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“Yeah. Look at the mercantile next door.”
He moved closer to the porch and shook his head. “I can’t just fix it with new wood, Merry. This is a big deal. You’ll want to use old wood. Wood that’s been reclaimed and—”
“I know all that! I’m not a complete amateur. I can take care of everything. I just need your help.”
Shane turned and looked at her. Really looked at her for the first time since she’d asked him for help. He looked past the smile, past the sweet round face and slightly tanned cheeks flushed with pink. Her brown eyes were unremarkable…except that if you took the time to look, they showed everything she was feeling. And right now, she was feeling worried.
“What’s going on here, Merry?”
“What do you mean? I’m hiring a carpenter. You. I’m doing my job.”
“So you own this place? You can do whatever you want?” He knew damn well that wasn’t the situation, but he needed to find out her angle.
Instead of answering his question, Merry shifted, then crossed her arms and walked farther down the road. Interesting. Shane followed. When she stopped and turned around, all traces of worry were gone and she looked cool as a cucumber.
“I think we should approach this in tiers. First, I need to know if the building is safe. The floors. The ceilings. If it’s not safe, I need to know how much it would cost to make it safe. That’s step one. Second, I’d like to see the most obvious repairs made. The sagging porch. Holes in the ceiling. That sort of thing. Lastly, I need to know how much a restoration would cost.”
“A restoration? Merry, I don’t have time for—”
“I get that. But we’re not talking a full restoration. It would still need to be ghost-towny. No one wants to come to a ghost town and see a shiny saloon.”
“Ghost-towny,” he repeated wearily. “That an official term?”
“It is now. There’s a shed at the east end of the town that’s full of wood already reclaimed from collapsed buildings. No new wood, right? Just watch out for spiders.” She shivered. “I try not to go into the shed. It’s pretty chock full of spiders. It’s like…a spider anthill.”
“A…?” Realizing he was only going to be drawn deeper into her strange mind if he said any more, Shane shook his head and dropped the subject. “Okay. I guess you have thought this through.”
“Yes. It’s my job.” Her chin rose a little, as if daring him to dispute it. She wasn’t smiling now. Strangely her mouth looked wider in repose. More full and mysterious.
Shane rocked back on his heels, put his hands in his pockets, taking a little time to look over the ragged buildings around him. “When are you planning on opening this place, Merry?”
“Next year,” she answered, her chin edging higher.
Next year. Shane couldn’t let that happen. He had to stop this. “All right, then,” he offered with a smile. “I’ll do what I can.”
All her false bravado disappeared and she was hopping up and down like a kid again. “You will? Really?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Shane!” She threw herself at his chest, and Shane automatically put his arms around her. He also automatically registered how nice and feminine she smelled, a stark change from the men he’d worked with on his two weeks of ranch work. Then he very carefully set her back.
“I’m going to take a look at that spare wood. Do you want to walk over with me?”
“No! The spider anthill, remember?”
“Right.” God, she was a piece of work. But she had information he needed, so Shane touched his hat brim and nodded. “I’ll deal with the spiders on my own. And then I’ll take a look at your saloon.”
“Thank you!” she squealed, and he tried not to feel guilty as he walked away. Merry had stepped into something that she couldn’t understand, and that wasn’t Shane’s fault. He set his jaw and walked on.
CHAPTER THREE
“WHERE WERE you last night?”
Merry sat up from a dead sleep, throwing her arms out to defend against the snarling monster crouched above her. The monster jumped back, quick as a hellbeast, its flame-tipped mane framing a…pale and pretty face?
“Oh! Grace. You scared me.” Merry flopped back down onto the mattress, wincing when a spring poked her back. “What are you growling about?”
“Where were you last night? I called eight times! I tried to make Cole get up and drive me home.”
“Yeah? What did he say?”
“He…distracted me.”
Merry snorted and pulled the covers over her head, but Grace yanked them back.
“Merry! What did you do? Did you sleep with Shane? I mean…it’s okay. You can tell me. I won’t be mad.”
The not-quite-suppressed violence beneath Grace’s words sounded like static in her voice. Merry grinned at her. “You promise you won’t be mad?”
“Yes,” she said past clenched teeth and a painfully pleasant smile.
“Oh, my God.” Merry laughed. “You’re the worst liar ever. No, I did not use my super-sexy wiles to lure Shane onto my fold-out sofa bed for a night of uncomfortable passion.”
“I wasn’t worried about you doing the luring!”
“Okay. No, Shane did not butter me up with Star Wars trivia and then ‘accidentally’ fall on me with his penis out.”
“Merry, be serious! Where were you?”
Finally accepting that she wasn’t going to get any more sleep, Merry crawled out of bed and headed to the kitchen to start coffee. “I went out to Providence. My phone must have been searching for a signal for an hour or two and it ran out of power. Sometimes I get four bars out there, and sometimes I get zero. I’m not sure how that works. Is it the wind? The clouds? What—”
“Okay, what about later?”
“Grace, what is your deal? First of all, why do you hate Shane so much? Second…I haven’t had sex in two years. Two years. If I miraculously talked a man into wanting to have sex, wouldn’t you be thrilled for me? I have needs, you know.”
Actually she didn’t. Not anymore. Those needs had finally dried up and died six months ago, at the exact moment that her cheap, knock-off vibrator had buzzed into a slow death. She’d replaced it with an even cheaper knock-off model but hadn’t even bought batteries for that one. She’d just put it away, still in its tacky packaging, and never thought about it again.
Grace seemed to have deflated to her normal petite size. She always seemed four inches taller when she was pissed, but apparently she’d gotten past it, because she sighed and opened a cupboard door to take out coffee mugs. “Why haven’t you been having sex?”
“You know why.”
“I don’t want to hear it, Merry. You’ve got an amazing body, you’re funny as hell and you’re cute.”
“I’m not like you, Grace.”
“What? Slutty?”
“You know that’s not what I mean! I just…I don’t know what to do with men. I get nervous. I make too many jokes. I act like a kid sister instead of their fantasy sex machine.”
“Come on, Merry. Men don’t want a fantasy. They want something real.”
Merry frowned but tried to hide it by turning back to the coffeepot, which was trickling out that last little bit of caffeine. That was easy for Grace to say. Grace, in all her reality, was a fantasy. She was edgy and strong and striking. She intimidated men in a way that turned them on.
Merry, on the other hand, was a friend. A perpetual friend. The girl who always had a good joke and a smile.
She didn’t know how to be sexy. And it didn’t seem to be something she could learn, damn it.
“Whatever,” she finally said. “It doesn’t matter. My point is you don’t have to worry about Shane. Shit, I wish you did.”
“Okay, I’ll drop it. I’m sorry, I just… You came here because of me. I feel like I need to watch out for you.”
“Bullshit, Grace. You always say the same thing.”
Grace shrugged and pushed the mugs forward for coffee. “None of those guys have been good enough for you. You know that’s true.”
“Good Lord, I’m not the Virgin Mary. If he’s got a job and a penis, he’s already halfway up my scale. And I don’t really care about the job.”
Grace choked on laughter. “Shut up. That’s not true. It’d better not be true or you’re grounded, young lady.”
Merry just shook her head. “You’re the one who let me move into a place called the Stud Farm.”
Grace rolled her eyes, but Merry laughed as hard as she ever did at the joke.
The apartment building was really the two-story house of the old Studd farmstead, converted into four identical apartments, two on the ground floor, and two upstairs. She didn’t know if it had an official name, but everyone called it the Stud Farm after Aunt Rayleen’s tendency to fill it with single young men. Young compared to her, anyway.
When Grace had blown into town last year, even Rayleen hadn’t had the heart to send her away. She’d let Grace stay for a few weeks, and even though the old battleax tried to hide it, Merry could tell the woman loved her niece. She’d let Grace keep the apartment, and she’d let Merry move in, too, but the Stud Farm name would probably never go away.
Merry elbowed Grace. “Go take a shower while I fold up the bed. You’re probably filthy from last night. Which really pisses me off. I’m leaving in an hour, whether you’re ready or not.”
* * *
SHANE WALKED DOWN the hard-packed dirt road that ran through the center of Providence. Merry was sitting on the porch of one of the few buildings that still looked relatively safe. The porch beams weren’t canting off toward the east. The stairs were still intact. He hoped she’d chosen well. He’d hate for her to fall through the floorboards into the spider nests that undoubtedly filled the space beneath. He’d better check out that porch just to be sure.
She didn’t seem to have noticed him yet, so Shane took the chance to study her while she was so untypically still. Her dark hair looked black but he knew it was lighter than that. A deep brown like stained walnut. He’d never really had a preference in women’s looks, as far as blond versus brunette, but he couldn’t help noticing how striking she looked sitting there. Her tan skin looked pale in contrast to the curve of hair that fell over her cheek as she read, and her wide mouth was rosy-pink and tipped up in a small smile even in solitude. Merry was the perfect name for this strange girl.
At least she was smart enough to stay out of the sun. Even with her coloring, at this altitude she’d burn like hell, and her shoulders were totally exposed in the pink tank top she was wearing. So Merry was smart enough to stay out of the sun, but not smart enough to pay any attention to her surroundings. She had earbuds in her ears. Like every city person he’d ever met, she put more value on her electronics than the beauty that surrounded her.
He glanced toward the looming peaks of the Tetons, then back to Merry, her head bent over some sort of device. She couldn’t hear the crunch of his boots against the patches of gravel and dried grass, but he could hear the tinny echo of the music that leaked from her ears.
Shane sighed as he drew within five feet of the porch. She didn’t react. He stopped two feet from her and cleared his throat.
When she didn’t notice, he coughed.
Still nothing. Was she this vulnerable every day? Did she think there weren’t creeps and rapists in Wyoming? Hell, in addition to the residents, some of whom were pretty damn rough and mysterious, the place was crawling with strangers from all over the world.
Irritated by his own concern, Shane stepped forward and knocked on the porch rail. “Hello?”
Merry finally glanced up, and her whole body jerked in shock. “Ah!” she screeched, an iPad flying from her hands as if it were a bird startled into flight.
Her wide eyes left him to watch the thing tumble through the air and right over the railing. “Ah!” she screamed again.
She surged to her feet to stare in dismay at the cloud of dust rising up around her iPad. “Oh, my God! Oh, no!”
“Sorry. I tried to let you know I was here.”
The cord of her earbuds dangled impotently against the railing. “What?” she breathed.
“I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought I’d come out this morning and get a head start on—”
She leaped into motion so quickly that he bit back his words in shock as she took the three porch steps in one quick leap and swooped up the dropped iPad.
“Sorry,” she breathed. “It’s the only thing keeping me sane out here.” When she cradled it like an injured baby, Shane doubted her claim of sanity. “I think it’s okay,” she breathed as she swiped one finger over the screen. “I think it’s okay.”
“Great,” he said dryly.
“Yes, it is great, isn’t it?” She finally looked directly at him and a wide smile spread over her face. “Hey, Shane! I didn’t expect to see you here this early!”
“So I gathered.”
She hugged her iPad tighter, and Shane tried not to notice the way her breasts pressed up, revealing a beautiful amount of cleavage above the thin cotton of her tank. He tried not to notice, but he failed miserably. He was a man, and there were breasts right there. Her skin wasn’t quite so tan where the shirt dipped down. It was pale and soft and gently rising, like—
“You’re all cowboyed up again,” she said.
He frowned a little at the delight in her voice. Did she think this was Disneyland, where people played dress-up and tried on a drawl?
“The hat,” she clarified.
“The hat is for shade. I’m not a cowboy.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, waving a hand as her earbud cord bounced.
“What are we going to do today?”
“What are we going to do? This is so exciting!”
Oh, God. Fine. Shane took a deep breath and tried to let his grumpiness go as he followed Merry toward the saloon. He couldn’t put a finger on when it had sunk so deeply into his flesh. He used to be able to let a bad mood go. He used to be able to forget his family and the years of betrayals and stress. He could work to forget. Or hang out with friends. And if that didn’t work, there were always women. But the past year had made forgetting damned difficult.
“You should get some spurs!” she said, walking backward now. “A little jingling would really liven this place up.”
He opened his mouth to respond, then realized he had no idea what to say to that. “Right,” he finally said in defeat before closing his mouth again.
She nodded solemnly. “Yeah.”
Shane suddenly had to consider that Providence might be a ghost town in an old episode of the Twilight Zone. It had to be. There was no other explanation for this odd woman plunked down in the middle of the dustiest part of Jackson Hole. There was no way to explain why she’d stumbled into his problems this way.
“I brought the estimates,” he said, then jumped forward to grab Merry as she tripped over her own feet and almost went down on her ass. “Hey. You okay?”
“Sure!” Her laugh tripped over itself like a broken toy.
