“That was the date.”
Brooks pushed his Stetson higher on his head with his forefinger. “What?”
“Calf-roping. He thought it would be fun if he showed me how he did it. That would have been fine, but then he wanted me to do it. Yes, I ride. Yes, I love horses. But I’d never calf-roped before and so I tried it. There was mud all over the place and I slipped and fell and I was covered with mud from head to toe.”
Brooks was laughing by then, a deep, hearty laugh that seemed to echo through her. She liked the fact she could make him laugh. Genially, she bumped his arm. “It wasn’t so funny when it was happening.”
He gave her a crooked smile that said he was a little bit sorry he laughed, but not much. “Whatever gave him the impression you’d like to try that out?”
“I have no clue, except I did tell him I like horses. I did try to be interested in what he did, and I asked him questions about it.”
“This was a first date?” Brooks guessed.
“It was the last date,” Jazzy responded.
“Not the last date ever.”
She sighed. “Probably not.”
Was he thinking of asking her out? Or were they just flirting? With that twinkle in his eyes, she imagined he could flirt with the best of them if he really wanted to.
“So you came here to meet a friend and hash out everything that’s happened,” he concluded.
“My gosh, a guy who understands women!”
He laughed again. “No, not so well.”
She wondered what that meant. “When I’m at home, sometimes I talk it all out with my sisters.”
“How many do you have?”
“I have four sisters, a brother and parents who think they know what’s best for me.”
“You’re lucky,” Brooks said.
“Lucky?”
“Yep. I’m the only one. And I lost my mom a long time ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Water under the bridge.”
But something in his tone said that it wasn’t, so she asked, “Are you close to your dad?”
“He’s the reason I stopped in here tonight.”
“To meet him?”
“Nope.” He hesitated, then added, “We had another argument.”
“Another?”
Brooks paused again before saying, “My dad’s not taking care of himself, and I can’t give him what he wants most.”
In her family, Jazzy usually said what she thought, and most of the time, no one heard her. But now she asked, “And what’s that?”
“He wants me to marry, and I’ll never do that.”
Whoa! She wanted to ask that all-important question—why?—but they’d just officially met and she knew better than to probe too much. She hated when her family did that.
Her questions must have led Brooks to think he could ask some of his own because he leaned toward her again. This time his face was very close to hers as he inquired, “So what was the job you left?”
After a heavy sigh, she admitted, “I was a glorified secretary.”
“A secretary,” he murmured, studying her. “How long are you staying in Rust Creek Falls?”
“I’ve already been in town for a while, so I guess I’ll have to go back soon. I work for Thunder Canyon Resort. I’m in the pool of assistants who handle everything to do about skiing. I had a lot of vacation time built up but that’s gone now. I don’t want to use all my savings because I want to earn my degree. Someday I’m going to own a ranch and run a non-profit organization to rescue horses.”
Brooks leaned away again and really assessed her as if he was trying to read every thought in her head, as if he was trying to decide if what she’d told him was really true. Of course it was true. A rescue ranch had been a burning goal for a while.
“How did you get involved in rescuing horses?”
“I help out a friend who does it.”
Finally, Brooks took a few long swigs of his beer and then set down his glass. He looked at it and then grimaced. “I didn’t even offer to buy you a drink. What would you like?”
“A beer would be fine.”
Brooks waved down the bartender and soon Jazzy was rolling her finger around the foam on the rim of her glass. This felt like a date, though it wasn’t. This felt...nice.
The music on the jukebox had stopped for the moment, and she listened to the chatter of voices, the clink of glasses and bang of a dish as a waitress set a burger in front of a cowboy.
Finally, as if Brooks had come to some conclusion, he swiveled on his stool and faced her. “If you had a job in Rust Creek Falls, would you stay longer?”
She had no idea where this was going since the town had few jobs to spare, but she told him the truth. “I might.”
“How would you like to come work for me as my secretary and assistant?”
“I don’t understand. You said you work for the vet practice in Kalispell.”
“I made a decision tonight. There’s only one way to keep my father from running himself into the ground, and that’s to take some business away from him. If I open an office here in Rust Creek Falls, I can take the load off my father and show him at the same time that he can feel confident handing down his practice to me, whether I marry or not.”
She admired what Brooks wanted to do for his father. Would working for him move her life forward? She could learn a lot from him.
“Can I think about it, at least until tomorrow?”
“Sure. In fact, take a couple of days. Why don’t you come along with me on my appointments to get a feel for my practice day after tomorrow? I’m going to have loose ends to tie up in Kalispell, but then you and I can spend the day together and you can see what my practice will involve.”
When she looked into Brooks’s dark eyes, she felt something deep in her being. In that moment, the world seemed to drop away.
They might have gazed into each other’s eyes like that all night except—
Cecilia Clifton was suddenly standing beside Jazzy saying, “You should have come to the meeting. The town’s making plans for the holidays.” When her gaze fell on Brooks, she stopped and said a breathy “Hi.”
Yes, Brooks could take a woman’s breath away. Jazzy thought again about his offer. “I’d like to shadow you for a day and see what you do.”
Brooks smiled and so did she. She had a feeling the day after tomorrow was going to be a day to remember.
Chapter Two
Two days later, Brooks pulled his truck to a stop in front of Strickland’s Boarding House, a four-story ramshackle Victorian. Its once-purple paint had faded to a lavender-gray. Cowboys on the rodeo circuit had bunked here over the years, but right now, many of the folks from Thunder Canyon who had come to help were staying here. Melba and Old Gene Strickland cared about their guests in an old-fashioned family way.
He switched off his ignition, thinking he must have been crazy to ask Jazzy Cates to work for him. He really knew nothing about her except what she’d told him. He’d followed his gut instinct as he often did in his work. But that didn’t mean he was