Stories of family and romance beneath the Big Sky!

“Can’t believe a little thing like you could overturn me like that.”

Lori half smiled. “I’m stronger than I look.” That was her hope, anyway. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?” Her face heated again as their tangle replayed in her mind. The man probably thought she was certifiable for going into maul-the-mugger mode at the slightest contact.

Josh shook his head. “I’m fine. You might consider registering with the sheriff as a lethal weapon, though.”

Her eyebrows rose. “My hands, you mean?”

His eyebrows lifted, too, and another one of those slow smiles warmed his rugged face. “The whole package, sweetheart.”

In Love with Her Boss

Christie Ridgway

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHRISTIE RIDGWAY

Native Californian Christie Ridgway started reading and writing romances in middle school. It wasn’t until she was the wife of her college sweetheart and the mother of two small sons that she submitted her work for publication. Many contemporary romances later, she is happiest when telling her stories despite the splash of kids in the pool, the mass of cups and plates in the kitchen and the many commitments she makes in the world beyond her desk.

Besides loving the men in her life and her dream-come-true job, she continues her longtime love affair with reading and is never without a stack of books. You can find out more about Christie at her website, www.christieridgway.com.

For Barbara Freethy, a great listener.

Thanks.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter One

The calendar read December twenty-fourth, but Lori Hanson wanted to forget all about Christmas. She wanted to forget a lot of things, truth to tell, which was why she was impatient to begin her workout at the state-of-the-art facility located at Whitehorn High School in Whitehorn, Montana. Standing in the small entry area, she clutched her gym bag in one hand and used the other to dig in her coat pocket for her membership card.

Card located, she stepped up to the desk, ignoring the Christmas carols piping cheerfully through the speakers, the red-and-green tinsel draped along the counter, the fuzzy Santa hat perched on the head of the high-school boy who was there to check her in. His winning smile was impossible to avoid, though. “Merry Christmas,” he said.

“You, too,” Lori murmured, hoping her Scrooge mood didn’t show. But Christmas was for families, something she didn’t have in Whitehorn…not yet.

The boy took her card and wrote her name down in a ledger book. “New member?” he asked.

“Yes, I sure am.” She’d only been in Whitehorn a week, but she’d joined the gym the day after finding her small apartment and hours after she’d gone shopping for a winter-in-Montana wardrobe and groceries. To Lori, working out had become a necessity on a par with shelter, clothing and food.

“Texas?” the high-schooler asked as he handed back her card.

Lori frowned. “Texas?”

“Your accent.” The boy grinned. “My mom loves to watch those Dallas reruns.”

“Oh. No. I’m from South Carolina.” But she was never going back there. She couldn’t.

“South Carolina.” His forehead scrunched in thought, he leaned back in his chair. “Capital city, Columbia, population approximately 4 million, major economic features are textile manufacturing, tourism and agriculture.”

At Lori’s clear surprise, he grinned again. “County geography champ last year.”

This time Lori had to grin back, because his big, open smile was that cute. When she was in high school she would certainly have fallen in love with a boy like this one. Then her smile faded. Those years were long gone, though, and when she had fallen in love it was with a man who had kept his true nature hidden. She shoved her card back in her pocket and turned toward the women’s locker room.

The boy wasn’t through with her, though. “Winter in Montana’s going to be a shock,” he advised.

She sent him a half-smile over her shoulder, but kept on walking. She’d been shocked before. She had come to Montana in winter to get away from all that. To make a new start.

The locker room was deserted. Probably most women were completing their last-minute Christmas shopping or putting the finishing touches on a big family meal. Lori stifled a sharp pang of loneliness and focused instead on shedding her heavy outer clothing and exchanging her winter boots for her running shoes. The sooner she started running, the sooner she could forget her troubles.

The weight room was nearly empty too, but on its other side there was a basketball game in progress on one of the courts surrounding the indoor running track. She paused, out of long habit cautiously surveying the men at play.

Though they were the right age, somewhere in their thirties, none of them had the lean, almost slight build of the man she was constantly on watch for. Thank God.

Relaxing, she continued watching for a minute. Goodness, the males grew big in Montana. The players on the court were all over six feet tall—one of them probably six and a half feet!—with heavy shoulders and broad chests to match.

In various examples of ragged workout wear, they sweated and grunted and thundered up and down the court, trading good-natured insults. Lori finally moved her gaze from them and walked onto the gray-surfaced track. Eager to begin, she had to force herself to stretch before running. Shoulders, hamstrings, calves: she methodically warmed them up.

A harsh shout from the basketball court caused her to flinch—raised voices still did that to her—but she made herself complete her final stretches. Then, only then, did she allow herself to start running.

Aaaah. It was almost a physical sigh that rippled through her mind as she began. A year ago, when she’d taken up running, it had merely been a part of an overall conditioning routine that she’d used to get control over her life. Self-defense classes, some weight training, the running, they were ways to gain confidence.

But the running had gained her something else, too. A runner’s high. The zone, as she described it to herself. It was a place where the past couldn’t find her and where she could calmly escape her present worries as well.

Even now, the murals painted on the walls of the gym began to blur. They were beautiful scenes of Montana, wildflowers, snow on the Crazy Mountains, elk on rugged plains, but as her pace increased their colors blurred. The mingled sounds of “Jingle Bells” and the thud of the basketball against wood receded too, and Lori’s mood lifted.

She was safe here. Safe in the zone. Safe in Montana. It was right to come back to her mother’s hometown. The day after Christmas she’d start her temporary job. And some days after that, she’d begin on the real task that had brought her here to Whitehorn.

Her speed picked up another notch, and she felt her long hair fluttering against the back of her neck. In South Carolina, she’d run outdoors, and even in the zone she’d run with one eye looking over her shoulder at all times. In Montana it was going to be different.

The hair at her temples dampened, though the breeze her own movement created dried the sweat on her face. She reveled in the pumping motion of her arms and legs, in her escalating mood, in—

A body bumped into Lori from behind. Impressions flashed through her mind.

Huge. Heavy breath. Grasping hands.

Panic speared her. Her feet skittered forward. Strong fingers bit into her arms. She was jerked upright, back.

Then survival instincts woke. A burst of adrenaline surged through her muscles. With desperate strength, she tried pulling free of her assailant. Both off-balance, their feet tangled. They pitched forward. Lori landed belly-down on the running surface, the man half on top of her.

Even with the breath knocked out of her, two years of self-defense classes exploded into action. No! Not this time! Lori’s mind screamed.

With a frantic twist, she heaved off his weight. Leverage on her side now, she threw herself over him, her forearm across his throat. Gulping one desperate breath, she tossed her hair out of her face and looked down into his eyes. Into the eyes of…

A stranger. A dark-eyed, dark-haired stranger.

Aghast, yet still half-afraid, Lori jumped up, then backed away from the massive form lying on the ground like a felled tree. Male laughter rang out, and she glanced around, bewildered. The basketball game had halted and the players were looking at her.

No, at him.

He was looking at her.

His face, all angles made up of strong cheekbones and a chiseled jaw, appeared rough-hewn, handsome, even when slightly dazed. His eyes were bittersweet-chocolate brown with long black lashes she’d have had to use two coats of mascara to achieve. He blinked, as if trying to clear his head.

Lori swallowed, a new kind of alarm zinging through her. “I’m so sorry. Are you…are you all right?”

He didn’t move. “Depends on if you’re asking me or my ego.”

She swallowed again. “What?”

He seemed to consider a moment. “Okay. The answer is, I’m fine, but the ego might need a good soak in the whirlpool.” His mouth lifted in the slowest, sweetest smile Lori had ever seen in her life. “Join me?” he asked.

She took a giant step back. “No.”

“But it’s Christmas.” His crestfallen expression made her feel as if she’d stolen the ribbon from around a teddy bear’s neck.

Then he rose to his feet, and she just felt afraid. The basketball player she’d attacked was the huge one she’d noticed earlier. He towered over her five feet eight inches and, as he came toward her, Lori found herself retreating farther.

Her heart slammed against her chest as he just kept coming. She scuttled back some more.

“Watch—” he started, reaching out.

Too late. Her feet tripped over a basketball. With resigned dismay, she realized she was falling again. His huge hand came nearer, as if to catch her, and by some miracle—fear over physics—she managed to regain her balance before he could touch her. She felt her face flush.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Lori couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so clumsy. “It depends on if you’re asking me or my ego.”

At her little joke, he smiled again, slow and big. “I’m Josh,” he said, bending to retrieve the ball.

“Lori,” she answered, moving back another step.

Catcalls from the court had him glancing over her head and he tossed the basketball toward his teammates. “I’m sorry, Lori. The first apology should have been mine. I was chasing after the ball and didn’t look where I was going.”

Her breathing could finally settle down, but, funny, it didn’t. “I’m sorry too. I…overreacted.”

He shrugged, his massive shoulders moving up and down. “Can’t believe a little thing like you could overturn me like that.”

She half smiled. “I’m stronger than I look.” That was her hope, anyway.

The other men were shouting at him from the court. Lori glanced over her shoulder. “I think they want you to rejoin the game. You’re sure you’re not hurt?” Her face heated again as their tangle replayed in her mind. The man probably thought she was certifiable for going into maul-the-mugger-mode at the slightest contact.

He shook his head. “I’m fine. You might considering registering with the sheriff as a lethal weapon, though.”

Her eyebrows rose. “My hands, you mean?”

His eyebrows lifted, too. “The whole package, sweetheart.” With another of those slow smiles warming his rugged face, he touched two fingers to his forehead in a casual salute and then jogged back to his game.

Struck dumb by his good looks and almost offhand charm, Lori found herself staring after him. She was still standing there three baskets later, when despite his large size, he made a graceful, clean swish of two points and glanced over at her, grinning in triumph.

With a jerk, Lori got herself moving again, even as yet another blush crawled up her neck to her cheeks. Steering way clear of the game, she headed for the locker room.

There were some things it wasn’t smart to forget, not even for a moment. South Carolina hadn’t been safe because of a man. She wasn’t going to let the same thing happen to her here in Montana.

By the time she was back in her outerwear, she was feeling a lot less flustered. She hadn’t seen Josh at the gym before today, and she probably never would see him again. If she did, she’d ignore him. That would be simple enough.

The day after Christmas, Lori braked her car in front of a small building and opened her notebook to recheck the address she was seeking. Though a small sign declared the place was indeed Anderson, Inc., the site of her temporary job, the dark-red, wood-sided building looked more like an old schoolhouse than the office of a construction company.

But the address was the correct one, so she parked her car in the small attached lot beside a behemoth four-wheel-drive SUV, then headed for the front door. Her black boots made quiet clacks against the brick pathway. She’d teamed the boots with a long black wool skirt and a chunky black sweater. An austere look, maybe, but warm. Her roots might be in Montana, but her leaves were definitely more accustomed to the milder Southern winters.

Despite her woolen clothing, a small shiver rolled down her spine. But it was normal apprehension, not a quaking, stomach-knotting fear, thank God. She was starting the first job of her new life today, and she desperately wanted it to go smoothly.

Through the plate-glass front door, Lori spied the orangey curls of Lucy Meyer. The fortyish woman was a new mom and Lori had been hired to replace her as the receptionist while Lucy took maternity leave. They’d met once—in Lucy’s home. Her baby had just arrived—a month early—and Lucy was anxious to get someone to help “the boss” as she referred to the head of the company, Mr. Anderson, as soon as possible.

When Lori opened the door, Lucy turned toward her with a smile. “Come in, come in,” the other woman said, bustling forward with characteristic energy.

Lori walked into an expansive reception area. Centered on the wall to her right sat a woodburning stove that was pumping out pleasant heat. A large oval rag rug, in shades of red and cream, covered a honey-toned wooden floor. Several comfortable-looking chairs and a selection of magazines made the room appear even more homey.

Lucy took Lori’s coat and hung it on one of the brass hooks attached to the wall by the door. “I want to get you as familiar with things as I can before the squeaker gets hungry,” she said.

Lori smiled, her nervousness allayed by the unexpected pleasantness of the office. “Where is Baby Walt?”

Lucy jerked her head in the direction of a doorway off the waiting area. “With the boss. I’ll introduce you to him in a minute.”

Lori had only a second to peer through the indicated door, and only another to absorb a glimpse of a massive desk with a pair of giant-sized, booted feet propped atop it. Then Lucy drew her away.

“This is where you sit,” she said. Centered a few feet from the front door was an old wooden desk that looked as if it had once belonged to a schoolmistress. A computer and state-of-the-art phone system on its top appeared efficient, though anachronistic.

Lori took notes as Lucy explained the workings of the phone and the small amount of computer work the receptionist’s job entailed. Then she followed the other woman down a short hall that led to a bathroom, a large conference area and an almost-closet that held a refrigerator and coffeemaker.

They were standing in the filing-cum-supply room when Lucy suddenly stilled. “Uh-oh,” she said. “The squeaker. I’d better go rescue the boss.”

As they exited the room, Lori could hear the baby fussing herself, and a man’s deep voice trying to soothe him. Then the baby and man noises sounded louder, as if both were coming toward Lori and Lucy. Lori straightened her shoulders and smoothed her skirt, hoping she was going to like Mr. Anderson as much as she liked his office space.

Lori and Lucy turned the corner into the reception area, coming face-to-face with Baby Walt and Mr. Anderson. Lori stiffened.

Apparently Mr. Anderson was Mr. Josh Anderson.

Lori’s Josh.

Not her Josh, she amended hastily, but that mammoth Josh she’d hoped never to see again. Just that morning, she’d been relieved not to run in to him—figuratively or literally—when she’d worked out at the gym right after dawn.

His eyebrows rose in mild surprise as he transferred the baby to his mother’s arms. “Who’s your new friend?” he asked Lucy over the child’s fussing.

Lucy had eyes only for the baby. “She’s your new receptionist. I told you she was coming in today. Josh Anderson, this is Lori Hanson.”

“We’ve met,” he said.

That caught Lucy’s attention. She looked up. “What?”

Lori tried to think what to do. Even with five feet separating them, Josh was so big. Too big. And her heart was pumping too hard. “I—”

She clamped her mouth shut on her immediate urge to say she couldn’t take the position after all. The temporary agency she’d signed with wouldn’t be exactly thrilled if she couldn’t stay on the job for even an hour. “We met at the gym,” she told Lucy.

The other woman’s gaze sharpened. “Really? How—” The baby wailed louder, and Lucy broke off to change his position. Then she looked over at Josh, her expression rueful. “I’m taking Lori through the files, and the squeaker’s noise is going to echo like crazy off the metal cabinets. I recommend you take an hour’s coffee break—at least a block away.”

Some of the tension left Lori’s shoulders. With Josh out of the office, she could pump Lucy for information about him and then decide if she could really take on this assignment.

But Josh was shaking his head. “I’m expecting some plans to be dropped off.”

Lori let out a slow breath. Okay, so he’d still be around. But in the privacy of the filing room, she knew that the talkative Lucy would be happy to give an honest assessment of her boss.

The baby wiggled and cried louder. Josh reached out his enormous hand and ran it over the back of the baby’s fuzzy head. “Luce, why don’t you take Walt home? I can show Lori what she needs to know.”

“Oh, but—” Another infant wail interrupted Lucy’s protest. “I think I will,” she said, with a grateful smile. “If you don’t mind, Lori?”

As if she could ask a new mother to put off taking her unhappy infant home. Smiling weakly, Lori shook her head. “I’ll be fine with Mr. Anderson.”

“Josh,” he said. “Just Josh.”

“I’ll be fine,” she echoed obediently, thinking of his big hand on the baby’s tiny head. “With Josh.” Wouldn’t she?

In the few minutes it took for Lucy to gather her things, though, Lori’s nervousness grew. When the front door shut behind the other woman, its thud was nothing compared to the loud, anxious thumping of her heart.

But she could do this, she thought, sitting down in the receptionist’s chair and pulling her notebook and pencil front and center. It didn’t matter that he was standing on the other side of her desk and that they were alone in the office. It didn’t matter that he was big. That he was young and good-looking. He was just her boss.

Keep it impersonal, she told herself. They’d concentrate their attention on files, phone calls, blueprints. Business.

Her eyes focused in the vicinity of the second button of the denim workshirt he was wearing with a pair of clean but worn jeans, she made her voice brisk. “Where would you like to start?”

“I keep thinking I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

Her gaze jumped to his. His dark eyebrows were drawn together over his dark brown eyes. His coffee-colored hair was slightly shaggy. Its ends brushed against his collar as he shook his head. “You’re familiar.”

Uneasiness drew like a cold finger down her spine. “The gym,” she said, her mouth dry.

He shook his head again. “No. Somewhere else…someone else?”

She didn’t want him pursuing that line of thought. “But I’ve never been to Montana before.” Except for the first few weeks following her conception. “Have you ever been to South Carolina?”

He hitched one hip onto the corner of her desk. “So that’s where the pretty accent comes from.”

“Yes.” His intense regard was making her palms sweat, so she cast about for another subject. “Why don’t you…why don’t you give me a little history of the company?” Maybe it wasn’t as impersonal as she would have liked, but at least it was off the subject of her person.

Josh settled himself more comfortably on the edge of the desk. She tried not to stare at the long muscles of his thigh, but sheesh! the man was substantial.

“My dad built the business,” Josh said. A little smile played around his mouth, and she wondered if he’d noticed where her gaze had wandered. “I’m the youngest of four—all the rest girls. My sisters are married now and scattered between Montana and California. But growing up, Dad and I spent a lot of time at the construction sites—pure self-defense—because a houseful of women can be…daunting.”

Hah. Lori didn’t think this man could be daunted by anyone, but three sisters went a long way to explaining his self-deprecating charm. “Your father is retired now?”

Josh nodded. “He and Mom travel around in a Winnebago most of the year in order to serially spoil their ten grandchildren.”

A big family. Sisters. Nieces and nephews. A wealth of people to turn to when times were bad.

“What about you?”

The sudden question made her jump. “M-me?”

“You.” He smiled, that slow smile that turned her insides upside down. “Are you the petted youngest, the earnest eldest, what?”

“The lonely only.” The words just slipped from her mouth and her face instantly heated. He didn’t need to know anything about her. She didn’t want a man, any man, to get that close.

It was as if he could read her mind. “Do I make you nervous?” he asked.

“Of course not.”

His face softened, as if he knew she was lying but forgave her for it. “Well,” he said. “You make me nervous.”

She blinked. “I do?”

“Yeah.” He let a beat go by. “It’s not many women who flatten me.”

Something warm flowed through the air between them. Lori felt it touch her skin, making it tingle, making her pulse skitter.

Her panic jumped to a new level. But this was a different kind of panic than she felt around most men. A new panic, or a forgotten one. Yet Josh was still dangerous.

She looked down at her notebook. “Perhaps we should get to work.”

The warm current between them wasn’t interrupted, but she knew he understood what she hadn’t said. He rose to his feet. “Where did Lucy leave off?”

For the next half hour he took her around the office, explaining what Lucy hadn’t had the chance to. Finally, they ended up in his office, where he showed her the rack of rolled blueprints that represented the company’s current projects.

He settled into the big leather chair behind his desk and she perched on the chair opposite, her gaze snagging on plaques on the wall behind his head. Probably two dozen hung there, mostly team pictures of little kids. Boys, girls, basketball, baseball, football, their uniforms all proclaiming Anderson, Inc.

Josh twisted around to see what had caught her attention then turned back. “Now you know my secret.”

“Your secret?” She didn’t want to know it. Of course she did. “What secret?”

“I’m a sucker for a kid in a uniform.” He sighed. “Any uniform.”

She felt the smile start at her toes. When it reached her mouth, he smiled back, as if delighted. “Any uniform?” she asked.

He nodded sadly. “There’s the cutest little Brownie who lives next door to me. I bought out her whole troop’s worth of cookies.” There was a gleaming wooden credenza behind him and he pulled open one of its drawers to display box after box of Girl Scout cookies. “I couldn’t help myself.”

His eyes were serious as they met hers. “So the next time you’re in the mood for a thin mint, do me a favor, will you, and eat a whole box?” Then he grinned.

That heated, tingly current rushed like a flash flood toward her. It wasn’t what she wanted, it wasn’t what she was looking for, not in the least, but she didn’t seem to have any choice but to let the feeling sweep over her. Sweep around her.

After two confusing years of marriage and three years during which she’d been both frozen and afraid, it was as if her feminine senses had come awake with one quick jolt. Or with one quick fall to the floor of the gym.

“Lori—” he started, then the phone rang. She jumped for it, but he held her off with his hand and lifted the receiver himself. She could feel his eyes on her, even as he spoke some important-sounding specifications.

Half embarrassed and half scared of what Josh might be seeing on her face, Lori looked away. Her gaze moved to the Girl Scout cookies in the drawer to another photo, this one sitting on top of the credenza itself. It was a framed photo of a blond bride.

Josh’s wife.

She didn’t question her immediate conclusion. He certainly wouldn’t choose to display just one of his sisters, and the beautiful woman looked like the type big, dark Josh would love.

He was married.

A feeling twisted her insides. Relief, she guessed. Whatever current she’d been feeling was imagined, or at the very worst, all on her side.

Josh was a married man. As he completed his phone call, she let that knowledge sink in. He wasn’t any kind of threat to her. She didn’t have to worry about him getting too close.

He was a husband.

At the click of receiver to cradle she looked up. Stood up. “I’ll just get back to my desk.”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you all right?”

Lori realized he wasn’t wearing a ring. But for a man who worked with his hands, that was probably a good idea.

“Are you all right?” he asked again.

Of course. Now she was. Whatever was between them was something she’d obviously misread—she was so good at misreading men—and—

“What are you looking at?”

Until that moment, she hadn’t realized she was looking at anything. But then he swung around to follow her gaze. They both stared at the photo of the bride.

Lori swallowed. “Your wife?” She thought her voice sounded normal.

Josh nodded.

“She’s beautiful,” Lori said. Then she smiled at him, because it was going to be okay. He was safe now. He was married.

But he didn’t smile back as a shadow crossed his face. “She was. Kay died five years ago. I’m a widower.”

Chapter Two

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Lori said, her voice soft and sincere.

“Thank you.” Josh looked away from the photo and back at the beautiful woman standing on the other side of his desk, cursing whatever it was about her that made him feel as if his hands, his feet, his Adam’s apple were all too big. But he felt more than just physically awkward at the moment.

When was the last time he’d told someone he was a widower? In the small town of Whitehorn, after that first, awful day, everyone had known.

He cleared his throat.

She shuffled her feet.

“Is there—”

“Why don’t—”

They both broke off.

Josh took a breath. “Ladies first.”

Lori clutched her notebook against her chest. “I was going to ask if there was anything else you wanted to tell me before I went back to my desk.”

Yeah. He wanted to tell her she was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen. It was the damn truth. Dark hair, blue eyes, creamy skin tinged with just a hint of peach. And her voice…it was moonlight. It was Southern, moonlit nights with fluttering lace curtains and bodies tangled on a bed.

He wanted to tell her he’d never considered himself a romantic man, but looking at her filled his thoughts with an embarrassment of bad lyrics to a country western song.

He wanted to tell her he’d fallen to the floor of the gym on Christmas Eve a settled, thirty-seven-year-old man and gotten up a randy teenager again, in instant lust for her long legs, her long dark hair, her full mouth. The way she’d stared back at him, her gaze filled with equal parts attraction and wariness, had done nothing to cool him off. That same gaze from her now didn’t dampen his interest one bit.

Yet, see, there was that wariness, so instead he said, “Sit down for another minute. I want to know a little more about you.”

Snails moved more quickly. Rain clouds appeared cheerier. After she finally returned to her chair, she reached inside her notebook and slid out a sheet of paper. “My resumé,” she said, handing it to him.

He didn’t even glance at it. “Why don’t you tell me?”

She delivered the facts without emotion. “I moved to Montana from South Carolina last week. I signed on with the Whitehorn Temporary Agency. They sent me to Lucy. Lucy hired me.”

Despite the dryness of the details, he could listen to that soft accent all day. South Carolina. Montana. The words were prettier in her Southern voice. “But why?” he asked. “Why Montana?”

She shrugged. “I grew up in the South. It was…time for something different. Someplace different.”

“But why would you pick Whitehorn? We’re not exactly Billings or Missoula.”

She shrugged again, and her gaze dropped to her notebook.

Frustrated, he looked down at her resumé. She was twenty-eight years old. She’d gone to college in South Carolina, in a town he thought he recognized as located at the southern end of the state. She had a degree in business administration. He looked up. “You have a college degree and you’re temping as a receptionist?”

“It’s work,” she said. “Experience.”

That non-explanation sent him back to perusing her resumé. Which made her even more of a mystery. For more than two years following her college graduation, there was no employment listed. And in the past three years she’d held seven different jobs in several different South Carolina cities.

She was either easily bored or on the run.

He frowned. “Why—”

“Does it matter?” she interrupted. Steel suddenly hardened that soft Southern accent. “I’m technically employed by the temp agency, Mr. Anderson. They were satisfied. If you’re not…” She shrugged, as if she wouldn’t care if their paths never crossed again. “Call them and they’ll send someone else over.”

Okay. That put him in his place. Josh had no reason to feel she’d slapped him across the face, because she was right. Her employment history—or lack thereof—was none of his business. Not as long as she fulfilled her duties as Anderson, Inc.’s receptionist.

But he was irritated by her reticence because he wanted to know about her. Know her. And a few minutes ago he could have sworn there were sparks flying between them. Even before that, at the gym, her gaze meeting his had given him an I’m-Adam-you’re-Eve rush that he hadn’t felt in a long, long while.

With a mental shrug, he threw off his disappointment. Lori was beautiful, but so were a lot of women. She was an enigma, but he’d never been very good at puzzles. And the bottom line was that she wasn’t interested in his…interest.

Sure, their mutual attraction was undeniable. Some things a man just knew; like, he knew which side to part his hair on or the exact spot to hit the basketball backboard for his best lay-up. But, right now Lori was putting up a sign that screamed Back Off in big neon letters, and she didn’t need to flash it at him more than once.

So fine. The lady wanted nothing to do with him. He got it. He’d put his focus strictly on business and forget all about her.

He did okay for a while. A few hours. There were a dozen phone calls to field, a fire or two to put out at one of the construction sites. By afternoon, though, when he was back at his desk and staring at piles of work, the only thing moving through his head was the enticing, peachy scent of his new receptionist.

Ms. Hanson. He’d decided to call her that.

She responded in the prim manner of the schoolmistress who had once ruled over this old building. With an efficiency that put his teeth on edge, she located the files he asked for. Tracked down a wayward bill. Watered the plant in the corner of his office that he usually treated to desert rations. After those words over her resumé, never once did she seem to be aware of him the way he couldn’t help being aware of her.

When the sky outside his window started to darken, he wandered into the office’s reception area to check on the supply of firewood in the brass box sitting beside the woodburning stove. But it was chock-full and there was a telltale, winter-air pink on the receptionist’s cheeks and nose.

He frowned at her. “Ms. Hanson. Restocking the wood isn’t your responsibility.”

From the chair at her desk, she looked up at him. A pencil was stuck behind her ear, pushing a lock of hair forward so that it tangled in her curly black eyelashes. “I don’t mind.”

“Well I do.” His voice was just short of surly. “It’s heavy. You could be hurt.”

She brushed the hair out of her eyes. “I’m stronger than I look.”

“So you’ve told me before,” he said. “That day at the gym.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Then you should believe me.”

Instead of a good comeback the only thing that occurred to him was the memory of his body lying across hers, so he stomped back to his office and dropped behind his desk. He was acting like an oaf, or worse, a jerk, but there was something about her that aroused his protective instincts. It was that wariness. It was that Southern voice.

It was that peachy scent.

He opened up the nearest file and pretended he was looking at it. Perhaps he’d been all wrong about the mutual attraction. He was thirty-seven, supposedly old enough to know when something was there and when something wasn’t. But maybe he was going through some pre-midlife crisis. Maybe he was entering some delusional psychological state in which he imagined beautiful women had the hots for him.

What a depressing thought.

Depressing enough to send him stomping back to the reception area. “Ms. Hanson?” he barked.

She blinked those astonishing blue eyes of hers. “Mr. Anderson?”

He hesitated. For God’s sake, he couldn’t come right out and ask her if she was attracted to him. There was probably some sort of employment code about that, not to mention what his sisters would say if they ever heard about it. His ears burned just imagining his mother’s reaction to something so bad-mannered.

“Call me Josh,” he muttered, then stalked back to his desk.

As the afternoon wore on, his mood darkened. Lori Hanson was hell on his ego. On Christmas Eve, he’d been forced into buying the first round of beers for the team because he’d been bested by a woman. He’d laughed about it, been a good sport about his friends’ ribbing, because he had no problem with strong females. Risk-taking women were trouble, but not strong ones. Until he’d turned ten and outstripped all three of his older sisters in size, they’d flattened him often enough for him to be used to it.

But to make him doubt his powers of perception! That ability to recognize when a woman liked a man and when she didn’t was the only thing a man had between himself and humiliation. Since Kay’s death he’d enjoyed the companionship of women on occasion, always with the certainty that his attention was welcome. Because he knew which women welcomed him. Always.

But now…

Now he didn’t know if he had his signals crossed or if the ones she sent out were the problem.

Sighing, he cast a look at the deepening dark outside his window, then at the clock. It was 4:55. Well, the good news was that any second now Ms. How-the-hell-do-I-know-what-she’s-thinking Hanson would be on her way home. Then he could settle down and finish all the work that he should have been finishing that afternoon.

At 5:05 she hadn’t left her desk.

At 5:20, the only movements she’d made were to run her hands through her hair and frown at the computer screen.

When it was exactly 5:30, he made himself exit his office and tell her she’d been free to leave for half an hour. She hmmed absently, wrapped up with some paperwork on her desk.

By 5:45, he considered taking all his paperwork and dumping it on her, because only one of them seemed to be able to work in the other’s presence.

At 6:00 he couldn’t take it anymore. “Ms. Hanson,” he yelled from his desk.

“Yes, Mr. Anderson?” came from the reception area.

“Josh.” He grabbed hold of his temper. “Ms. Hanson, it’s time for you to go home.”

He thought she made another one of those absent hmms. With a look at the massive amount of work he had yet to finish, he strode into the reception area. “Ms. Hanson,” he said from between his teeth. “Go home.”

She didn’t look at him. “Soon.”

“You’ve done enough for today.” While I’ve done nothing but make myself crazy. “It’s time to knock off.”

She sucked in one edge of her bottom lip. “I’ll leave when you do.”

Staring at her mouth, he knew if she stayed he’d never get anything done. Obviously, someone had sent her here to drive him over the edge. One of his competitors. One of his so-called friends. His sister Dana, who had never truly forgiven him for catching her entire Senior Prom date on audiotape.

God, now his delusional thoughts were sliding into paranoia. Exasperated, his voice came out strangled. “Ms. Hanson, what the hell is wrong with you? I tell you to go home and you stay. What is it—are you afraid of the dark?”

She stilled. Her eyelashes lifted to reveal those blue-as-some-exotic-flower eyes.

Josh’s gut twisted. Don’t, he thought, suddenly as desperate not to know any more about her as he’d been desperate to know more about her earlier. Don’t say it.

But then she did. “Yes.”

Lori knew Josh wasn’t happy as he held open Anderson Inc.’s front door for her. “You should have said something,” he grumbled, following her into the darkness.

She pretended the heat on her cheeks was from the cold night air, not her embarrassment. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m in a new place…it’s unfamiliar—”

“Don’t apologize,” he said shortly. “I should have thought of it myself.”

It wasn’t his fault. “It’s me. The dark parking lot…”

“I’m going to get one of the men to install a light out there tomorrow,” he said.

Halting on the brick walkway, she turned to him. “Oh, no—”

“Lori.” In the darkness, his body was a massive shadow, but his voice was gentle. “It’s done. But to ease your mind even more, remember this isn’t the big city. You’re in Whitehorn now.”

“Yes.” Looking up, she took a deep breath of the clean, icy air. Whitehorn, Montana. “The stars seem so clear, so close here,” she said. “It’s as if someone polished the sky.”

“Someone did,” he answered lightly. “We like things to look their best when Southern girls arrive.”

She laughed. “Well, I’m impressed. I didn’t expect it to be quite so beautiful.” With a hand, she gestured toward the building they’d exited. “I didn’t expect a construction company office to look like an old schoolhouse either.”

Josh started toward the parking lot again. “It is an old schoolhouse. Miss Lilah Anderson’s schoolhouse, as a matter of fact. Dad and I rescued it a few years ago.”

“Lilah Anderson? A relation?”

“Yep. An aunt. I forget how many greats,” Josh answered. “My sister Dana knows, though, she’s the genealogist in the family.”

“Your roots go deep in Whitehorn, then.” Lori had roots here too, roots that she wanted to reconnect to. Roots that she hoped would help her build a new life. “It must be nice.”

“Are you rootless, Lori?”

She figured he was thinking of her resumé and the many jobs she’d had and cities she’d lived in over the past years. But she didn’t want to go into that. “I don’t have a big family like you do,” she said instead. “My mother died when I was twenty-three, after a long illness. We were…alone in the world.”

And how alone she’d felt during her mother’s illness. So alone that she’d made a mistake she’d been paying for every day since.

They reached her car. Though Lori had her keys in her hand, Josh leaned against the driver’s-side door, blocking her way. Goodness. His shoulders had to be twice the size of the average man’s.

“You make me realize I shouldn’t take so much for granted,” he said. “My family’s always been there for me. And the business was always there for me, too.”

Lori dipped her hands in the pocket of her coat. “So you always wanted the business? You always wanted to build things?” She could see him, she thought, a tall gangly kid following his father around with a hammer and a hundred questions.

His grin sliced whitely through the darkness. “I wanted to be a cowboy until I was nine years old and I fell off my friend’s horse and onto my keister. Then good ol’ Smokey stomped all over my hand. Couldn’t sit down or make a fist for a week.”

“Poor baby.” Lori shook her head, amused by the picture he painted. “Though you’re ruining Montana’s image for me. I thought all western men were horsemen.”

“Yeah,” he said dryly. “Just like we all smoke Marlboros and drag our Christmas trees behind sleighs through snowy fields.”

“Wearing ten-gallon hats,” she added.

“And sheepskin jackets.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “You don’t have a sheepskin jacket? I think I’m going to cry.”

“I’ll get one tomorrow,” he said promptly. “Just so you won’t.”

The teasing note in his voice made her nervous again. “Well…” she started.

“Well?”

“I guess it’s time for me to take myself and my fractured preconceptions home.” She drew her hand and her car keys from her pocket.

He moved away from the door so she could unlock it. “It’s not that I don’t like horses, Lori. Just that I like them best when they’re standing and I’m standing too.”

When she opened the door, the car’s overhead light pooled on Josh’s heavy construction boots but didn’t come close to illuminating his face, somewhere above her. “You seem to have bad luck with things falling on you,” she said, daring to tease a little about their meeting in the gym.

“I wouldn’t say it’s bad luck at all.”

With just those words, her pulse quickened again. She looked up at him, then swallowed, because he was so big and because there was that current running between them, that hot, tingly current she’d worked so hard to ignore all day. She had no business feeling this. For Josh, or for any man. It was too easy for her to become dependent on one. The wrong one.

“Josh.” She meant to say the word as a warning, but instead it came out uncertain.

“Lori.” He took a step closer, and she automatically shrank against the car. He froze. He muttered to himself. He turned away from her. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

But before she had the door shut, he turned back. “Lori.”

“Yes?”

His face was still in shadow, but it didn’t take night vision for her to know he was battling himself. “Are you…is there…” He broke off, muttering again.

“What do you want, Josh?”

His voice was rueful. “For the moment, the answer to a question.”

“Yes?”

He sighed. “Did you come to Whitehorn to be with someone?”

To be with a man, he meant. “No, Josh.” Lori almost laughed. “Good night.” Shutting the car door, she wondered what he’d think if she told him she’d come to Whitehorn for precisely the opposite reason. She was here to get away from someone.

To get away from a man.

Chapter Three

Before work a few mornings later, Josh sat on a weight bench at the gym, pushing himself through another set of bicep curls. Sweat ran down his neck and glistened on his arms. He worked his muscles to the failure point, knowing that he wouldn’t make it through the day without burning off some of his restless energy.

Dealing with Lori Hanson wasn’t getting any easier. She continued to be a distracting, enigmatic presence in his office. He still didn’t know if he had his signals crossed or if she sent out hot and cold messages on purpose.

Though he’d been spending a lot of time out of the office, he still made it back by five o’clock every day to walk her to her car. As he’d promised, the parking lot was brightly lit now, but he felt better seeing her off himself.

Someone dropped to the bench beside him. Josh kept pumping the weights, thinking about how Lori had looked beneath the new light the night before, her nose pinking with the cold, her dark hair curling against her cheek. He’d had to hold himself back from placing his palm there. Worse, he’d yet to shake the feeling that part of her wanted him to do that very thing.

“Hell, Josh,” said a familiar voice. “I said ‘good morning’ and I’ve been sitting here for five minutes waiting for a response, but you haven’t done anything but grunt and sweat.”

Jerked from his reverie, Josh turned his head. “Oh. Andy. Hey.” He’d known Andy McKenna for a dozen years.

Andy picked up a couple of nearby dumbbells and started his own set of curls. “What’s eating you?”

Josh let his weights slip to the floor. His arm muscles burned. “The usual.”

Andy looked over. “A work problem?”

“Woman problem.”

Thud-thud. Andy’s weights dropped. So did his jaw. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Why would you say that?” Josh asked.

“Because, buddy, you haven’t let yourself have a woman problem, not once, in the last five years.”

Since Kay’s death, Andy meant. Josh shifted on the bench, stretching out his legs to inspect the laces of his cross-trainers. It was true. He hadn’t felt the need for anything more than the most casual relationships with women since then. Nothing heavy enough to be classified a problem. He grunted. “I have one now.”

“Well, hallelujah,” Andy said. “Good ol’ Josh has a woman problem.”

Josh shot the other man a look. “Gee, thanks.”

He grinned. “Misery loves company and all that. So tell Dear Andy the problem. Is the lady married? Does she have a boyfriend?”

“No.” As he’d walked her to her car that first night, Josh had wondered that himself. But she’d said she hadn’t come to Whitehorn to be with a man. He ran a hand over his damp hair. “Andy, you know when a woman’s interested, right?”

“Hmm.” The other man reached for the dumbbells he’d dropped. “Well, I’ve made my share of blunders over the years, but I’d say that now I’m pretty good at distinguishing between a smile and a, well, smile.”

“And how old are you?” Josh asked.

“Thirty-five.”

Younger than Josh, which meant he couldn’t rule out that pre-midlife crisis condition.

“Geez, Josh.” Andy stopped lifting again. “You look serious. What the hell’s the matter?”

Josh shook his head. “I—”

Andy’s low whistle interrupted him. “Wow. Would you look at that.” With his chin, he gestured toward the glass wall in front of them, the wall through which they could see the basketball courts and the running track surrounding them.

A woman was stretching in the far lane of one curve. “‘That,”’ said Josh. “Is precisely my problem. Lori Hanson, my temporary receptionist.”

“Oh, buddy.” Andy gazed on him with pity. “I don’t blame you. She looks like trouble.” He switched his gaze back to the track, where Lori was now starting her run. “Uh-oh. Wouldn’t you know it, Wily Rick Weber is on the scent.”

Ahead of Lori on the track, a lean, curly-haired man paused and bent over, as if his shoe needed retying. It was only too obvious to Josh that the other runner had noticed Lori and was waiting for her to catch up to him.

Andy snorted. “Is he always the first to sniff out new prey, or what?”

Josh lifted the hem of his T-shirt to wipe the sweat out of his eyes, then leaned forward. How would Lori respond to the ever-charming Wily Rick?

She didn’t.

Even though Rick timed it so that he started jogging again just as Lori reached him, even though he smiled whitely, oozing friendliness that Josh could feel even through the plate glass, Lori didn’t even glance at the other man. As a matter of fact, she picked up her pace, causing Wily to have to leap forward in order to keep up with her.

His mouth moved. Probably saying something witty, Josh thought. Something far more interesting than “Ms. Hanson, find me the Feeney file, please.” But she responded to Rick with even fewer syllables and less animation that she did when Josh spoke.

Surprise crossed Rick’s oh-so-slick and handsome face, and he slowed a bit, letting Lori get ahead. Strike one for Wily.

“Well,” Andy said. “Rick hasn’t bowled her over.”

“Neither have I,” Josh muttered.

And just like Josh himself, Rick didn’t find it easy to give up on Lori either. As Josh watched, the other man caught up with her again and tried to start another conversation. Her slight grimace made clear, to Josh anyway, that she didn’t appreciate Wily’s second attempt.

Josh stood up. “I’m going to take a few laps myself,” he told Andy.

The other man’s grin was knowing. “You do that. But be careful. I haven’t seen you chasing—I mean running—in a long time, old friend.”

Josh didn’t look back. He wasn’t chasing. He was going after Lori to make sure Wily wasn’t annoying her, not because of the apparently one-sided attraction he had for her. That attraction he was determined to put a lid on, because it would be hell on his brain and his business if it was allowed to simmer unchecked for the remainder of Lucy’s maternity leave.

Just as Josh jogged onto the track, Wily jogged off, a look of baffled disappointment on his face. He didn’t even acknowledge Josh’s two-fingered salute. It wasn’t often Rick struck out, and it looked as if it was going to take him some time to recover.

Josh was smiling when he caught up with Lori. He brushed off the niggling notion that his entire reason for joining her was now heading for the men’s showers. “Good morning,” he said.

She looked over at him, her eyes widening, then she trained her gaze back on the track in front of her. “Good morning, Mr. Anderson.”

“Josh.”

She made another of those maddening, absent hmms that she liked to torture him with.

“Well. How are you this morning?”

“Fine.” She didn’t look at him.

“I, um, thought I’d let you know that I’m stopping off at the Feeney site before I come into the office this morning.”

“All right.”

When he thought about it, maybe he should still bring up Rick and his attempts at flirtation. He hesitated, then plunged in, unable to come up with some way to ease into the subject. “I saw Rick talking to you,” he said.

“Who?”

“Wil—Rick Weber. The curly-haired guy who was running with you.”

“Oh. Him.”

The little breeze they generated running caused her peach scent to waft enticingly over Josh’s face. He tried not breathing through his nose. “He’s okay, but he has a reputation for two-timing.”

Now she looked at him, her expression bewildered. “Why would you tell me that?”

So I could feel my feet grow five sizes larger, Josh thought. But he went on doggedly. “I just thought you should know because…I, well… Well, he was hitting on you.”

“I’m not interested in him.”

“Good.” She shot him a look, and he hoped he didn’t look as satisfied as he felt. To cover it up, he cleared his throat and then forced himself to test the waters again. “But just in case you are interested in dating, I do know a few good men I could introduce you to.”

Did he imagine it, or was her face turning a shade of red that bespoke embarrassment, not exertion?

“I didn’t come to Whitehorn to meet men.”

“I didn’t say that you did,” Josh answered, plodding on with his offer. “But you’re a young woman. Certainly you’d like a social life. I have friends who—”

She shook her head. “Please, Josh. I don’t want to meet anybody. Please.”

The tone in her voice was urgent. Anxious.

Despite her discomfort, he had to admit he felt that satisfaction again. “Okay. Sure. No problem,” he answered.

“Josh.” She abruptly stopped running and he skidded to a halt beside her.

“What?” he asked.

Her chest moved up and down, her breaths still coming fast. Josh tried not to stare, focusing instead on her dark eyelashes that hid the expression in her eyes.

“I’d even be grateful,” she said, “if you’d…pass the word around the gym.”

Josh blinked at her. “Pass what word?”

Her shoulders hunched in an embarrassed sort of shrug. “I’ve…sworn off men for the moment, okay? I’m not eager to meet any, date any, become entangled with any.” She darted one swift look at him. “With anyone, no matter how…appealing.”

With him, she meant.

Then she dashed off in the direction of the women’s locker room, leaving Josh staring after her. Well, he thought. Finally, there was his answer. It wasn’t mixed signals. It wasn’t him misreading. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel the same attraction he did—she’d even implied she found him appealing. But the fact was, she’d sworn off men.

He could understand that. Appreciate it. Abide by it. For God’s sake, he hadn’t paid any but the most cursory attention to his own social life in the last five years.

And why she’d sworn off men was none of his business either.

Josh showered and dressed quickly, telling himself he was glad to have the Lori problem straightened out. It meant he could refocus his attention on business. That he could smother the attraction he felt for her because she wanted to smother it too.

He even managed a cheerful goodbye to the kid who manned the check-in desk as he left. Even when he encountered Lori at the door leading outside, his lightened mood didn’t change. Much.

He smiled at her as he held open the door. “I’ll be in around ten. You can get me on my cell phone, though.”

“The Feeney site,” she replied, stepping onto the concrete sidewalk, her gym bag in one hand.

The morning had grown colder in the hour he’d been working out. Lori’s second step found a patch of ice that had been a shallow puddle sixty minutes before. The sole of her shoe lost purchase, and Josh saw her heel slide out from under her.

Her free arm windmilled.

Without a second thought, a first, any thought at all, he reached out, sliding his arm around her waist. With a jerk, he swept her upright and against him.

She screamed.

Startled, Josh’s arm tightened. It wasn’t a shriek of surprise, or an I’m-about-to-fall squeal. It was—

She screamed again, fighting wildly against his arm.

Startled again, he let her go.

She whirled to face him, her face white, her eyes huge pools of blue fear.

Fear.

He remembered her reaction when he bumped into her on the running track Christmas Eve. He remembered her shrinking back against her car when he’d stepped close to her in the parking lot.

Her free hand lifted. “I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely. “I’m sorry. I was…”

“Scared?” he supplied.

Color rushed up from the collar of her coat to redden her cheeks. At least she didn’t look like she was seeing a ghost anymore. “Yes. But thanks for not letting me fall.”

“Anytime,” Josh replied. He wasn’t surprised when she hurried away from him, in the direction of her car. “Anytime,” he said again, staring after her retreating figure.

Of course, the next time he probably would let Lori fall. Because he couldn’t bear to frighten her again. And touching would. Getting close to her would. He was certain of that.

Because there was a terrible, sick feeling in his gut that told him exactly why Lori Hanson had sworn off men.

Lori bustled around the Anderson, Inc., office, grateful that Josh was stopping by the Feeney site before coming in. She needed the opportunity to recover her composure. She needed time to convince herself that right this minute Josh wasn’t booking his skittish temporary receptionist a rubber room.

She needed to believe he wasn’t aware that a man’s touch—any man’s touch—made her jump as if she’d been recently beaten.

Because that wasn’t the case. Her ex-husband hadn’t hit her in over two years.

Lori closed her eyes against those memories, thinking instead of Josh. As he’d saved her from falling, his big body had been warm against hers. He’d smelled of soap and cold Montana air. And though her heart had been pounding with its old, instinctive panic, there had been another feeling running counter to the fear. Feelings.

Interest. Curiosity. Excitement.

But that was just all the more confusing! She’d been honest with Josh when she’d said she’d sworn off men. Yet the truth was, when he’d brought up the idea of her socializing, of her dating, for a moment she’d wondered what it would be like to date him.

Of course, after her little panic attack outside the gym this morning, he probably couldn’t imagine fixing her up with someone, let alone himself. But that was fine. That was what she wanted. She wanted to do a good job as his receptionist, nothing more.

By the time Josh arrived from the Feeney site, she had her emotions back under control. As the door shut behind him, she scooped up the pile of pink slips that were his messages.

“Good morning,” she said, as if they hadn’t already encountered one another that day. “Your messages, Mr. Anderson.” She held them out.

He approached her desk. “Josh,” he countered, though his voice was mild. “You’re supposed to call me Josh.” When his large hand slid the papers from hers, their fingers didn’t touch.

She was glad. Though she’d promised herself to curb her jumpiness around him, her reactions weren’t always easy to control. Her breath, for example. As he hesitated in front of her, she couldn’t seem to catch her breath.

She swallowed, trying to meet his eyes without flushing. “Is…is everything okay?”

There was something different about Josh now, she noticed. His big body seemed stiller, calmer than before. Which only made her feel that much more gauche. “Did you want something?” she asked, when he didn’t say anything.

“No.” He smiled, that slow, wide, warm one that seemed to brighten the whole room. “Everything’s fine now.”

The rest of the morning echoed his words. For the first time they worked in an atmosphere of friendly harmony. He didn’t bark out assignments, she didn’t jump when he walked into the reception area. It was almost as if Josh had turned his personality on Low. While he couldn’t do anything to mitigate his massive size, she thought he’d somehow banked his normal forcefulness.

Their business relationship might just work out.

At noon, she retrieved from the refrigerator a salad she’d made at home and carried it to her desk. Whistling softly, Josh walked out of his office, his coat caught on two fingers.

He glanced over at her. “I’m off to—” His mouth turned down in obvious distaste. “That’s lunch?”

“Well, yes.” Looking down, she couldn’t stop from making her own face. When she’d made the salad that morning, the lettuce had already been half wilted. Now it looked like it had gone into a dead faint.

Josh shook his head. “Why don’t you come with me? We’ll find something better.”

“Oh, no,” she said instantly. Not when their business relationship was just getting established.

He hesitated. “C’mon, Lori. I know you said you didn’t want me to introduce you to any men, and I respect that. But I know some other people you might like to meet.”

“Oh, I couldn’t.” She drew her chair closer to the desk to make sure he got the message. “There’s the phones, the business…”

“The machine will take the calls and this is business,” he countered. “I’m going over to the Hip Hop Café to check the crew’s progress. I told you about that project, right? We’re rebuilding the restaurant after the arson fire last month. As the company’s receptionist, you should know the kinds of things we do. I’m meeting the owner there, Melissa North. I’ll introduce you. You’ll like her.”

Melissa North. Lori hoped her face didn’t betray her sudden eagerness. Melissa North. She weighed the prospect of meeting Melissa North against the danger of spoiling this very newfound peace with Josh by spending more time in his company.

As if he sensed her mental struggle, Josh used his own weapon. He smiled, that easy, patient, warm one. “Let’s go,” he said, nodding toward the door. “It’s business.”

Because it was business, Lori didn’t feel obligated to keep up a conversation on the short drive from the office to the heart of downtown Whitehorn. When Josh turned his big, black four-wheeler into a parking place, she was out of her seat and on the sidewalk before he had the emergency brake on. One business associate certainly didn’t expect another business associate to open her door for her and help her out, despite the long leap to the ground.

Because it was business, she kept her attention strictly on the discussion between Josh and the Hip Hop site foreman as they toured the reconstruction. The restaurant had burnt to the ground a few weeks before and the Anderson crew was just beginning to rebuild.

Though she didn’t understand all of the conversation, Lori was fascinated to learn that some time capsules had been found buried in the restaurant’s original foundation. When Josh bent over to inspect the cavity where they’d been discovered, his thigh-length parka rode up. It might not have been completely businesslike of Lori to notice the long muscles of his hamstrings or the tautness of his gluteus maximus muscles beneath his worn jeans, but it was natural, right? She had an interest in fitness.

By the time Josh straightened, she was perusing a set of plans unrolled on the hood of the foreman’s truck. All business.

Josh checked his watch. “Time to meet Melissa,” he said.

Lori looked up. “She’s not coming here?”

“We’re meeting her at the counter of the Big Sky Five & Dime.” His thumb jerked to the small variety store across the street. “She’s probably waiting for us.”

Lori’s heart hammered as she crossed the street in Josh’s wake. Now that the moment had come, she wondered if she should have stayed safely back at her desk after all. Melissa North.

At the door of the Big Sky Five & Dime, Josh turned to watch Lori’s reluctant progress. One of his eyebrows rose. “Something the matter?”

Taking a breath, she shook her head, then hurried her footsteps. Josh had witnessed enough of her craziness for one day. With a businesslike cloak, she’d hide from him her inner turmoil.

He held the door for her. “There’s a counter and a couple of booths at the back that have gained new life since the Hip Hop went out of commission.”

At a calm pace, Lori walked down the narrow aisles in the direction Josh indicated. Her gaze darted over the customers she encountered, though, her stomach clenching as she wondered if she would recognize Melissa.

As the smell of french fries and coffee grew stronger, Josh called from behind her, “Take a right.” Lori obeyed, coming upon a counter with five stools and beyond that, two four-person booths upholstered in red vinyl.

In the nearest booth a couple sat side-by-side. The woman laughed, and her dark hair slid away from her cheek as she lifted her face for the man’s brief kiss. Then he whispered something in her ear, and she turned her head toward Lori and Josh.

She looked beautiful, with fair skin and blue eyes. She looked happy and friendly.

She looked just as Lori had imagined her half sister might.

It was lucky that Josh stepped in to make the introductions, because Lori felt anything but businesslike as she met Melissa and Wyatt North. In seconds she was knee-to-knee with the other woman, though, as she and Josh took the seat on the other side of the booth.

Lori’s tongue remained knotted, so it was lucky, too, that it took some minutes to order their lunch— Josh told her the only substantial food offered was grilled cheese sandwiches—and get the Hip Hop details out of the way. By the time her plate was in front of her, Lori had relaxed a little.

When the men started talking about the arson investigation, Melissa grinned at her. “Would you be horribly offended if I snitched a french fry?” she asked.

“Oh. Oh, no.” Lori flushed and pushed the plate toward the center of the table. “I should have offered. Forgive me.”

“Done.” Melissa bit into the french fry with relish. “It’s the only thing they make nearly as good as the Hip Hop.”

Lori took up her own fry, but her stomach was too nervous to eat. “I’m sorry to hear about what happened to your restaurant.”

Melissa shook her head. “Don’t get me started. Half the time I want to cry and the other half I want to strangle whoever did such a destructive thing.”

“They haven’t caught who did it?”

“No.” Melissa sighed, but then took another french fry and turned her attention to Lori. “So tell me about you.”

“I…” This wasn’t the time or place to blurt out the truth. Lori licked her lips. “I’m new to Whitehorn. As Josh said earlier, I’m his temporary receptionist.”

“He’s a good man,” Melissa said, then her gaze sharpened. “But you know that, right?”

Lori bit into her french fry so she could nod instead of talking.

“Still, it can’t be easy to settle someplace new,” Melissa went on. “Did you have a special reason for coming to Whitehorn?”

Lori swallowed. “I wanted to set down some roots.”

Melissa nodded, as if she understood. “I grew up in Whitehorn, and then my mother and I moved when I was a senior in high school. I spent the next few years mooning over Wyatt and doing what I had to come back.” She cocked her head. “But it was coming home for me. How did you even hear about Whitehorn?”

“My mother told me about it. She was from Whitehorn.”

One of Melissa’s dark eyebrows rose. “From here? Who is she?”

Lori didn’t think her mother’s name would mean anything to Melissa. Her mother had said that Charlie Avery, Lori and Melissa’s father, had been a philanderer, and that her parents had moved the family out of state as soon as she’d discovered she was pregnant. “Jill Hanson. The daughter of Roy and Jane Hanson. But they’re all gone now.”

“Oh.” Melissa’s face softened “I’m sorry. That must be lonely sometimes.” She reached out and covered Lori’s hand with her own.

Lori froze. Women didn’t send her into a panic, but she hadn’t felt comfortable with anyone’s touch in a long while. Because of the kind of marriage she’d had and the way she’d been on the move after it, she hadn’t had the opportunity to develop any kind of relationship that involved touching, not even something as casual but as considerate as this.

She stared at their joined hands, at the similar skin tone, at Melissa’s slender fingers that reminded her so much of her own. Tears burned the corners of her eyes.

“Lori?” Josh softly called her name.

Blinking, she turned her head toward his. Her breath caught. There was concern on his rugged, handsome face. Kindness.

Then something more. As she looked up at him, with her half sister Melissa’s hand still covering hers, Lori felt her heart open up, and she saw Josh watch it happen.

Warmth, trust, promise. Like petals, the feelings tentatively unfurled in her chest, a blossom taking its chance on a winter sun.

Chapter Four

At one end of the weight room, Josh leaned against a Nautilus machine and pretended he was merely resting between sets instead of what he was really doing—resting between sets while watching Lori work out. It was a kickboxing class today, in the adjacent aerobics area. The class was unusually small, probably because it was New Year’s Eve and most people had headed home early this Saturday afternoon to prepare for their evening celebrations.

But Billy Blanks and his Tae-Bo enthusiasts would be proud. Even without the communal energy of a full class, Lori’s sidekicks punched outward with determined force.

Her jaw looked clenched in concentration. The tendrils of hair that had escaped her ponytail hung in damp question marks against her cheeks. In a baggy pair of sweatpants cut off at the knees and an oversized T-shirt, she should have looked tough. Competent.

She did. But why she worked so hard on that strength clawed at him.

Her terrified reaction when he’d stopped her from falling a few mornings ago, added to her self-defense attack when he’d bumped into her on the running track the first day they’d met could equal only one thing. A man had hurt her. Not just emotionally, but physically too.

The certainty made him sick. And relieved, though that sounded more warped than it should. He wasn’t happy about whatever experiences she’d endured, of course, but he was glad to finally understand her skittishness. He was damn glad to know so that he could quit adding to her disquiet with his attempts at flirtation.

None of this changed her appeal for him, though. God, no. Now she was more than beautiful. In every bead of sweat, in every kick, in every lap, he read Lori’s determination never to be a victim again. He admired that.

But overlying his regard for her tenacious guts and her uncommon gorgeousness was something that sent him running. Tenderness. Protectiveness.

He didn’t want to feel that way.

So he reminded himself that she needed healing, not him. She wasn’t in the market for a fling any more than he was. Neither one of them was in any emotional place to want anything more.

As Josh watched, Lori changed direction, back-kicking for all she was worth. If only he could kick off his raging guard-dog complex as easily. Such an ability would come in handy right this minute, Josh thought, as he spied Wily Rick Weber sauntering through the weight room, his gaze glued on Lori.

Josh suppressed a feral growl, instead smiling at the other man as he intercepted Rick’s straight path toward the aerobics room. “Hey there, Rick.”

It took Wily a moment to switch his focus to Josh. “Anderson,” he said absently, already moving forward to brush by him. Then Wily paused, the expression on his face reflecting his crafty nickname. “Wait a minute,” he said softly. “She works for you, doesn’t she?”

Josh folded his arms across his chest and looked down at the smaller man. “Who?”

Wily’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, right. As if you don’t know who I mean. Her name’s Lori, correct?”

No one ever said Wily was dumb, just trouble. “Mmm,” Josh answered, shrugging.

Wily’s eyes squeezed to suspicious slits. “Don’t try scaring me off, Josh. There’s no reason I shouldn’t ask her out. It’s not like you have a claim.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?” The hair on the back of Josh’s neck bristled.

Wily gave him a smarmy guy-to-guy smile. “Word is you’re more monk than man, Anderson. Can’t see you trying to melt the ice queen over there as your first foray into romance after all these years.” His smile widened. “Leave the hard ones to me, big guy.”

Smarmy, wily, stinkin’ Rick Weber had just insulted him. Lifted Josh’s ego and dumped it on its head. He was so pissed, he just stared at the jerk.

Which apparently gave Rick the idea that he was letting him get away with it, because Rick smiled again. “I’ve suddenly found myself dateless for the New Year’s party at the country club tonight. Watch this. Give me five minutes and I’ll make her say ‘yes.”’ He swaggered forward.

Until Josh grabbed his arm and hauled him back. “No,” he said.

Wily frowned. “No?”

“No.” Josh would have let his ego take the beating, but he couldn’t let Rick Give-me-five-minutes Weber try to make Lori do anything. “She’s busy tonight.” Hadn’t Lori asked him herself to put out the word around the gym that she was off-limits?

Rick’s eyebrows rose. “Maybe I’ll make certain of that myself. Maybe I’ll just show up at her place tonight and hope she invites me in for…something.”

Josh squeezed Rick’s arm, the idea of him on Lori’s doorstep tightening a sudden knot in his belly. “She’s already going out with me.”

“Oh, yeah?” Rick asked. “Where?”

“The country club.” Josh didn’t have time to come up with something else. He had been going to the country club celebration. Stag.

“Hmm.” Rick’s face turned down in a considering frown. Finally, he shrugged. “I’ll see you there, then.” Shaking off Josh’s hand, he sauntered in the other direction, toward the men’s locker room, leaving Josh to face Lori, who didn’t know she’d just gotten herself a New Year’s Eve date.

Her class over, Lori walked out of the aerobics room, blotting her face with the end of the towel hanging around her neck. When she saw him, she halted, a shy smile on her face. “Josh.”

Oh, he felt like a heel. In the past few days, since figuring out what made her afraid, he’d been so damn careful with her. He’d given her space. He’d made sure he never showed how he gulped back his lust when she walked into his office, her peachy scent preceding her. Her ease with him had grown by leaps and bounds and now, damn it, the leaps were going to be backward ones.

“Lori, good to see you.” He cleared his throat, keenly aware that asking her out was going to put her guard back up. “Do you, uh, do you have any New Year’s Eve plans?”

A shadow darkened her jewel-blue eyes. “No.”

“I was hoping…I was wondering…I’m going to the Whitehorn Country Club tonight for a dinner dance.” His feet, his hands, his Adam’s apple felt as if they were growing like Pinocchio’s nose. Damn, she made him that edgy, even when he was asking her out for her own good.

She frowned and took a small step back. “Josh, I—”

“The Norths are going to be there,” he said hastily, thinking of Rick’s smarmy smile and his notion to show up on Lori’s doorstep. “Melissa and Wyatt. Some other people I think you’ll like, too.”

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