Harlequin American Romance November 2014 Box Set: The SEAL's Holiday Babies\The Texan's Christmas\Cowboy for Hire\The Cowboy's Christmas Gift (41 page)

She went directly to the table where Connie had set up her
office.
Seeing that it was covered with stacks of papers, she turned toward the bar instead.

“Miss Joan said you need to keep your strength up,” Dora announced, setting the rectangular carrier she'd brought in on the bar.

Unzipping the insulated carrier on three of its sides, Dora extracted what turned out to be a complete three-course meal, along with a container of coffee and a huge slice of coconut cream pie.

The pie was her favorite, Connie thought. Was its inclusion in the meal just a coincidence? Or was this a further example of Miss Joan's talked-about, unusual abilities? At this point, she really didn't know what to believe—or what she ultimately felt comfortable believing.

So instead, she pretended as if all this was just commonplace. “This is for me?” she asked, feigning surprise.

“Miss Joan told me not to let anyone else pick at it but you,” Dora told her.

Dora looked at Finn. A rather sharp
no
trespassing
look passed between them because the latter looked rather interested in the pie.

Flashing a smile at the waitress, Finn, along with his brother, brought over one of the tables that had been pushed to the side and set it up beside the other one.

Dora brought all the items from the carrier over to that table.

Connie moved her chair over to the new table and regarded the unusual spread. She wasn't accustomed to having anyone concern themselves with her welfare. “I don't know what to say.”

“Don't have to say anything,” Dora told her, zipping up the carrier and then slinging the straps over her shoulder as if it was nothing more than an oddly shaped shoulder bag. “Miss Joan said for you to consider it her investment in the hotel—and the future.”

Connie was unclear as to the message that was being conveyed. She glanced at Finn. “What's that supposed to mean?”

Finn laughed. “You got me. Half the time we're not sure exactly
what
Miss Joan's saying, only that, somehow, in the long run, that very sharp lady always turns out to be right.”

“I don't have any great insight in the way people think,” Joe began, joining the circle of people, “but offhand, I'd say that Miss Joan just wants to make sure you don't waste away. She doesn't like anyone being as skinny as she is,” the deputy added with a dry laugh. He turned toward Brett. “I'll be heading back now.” His attention shifted for a moment back to the young woman he had initially come to see this morning. “Thanks for hiring some of my friends.”

“No reason to thank me.” She thought for a moment, then added just before he walked toward the door, “If there's any thanks to be given, I should be the one to be thanking you for bringing them here today.”

“Then you can thank Finn,” Joe told her. The man he'd just mentioned had temporarily stepped aside to talk to Brett. “He's the one who told me about this hotel your company's building.” He nodded, as if agreeing with something he was thinking before he said out loud, “Finn's a good man.”

Connie had no intentions of disputing that. Her gut instincts had already told her the same the morning she had seen him standing before the ranch house, tool belt dipped provocatively at his hips, causing his jeans to dip with them. It had brought a whole new meaning of
fine craftsmanship
flashing through her mind.

Out loud, she murmured to Joe, “I'm beginning to see that.”

The problem, however, was that she was also beginning to see a lot more, and that could only have a negative effect on her ultimately getting the job done the way she wanted to.

Chapter Eight

“I'll take that drink now,” Connie said, slipping onto the bar stool.

Finn seemed somewhat surprised to see her sitting there. The woman had somehow managed to make it from her table to the bar without a single telltale sound to alert him that she was moving in his direction. Glancing around her, he saw Joe just as the latter went out the front door. He couldn't see the deputy's face from where he was—not that it would have done any good even if he had. As a rule, Joe's face was completely unreadable, giving nothing away that he didn't want to.

“Joe giving you a hard time?” Finn asked her, curious.

It took Connie a second to connect the face with the name. She'd spoken to several “Joes” during the marathon interviewing session today.

“Oh, you mean the deputy?” she finally concluded. “No, he was nice as pie.”

Pouring her a shot of Kentucky bourbon, Finn moved the partially filled glass in front of her. “Not that I didn't offer you one just a few minutes ago, but why do you suddenly look as if you actually need this drink?” he asked.

She raised the glass, but rather than throw back the drink or sip it, she just studied the amber liquid in it, moving it slowly from side to side.

“So I can talk myself out of the idea that I'm in over my head,” she replied.

He hadn't expected her to say that. From what he had seen, Connie Carmichael struck him as being equal to anything she tackled. But he'd learned long ago that self-image had a lot to do in making decisions that affected more than just yourself.

“Is that how you feel?” he asked.

She laughed shortly, shaking her head. “You're not much of a bartender, are you?”

Although, she silently had to admit, Finn Murphy with his lean, sculpted torso, sexy smile and magnetic green eyes, was every woman's fantasy come to life. She would have to watch her step with him. Really watch her step.

“Come again?” Finn asked.

“Well, isn't this the part where you tell me that, ‘no, you're not in over your head. Everything's going to work out just fine and we'll stand to gain from this experience when it's all behind us.'” Her tone of voice was only partially sarcastic.

“Don't see why I should. You seem to have taken care of that part pretty much on your own.”

Connie frowned, still regarding the drink in her hand. “Yeah, except that I don't believe myself.” And with that, she took a long, savoring sip from her glass. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to focus on the fiery path the alcohol took through her body. He noted that she didn't toss her drink down, the way people would when they were trying to erase a reaction or memory of a sore point.

“Maybe you should,” he told her. “From where I'm standing, you seem like a very capable person. Notice I said
capable,
not
superhuman,
” he pointed out. “If you were shooting for superhuman, I'd say that you had unrealistic expectations. But since you're not, I'd say that everything was A-okay. Now why don't you take that drink—” he nodded at it “—go back to your table and have that dinner Miss Joan sent over before it gets cold?” he suggested. “If I don't miss my guess, Angel made that dinner special, just for you.”

“Angel?” Connie tried to recall if she'd met anyone answering to that name in the last two days. She came up empty.

“Gabe Rodriguez's wife,” Finn told her. “Miss Joan's got her working at the diner, and that lady's got a way with food that's nothing short of heavenly.” He paused to inhale deeply even though it was literally impossible to catch a whiff of the aroma of the meal. The distance was fairly substantial. “I'd recognize Angel's fried chicken
anywhere.
”

He sounded as if he'd enjoy the meal a lot more than she would, Connie thought. Her stomach was badly knotted. As far as she knew, he hadn't had a chance to eat anything, either, so she beckoned him over before she even sat down at the table again.

“Why don't you join me, then? There's more than enough here for both of us,” she told him, indicating the food that was on the table.

Finn glanced at the heaping basket of fried chicken that had been placed beside her plate. He knew Miss Joan and the way the woman thought. She had people and their appetites down to a science, and she wouldn't have sent over that much food if she thought that Connie would be eating it by herself. What he was looking at was a deliberate double portion, generous, yes, but definitely a double portion.

Why Miss Joan had sent a double portion, he could only speculate, but he had a feeling that if Connie suspected this was what the older woman had in mind—that they share a meal together for the second time—it just might be the added pressure that would cause Connie's undoing. The woman currently had more than enough on her mind without trying to fathom what was going on in Miss Joan's head.

“Well, if you insist,” Finn allowed, crossing over to her table.

“I do.”

“Then how can I say no? You're the boss lady,” he told her agreeably as he took a seat opposite her at the table.

Boss lady.

That sounded good, Connie couldn't help thinking. She just hoped that this wouldn't turn out to be an isolated incident.

She gazed at the food again and shook her head in amused disbelief. “Miss Joan must think that I have an absolutely
huge
appetite.”

“Miss Joan likes to think that when it comes to the food she serves at the diner,
everyone
has a big appetite,” Finn told her. “I think that woman feels it's her mission in life to fatten everyone up.”

As he spoke, he reached into the basket for another piece of chicken—at the exact same time that Connie went to take one herself. They wound up both reaching for the
same
piece of fried chicken, which was why, just for a second, their fingers brushed against one another. Contact generated a spark that had no business being there, and no tangible explanation for being there, either.

They both pulled their hands back almost simultaneously.

“Sorry,” Connie murmured. She was
really
going to have to be careful, she warned herself. Everything, including her entire future, was riding on her success with this project.

“No, my mistake. Go ahead,” he urged, gesturing toward the basket. “After all, you're the one Miss Joan sent this to. It's her way of looking out for you,” he added.

“Why would she even concern herself with me?” Connie asked. “I mean, not that it's not a nice feeling to know that someone cares whether I eat or not, but she really doesn't know me from Adam.”

“Oh, I think she's got that part pretty much figured out,” he told her with a grin. “There's definitely no mistaking you for any guy named Adam. As for the rest of it, Miss Joan likes to think of herself as a great judge of character. To give the woman her due, I don't think there was a single time that anyone can recall Miss Joan being wrong about anything.”

“Bet that must make her hard to live with,” Connie commented.

She knew firsthand what her father would be like under those circumstances. The man already felt he couldn't be opposed, and he had been wrong at least several instances that she knew of. Most likely more that she
didn't
know about, she was willing to bet.

“You'd think so, wouldn't you?” Finn agreed, then went on to say, “But I don't think there's a nicer person in Forever than Miss Joan. Oh, she comes off all prickly and distant at times, you know, crusty on the outside. But she's kind of like French bread in that way. Soft on the inside,” he told her with a wink. “Miss Joan's got that famous heart of gold that so many people have benefited from. She thinks you're going to be good for the town, so that's why she's behind you the way she is,” Finn told her.

Because her father had made her leery of being on the receiving end of praise, she'd never been one to take a compliment lightly or at face value.

“I don't know about
me
being good for the town,” Connie said, “but the hotel's bound to be. If there's a hotel in town, people'll be more inclined to stop here rather than somewhere else. That means they'll eat their meals here, maybe spend a little money here—” And that was when an idea hit her. She looked at Finn hopefully when she asked, “Anything like an annual rodeo take place here?”

Now
that
had come out of left field, he thought. “Nope.”

The woman amused him, she really did, Finn thought. It was obvious from the way she conducted herself that she was a city girl—even if she hadn't told him that her father's company was domiciled in Houston, she had the word
city
written all over her. Yet here she was, acting like some kind of an activities director, coming up with ideas about what she thought would be best for a town she'd only set foot in yesterday.

It took a great deal of self-confidence to come across like that—yet when he looked into Connie's eyes, he could see the slight element of fear lurking there. Fear of failure, he assumed. That kind of a thing might ultimately cause her to second-guess herself, which, in his experience, never amounted to anything positive in the long run.

“Maybe you should consider holding a rodeo here,” she encouraged. God knew she could picture Finn on a bucking bronco, every muscle tense as he focused on the longest eight seconds of his life.

A warm shiver went up and down her spine. It was an effort to get herself under control and act as if images of Finn hadn't just taken over her brain.

“I'll do that,” he told her with a wink, unable to put a lid on his amusement any longer. “I'll consider holding an annual rodeo.”

“I'm serious,” she told him, leaning in closer over the table. “That would really bring in more people to Forever.”

“People who would have to stay at the hotel,” he said with a straight face.

“Yes.” And then she took a closer look at him. It wasn't that he thought she was kidding; he thought she had a screw loose, she realized. “You're laughing at me.”

He did his best to turn down the wattage of his grin—but she was so damn cute when she tried to be so serious. “Not at you, with you.”

Connie frowned. “You might not have noticed this, but I'm not laughing.”

“But you will be. Sooner or later, you will be,” he assured her. “One thing you should know about the people in Forever is that they kind of move at a slower pace than what you're probably used to.”

Connie immediately interpreted the words to mean something that affected her. Instantly on the alert, she asked, “What are you telling me, that we're not going to make the deadline?”

“Oh, no, you'll make the deadline,” he told her quickly, wanting to make sure she didn't misunderstand him. “That's a real hardworking bunch of men you just hired today.”

Her eyebrows seemed to knit themselves over her narrowed eyes. Finn had lost her. “Then I don't understand....”

“People in Forever are slow when it comes to making changes. They take their time embracing progress, if you will.”

“Everything has to embrace progress,” Connie doggedly insisted. “If something isn't growing, then it's dying.” It was one of the first lessons she'd ever learned—and it had come from Emerson, not her father.

“Or maybe it's just being,” he suggested.

“Being?” she asked, not understanding what he was trying to tell her.

“Existing,” Finn said, putting it another way. “In general, people work hard to make a living, and they feel that they're entitled to just sit back and enjoy that accomplishment. You know, sit back, take a look around and just be happy that they've managed to come this far and survived. It's not always about reaching the next major goal, or getting the next big-screen TV. In other words, it's not always about getting something bigger, or better, or faster. Sometimes, it's just about enjoying the prize that you have, the thing—however small—you succeeded in doing.”

He realized that Connie hadn't said anything in a couple of minutes, hadn't attempted to interrupt him. Not just that, but she was looking at him in a very odd way, like he was speaking another language.

He'd overstepped his bounds, Finn thought, upbraiding himself. The woman wasn't ready to hear this countrified philosophy when all she was interested in was getting a good day's work out of them.

He tried to backtrack as gracefully as he could. “Hey, but that's just me,” he concluded, easing himself out of the conversation.

But Connie continued to watch him in what he could only describe as a thoughtful, strange way. It was obvious that if they were to move on, he had no recourse but to ask her, “What?”

As Finn had talked, she'd stopped embracing the credo that had governed most of her life, and instead listened to what the cowboy was telling her. It didn't take a scholar to realize—rather quickly—that she was hearing the antithesis of her father's number one philosophy.

Her father would probably have this man for lunch—or try to—saying that if everyone was like him, the country would have withered and died a long time ago.

But maybe it wouldn't have, Connie now thought. Maybe the country would continue thriving because people were satisfied and that in turn made them happy. Was that so bad, just being happy?

She couldn't recall the last time her father, with his countless mind-boggling triumphs and successes, had been happy for more than a fleeting moment or two.

For Calvin Carmichael, it was always about the next project, the next conquest. Bigger, better, more streamline, all that was her father's primary focus. That was what had always kept him going even more so since her mother had died.

And, until just now, that was what kept her going, as well. But maybe not, Connie amended. “You sound like the exact opposite of my father,” she told him.