“Are you all right?”

She slouched in the chair as much as she could without mussing her bleaching hair. “Eddie’s ranch project is still freaking me out.”

“I thought you said he was scaling back the construction.”

“He is, but I ran the numbers again, estimating the size of their hotel. Even with the new smaller scale, our projected loss is still too high.”

“I think you’re making too big a deal out if it,” Sorrow said. “Think about it for a sec.”

“That’s all I’ve been doing,” she shot back.

Sorrow kept her patience and said gently, “I know, but the numbers will work out. Their resort will be totally different from the lodge. It’ll be more like a spa. Mud baths, massages…it’ll draw visitors to Sierra Falls we’d never get otherwise.”

“I guess we do mostly get hunter-hiker types.”

“Now we’ll get hunter-hiker wives.” Sorrow reached over and put a hand on her knee. Earnestly, she said, “We’ll be fine. It might even be good for us. Have you thought about that?”

“I guess it would be nice to have a place to get a decent mani-pedi without having to drive all the way to Silver City.”

“There you go,” Sorrow said brightly as she riffled through the stack and grabbed a new magazine. “You’ve got to have a good attitude about it, because I don’t think there’s any stopping it. If Eddie tried—”

“How hard, really?”

Sorrow laughed. “Enough already. Stop fretting over Eddie. He’s a good guy. He wouldn’t intentionally do something that was bad—for us or for the town.”

Laura sulked at that, knowing it was the absolute truth. He’d been so much safer when he wasn’t a good guy. She turned her attention to her own magazine, blindly flipping through.

Good guy. That was the trouble. He was a good guy.

“Why do you have such a bee in your bonnet about him, anyway?” Sorrow’s hands grew still. Not looking up from her Vanity Fair, she said, “Unless you secretly like him.”

She groaned. That was the problem.

“I know,” Sorrow said, misunderstanding. “You’re holding out for your zillionaire.”

Would she really want a zillionaire? She certainly wouldn’t find one in Sierra Falls.

For half a second, she considered telling her sister about the job offer from her old CEO. She considered the offer itself. If she took her old job back, it’d solve all kinds of financial problems for the family. It’d mean better health insurance. A bigger cushion for all of them. Not to mention the fact that she’d meet all kinds of single executive types.

And she was sure very few of them spent their free weekends taking kids camping.

“This one’s kind of boring.” Sorrow traded Vanity Fair for Vogue and became engrossed in several pages of ads.

“Did you know he takes poor kids camping?” she blurted.

“Who, Eddie?” It took Sorrow a second to get what she was talking about. “Yeah,” she said warily. “Billy helped him a couple months ago with one of the kids.”

She waited a moment, letting the silence hang, then demanded, “Well?” She stared at Sorrow, who was aggravatingly engrossed in her reading. “What happened?”

Her sister shrugged. “One of the older boys got into a scrape, but Eddie vouched for him, and Billy intervened. Convinced Reno PD the kid just needed a talking-to, rather than sending him to juvie.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Sorrow looked at her like she was nuts. “I didn’t think you’d care.”

“Hmph.” She went back to her magazine, more flustered than ever, and flipped angrily through the pages.

So, he was a good guy. A nice guy. A good egg.

She looked up with a huff. “Well, he could be a saint for all I care, but he needs to get his business in order.”

Sorrow finally spun her salon chair, facing Laura completely. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“I can’t finalize our fourth-quarter budget until I have a full picture of what our expenses will be.” She turned her attention back to a spread on fall dresses. “If he’s such a good guy, you can tell him he needs to bill us.”

“Bill us for what?” Sorrow asked, sounding perplexed.

“For all the stuff he’s done around the lodge. Who knows what that’s all going to come to.”

“I do,” Sorrow said. “Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing? It’ll add up to something, believe me. These contractors charge a fortune.”

“Eddie never charges Dad. They’ve got something worked out. I mean, we pay for materials, but his labor is always free.”

“What?”

“You’ll note he never has a bar tab,” Sorrow said with a smirk.

“This is serious. Our expenses are out of control. Somebody needs to keep track of everything, and that somebody is me.”

“Jeez, Laura. It’s fine. It all works out in the end.”

“That’s a horrible way to do business,” she shot back.

“Well it’s how we do business.” Her sister uncrossed her legs and gave her a pointed look. “Eddie’s like family. They’re just little jobs, anyway. I’m sure Dad would insist on paying him if he did something big. Like when he patched the roof. We paid him then.” Sorrow turned her attention back to her magazine, flipping through like it was no big deal. “I know you have a thing against the guy, which is why I don’t really talk about him. But I promise, he’s got no secret plans to destroy us. He doesn’t want to take us down. He’s not going to stick us with some crazy unexpected bill. He’s a good guy.”

“So you keep saying,” she mumbled.

“He’s such a cutie-pie, too. It’ll be interesting to see if he ever settles down. It’s gotta happen eventually.”

“Does it?”

“Sure.” Her sister continued to flip through her magazine, blithely prattling on about things that were turning knots in Laura’s belly. “He’s so great with those kids—I’m sure he must want some of his own someday. If any woman could catch him, he’d be awesome husband material.”

“Eddie?”

“No, old Stanley down at the recycling center. Yes, dummy. Eddie. I’ve seen so many girls throw themselves at him. He’s got to be holding out for something. I wonder what it’d take to get a guy like that to settle on just one woman.” Sorrow got a swoony little look on her face. “For him to tell her, hey babe, that’s it, I’m yours.”

But Laura knew. He already had.

“I’m all yours,” he’d said.

And he’d said it to her.

Twenty-six

“No, I said we’re going with the PEX pipe, not the PVC.” Eddie leaned his elbows on the counter, breathing slowly to keep his temper.

“I heard you,” Rob said, then surreptitiously checked his watch.

“Don’t let me keep you.” He was only half joking. “Shift over soon?”

“Yeah.” Rob gave him a guilty smile. “I’ve been here since seven.”

He wondered where the guy would be running off to at one in the afternoon, because Eddie sure as hell never saw him with his wife or kids. He felt sorry for poor Helen—her husband surely had something going on the side, though concealing it in a town this small was some feat. Rob must’ve been dipping into action outside the town limits.

As far as he was concerned, the guy needed to man up and deal with himself. It wasn’t like Eddie didn’t understand the concept of wanting to be somewhere else. In fact, he could think of a whole mess of other places he wanted to be. Like…

Instead of coming with Jack to the hardware store to pick up an order, he could be picking up Laura.

Instead of doing errands, he could be doing Laura.

She consumed his thoughts. He just wanted to lose himself in her.

He blew out a breath and checked the clock on the back wall. He’d call her later. Convince her about that dinner. Laura needed pursuing, and he was more than up for the challenge.

For now, though, he had responsibilities. He wanted to be all kinds of elsewhere, but he kept his word. Which meant he was standing at this counter, waiting for this guy to do his job.

“All set,” Rob said, and Eddie zoned back in.

“Cool, thank—Wait.” He pointed to the ancient screen. “You typed PVC again. I said we don’t need PVC.”

He loved Up Country Hardware, but wasn’t it time they upgraded? Got a new system…maybe a new employee even.

“Oh, oh.” Rob peered at the order like he was seeing it for the first time. “Got it.”

Did he? Because demo on the ranch had gone fast. They were down to the studs, and work needed to happen quickly. They couldn’t get stopped up now with the wrong gauge of the wrong pipe. He’d stuck out his neck enough, asking Fox to scale back the project. He couldn’t be pushing back the date on top of it.

Rob pecked at the keys. “Sorry. The PEX won’t be in till tomorrow.”

“We all set?” Jack came up from behind and dumped some stuff onto the counter. “I’ll pull my truck around. Let’s load up the pipe.”

He hung his head, rubbing the rim of his ball cap. “Can’t.”

His brother gave him a flat look. “What do you mean, can’t?”

“Rob here ordered the PVC, not the PEX.”

“It’ll be in first thing tomorrow,” Rob assured them.

“But we need it this afternoon.” Jack caught sight of the bright yellow flyer pinned behind the register. “And what the hell is that?”

STOP THE DESTRUCTION—END THE CONSTRUCTION

He smirked, clapping Jack on the shoulder. Laura was a challenge unlike any he’d ever encountered. “That, big brother, is Laura Bailey.”