Destined for the Maverick - Allison Leigh

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No nibbles on the line, period, despite the dates. She’d come to believe that she hadn’t found her future in her hometown of Cincinnati, because her future wasn’t in Cincinnati.

      Maybe, like her favorite blogger, her future was in Rust Creek Falls, Montana.

      “I’m moving because I need a change,” she told Daphne again, hiding a sigh because she’d just seen two of the teenage shoppers slip several chains from the display into their pockets. “Call security,” she instructed her coworker.

      “Call the men in the little white coats,” Daphne countered, “because you’re the one who’s gone out of her mind.”

      “Maybe I’m heeding the call to my destiny!”

      “Just hope it’s not like a moth’s destiny,” Daphne muttered, setting down her steamer wand to pick up the phone. “They can’t keep from incinerating themselves by flying into the light.”

      Addie tossed up her hands in frustration. She’d had too many similar reactions from her own family. “Say what you want. Rust Creek Falls is waiting for me. And I am not going to disappoint her!”

       Chapter Two

      “Sounds like you need a good mechanic.”

      Addie nearly jumped out of her skin at the deep-voiced comment. She looked up from the mysterious innards grinding away in discordant cacophony beneath Edith’s hood and felt her knees wobble a little bit.

      She could have blamed that wobble on the fact that she’d just finished driving a couple thousand miles only the night before, and with every mile, not only had her car engine become more unwilling, but doubts had crept in that she was making the gigantic mistake everyone back in Cincinnati had predicted.

      Or she could blame that wobble on Tall-Dark-and-Macho standing two feet away, who’d just thumbed up the brim of his black cowboy hat and was giving her a decidedly interested look out of his dark brown eyes.

      Maybe her head was so full of handsome, knee-wobble-worthy cowboys from Lissa Roarke’s blog that travel exhaustion had conjured one right out of her imagination.

      “Might want to give that thing a rest before you throw a rod or something,” the man prompted.

      She jumped a little and went around to reach inside the car and shut off the engine.

      The silence that filled the early Sunday morning felt blessed. She straightened and eyed him across the top of the car. The sunrise was behind him and brilliant color streamed over the horizon, bathing him in a red and gold aura. It was as if God was reaching down and wrapping him in a ribbon for her.

      “You just moving in?”

      She realized she was still gawking, probably with drool working down her chin, and she quickly moved around to close the hood of the car. “Yes, to both,” she said, surreptitiously swiping at her chin. Just in case. Mercifully, her fingertip came away dry and she cast him a sideways look. He was still six feet of mouthwatering cowboy from Stetson to dusty cowboy boots, so maybe she was still a little sane. “How could you tell?” she added wryly, because her car engine had been screaming and there were packing boxes crammed inside on the seats, easily visible through the car windows.

      His smile was a little crooked, but his teeth were strong, white and perfectly straight. “I’m quick that way,” he drawled. He thumbed back his hat an inch more, revealing a suntanned forehead and hair nearly as dark as the hat. “Saw the Ohio license plate. You drove all the way from there?”

      She nodded and waved her hand over the now silent car. “From Cincinnati. Which is why Edith here protests so much.”

      “You named your car Edith?”

      His obvious amusement ought to have made her cringe, but just looking at him seemed to cause a bouquet of excited bubbles to bloom inside her chest. She hadn’t thought she was quite so man-hungry as to imagine every one she met as the father of her babies, but she had a sudden vision of those black-brown eyes staring up from a toddler’s face. “What can I say? I’ve had her ten years,” she defended lightly. “Sixteen-year-old girls tend to name their cars. The habit stuck.”

      He looked even more amused. She’d never seen such dark eyes sparkle, but his did.

      Just as their babies’ would.

      She shook off the thought.

      “None of the sixteen-year-old girls I knew ever had their own cars,” he was saying. “Neither did the guys.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Jack. Jack Lawson.”

      Add breathless to wobbly. And quite possibly insane. “Addie McBride.” She set her hand against his, and his palm was as warm as the sunrise. Warm and callused. Large enough to engulf her fingers in a decidedly lingering handshake. She barely managed not to rub her hand against her thigh to stop the tingling when she finally drew back. He had faint laugh lines radiating from the corners of his dark brown eyes, and she was guessing he was probably only a few years older than she was.

      He was wearing blue jeans and a blue plaid cotton shirt, neither of which had ever seen a designer’s shelf. But the jeans were worn and fit his lean hips and long legs as if they’d been tailor-made and the shirt—well, she didn’t let her eyes linger too long on the way the cotton molded around his wide shoulders, because her knees were still troubled with that whole wobbly-feeling thing.

      Talk about blessed. The man was. Seriously.

      “I took a day longer to get here than I planned,” she babbled, “trying to give Edith a bit of a break. Got in so late last night I didn’t have the energy to unload.” She’d only gotten as far as throwing an afghan over the bare mattress in the studio-sized duplex she’d rented before crashing. “Thought I’d see if she sounded any better this morning.” She grinned, even though she had no business doing so when she was facing the unknown expense of car repairs. “As you obviously heard, no such luck.”

      He casually propped his left hand on the hood of her car. He wasn’t wearing any jewelry to speak of. No wedding ring—not that that meant anything, of course—she reminded herself sternly.

      “I don’t know about that, but Rust Creek Falls is feeling pretty lucky ’bout now.” His sparkling eyes were trained on her face, and the way he was leaning his hand on her car also had him angling closer to her. “What did our little town do right to lure you here?”

      More bubble bouquets grew and in that moment, she knew right down to her bone marrow that coming to Rust Creek Falls had been the right decision.

      Bless you and your blog, Lissa Roarke.

      “I’m here to, um, to work on the Community Center construction project,” she said a little breathlessly. She was five-five in the flat-soled tennis shoes she was wearing with her jeans and hot-pink T-shirt, and she tilted her head back to look up at him. It felt as if her smile was about ready to split her face in two. “I start tomorrow.”

      His eyebrows shot up and he gave her an assessing once-over. He shifted a little. Maybe an inch. Two. But not toward her. Then she realized his eyes were no longer smiling and a few of the bubbles inside her popped. “You’re one of Arthur Swinton’s finds?”

      Nevertheless, optimism and that golden aura made her push onward. “Yes. Mr. Swinton hired me. About two weeks ago.”

      Arthur Swinton was the money behind the intergenerational project. And if it weren’t for the employment bonus he’d offered for people willing to move to Rust Creek Falls and work on the construction project, she’d never have been able to afford to come to Montana in the first place. The bonus had paid for her gas and the deposit on her duplex, and if she was careful, it would carry her over for a small while when the two-month job ended until she found a more permanent one.

      That was the argument she’d given her family back in Cincinnati, and she was sticking to it.

      “I

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