“Poor baby.” Lori shook her head, amused by the picture he painted. “Though you’re ruining Montana’s image for me. I thought all western men were horsemen.”
“Yeah,” he said dryly. “Just like we all smoke Marlboros and drag our Christmas trees behind sleighs through snowy fields.”
“Wearing ten-gallon hats,” she added.
“And sheepskin jackets.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “You don’t have a sheepskin jacket? I think I’m going to cry.”
“I’ll get one tomorrow,” he said promptly. “Just so you won’t.”
The teasing note in his voice made her nervous again. “Well…” she started.
“Well?”
“I guess it’s time for me to take myself and my fractured preconceptions home.” She drew her hand and her car keys from her pocket.
He moved away from the door so she could unlock it. “It’s not that I don’t like horses, Lori. Just that I like them best when they’re standing and I’m standing too.”
When she opened the door, the car’s overhead light pooled on Josh’s heavy construction boots but didn’t come close to illuminating his face, somewhere above her. “You seem to have bad luck with things falling on you,” she said, daring to tease a little about their meeting in the gym.
“I wouldn’t say it’s bad luck at all.”
With just those words, her pulse quickened again. She looked up at him, then swallowed, because he was so big and because there was that current running between them, that hot, tingly current she’d worked so hard to ignore all day. She had no business feeling this. For Josh, or for any man. It was too easy for her to become dependent on one. The wrong one.
“Josh.” She meant to say the word as a warning, but instead it came out uncertain.
“Lori.” He took a step closer, and she automatically shrank against the car. He froze. He muttered to himself. He turned away from her. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
But before she had the door shut, he turned back. “Lori.”
“Yes?”
His face was still in shadow, but it didn’t take night vision for her to know he was battling himself. “Are you…is there…” He broke off, muttering again.
“What do you want, Josh?”
His voice was rueful. “For the moment, the answer to a question.”
“Yes?”
He sighed. “Did you come to Whitehorn to be with someone?”
To be with a man, he meant. “No, Josh.” Lori almost laughed. “Good night.” Shutting the car door, she wondered what he’d think if she told him she’d come to Whitehorn for precisely the opposite reason. She was here to get away from someone.
To get away from a man.
Before work a few mornings later, Josh sat on a weight bench at the gym, pushing himself through another set of bicep curls. Sweat ran down his neck and glistened on his arms. He worked his muscles to the failure point, knowing that he wouldn’t make it through the day without burning off some of his restless energy.
Dealing with Lori Hanson wasn’t getting any easier. She continued to be a distracting, enigmatic presence in his office. He still didn’t know if he had his signals crossed or if she sent out hot and cold messages on purpose.
Though he’d been spending a lot of time out of the office, he still made it back by five o’clock every day to walk her to her car. As he’d promised, the parking lot was brightly lit now, but he felt better seeing her off himself.
Someone dropped to the bench beside him. Josh kept pumping the weights, thinking about how Lori had looked beneath the new light the night before, her nose pinking with the cold, her dark hair curling against her cheek. He’d had to hold himself back from placing his palm there. Worse, he’d yet to shake the feeling that part of her wanted him to do that very thing.
“Hell, Josh,” said a familiar voice. “I said ‘good morning’ and I’ve been sitting here for five minutes waiting for a response, but you haven’t done anything but grunt and sweat.”
Jerked from his reverie, Josh turned his head. “Oh. Andy. Hey.” He’d known Andy McKenna for a dozen years.
Andy picked up a couple of nearby dumbbells and started his own set of curls. “What’s eating you?”
Josh let his weights slip to the floor. His arm muscles burned. “The usual.”
Andy looked over. “A work problem?”
“Woman problem.”
Thud-thud. Andy’s weights dropped. So did his jaw. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Why would you say that?” Josh asked.
“Because, buddy, you haven’t let yourself have a woman problem, not once, in the last five years.”
Since Kay’s death, Andy meant. Josh shifted on the bench, stretching out his legs to inspect the laces of his cross-trainers. It was true. He hadn’t felt the need for anything more than the most casual relationships with women since then. Nothing heavy enough to be classified a problem. He grunted. “I have one now.”
“Well, hallelujah,” Andy said. “Good ol’ Josh has a woman problem.”
Josh shot the other man a look. “Gee, thanks.”
He grinned. “Misery loves company and all that. So tell Dear Andy the problem. Is the lady married? Does she have a boyfriend?”
“No.” As he’d walked her to her car that first night, Josh had wondered that himself. But she’d said she hadn’t come to Whitehorn to be with a man. He ran a hand over his damp hair. “Andy, you know when a woman’s interested, right?”
“Hmm.” The other man reached for the dumbbells he’d dropped. “Well, I’ve made my share of blunders over the years, but I’d say that now I’m pretty good at distinguishing between a smile and a, well, smile.”
“And how old are you?” Josh asked.
“Thirty-five.”
Younger than Josh, which meant he couldn’t rule out that pre-midlife crisis condition.
“Geez, Josh.” Andy stopped lifting again. “You look serious. What the hell’s the matter?”
Josh shook his head. “I—”
Andy’s low whistle interrupted him. “Wow. Would you look at that.” With his chin, he gestured toward the glass wall in front of them, the wall through which they could see the basketball courts and the running track surrounding them.
A woman was stretching in the far lane of one curve. “‘That,”’ said Josh. “Is precisely my problem. Lori Hanson, my temporary receptionist.”
“Oh, buddy.” Andy gazed on him with pity. “I don’t blame you. She looks like trouble.” He switched his gaze back to the track, where Lori was now starting her run. “Uh-oh. Wouldn’t you know it, Wily Rick Weber is on the scent.”
Ahead of Lori on the track, a lean, curly-haired man paused and bent over, as if his shoe needed retying. It was only too obvious to Josh that the other runner had noticed Lori and was waiting for her to catch up