LITMIR.BIZ

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he contradicted. “But that’s okay, it’s not supposed to be ‘charming.’ It’s supposed to be functional. And it is. This is where the ‘bad’ boys get sent in order to be turned into human beings, something that my brother, Jackson, does, time and again, very, very well.”

      “And you? What do you do?” she asked. She’d stopped driving for a moment and was taking in the ranch in its entirety.

      Did it get any less run-down from close up? She certainly hoped so. She was planning on taking a few photographs to go with her article and right now, she didn’t see a good angle to use for her shots of the ranch house’s exterior.

      “Anything I have to,” Garrett said in response, his voice dropping by an octave or so. Enough to get her attention and have her wondering things that wouldn’t be finding their way into the article.

      “Define ‘anything,’” she requested in a mildly intrigued voice.

      “Just what it sounds like,” he replied, looking at her and punctuating his answer with a wink that seemed to flutter directly down into her stomach, causing just the slightest mini–tidal wave to take place there.

      Kim paused to take in a discreet breath before continuing. The breath was to help steady her unexpected reaction to this dusty cowboy who fancied himself a ladies’ man.

      “I’ll pin you down for details later,” she told him. “Right now, I’d like to meet your brother before I go into town to see about my hotel reservation.” She glanced at her watch before continuing to drive toward the ranch house. “I’m already running late,” she realized. “How long will they hold a room at the hotel?”

      Garrett had to struggle to keep the laugh from surfacing. The hotel wasn’t exactly beating off patrons with a stick.

      “As long as it takes,” he finally replied. The corners of his mouth curved despite his best efforts to keep a straight, if not dour face.

      She wondered if everyone in this quaint little dust bowl of a town talked in circles. Just what was he telling her about her hotel room? “I don’t think I understand.”

      “We don’t exactly have a lot of tourists coming through Forever,” he told her. “There’s no danger of losing your room to someone else, not unless a twister suddenly comes through, taking down every building except for the hotel. That happens, then you might have to be concerned about losing your room to someone else if they get there first. But until then, I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. You’re in the driver’s seat, trust me.”

      That didn’t make any sense to her. “If that’s the case, how does the hotel stay in business?”

      “Good question,” he acknowledged. Kim struggled not to feel resentful, as if she was being patronized. “The hotel belongs to this construction company that sees it as getting some sort of a toehold in the region,” he went on to explain. “The owner’s not in it for the money,” he confided. “The way matters had turned out, the general contractor wound up owning the building—and she’d married Finn Murphy, so her stake in building up the town has definitely gone up.”

      “That doesn’t seem possible,” Kim told him, certain that Garrett was making this all up, trying to pull the wool over the outsider’s eyes with this tall tale. Who wasn’t in it for the money? If not that, then they were in it for the prestige, the way her parents were. And this was definitely not a place someone came in order to build up their reputation.

      Just how naive did this man think she was?

      Did she come across as naive? Kim caught herself suddenly wondering.

      That was not the image she was going for. Smart, sassy, capable, those were the buzz words she was after, not naive.

      “A lot of things in Forever and the places around it don’t really seem possible,” Garrett informed her. “Forever isn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill kind of place.”

      “Oh, God, just like Brigadoon,” Kim murmured under her breath before she could think better of it and stop herself.

      Garrett had overheard her despite the fact that she had meant the comment only for herself, but the reference went right over his head.

      “Like what?” he asked, looking at her quizzically.

      A strapping he-man like Garrett White Eagle undoubtedly thought all musicals were products of stupid, self-involved minds. She wasn’t about to give him ammunition to use against her. This job was going to be hard enough as it was. She wanted to be taken seriously—even by this cowboy.

      “Never mind,” Kim said dismissively. “It’s not a real place, anyway.”

      Garrett had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, but he felt it wasn’t really polite to tell her that. So, at least for now, he just let Kim’s remark slide.

      “Well, Forever’s real, all right,” he assured her. “It’s just different.”

      She took a deep breath, more than a little relieved to be able to distance herself from the subject. “I’m beginning to see that,” she replied.

      She drove the rest of the short distance to the ranch house and got out of her car. Garrett dismounted almost parallel to her vehicle and let the palomino’s reins drop to the ground in front of him.

      Walking away from Wicked, he stepped onto the front porch.

      Kim looked at his horse uncertainly. She fully expected to be trampled any second if the horse got it into his head that she was standing in his way, blocking his access to something.

      “Aren’t you going to tie him up?” she asked, shifting closer to Garrett.

      She was banking on him protecting her if the horse suddenly went rogue—or whatever it was called when horses charged at people for no reason.

      “Wicked’s not into bondage,” Garrett told her with a grin.

      The cowboy was making fun of her because she was clearly out of her element, she thought. Since she needed his help—at least for the moment—she did her best not to act offended.

      Instead, she told herself to try harder to get on this cowboy’s good side. The faster she got this story down, the faster she’d be back in San Francisco, mistress of her own fate—with her rent paid.

      “No, I mean won’t your horse take off if you don’t tie his reins to something?” she pointed out.

      “Not unless you plan to scare him,” Garrett said with a laugh. And then he answered her question more seriously. “Wicked’s trained to stay wherever I put down his reins. He knows not to run off,” he told her. “That comes in handy when we’re out on the range and there’s nothing to tie him to.”

      Kim glanced from the horse to his rider. She wouldn’t have known how to begin to train an animal for something like that—which was why, among other reasons, she’d never gotten a pet.

      “That’s pretty clever,” she said honestly.

      “Wicked’s pretty clever,” Garrett corrected, giving the animal he had trained the credit he felt the stallion deserved.

      While he regarded animals to be smarter than a lot of people realized, he was aware that, like people, some animals were smarter than others. In his estimation, Wicked was exceedingly smart.

      “Be right back,” Garrett told her, going inside the house.

      “Okay,” Kim said cheerfully. The man was modest. Getting on his good side with flattery was going to be harder than she thought, but she was determined to do it. If she could get him to open up, she was confident that all the details she needed for this article would just come pouring out of him and the story would wind up writing itself.

      Twenty-four hours and she was going to be out of here, she promised herself.

      Thirty-six at the most.

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