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  For just the tiniest split second, he debated acting on the thought. Debated kissing her purely for practical reasons.

  He even leaned into her a little. And once he did, he started to go through the rest of the motions. His eyes held her prisoner just as much as hers managed to hold him in the same cell.

  His lips were almost touching hers—

  And then the bell over the doorway went off, splintering the moment. Breaking the mood.

  Announcing the presence of another person entering their private space.

  Acute discomfort, laced through with a prickly dose of guilt, had Cody taking a step back away from his intended target before he looked in the direction of the offending doorway.

  “I thought you said you were closed,” he said to Catherine, his tone dark.

  It almost sounded like an accusation, Catherine thought, even as she tried to figure out exactly what had just happened here—and what hadn’t happened.

  “I am,” she finally answered, the words emerging from her lips in slow, confused motion.

  “But she’s not closed to family,” the person walking into the shop cheerfully declared. The smile in the young woman’s voice was only rivaled by the one on her face. “Are you, Cate?”

  A wave of disappointment washed over Catherine, although she wasn’t altogether certain why or what it was that she was disappointed about. It took her a moment to catch her breath.

  Belatedly, she looked toward the source of the cheery voice and identified the young woman for Cody. “C.C.”

  “Well, at least you still recognize me.” Her youngest sister laughed. “That’s hopeful.” She looked pleased with the observation. Stepping forward as she took the muffler off from around her neck, C.C. put her hand out to her sister’s friend. “Hi, I’m the cheerful sister.” She cocked her head the exact same way that Catherine did. “And you are?” She waited for the man to identify himself.

  “Just leaving,” Cody replied gruffly, a feeling of uncustomary awkwardness invading him. It was a strange feeling and he couldn’t say that he much cared for it.

  “Well, Mister ‘Just Leaving,’” C.C. said, tongue in cheek as she made her request, “please don’t do it on my account. I just dropped by to see how things were going and to ask my big sister if she needed a hand for a few hours.” Her grin grew to almost huge proportions as her eyes swept over the man she’d seen standing almost intimately close to her sister. “You obviously don’t,” she concluded, turning toward Catherine. There was blanket approval in C.C.’s eyes—as well as admiration and perhaps just the tiniest touch of envy. “You seem to be doing just fine.” Her eyes all but danced as she turned toward the door again. “I’ll just leave you two alone and—”

  “No, stay,” Cody said. It was very close to sounding like an order. “I was just going.”

  The grin—or was that a smirk, Cody wondered—remained as Catherine’s younger sister seemed to take careful measure of him.

  “You didn’t look as if you were just going when I came in,” she told him. “From where I was standing, you looked like you’d just arrived.”

  If that was a riddle, he had no time to untangle it. He missed the very annoyed look that Catherine shot at her sister. Glancing at C.C., he mumbled something that sounded like “nice meeting you” without any conviction whatsoever and then addressed Catherine. “I’ll be seeing you,” he told her with a nod of his head.

  A few strides toward the door and then he was gone.

  “I sure hope so,” C.C. murmured under her breath as the door closed again. The tiny bell needlessly announced his departure. Turning on her heel to look at her sister, C.C. declared with no small enthusiasm, “If you’re stocking those in the store, I’ll take twelve.”

  “C.C.—” There was a warning note in Catherine’s voice.

  “Okay, okay,” C.C. relented. “I’m being greedy. I’ll take ten.” Seeing her older sister’s frown deepen, she stopped teasing. Kind of. “Who was that masked man?” she wanted to know. “He was absolutely, blood-pumpingly gorgeous.”

  There was no point in telling C.C. that what she’d just said made no sense. There were times when her youngest sister lived on a planet all her own.

  So instead, Catherine simply said, “That was Cody Overton.”

  There was a great deal more to this man than just a name, C.C. thought. Her sister might not be aware of the sparks of electricity she’d just seen flying between them, but she definitely was. It’s a wonder neither one of them had any of their skin singed.

  “And?” C.C. wanted to know.

  Catherine looked at the younger girl, completely confused. “And what?”

  C.C. looked at her closely, as if she was attempting to delve into her sister’s mind. With absolutely no luck at the moment. So she asked, “And have you been holding out on us?”

  “Holding out?” Catherine repeated, at this point very thoroughly confused. There was no “holding out.” Her life and what she did was an open book. A boring one, granted, but an open one nonetheless. She had no idea what C.C. was talking about.

  C.C. gravitated toward the box of clothes that Catherine had just opened. Her attention was instantly captivated by the top two items, each of which she took out and held up for closer examination. She definitely liked what she saw.

  “You know, like a secret lover,” C.C. elaborated absently. Holding the beaded shirt against herself, C.C. smoothed it down into place. She tried to imagine what it would look like coupled with her favorite pair of jeans. It would definitely turn heads, she concluded. Holding the shirt up, she asked Catherine, “Hey, you give discounts to relatives?”

  Pressing the blouse against her upper torso, C.C. went in search of a mirror or some sort of shiny surface to give her an idea what she looked like in the shirt.

  “Only if I don’t disown them,” Catherine fired back. And then she softened just a little. “Seriously, what are you doing here?”

  “‘Seriously,’ I came to help out for a few hours,” C.C. told her again. And then a touch of remorse entered her voice. “I didn’t mean to break something up.”

  “You didn’t,” Catherine quickly assured her.

  C.C. laughed, shaking her head. Was her sister in denial—or just trying to pretend nothing was going on for her benefit?

  “You obviously weren’t paying attention,” she chided, then tossed in an accusation for good measure. “You’ve been holding out on me.” Rather than be annoyed, C.C. was delighted with this turn of events. “Have you known him long?”

  Catherine was completely speechless at the way her youngest sister could jump to conclusions without any sort of real input at all. She made it sound as if there was something going on—and there wasn’t.

  “A couple of hours,” she finally told her sister, hoping that was the end of it.

  But this was C.C. and the “end” was a long way away, Catherine thought with a mental groan.

  “Looked like he knew you a lot better than that,” C.C. commented, putting the shirt on the counter before going on to explore the rest of the box’s contents.

  Catherine deliberately took the faded, flared jeans out of C.C.’s hands. She didn’t want her sister “buying” the entire contents of the box. Knowing C.C., what she’d get was a series of IOUs that C.C. would conveniently forget about and that she herself would have no intentions of collecting on. Family was family through thick and thin and sales receipts.

  “How is it you don’t get a nose bleed from jumping to conclusions like that?” Catherine asked her matter-of-factly.

  Rather than answer, C.C. cocked her head as she eyed Catherine again. She had no intentions of having her sister distract her. Something was up—and she had a pretty good idea what that something was all about.

  “Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” C.C. declared in a pseudo-cultured voice.

  “What the ‘lady’ is desperately trying to do is keep from strangling her youngest sister to death,” Catherine countered bet
ween clenched teeth.

  She loved everyone in her family more than words could possibly begin to describe, but there were times when they—collectively and individually—got to be just too much for her. That was when she’d engineer a mini-getaway—sometimes all she needed was a few hours alone. But this time, she had a feeling she might need just to “disappear” for more than an hour—or five.

  Despite the threat—obviously an empty one, C.C. thought—she didn’t back off. For one, she was having far too good a time with this. For another, she knew that Catherine didn’t even yell, so murder seemed as if it would be a little out of her comfort zone.

  “Am I getting too close?” C.C. asked her.

  “To your own demise?” Catherine shot back, then added a confirmation. “Yes.”

  For a second, C.C. did back off, but only to study her subject. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this before.” For C.C. there was only one conclusion to be drawn. “You must really like this guy.”

  Catherine’s slender shoulders rose and then fell again in a dismissive shrug. “He’s just a cowboy—”

  “Yeah, I know.” C.C.’s voice was almost dreamy as she talked. “I really thought he’d mount his horse and go riding off into the sunset. Where have you been keeping him all this time?” she wanted to know, refusing to believe that Catherine had just stumbled across this man a matter of hours ago, the way she’d alluded.

  Catherine sighed. Her sister was a hopeless romantic and ever since Calista had announced plans for her upcoming wedding, C.C. had gone off on some impossible tangent, seeing potential grooms behind every tree and rock. She was surprised that the girl hadn’t eloped with someone by now.

  Surprised and grateful, Catherine added silently before tackling C.C.’s overly fertile imagination one last time.

  “Once and for all, C.C., I haven’t been ‘keeping’ Cody anywhere. He walked in here three days ago, looking to buy a birthday present for his sister. When he spotted a fringed coin purse, I decided to make him a trade—I’d let him have the coin purse for free in exchange for his opinion on a few items I was going to be carrying in the shop.” She could see by the expression on her sister’s face that C.C. just wasn’t buying into this. Damn, but that girl could be stubborn. “I thought I’d try to appeal to his demographic,” Catherine tacked on, feeling almost helpless.

  “So what you’re saying is that you’re planning on only selling to hopelessly sexy cowboys with killer eyes?” There were dimples winking in and out of the corners of her mouth as she made no effort to keep the amused grin off her lips.

  For now Catherine threw in the towel. “Why don’t you see if Calista needs help with her wedding plans?” she suggested forcefully.

  “I’d rather stay here and torture you,” C.C. told her with a straight face. But when she saw the exasperated look that entered Catherine’s chocolate eyes, she held up her hands in protest. “Okay, okay, I’ll cease and desist, I promise.” And then a serious look flitted across her face as she said, “But I am sorry.”

  Okay, what was this about? “About what?” she asked aloud.

  Wasn’t Catherine paying any attention? “That I walked in at the wrong time. From where I was standing, it looked as if your so-called ‘Mr. Demographic’ was just about to kiss you—and would have if I hadn’t picked just then to come barging in.”

  If she were being honest, Catherine would have had to admit that she’d been pretty certain that he was going to kiss her just then. But then, maybe this had all worked out for the best anyway.

  “That’s just your imagination,” Catherine insisted, wanting the book to be closed.

  Rather than continue the argument, C.C. merely shrugged. “Okay, if you say so, Cate. But I was serious when I said that I came here to help you out in the store for a little bit. I don’t have to be anywhere for a few hours and I thought you might want some help sorting all this stuff. Unless, of course, you want to save it for Mr. Strong, Silent Type,” C.C. amended.

  Instead of answering, Catherine went into the back room. When she emerged again, she was armed with a large feather duster. The moment she was close to C.C., she placed the feather duster into her sister’s hand.

  “Here, if you really want to be useful, start dusting from the back to the front,” she instructed. “I don’t think this place has had a once-over since before Jasper Fowler got arrested.”

  “That’s an awful lot of dust,” C.C. commented.

  “I know,” Catherine agreed sympathetically. “So I guess you’d better get started if you want to finish before next Easter.”

  C.C. saluted her with the feather duster. “Your word is my command, Cate.” She grinned as she looked around. “This really is pretty exciting,” she agreed. “When are you opening for business again?” she asked as she started dusting.

  Catherine thought of her target date. It was breathing down her neck. How did it get to be so late in the month? “Too soon,” she murmured.

  “Well, if you don’t think you’ll be ready in time, you could always ask Mr. Delicious Cowboy to come riding to your rescue.”

  “Just dust,” Catherine ordered, pointing to an area that was completely obscured by dust.

  Her sister laughed and saluted with the hilt of the duster. “Yes’m.”

  Catherine nodded her head and smiled at C.C.’s “obedient” response. She had to admit, she liked the sound of that. Especially after all these years.

  “You’re finally catching on, C.C.,” she told her sister.

  “I could say the same thing about you,” she heard C.C. murmur under her breath.

  About to make another comment, Catherine decided to hold her piece instead. A great deal more would get done in the store in the long run if she just pretended not to have heard C.C.’s last reply.

  Chapter Five

  That had been a very close call, Cody told himself as he drove his truck over to the General Store. He’d nearly forgotten to pick up the things that had supposedly brought him into Thunder Canyon in the first place. He could just picture what Hank and Kurt would say about that.

  The ranch hands wouldn’t say anything to him directly, but there’d be winks and nods and knowing nudges. He could damn well do without that.

  But that wasn’t what he actually regarded as his “close call.”

  If that blonde girl hadn’t come into Catherine’s store just when she did, he probably would have wound up kissing Catherine.

  Not a good idea.

  Not that he hadn’t kissed anyone in the last eight years. He had. He’d done a lot more than just kissed those other women, too, but he had an uneasy feeling that while the other women he’d been with were just a way for him to satisfy the physical need he occasionally experienced, kissing the enthusiastic store owner would lead him down a whole different path.

  Not one he was planning to take. Ever.

  Anyone could see that Catherine Clifton wasn’t like the others.

  There was a purpose to her, one that did not include fixing or changing him. She was the first woman he’d come across in a long time who didn’t strike him as being just one-dimensional. There was substance to her. He found he could carry on a conversation with her without having his mind drift off somewhere in the middle because he was bored.

  No, Cody thought as he absently made his way through the General Store’s aisles, looking for the items he’d said he was bringing back, the woman definitely wasn’t boring.

  Far from it.

  He was attracted to her and therein lay his problem. He didn’t want to be attracted to her, didn’t want to be attracted to anyone. A strong enough attraction could lead to caring and that could lead to disaster. He knew that firsthand.

  Caring was asking to have his heart ripped out of his chest and barbecued on a bed of hot coals when he least expected it.

  Loving someone left you vulnerable to all sorts of things.

  Been there, done that, Cody thought with finality, deliberately shutting th
e door on the very idea that he could ever allow himself to go down that particular path again.

  The thought abruptly had him coming to a mental skidding halt.

  What the hell was going on here? How had he gone from almost kissing Catherine to having his heart extracted without benefit of an anesthetic?

  That whole analogy was way too dramatic for him.

  Rolling it over in his head now, it seemed more like something one of the women he’d gone out with after Renee’s passing might have said.

  He wasn’t being himself.

  Maybe he should have kissed her, Cody decided, rethinking the situation. Just to show himself that he could take it or leave it—and her—whenever he felt like it.

  Just to prove to himself that the feisty shop owner had no power over him.

  “Will there be anything else, Cody?” the older man behind the checkout counter asked him politely. All his groceries were tabulated and neatly stacked to the side, waiting to be packed up.

  Cody blinked, coming out of his self-imposed mental fog as he suddenly realized that he’d come to a dead stop at the checkout counter and hadn’t moved, even after he’d paid his bill.

  The man he’d handed the cash to had to think that he was a little bit crazy just to remain standing there as if he was trying to imitate a statue.

  “No, thanks.” He forced what passed for a smile to his lips for the clerk’s benefit. “That’s everything,” he said to him.

  The man looked at him thoughtfully and with just the smallest measure of concern. “Everything all right, Cody?” he inquired.

  “Everything’s fine, Jake,” Cody replied immediately. His tone left no opening for any sort of further exchange. He wasn’t one to discuss anything that was going on in his private life.

  Taking the grocery bags off the counter, he hefted them outside to his truck and secured them in the back.