Victoria Dahl - Too Hot to Handle

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.