Harlequin American Romance November 2014 Box Set: The SEAL's Holiday Babies\The Texan's Christmas\Cowboy for Hire\The Cowboy's Christmas Gift (42 page)

“I meant no disrespect,” he told her. “I just think that maybe there's room for both those points of view. Think about it,” he urged. “Why should someone work so hard for something and not stop to at least enjoy it for a bit?” he asked.

Connie realized that he probably thought she was trying to find a nice way of saying that he was wrong. But the truth of it was, upon reflection, she didn't believe that he was. What Finn had done was succeed in making her think a little—not to mention that he'd managed to generate a feeling of—for lack of a better word—relief within her.

There
was
room for more than just her father's work ethic out there. That was a fact that was good to keep on the back burner, she decided.

“I didn't say I thought you were wrong. I just said you and my father would be on opposite sides of the fence when it came to your idea of what life was all about.” She smiled, more to herself than at the man with whom she was sharing this impromptu dinner. “You might have guessed that my father is not the kind of man you could get to stop and smell the roses. He's more inclined to stomp on the roses as he made his way to the next rosebush—just to reach it, not to try to savor it or appreciate it,” she confessed.

At this point, Connie decided that a change of subject might do them both some good. This was just the beginning of their working relationship. It wasn't the time to get into philosophical discussions regarding—ultimately—the meaning of life. Or any other serious, possibly life-altering topic. Not if it didn't directly relate to the job at hand.

So instead, Connie turned her attention to the meal they were sharing. “You were right.”

“About?” Finn asked.

“This has to be the best fried chicken I've ever had. Does Angel do something different when she makes this?”

“I'd say that would be a safe guess,” Finn answered her. “But if you wanted to know exactly what she does, that's a discussion you're going to have to have with Angel.”

She understood that chefs had their secret recipes, and she wasn't trying to pry. Her eye was on a much larger prize at the moment.

“You know, Miss Joan might do well if she thought about looking into maybe having a chain of restaurants, or selling a franchise—including this recipe and a few others in the package—” She looked at Finn, her momentum growing. “I'm assuming fried chicken isn't the only thing Angel does well.”

She said this as she finished yet another piece of the chicken. Rather than become full, Connie only seemed better able to savor each bite the more chicken she consumed.

“Everything Angel makes is pretty tasty,” Finn answered. “She has a whole bunch of regular customers who faithfully turn up at the diner since she came to work there.”

“I knew it,” she said with feeling. Plans and possibilities began to multiply in her head. “Angel and Miss Joan are missing a golden opportunity,” Connie told him.

“I'll let them know you said so,” he told her. “But for right now, I think you're missing a golden opportunity yourself.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

Finn smiled at her. It wasn't a patronizing smile. Instead, it was indulgently patient. The kind of smile a parent had while waiting for their child to catch on to something all by themselves after all the clues had been carefully and discreetly laid out.

But, Finn quickly realized, they came from different worlds, he and this woman, and thus had been raised completely differently, with a different set of rules to guide them. She would need more than just a hint to catch on.

“You're forgetting just to enjoy the moment. Just for a little while, why don't you forget about the project, your father and everything else and just enjoy the meal and what's around you without trying to see if you can maximize it or improve it or market it? Maybe I'm talking out of turn, but you're going to wind up wearing yourself out before you get a chance to make that mark on the world you're so keen on making.”

She pressed her lips together. She hated to admit it, but Finn was right.

At least about the last part.

Chapter Nine

The next moment, Connie pulled herself back mentally and rallied. Maybe if she'd lived here, in this tiny speck of a town all of her life, her view of life might match the handsome cowboy's, but she wasn't from Forever. She was from Houston, and things were a lot different there, not to mention that it moved a great deal faster in the city. Oh, she was certain there were people in Houston with the exact same approach to life as Finn had just emphasized, but they were the people who were content never to get anywhere. To be satisfied with their small lot in life and just leave it at that.

But she wasn't. Her father had drummed it into her head over and over again: you were only as good as your next accomplishment.

Finn might not have a father he needed to prove himself to—once and for all—but she did, and until she accomplished that mission, those roses that needed smelling would just have to wait.

Finished with her dinner, Connie pushed herself away from the table and rose to her feet. “As tempting as just kicking back and savoring the moment sounds, I've got a full day tomorrow. We both do,” she reminded him pointedly. “And I've still got a fifty-mile trip ahead of me.”

It was that fifty-mile trip that was going to wear her out faster than the rest of it, he couldn't help thinking.

“Why don't you reconsider and just stay in town?” Finn suggested. “That way, you could give yourself a little while to take a well-deserved deep breath, relax and enjoy the rest of today before you go full steam ahead tomorrow.”

He made it sound so very simple—but she'd learned the hard way that
nothing
was ever simple.

“And just where do you suggest I spend the night?” Connie asked him. “My car's a little cramped for sleepovers,” she added in case Finn was going to suggest that she sack out in her sports car.

“I wouldn't have even thought about you sleeping in your car,” he told her. “That's a sure-fire way to guarantee waking up with a stiff neck. Not exactly the way you'd want to start out,” he predicted. “Besides, plenty of people in town would be willing to put you up for the night,” he assured her.

And just how did he propose that she go about making that a reality? Connie wondered with a touch of cynicism. “I'm not about to go begging door to door—” she began.

Finn cut in. “No begging. A lot of people here have an extra bedroom.” Hell, until Brett and Alisha got married and moved into the ranch house he'd inherited, for all intents and purposes, he and his brothers didn't just have an extra room, they had an extra
house.
“All you'd have to do was say that you needed a place to stay and—”

He didn't get a chance to say that people would line up with offers to accommodate her because Connie cut him off. “Which is just another way of begging,” she pointed out, stopping him in his tracks.

But Finn, she quickly learned, was not the type to give up easily. “Miss Joan offered you a room at her place,” he reminded her. “That was without you saying anything about even
needing
a place.”

She was not about to impose on anyone, or approach them, hat in hand, like a supplicant. “I already told Miss Joan I had a room in the Pine Ridge Hotel. To arbitrarily just ask her if I could stay at her place after that wouldn't seem right.” She wanted the workers to trust her, not think of her as some sort of a giant sponge.

“What it would seem,” Finn argued amicably, “is practical, and there's nothing Miss Joan admires more than someone being practical.”

Judging by the look on Connie's face, he hadn't won that argument, Finn thought. He gave getting her to agree to remain in town overnight another try by offering her another option to consider.

“Or if you really can't bring yourself to do that, my brothers and I have a house right here in town not far from this saloon,” he told her. “It's plenty big.”

She looked at him incredulously. Was he actually saying what she thought he was saying? “And what, I should stay with you?”

“And my brothers,” Finn tacked on for good measure.

“Even better,” she murmured to herself, rolling her eyes. If she gave him the benefit of the doubt, best-case scenario, the man thought he was being helpful. She told herself to keep that in mind. “I realize that appearances don't count for very much in this day and age,” she began, “but it wouldn't look right, my staying with my crew foreman in his house. Look, I'm not an unreasonable boss to work for, but there are certain lines that just shouldn't be crossed. You've got to know that,” she said, searching his face to see if she'd made an impression on the cowboy.

Finn ran the edge of his thumb ever so lightly along the area just beneath each of her eyes. Initially, she began to pull back—then didn't.

There it was again, she realized, that lightning, coursing through her veins. Immobilizing her.

“Only lines I'm worried about seeing are the ones that are going to be forming right here, under your eyes, because you didn't get enough sleep,” Finn told her in a low voice that made her scrambled pulse go up several more notches. “And that'll be in large part because of your fifty-mile, round-way trip from Pine Ridge to Forever. Seems like a lot to sacrifice just for appearances' sake.”

Finn dropped his hand to his side. “C'mon, Ms. Carmichael, we're both adults,” he coaxed gently. “Adults handle situations. Nothing's going to happen if we don't want it to.”

If.
He'd said
if.
Not
because
but
if.
Was that a prophesy?

Only if she let it become one, Connie silently insisted.

She supposed, in the interest of being here very early—Emerson had promised that the machinery she required to begin the excavation would be here first thing in the morning—finding a place in town to crash for the night was the far more practical way to go. And while staying with Miss Joan seemed to be an acceptable concept, the older woman seemed the type to subject to her a battery of questions. And Connie would feel obligated to answer in repayment for the woman's hospitality.

That
was an ordeal she would definitely rather not face.

She slanted a glance toward the man standing beside her.

“What would your brothers say about your impulsive burst of hospitality?” she asked, covering up the fact that she found herself suddenly nervous with rhetoric.

Finn shrugged, as if she'd just asked a question that was hardly worth consideration. “Brett wouldn't say anything because when he knocks off for the night, which is pretty damn late, he usually goes home to the ranch house you saw me working on. Lady Doc stays there, as well, whenever she gets a chance. So Brett's not even in this picture if you're worried about what he thinks,” Finn guaranteed. “As for Liam, well, Liam doesn't exactly think,” he said with a dismissive laugh.

“What do you mean?” she asked, doing her best to be tactful in her inquiry.

The last thing she wanted to do was insult someone in Finn's family.

“Liam's just plain challenged—challenged by anything that's not a musical note in a song he had a hand in writing. In other words, what I'm trying to say is that if you're not shaped like a guitar, there's little chance that he'd even notice you, even if you stripped down buck naked and pretended you were the dining room tablecloth. On second thought,” he amended, taking another look at the woman beside him, “maybe he's not really that far gone yet.”

“As intriguing as that sounds,” Connie began, but got no further.

Seeing his advantage, Finn pushed to the goal line. “Take me up on the offer. You'll be driving yourself plenty once this thing is in full swing. I can tell just by looking at you,” he said, surprising her. “This might very well be your last chance to take in a deep breath and relax. If you don't want to listen to me telling you this as a friend, then maybe you'll listen to the man you're paying to head up your crew and tell you the way he sees things.”

Connie stared at him for a moment, confused. “But that's you.”

The smile he flashed at her cut right through the cloud of confusion that threatened to swallow her up. “Exactly,” Finn agreed. “And the way I see it, your getting a good night's sleep is more important than you worrying about what a couple of people may—or may not—say about you staying at my house,” he underscored.

Having laid out his argument, he took a step back. He had a feeling that crowding this woman was
not
the way to go.

“Final decision,” he told her, “like with the project, is ultimately yours. But I'd like to think you'd respect my opinion and give it its due consideration. Otherwise, there's really no point in you hiring me. Think of it this way,” he added, suddenly coming up with another argument in his favor. “You wouldn't have any objections to staying in the same hotel as I was in, right?”

“Right,” she agreed warily, waiting to see where this was going.

“Well, then think of my house as a hotel,” he told her, adding with a grin, “a very small, rather limited hotel.”

The man really knew how to use his words. To look at him, she wouldn't have thought that he could actually be so persuasive.

“Bed-and-breakfast inns are larger than your house,” she told him.

“So, after your hotel is completed, I'll see about adding on some extra rooms to the house,” he told her. “You can think of it as a bed-and-breakfast inn in the making,” he added with a wink.

She felt something flutter inside her chest and told herself it was just that she was tired. Her reaction had nothing to do with the wink.

“My clothes are all at the hotel,” she suddenly remembered, which, in her book, should have brought an end to this debate.

She should have known better.

Finn took a step back and regarded her thoughtfully for a moment. “Lady Doc's about your size, as is Dr. Dan's wife. One of them can lend you something to sleep in. The other can give you a change of clothes for tomorrow. And once we get the assignments straightened out for the day, I can send someone over to Pine Ridge to get the rest of your clothes.” He grinned at her. “See? Problem solved.”

And just possibly, a brand-new one started,
she couldn't help thinking.

“So you've taken care of everything, just like that?” she asked out loud.

There was a note in her voice Finn didn't recognize, but he had a hunch that weather watchers would point out that it might have to do with a coming storm. He quickly got ahead of it—just in case.

“What I've done—just like that—was make suggestions,” he told her. “You're the one who makes the final decisions and ultimately takes care of everything,” he concluded, looking like the soul of innocence.

It was Connie's turn to look at him for a long moment. And then she nodded, suppressing what sounded like a laugh. She gave him his due. “Nice save.”

Finn did not take the bait. “Just telling it the way it is,” he countered.

Connie merely nodded, more to herself than to him. She definitely didn't want to spend the rest of the evening arguing—especially unproductively. Instead, she silently congratulated herself on going with her gut instincts. She'd made the right choice putting Finn in charge of all the others. If the man could pull off this side-step shuffle effectively with her, he could do it with anyone. After all, she had seen something in him from the very first moment she laid eyes on him, and it wasn't that he had looks to die for. It was a vibe she got, a silent telegraphing of potential that felt so strong, it had taken her a few minutes to process.

But just for a moment, she had to deal with his suggestion not as his boss, but as a woman. Looking at him intently, silently assuring herself that if he was selling her a bill of goods, she'd be able to tell, she had one more question for him.

“And you're
sure
neither one of your brothers—wherever they might roam—won't mind my crashing at their place—and don't tell me again that they won't be there. It's their place. That counts for something.”

“They won't mind,” he assured her with feeling.

“Okay, I'll stay in town,” she agreed in pretty much the same tone that someone agreed to have a root canal done. She only hoped she wouldn't wind up regretting a decision of so-called convenience.

“In the interest of full disclosure,” Finn went on, “I just want to warn you that neither one of my brothers—or I—are exactly good at housekeeping. I mean, it's livable and all that,” he was quick to add, “if you don't mind dirt, grime and dust like you wouldn't believe.” He looked a little embarrassed as he added, “Lost civilizations have less dust piled on top of them than some of the rooms in this house.

“The place is in sturdy condition,” he went on to assure her. “Either that, or the dust is acting like the glue that's holding all this together,” Finn told her with a hearty laugh.

Connie couldn't help wondering just how much of what the cowboy was telling her had more than an ounce of truth in it. Instead of repulsed, she found herself intrigued. Now she
wanted
to take a tour of this place where he had lived his entire life, just to see if it was in the less-than-savory condition he was describing.

“Remind me not to put you in charge of the new hotel's travel brochure,” Connie told him with a shake of her head.

“I don't think you're going to need someone to remind you of that.” And then it hit him. They were about to walk out of
Murphy's,
and Finn caught hold of his boss by the arm. He didn't want to lose sight of her until he had gotten at least this part straight. “Wait, are you saying that I managed to convince you?” he asked her, genuinely surprised. “You've decided that you're staying in Forever tonight?”