Too Hot to Handle (4 page)

“Oh. Right. I didn’t think of that.” Her heart sank. She’d had a very clever idea to pay a carpenter out of her own salary, only it suddenly didn’t seem quite so clever. Shane was booked up for the summer. That was why he’d looked like he’d been riding the trail for a month. Everybody else was probably overworked, too. Which meant they’d have no reason to go for her half now/half later payment proposal. “Shit,” she whispered, falling back to collapse into the fat cushions of the couch.

“Plus, I don’t know anything about restoration. That sounds like a specialty job.”

“This part is pretty straightforward,” she murmured. “I need the porch on the saloon fixed. It’s not safe right now, and it’s my favorite building. I think it’ll be a real draw. There weren’t a lot of saloons around here back then, since a lot of the settlers were Mormon. I’ve read some great stories about that place.”

“You’ve got a saloon right next door,” he said, waving his hand toward the Crooked R, where old Rayleen reigned like a not-quite-benevolent queen.

She shrugged. “It’s not the same.”

“Look, you just started. It’s the busy season for everyone in construction. You’re going to have to be content with taking your time. Nothing is going to happen this year. My advice is to sit tight and plan for next year.”

Oh, God. The idea of spending months like this… She’d run out of things to do during the winter. She could start building a website, maybe, but that wouldn’t take more than a month, and she couldn’t even make it live, because Providence was currently too dangerous to have curious visitors poking around.

Maybe she could design the signs that would eventually be posted on each building. Yes, that would be fun. Then she could put them in storage for two years until the first of the buildings was restored. Maybe in five years they could have a ribbon cutting ceremony, assuming the whole thing hadn’t been shut down due to a lawsuit.

No, she had to make this work, starting right now. She had to make this a success before the board realized their ploy wasn’t having an effect on the lawsuit and they let her go. Or until the lawsuit was dropped and they decided to bring a real curator in.

“I have to move forward,” she said. “Do you know anyone who could help, even if it’s just for a few hours a week? Please?”

“What exactly are your plans? Just to nail a few boards up and start charging tourists?”

“No! It’s not like that. There won’t even be a charge, just a donation box. I just need…”
Affirmation. Progress. Proof that I’m not a loser.
“It’s a wonderful place and people don’t even know it’s there. I want to start sharing it with the community.” Well, that was true, too. It had been even more true yesterday. “It’s an important part of the history of this place,” she finished feebly.

She glanced over, hoping to see sympathy on his handsome face. What she found instead was frustration. Or anger. But no, it had to be frustration. He was just a little…intimidating. And still not the least bit charming about it. Cole was so damn laid-back she couldn’t imagine him being close with Shane, but maybe that was what drew them together.

Shane hadn’t been quite so gruff at Grace’s birthday party, though. She’d thought he was cute then. Really cute. Oh, hell, he was still really cute; he just made her nervous as hell. Same as every other cute guy.

“Maybe I could stop by on a few evenings,” he finally said, pronouncing each word slowly, carefully.

“Really?” Merry squealed. When he nodded, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. He seemed too startled to hug her back. “Thank you! Thank you! Do you want to check it out? We can go right now.”

“Right
now?
”

“Sure. We’ve still got two hours of daylight left. Let’s scoot out there so you know what you’re working with.”

His gaze drifted toward the right as if he were looking through the wall toward the Crooked R and its cold pitchers of beer.

“I’ll buy you a beer when we get back,” she offered in her most flirtatiously tempting voice.

“I’m fine,” he said flatly. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Her triumph tasted strangely like burnt pride, but she just smiled wider. “Great. I’ll grab my keys.”

* * *

H
E
’
D
INSISTED
ON
FOLLOWING
Merry in his own truck. Or rather, she thought he was following, but he knew exactly where the Providence ghost town was. His dad had brought him out here dozens of times when Shane had been a kid. They’d spent whole days in the area, and sometimes nights in a tent next to the narrow creek that snuck through the piles of boulders at the mouth of the canyon.

As a kid, he’d thought of Providence as desolate and a little spooky. A place that people had abandoned. Walked away from. But that desolation had lent it a bit of reverence in his mind. To a kid, it had felt sacred and deliciously forgotten. Not a place to be turned into another tourist playground. Jesus, weren’t there enough of those around here?

Now, as the town came into view, with its familiar graying roof peaks and crumbling walls, he didn’t feel reverence. He felt…nothing. Nothing except irritation that it was causing him inconvenience.

He watched Merry glance in her rearview mirror as he followed her around the last curve of the dirt road. She’d looked into her mirror a lot on the drive, as if making sure he hadn’t ditched her.

Shit. He’d been gruff. He knew that. But she’d blindsided him with her news. Merry was just the out-of-town friend of Grace. She was a nice girl who smiled too much and wore goofy T-shirts and didn’t seem to fit with her wild, tough friend from L.A. How had she suddenly become a next-door neighbor who was asking him to help her ruin his childhood haunt?

When she stopped, he pulled in behind her on a wide patch of dirt and got out. She was nearly bouncing on her toes when he joined her. “Isn’t it amazing?” she squealed.

“It looks like a bunch of falling down shacks.”

“That’s because you don’t know the history! What people went through to build this place, the lives they dug out from the dirt, the tragedies that drove them away. This place is alive, Shane. It’s just…sleeping.”

“More like mummifying,” he muttered, but she ignored him and grabbed his arm.

“Come on. I’ll show you the saloon. It’s really in pretty good shape, aside from the porch.”

Shane let her pull him along and tried to ignore a sense of déjà vu as he got closer to the first buildings. Her excitement was contagious, in the sense that it dispersed through the air like an infection that coated his skin, contaminating him with the phantom touch of the excitement he used to feel here. The mystery of the place. The snakes and lizards that would dart out from underneath foundations. The wonder of who’d walked here before, lawmen and outlaws and all sorts of people who’d never actually set foot in Providence. Of course, he’d been a child. He wasn’t sure what Merry’s excuse was, but he didn’t like the feel of it, and he rolled his shoulders to shake it off.

“Here it is,” she said. Her words weren’t necessary. Even if he hadn’t known it was the saloon, there was an ancient sign propped on the porch.

“So this is pretty good shape?” he asked.

“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

“
W
HERE
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.”