LITMIR.BIZ

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one-dimensional.

      Like she needed layered men in her life right now.

      Like she needed any man in her life right now.

      “The Harrises have been warned,” she said, following him out of the room and back into the kitchen, hauling Julia up into her arms when the little girl came running over to her, a multilimbed bundle of joy. “In fact—” she kissed the baby’s chubby cheek, then looked back at Eli, who was giving her a strange look “—I told him flat out the scuzzy bathroom was a big reason why the place hadn’t sold. Squicking out potential buyers is not the way to go. Oh, no, honey,” she said when Julia launched herself toward Eli. “He doesn’t want—”

      But he’d caught the baby before she landed on her noggin, setting her in the curve of his arm like it was the most natural thing in the world. He didn’t exactly go all goo-goo-ga-ga over her, giving her what seemed to Tess a cautious smile, but he seemed comfortable enough holding her, so she let it go.

      “To tell you the truth,” he said, looking back at the cabinets, “easiest thing would be to just rip ’em all out, replace ’em with standard stock from Lowe’s or Home Depot or someplace. Heckuva lot cheaper, too.”

      “They won’t look cheap?”

      “Nah, they’ll look fine. And we can do granite veneer on the counters, looks great, but for, like, a quarter of the cost of solid.” He looked around. “Ditch the wallpaper, paint the walls, maybe do some tiling on the backsplash if you want…” He looked over, a slight smile tilting his lips. “I can get you an estimate by late tomorrow. How’s that?”

      “Um, sure, that’s great—”

      “Okay, pumpkin, back to your mama,” he said, handing the baby over and returning to the living room. “So, Miguel. Show how me what you taught the dog.”

      It was pitiful, the way the kid lit up. Pitiful and totally understandable. “Okay!” he said, bending over and patting his thighs. “C’mere, Blue! C’mere, boy!” The dog’s bat ears half-lowered, he looked back at Eli as if to say, Do I gotta? At Eli’s nod, the thing sighed and plodded over to Micky. “Now sit!” When the dog sat, Miguel looked at Eli, beaming. “Told you!”

      Smiling, Tess glanced back at Eli just in time to catch an achy expression on his face that stopped her smile cold, even as the man chuckled. “Let’s see if it works for me. Come, Blue.” The dog literally rolled his eyes, heaved himself to his feet and plodded back to Eli. “Sit, Blue. Well, look at that—you’re a good teacher, Miguel! Okay,” he said, gathering up his things. “I gotta git, but you two be good for your mama, y’hear?” Then he boot-scooted his fine self out of there, Blue trotting along behind.

      Bizarre.

      And all the way home, as Miguel yammered about how cool Eli was, the whole dog-sitting incident bugged. Yeah, Eli’d done and said all the right things, but Tess couldn’t shake the feeling something was off. Not that he didn’t like kids, or even that he didn’t know what to do with them, but…

      But like there was a story there he wasn’t telling.

      And if she was smart, she’d let it stay untold.

      Situated in what used to be an old A-frame house far enough from the center of town to be discreet, but not so far as to inconvenience anybody, the Lone Star Bar was about as threatening as a toothless hound dog. And almost as comical. Even with most of the original walls ripped out, the inside was hardly big enough for a decent-size bar, let alone the handful of tables and chairs and the requisite pool table squeezed into the back corner. Oh, and the six-foot-square “stage” set up for karaoke night. Ramon Viera, the owner, used to joke the place was so small he didn’t dare hire chesty waitresses for fear they’d put somebody’s eye out. But if, like Eli, you just wanted someplace to de-stress for a few minutes, there was no place better.

      Ramon’s bushy eyebrows barely lifted when Eli slid onto one of the dozen barstools. “Hey, Eli…haven’t seen you in forever,” he said over Reba McIntyre’s warbling on the jukebox, the clacking of billiard balls, some gal’s high-pitched laugh. “Everything okay?”

      Hell, no. Not by a long shot. And all it’d taken was the feel of Tess’s little girl in his arms, the yearning in a six-year-old boy’s eyes, for everything he’d worked so hard to put behind him to come roaring back up in his face, just like that.

      “What? I can’t stop in for old times’ sake?”

      Ramon shrugged. And grinned. Took a lot more than a cranky carpenter to offend the old bartender. “What’ll it be?”

      “Whatever’s on tap,” Eli said, tossing a couple bucks on the pock-marked bar when Ramon placed the filled glass in front of him, only to nearly choke on a cloud of perfume pungent enough to spray crops with.

      “Well, hello, stranger,” Suze Jenkins said, sliding up onto the seat beside him. “How ’bout buying a girl a drink?”

      Oh, Lord. They’d gone out exactly once, probably five years ago, although Eli couldn’t for the life of him remember why. What he did remember was that a) nothing had happened, and b) Suze had been right pissed about that. That despite his calling the next day to say he was sorry, but it didn’t seem right to leave her dangling when he knew nothing was gonna blossom between them—which had seemed the decent thing to do, if you asked him—she’d been harder to shake than a burr off a long-furred dog. And although she eventually let go, she still occasionally popped up, just seeing if the wind had changed.

      “Not sure that’s a good idea,” Eli now said, taking a sip of his beer, eyes straight ahead.

      “Chicken.”

      Finally, he looked at Tess’s business partner, seeing exactly what he’d seen then—a pretty woman in a low-cut sweater with desperation issues as strong as her perfume. “Just not in the mood for misinterpretations, that’s all.”

      “Oh, come on…after all this time? Don’t make me laugh.” She signaled to Ramon, ordered a whiskey and soda. “Heard you might be doing some work on the Coyote Trail house,” she said after Ramon set her drink in front of her.

      Eli frowned. “How’d you find that out?”

      “Candy might have mentioned it…oh, crap,” she said as she knocked her purse off the counter, adding, “No, that’s okay, I’ll get it,” when she bent over, a move that bathed her ample cleavage in a deep, neon-red glow.

      “Nothing’s set in stone yet,” Eli muttered, looking away. “Not until I submit my bid to the Harrises.”

      Once more upright, Suze fluffed her streaky bangs and took a sip of her drink. “And good luck with that. Tightwads.”

      Unaccountably irritated, Eli said, “Tess already got ’em to agree to a budget of about twenty grand. Long as I come in under that, we’re good.”

      “Even so…” Suze dunked her swizzle stick between her ice cubes. “How Tess thinks she can move that place is beyond me. Especially by Christmas? No way. I mean, if I couldn’t make it happen, nobody can.”

      “And maybe you shouldn’t be so sure about that,” Eli said, glancing toward the door just as his younger brother Noah came through it. Thinking, Thank You, Lord, Eli muttered his excuses, leaving another couple of bills on the counter to cover Suze’s drink before grabbing his beer and crossing to meet his brother.

      “Talk about your perfect timing,” he said in a low voice.

      Noah chuckled. “Yeah, you might want to watch out for that one.” He settled into a wooden chair at a hubcap-size table, tossing his cowboy hat on it and ruffling his short, light brown hair. “She’s like Super Glue.”

      “The new and improved formula,” Eli said, dropping into the other chair and shoving the hat aside to make room for his beer, wondering what it was about the west that made so many men who’d never gone near a cow don the duds. Himself

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