LITMIR.BIZ

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But out loud she simply said, “I intend to use you for market research.”

      Cody laughed shortly. “Only market I know is the one I go to buy my supply of eggs, milk and bread.”

      That was not the kind of market she meant. “Think bigger,” Catherine coaxed.

      “Okay,” he said gamely. “How about if I throw in a chicken, too?”

      Obviously this wasn’t going to be as simple as she’d hoped. “I’m talking about the general buying market out there,” she explained. “You’re just the age bracket I’m trying to attract.”

      Cody’s eyes met hers. “You ask me, you keep on smiling like that and you’ll attract more than your share of men my age—and older.”

      The remark pleased her, amused her and embarrassed her all at the same time. Not only that, but she could feel her cheeks growing hot. From the way he looked at her, she knew it wasn’t just an internal thing or her imagination. Her cheeks were turning pink. She had an uneasy feeling that her new “researcher” could see the color creeping up into them.

      Great, now he probably thought of her as some naive, innocent little girl playing at being a store owner.

      “I’m not looking for attention,” she told him with feeling. “What I’m looking for are paying customers who are interested in buying what they see.”

      The way he looked at her told Catherine that she was only making matters worse by talking. But she wanted him to take her seriously, to understand that all she was after at the moment was a business arrangement and a little input from him.

      She cleared her throat. “There has to be something that you want—to buy,” she tacked on when she realized that she was still sinking into the grave she had verbally dug for herself. She tried one more time, taking it from the top. “When you walked in here, what were you hoping to find?”

      “Like I said, I was looking for something for my sister.” As usual, he had put getting something for her off, telling himself he had plenty of time until he suddenly didn’t.

      “Such as?” she coaxed, trying to get him to give her something to work with.

      The broad shoulders rose and fell again as Cody shrugged carelessly. “I figured I’d know it when I saw it.”

      She could accept that. Shoppers didn’t always have a clear picture of what they were looking for. “Then look around,” Catherine urged, gesturing around the store. “See if anything appeals to you.”

      She’d been the former Tattered Saddle’s legal owner—using her life savings as a down payment—for almost a month now. During that entire time, she’d spent her days clearing away cobwebs, cleaning up and trying to put what she had gotten—the items in the store were included in the price whether she liked them or not—in some sort of manageable order.

      To be honest, there was a lot here that she was tempted just to toss out, but she decided that she should seriously consider calling in an expert to appraise everything before she began throwing things out wholesale. However, experts cost money. Someone like Cody Overton did not and it was to the Cody Overtons that she intended to sell.

       See if anything appeals to you.

      Cody looked at her for a long moment as her words echoed in his head. And then the corners of his mouth curved—just a little. Had this been years ago, he thought, he would have been tempted to say that what appealed to him was her.

      But that was a remark for a young man to make, not a man whose soul felt ancient—as ancient as some of the things in this little shop of hers, if not more so.

      “Okay,” he finally said, moving toward a newly cleaned shelf that displayed a few miscellaneous, mismatched items.

      At the very end of the shelf was a small, cream-colored, fringed coin purse. Looking closer, Cody could see that it had been carefully cleaned up so that there wasn’t even a speck of dirt or telltale grime on it. In addition, it had been lovingly polished with some sort of leather cleaner. He could tell by the trace of scent on it.

      The coin purse felt soft to the touch.

      Caroline had always liked things with fringes on them, he recalled. She’d had a vest with fringes on it that their mother had given her when she was a little girl. The vest was a little large for her, but Caroline didn’t care. She wore it with everything until it completely fell apart.

      There was no price tag visible on the purse, or on any of the other items on the shelf for that matter. Catherine must have just gotten started arranging the things, he reasoned.

      Turning around, he held up the coin purse for Catherine to see. “How much you want for this?”

      Catherine smiled, secretly relieved that he hadn’t chosen one of the more expensive items. “Consider it a gift.”

      That was exactly what he considered it to be. A gift. The gift he was going to give his sister. “That’s what I plan to do with it,” he confirmed. Then he repeated, “How much is it?”

      Rather than continue standing some distance away, Catherine crossed over to him. Maybe he’d understand her better if she was closer, she thought.

      “No, I mean consider it my gift to you in exchange for your services. I can’t really afford to pay you yet, but you can have whatever you want in the shop in trade for your help.”

      Cody was surprised. He hadn’t assumed that this woman was going to pay him anything at all. After all, if he understood what she had proposed earlier, this enthusiastic woman was just going to be asking his opinion about things. Didn’t seem right asking for money for giving his opinion.

      It wasn’t as if he was anybody special.

      He felt a little guilty about accepting the purse, but then he had a hunch that she was determined to give him something for his services.

      “Thanks. This’ll do just fine,” he told her. “My sister’ll like it.”

      Pleased to have gotten that out of the way—she hated feeling indebted for anything—Catherine put her hand out for the purse. When he looked at her quizzically, she explained, “I’ll wrap it up for you.”

      He was about to tell her there was no need, but then he decided against it. It seemed to make this woman happy to go through the motions of playing shopkeeper and, besides, he was really bad when it came to wrapping gifts.

      So he surrendered the purse to her and watched as Catherine placed his sister’s gift into a box that just barely accommodated the purse. The fringes spilled out over the side. She carefully folded them into the box until they all but covered up the purse.

      “This’ll make a nice gift,” she told him. Catherine glanced up at him, thinking he might like to hear the story that went with the purse. “It’s actually over forty years old. The original owner had it with her when she went to Woodstock.”

      Reaching beneath the counter, she pulled out a roll of wrapping paper she’d just placed there last night. With what appeared to be a trained eye, she cut exactly the right length of paper for the box.

      Completely switching topics, she asked Cody, “Younger or older?”

      That had come utterly out of the blue, catching him by surprise. He had no idea what she as asking him. “Excuse me?”

      She glanced up at him just for a moment as she clarified her question. “Is your sister younger or older than you?”

      “Oh.” Why did she want to know that? It had nothing to do with wrapping the gift. “Younger.”

      Catherine nodded as she took in the information. The questions didn’t stop there. Why didn’t that surprise him? “Are you two close?”

      “I guess.” But that wasn’t exactly the real truth, so Cody amended his statement. “We were, once. But then she got married and her husband

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