LITMIR.BIZ

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bought anything yet,” he felt obligated to point out.

      The man was obviously a stickler for the truth, she couldn’t help thinking. She liked that. Moreover, she could really use someone like that, someone who would tell her the truth no matter what.

      She paused a moment, wondering how the man would react to what she was about to propose.

      Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

      Catherine felt good about this. The sparkle in her deep, chocolate-colored eyes grew as she dove in. “Cody, how old are you?” she wanted to know.

      The question caught him completely off guard. The last time he recalled being asked his age like that, he’d been a teenager, picking up a six-pack of beer for his buddy and himself. At the time, he’d figured that his deep voice and his height would make questioning unnecessary. He’d assumed wrong.

      He fixed the young woman with a look, wondering what she was up to. “If you’re planning on asking customers their age, once word about that gets out, I don’t think you’re going to have too many of the ladies coming in.” And everyone knew that it was women, not men, who liked this old furniture and knickknacks.

      “I don’t care how old they are,” Catherine protested. “I mean, I do, but I don’t—” She stopped abruptly, realizing that she was getting tongue-tied again. Taking a breath, she backtracked. “I’m trying to appeal to a certain dynamic—a certain age-group,” she corrected herself, not wanting this rugged cowboy to think she was trying to talk over his head. But what she’d just said didn’t sound quite right, either. “Let me start over,” she requested. Taking a deep breath, she paused for a second before plunging in again. “What I want to do is attract a certain age-group—younger than the people who used to come into the store—so I thought if I could maybe pick your brain once in a while, find out what you think of some of the merchandise, it might help me improve sales once I open.”

      If possible, the woman was making even less sense to him than before.

      Hell, if she was trying to find out what would attract guys like him, all she had to do was look in the mirror, Cody couldn’t help thinking. Because, confusing though she seemed to be every time she opened her mouth, this new shop owner was a damn sight easy on the eyes. If she stood in the doorway—or near her show window—that would definitely be enough to bring men in on the pretext of shopping.

      But, curious to see if there was something more to what she was suggesting, Cody asked, “Why would you want to pick my brain?” His taste was plain and, if it were up to him, he wouldn’t have set foot in here in the first place.

      In answering his question, Catherine didn’t go with the obvious: that there was something compellingly fascinating about this vintage cowboy who had strolled into her shop just in time to keep her from breaking something vital. Instead, she gave him something they could both live with.

      “Because what you like is what would appeal to other people in your age bracket.”

      He’d never thought of himself as being like everyone else. Not that he saw himself as unique, just … different. The gadgets out there that held such fascination for men—if he was to believe the occasional commercial he saw—held no interest for him. He was a man of the earth, a plain, simple man who’d never felt the need to be part of the crowd or to join anything at all for that matter.

      With a shrug, he finally got around to answering the initial question she’d put to him. “I’m thirty-five.”

      That was about where she would have put him, Catherine thought, feeling triumphant.

      “Perfect,” she declared out loud, stopping short of clapping her hands together. “You’re exactly what I’m looking for. Business-wise,” she quickly qualified in case he got the wrong impression. She didn’t want him thinking she was staking him out for some reason. The last thing she wanted was to chase this cowboy away.

      Cody looked at the exuberant woman for a long moment. He sincerely doubted that he was the type that any woman was looking for, at least not anymore. There was a time when he would have been. A time when he’d been eager to plunge into life, to be the best husband, the best father he could possibly be. A time when he greeted each day with hope, thinking of all that lay ahead of him and Renee.

      But all that had changed once Renee had died. Whatever he’d had to offer in terms of a normal relationship had died and had been buried along with his wife.

      He was tempted to tell her she was wrong in selecting him, but he could see that there was just no putting this woman off. She had a fire lit under her, and if he wasn’t careful, that fire could burn them both.

      Still, he supposed he had nothing to lose by going along with her in this. She’d undoubtedly find his answers boring, but until she did, he could view this as a distraction. God knew he was always looking for something to distract him. Something to block his dark thoughts so that he didn’t have to dwell on just how empty his existence had become and continued to be.

      Eight years and nothing had changed. He was still just going through the motions of living, placing one foot in front of the other.

      “I don’t know about perfect,” he finally said to Catherine with a self-deprecating laugh that sounded as if it had come rumbling straight out of his chest, bypassing his throat, “but if I can help—” he shrugged “—sure.”

      If possible, her eyes brightened even more. It made him think of the way a satisfying, steaming cup of hot coffee tasted on a cold winter’s day.

      “Really?” Catherine pressed, this time actually clapping her hands together as if he was some magical genie who had just bestowed the gift of three wishes on her.

      Cody shrugged again in response to her question. “Why not?” he said even as a part of him whispered a warning that he had just taken his first step on a very narrow ledge. A step that could result in his tumbling down into an uncharted abyss at a moment’s notice.

      All things considered, he supposed that there could be worse things.

       Chapter Two

      “So exactly how is this going to work?” Cody asked her after a beat. As a rule, he wasn’t a curious man, but in this case, he had to admit that this woman had managed to arouse what little curiosity he did possess. “Are you going to be showing me pictures of the stuff you’re thinking of selling at the store, or what?” Before she could answer the question, Cody felt it only fair to inform her of something. “Think you should know right from the start that I’m really not too keen on broken-down old furniture.”

      As far as he was concerned, furniture didn’t have to be fancy, but it had to be functional—and not look as if it belonged in some garbage heap.

      Catherine laughed. “That’s good, because neither am I.”

      She was still feeling her way around as to the kind of focus she wanted to bring to the shop. Right now, she was pretty much making it up as she went along.

      Catherine wondered if admitting that to this down-to-earth cowboy would be a mistake. Would it make him think less of her? Or would he just dismiss her present indecision as a “woman thing”? An inconsequential whim on her part? She realized that it would bother her if he did.

      His expression registered mild surprise. Cody looked around at the showroom. Everything here was way older than he was. If it wasn’t for the fact that Caroline had a weakness for this kind of thing, he would have just called it all “junk” and dismissed the whole place out of hand.

      If this woman was really being on the level with him and felt the same way he did, that brought up another question. “Then what are you doing with this store?”

      “Changing its image,” Catherine answered without hesitation.

      How was she going to do that with the things she had to work with? “To what?”

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