to. She’d meant it as a compliment.

“Not junk,” she protested with feeling. “What I’m selling in the shop are rescued artifacts that once figured very prominently in people’s lives.”

To underscore her point, Catherine motioned toward the shelves directly behind her. Shelves she had so painstakingly arranged. The shelves were filled with newly cleaned merchandise, shown off to their best possible advantage. It was a potpourri of objects in all sorts of bright colors.

Currently, the sun was playing off the surface of several of the pieces, highlighting the metal and making them gleam like mysterious talismans.

“Everything you see here is vintage chic,” she told him proudly.

He inclined his head, taking a closer look, then raised one shoulder in a half shrug. “If you say so,” he murmured. Ever practical, he turned his attention to something that he was better equipped to understand. “Who are you getting to put your sign up?”

Catherine turned around to look through the window in the general direction he’d nodded in and said, “I hadn’t thought about ‘getting’ someone. I figured that I’d just do it myself—”

That was what he was afraid of.

Cody looked at her up and down slowly, taking full measure of her. His expression when he finished clearly said that he had found her wanting.

He snorted rather than say anything outright. His point driven home, he then asked, “You got that ladder handy?” referring to the one she’d fallen off of at their first meeting.

Did he think she was a complete helpless idiot? she wondered. How else did he think she was going to get up to the roof to hang the sign?

“Yes, it’s in the back.” The words were hardly out of her mouth when she saw Cody start to walk to the back room. The man was just taking over, she thought. She liked him, liked his company, but that couldn’t be allowed to happen.

“Where are you going?” she wanted to know.

“To get your ladder and hang that sign up for you,” Cody threw over his shoulder as he disappeared into the back room.

She didn’t want him to feel obligated to do anything except give her a little input on what he thought of certain things. That was their deal.

Hurrying after Cody, Catherine stopped short of the back room doorway because he was already coming out. He had the ladder mounted like a giant shield over one muscular shoulder while he carried a hammer he’d spotted and pressed into service in the other.

Pivoting a hundred and eighty degrees on her heel, Catherine followed him back through the showroom. Was he just displaying his machismo? Or was he feeling obligated for some reason?

“You don’t have to do this,” she protested with feeling as she continued to follow him.

He paused fleetingly to give her a quick, appraising look. Catherine could have sworn she felt a flash of heat pass through her.

That had to stop, she silently upbraided herself. She had no time to react to Cody in those terms. She had a business to launch.

“Yeah, I do,” he answered with finality. “I’m better at hanging up a sign than I am at setting broken bones.”

She was right behind him, step for step. “Contrary to what you might think, I’m not some helpless woman who’s all thumbs,” she informed him. “And I’m not a klutz. I’ve got great balance and I’m very handy.”

“Good for you,” he fired back. “Where I come from, men don’t stand around watching women do this kind of work,” he told her with feeling. He was thinking specifically of Caroline’s husband. Rory Connors would have liked nothing better than to never have to move another muscle in his body for as long as he lived if he didn’t want to.

That no-good SOB had his baby sister doing all the heavy work—and she wasn’t up to half of it. He was certain that was why Caroline had lost the baby she was carrying before it had even gotten through its first trimester. He recalled with anger that his brother-in-law had expressed no remorse over the loss that had all but completely devastated Caroline.

On the contrary, Connors had actually been relieved, saying that there was no room for “brats” in his life right now.

Or ever, Cody suspected. The man was far too egotistical and self-centered to share Caroline with even a baby.

Cody slowly became aware that Catherine was laughing. When he looked at her quizzically, waiting for an explanation, the woman was quick to let him in on the joke.

“Um, this might not have occurred to you but you and I come from the exact same place,” she pointed out.

He frowned as he steadied the ladder, picked up the sign and then began to climb up. She was right. “Yeah, well, then you should know that I wasn’t about to have you climbing up to the top, tottering on the ladder while you tried to hang this sign up. I was quick enough to catch you last time. I might not be this time.”

“I wasn’t going to try to hang it up,” she corrected with just a slight edge to her voice. She liked him and she knew he meant well, but she didn’t like being thought of as inept. “I was going to hang it up. There’s not exactly a need for an engineering degree when it comes to hanging up a sign,” Catherine pointed out. “And I figure I’ve filled my quota of falling off ladders. That was my first time and my only time,” she emphasized.

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.

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