Shit. He’d been gruff. He knew that. But she’d blindsided him with her news. Merry was just the out-of-town friend of Grace. She was a nice girl who smiled too much and wore goofy T-shirts and didn’t seem to fit with her wild, tough friend from L.A. How had she suddenly become a next-door neighbor who was asking him to help her ruin his childhood haunt?
When she stopped, he pulled in behind her on a wide patch of dirt and got out. She was nearly bouncing on her toes when he joined her. “Isn’t it amazing?” she squealed.
“It looks like a bunch of falling down shacks.”
“That’s because you don’t know the history! What people went through to build this place, the lives they dug out from the dirt, the tragedies that drove them away. This place is alive, Shane. It’s just…sleeping.”
“More like mummifying,” he muttered, but she ignored him and grabbed his arm.
“Come on. I’ll show you the saloon. It’s really in pretty good shape, aside from the porch.”
Shane let her pull him along and tried to ignore a sense of déjà vu as he got closer to the first buildings. Her excitement was contagious, in the sense that it dispersed through the air like an infection that coated his skin, contaminating him with the phantom touch of the excitement he used to feel here. The mystery of the place. The snakes and lizards that would dart out from underneath foundations. The wonder of who’d walked here before, lawmen and outlaws and all sorts of people who’d never actually set foot in Providence. Of course, he’d been a child. He wasn’t sure what Merry’s excuse was, but he didn’t like the feel of it, and he rolled his shoulders to shake it off.
“Here it is,” she said. Her words weren’t necessary. Even if he hadn’t known it was the saloon, there was an ancient sign propped on the porch.
“So this is pretty good shape?” he asked.
“Yeah. Look at the mercantile next door.”
He moved closer to the porch and shook his head. “I can’t just fix it with new wood, Merry. This is a big deal. You’ll want to use old wood. Wood that’s been reclaimed and—”
“I know all that! I’m not a complete amateur. I can take care of everything. I just need your help.”
Shane turned and looked at her. Really looked at her for the first time since she’d asked him for help. He looked past the smile, past the sweet round face and slightly tanned cheeks flushed with pink. Her brown eyes were unremarkable…except that if you took the time to look, they showed everything she was feeling. And right now, she was feeling worried.
“What’s going on here, Merry?”
“What do you mean? I’m hiring a carpenter. You. I’m doing my job.”
“So you own this place? You can do whatever you want?” He knew damn well that wasn’t the situation, but he needed to find out her angle.
Instead of answering his question, Merry shifted, then crossed her arms and walked farther down the road. Interesting. Shane followed. When she stopped and turned around, all traces of worry were gone and she looked cool as a cucumber.
“I think we should approach this in tiers. First, I need to know if the building is safe. The floors. The ceilings. If it’s not safe, I need to know how much it would cost to make it safe. That’s step one. Second, I’d like to see the most obvious repairs made. The sagging porch. Holes in the ceiling. That sort of thing. Lastly, I need to know how much a restoration would cost.”
“A restoration? Merry, I don’t have time for—”
“I get that. But we’re not talking a full restoration. It would still need to be ghost-towny. No one wants to come to a ghost town and see a shiny saloon.”
“Ghost-towny,” he repeated wearily. “That an official term?”
“It is now. There’s a shed at the east end of the town that’s full of wood already reclaimed from collapsed buildings. No new wood, right? Just watch out for spiders.” She shivered. “I try not to go into the shed. It’s pretty chock full of spiders. It’s like…a spider anthill.”
“A…?” Realizing he was only going to be drawn deeper into her strange mind if he said any more, Shane shook his head and dropped the subject. “Okay. I guess you have thought this through.”
“Yes. It’s my job.” Her chin rose a little, as if daring him to dispute it. She wasn’t smiling now. Strangely her mouth looked wider in repose. More full and mysterious.
Shane rocked back on his heels, put his hands in his pockets, taking a little time to look over the ragged buildings around him. “When are you planning on opening this place, Merry?”
“Next year,” she answered, her chin edging higher.
Next year. Shane couldn’t let that happen. He had to stop this. “All right, then,” he offered with a smile. “I’ll do what I can.”
All her false bravado disappeared and she was hopping up and down like a kid again. “You will? Really?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Shane!” She threw herself at his chest, and Shane automatically put his arms around her. He also automatically registered how nice and feminine she smelled, a stark change from the men he’d worked with on his two weeks of ranch work. Then he very carefully set her back.
“I’m going to take a look at that spare wood. Do you want to walk over with me?”
“No! The spider anthill, remember?”
“Right.” God, she was a piece of work. But she had information he needed, so Shane touched his hat brim and nodded. “I’ll deal with the spiders on my own. And then I’ll take a look at your saloon.”
“Thank you!” she squealed, and he tried not to feel guilty as he walked away. Merry had stepped into something that she couldn’t understand, and that wasn’t Shane’s fault. He set his jaw and walked on.
CHAPTER THREE
“WHERE WERE you last night?”
Merry sat up from a dead sleep, throwing her arms out to defend against the snarling monster crouched above her. The monster jumped back, quick as a hellbeast, its flame-tipped mane framing a…pale and pretty face?
“Oh! Grace. You scared me.” Merry flopped back down onto the mattress, wincing when a spring poked her back. “What are you growling about?”
“Where were you last night? I called eight times! I tried to make Cole get up and drive me home.”
“Yeah? What did he say?”
“He…distracted me.”
Merry snorted and pulled the covers over her head, but Grace yanked them back.
“Merry! What did you do? Did you sleep with Shane? I mean…it’s okay. You can tell me. I won’t be mad.”
The not-quite-suppressed violence beneath Grace’s words sounded like static in her voice. Merry grinned at her. “You promise you won’t be mad?”
“Yes,” she said past clenched teeth and a painfully pleasant smile.
“Oh, my God.” Merry laughed. “You’re the worst liar ever. No, I did not use my super-sexy wiles to lure Shane onto my fold-out sofa bed for a night of uncomfortable passion.”
“I wasn’t worried about you doing the luring!”
“Okay. No, Shane did not butter me up with Star Wars trivia and then ‘accidentally’ fall on me with his penis out.”
“Merry,