“Fine,” she said moderately. “But please don’t show it to anyone else in the meantime.”
“In the meantime?” Maggie echoed, with a friendly little laugh. “As in, say, the next half hour? Relax, Kendra—if you want the house, it’s yours.”
Joslyn was grinning throughout the whole conversation.
“Thank you,” Kendra said, near tears, she was so excited. She said goodbye, hung up and grabbed her purse from the corner of her desk.
“Kendra,” Joslyn said, “take a breath. It’s meant to be.”
“That,” Kendra retorted lightly, already on her way to the door, car keys in hand, “is what you said about Hutch and me. Remember?”
“Oh,” Joslyn answered breezily, “I haven’t changed my mind on that score. Sooner or later, I’m sure you’ll both come around.”
Kendra shook her head, gave a rueful chuckle. “Don’t work too hard,” she said, opening the office door. “If you’re still here when I get back, I’ll buy you lunch at the Butter Biscuit.”
“One more lunch at the Butter Biscuit,” Joslyn said, “and I’ll be a butterball. Anyway, I promised to meet Shea at the Curly Burly at one—we’re going shopping.”
Kendra nodded and rushed out.
Five minutes later, she was seated in Maggie’s office, on the very edge of her chair.
Maggie had already warned her that building a legal structure that would protect Madison’s considerable financial interests would require a series of meetings, if only because of the complexity of the task.
Kendra listened to Maggie’s explanations and suggestions as patiently as she could, but her mind was on the one-story colonial with the fenced backyard. This, too, was unlike her—she usually focused keenly on whatever she was doing at the time, but today, it was impossible.
Maggie, a pretty woman with short hair, gamine eyes and very nice clothes, finally chuckled and laid down her expensive fountain pen.
“You’re not getting a word of this, are you, Kendra?” she asked.
Kendra smiled and shook her head. “I’m sorry. From the moment I realized the house might be available, I’ve been fidgety.”
Maggie collected her handbag from a drawer of her desk. “Then let’s go and do the walk-through,” she said. “Then we’ll come back here and take another shot at running the numbers for Madison’s fund.”
“I’d like that,” Kendra said, feeling almost giddy.
“Follow me, then,” Maggie said, jangling her car keys.
The cottage had been freshly painted, Kendra noticed with a pang of sweet avarice, and so had the picket fence out front. The flower beds were in full bloom and the lawn, newly mown, smelled sweetly of cut grass.
It was so easy to imagine herself and Madison living here.
“I knew you were selling the mansion, of course,” Maggie said when they got out of their cars and met on the sidewalk in front of the colonial. “But I guess I thought you’d be in the market to buy a place, rather than rent.”
“I did plan on buying,” Kendra answered, letting her gaze wander over the sleeping-in-the-sunshine face of that perfect little house, “but I’m learning that it’s wise to be open to surprises.”
Maggie smiled and opened the creaky gate. “Isn’t that the truth?” she responded.
WHEN HUTCH FINALLY caught up with Brylee, she was in her small but well-organized warehouse on the outskirts of Three Trees, helping to stack boxes as they were unloaded from the back of a delivery truck.
Clad in jeans, sneakers and a blue U of M pullover, she looked more like a teenager than a thirty-year-old woman with a successful business and a bad-luck wedding day to her credit. Her russet-brown hair hung down her back in a long, fairly tidy braid, and she hadn’t bothered with makeup.
She didn’t notice Hutch right away and he used those moments to gather his resolve, all the while wishing he felt something for Brylee—God knew, she was beautiful and she was sweet and she was smart. She was definitely wife and mother material—but she didn’t stir him down deep where it counted and that was a deal-breaker.
At last Brylee stilled, like a doe catching the scent of some threat on the wind, she turned her head his way and saw him standing just a few feet inside the roll-up doorway of the warehouse,
Her large eyes, bluish today because of the color of the shirt she was wearing, looked hollow as she took him in and he knew she was weighing her options—seriously considering walking away without deigning to speak, if not shooting him down where he stood or running him over with the first handy forklift.
Brylee had a temper and she could be as hardheaded as any statue, but she was no coward. She spoke sotto voce to the other workers, all female, all of whom were staring now, as though Hannibal Lector had just appeared in their midst, wearing the leather mask and holding a plate of fava beans, and then came slowly toward him.
Brylee ran a small but thriving party-planning company that sold home decor items and various gifts. She had a network of sales people that covered a five-state area, holding lucrative little gatherings in people’s homes, and operated a thriving online store, as well.
“Hello, Hutch,” she said, indicating her nearby office with a nod and leading the way.
He fell into step with her after muttering a gruff “hello” of his own.
The office was small and furnished in early army surplus. Brylee evidently reserved her creative capacities for choosing and photographing products, training her “independent home decor consultants” and coming up with innovative marketing strategies. Here, in this little room off the warehouse, she handled the practical end of things.
“I wondered when you’d show up,” she said once they were inside her enclave with the door closed against listening ears.
“I wanted to come and see you right after the—well, after—but I was persuaded that it wouldn’t be a good idea,” Hutch replied. He stood with his back to the door, while Brylee perched on the edge of her beat-up steel desk, with her arms folded and her head tipped to one side in skeptical anticipation.
“I could have spared you the trouble of paying a visit,” Brylee replied quietly. She looked strained, exhausted, a little pale, but pride flashed in her changeable hazel eyes and stiffened her generous mouth. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Hutch. Nothing I’d want written in the Book of Life, anyway.”
“Well,” he drawled, after stifling a wry chuckle, “it just so happens that I have something to say to you.”
Brylee arched one eyebrow and waited. She looked bored now, but wary, too. What, she might have been wondering, was this yahoo going to spring on her now?
Hutch shoved a hand through his hair. He’d left his hat in the truck, but otherwise he was dressed as usual in work clothes and boots. Whisper Creek Ranch practically ran itself these days, well-staffed and well-organized as it was, but he still felt the need to get up every morning before the sun rose and tend to the business of herding cattle, mending fences and all the rest.
Today he hadn’t been able to keep his mind on the routine, though, and it was a damn confusing situation, too. He thought about Kendra 24/7, but he’d been drawn to Brylee ever since that broken-road wedding that didn’t quite come off.
“I can’t say I’m sorry for what I did,” he said straightforwardly. “Going through with that ceremony would have been the