She fairly collided with Conner Creed in the big double doorway; his arms were full of small boxes and he was wearing a battered brown hat that cast shadows over his facial features.
“Sorry,” she said, after gulping her heart back down into its normal place. Nearly, anyway.
He said something in reply—maybe “Excuse me”—but Tricia had already started to go around him, unaccountably anxious to get away.
Becky stood behind the counter, wearing colorful scrubs with pink cartoon kittens frolicking all over the fabric, holding out the leash and collar without being asked. Her eyes sparkled as she looked at Tricia, then past her, to Conner.
“Thanks,” Tricia said.
She turned around, and Conner had disappeared. Her relief was exceeded only by her disappointment.
All for the best, she told herself firmly. It’s not as if you’re in the market for a man. You’ve got Hunter, remember? Never mind that she hadn’t seen or even spoken to Hunter lately.
Outside, Conner was just turning away from his truck, where he’d stowed the boxes he’d been carrying before. He adjusted his hat, giving her another of those frank assessments he seemed to be so good at.
“Need help?” he asked, at his leisure.
Tricia realized that she’d stopped in her tracks and made herself move again, but color thumped in her cheeks. “I can manage,” she said.
Conner approached, nonetheless, and when she opened one of the Pathfinder’s rear doors, he eased her aside. “Let me,” he said, taking the leash and collar from her hand. He lifted the panting dog out of the vehicle and set him down, offering the leash to Tricia. “What’s his name?”
“I call him the dog,” Tricia said.
“Imaginative,” Conner replied, with another of those tilted grins.
Tricia bristled. “He’s a stray. I found him hiding under one of the picnic tables at River’s Bend, just this morning.”
What all this had to do with naming or not naming the animal Tricia could not have said. The words just tumbled out of her mouth, as though they’d formed themselves with no input at all from her brain.
“So you’re leaving him here?” Conner asked. His grin lingered, but it wasn’t as dazzling as before, and his voice had a slight edge.
“No,” Tricia said. She’d just gotten her feathers smoothed down, and now they were ruffled again. “He’ll be staying at the office until I can find him somewhere to live.”
She’d hoped that would satisfy Conner and he’d go away, but he didn’t. He dropped to his haunches in front of the dog and stroked its floppy ears.
“A name doesn’t seem like too much to ask,” the rancher said mildly.
Tricia tugged at the leash, to no real avail. “We’ll be late,” she fretted. As if she had anything to do for the rest of the day except clean restrooms at the campground. “Come on—dog.”
Conner stood up again. He towered over Tricia, so her neck popped when she tilted her head back to look into his face.
She liked shorter men, she reflected, apropos of nothing. Hunter, at five-eight, was tall enough. Perfect, in fact. He was the perfect man.
If you didn’t mind being ignored most of the time.
Or if you set aside the fact that he didn’t want children. Or that he didn’t like animals much.
“He’ll be here at the clinic awhile,” Conner said, ostensibly referring to the dog. “Have lunch with me.”
Tricia blinked. She didn’t know what she’d expected, if indeed she’d expected anything at all, but it hadn’t been an invitation to lunch. Was this a date? The thought sent a small, shameful thrill through her.
“Natty’s a good friend of mine,” Conner went on, adjusting his hat again. “And since you and I seem to have started off on the wrong foot, I thought—”
“We haven’t,” Tricia argued, without knowing why. The strange tension between them must have made her snappish. “Started off on the wrong foot, I mean.”
Again, that slow grin that settled over her insides like warm honey. Agitated, she tugged at the leash again and this time, the dog was willing to follow her lead. Relieved, she made her way to the doors.
But Conner came right along with her. He was a persistent cuss—she’d say that for him.
“My, my,” Becky said, rounding the desk to take the leash from Tricia but looking all the while at the dog. “I see a bath in your future,” she told him. Then, meeting Tricia’s gaze, she added, “We’re looking at an hour and a half at the least. More likely, two. Dad’s schedule is packed.”
The dog whined imploringly, his limpid gaze moving between Tricia and Conner, as though making some silent appeal. Please don’t leave me.
She’d better toughen up, Tricia thought. And now was the time to start.
“Mr. Creed and I are going to lunch,” she heard herself say, in a perfectly ordinary tone of voice, and was amazed. “I’ll check back with you later on.”
“Good idea,” Becky agreed, with a little twinkle.
Just as Conner had done earlier, the woman crouched to look into the dog’s eyes. “Don’t you be scared, now,” she said. “We’re going to take good care of you, I promise.”
He licked her face, and she laughed.
“Hey, Valentino,” Becky said. “You’re quite the lover.”
Valentino, Tricia thought.
Oh, God, he had a name now.
But as Becky rose and started to lead the dog away, into the back, he made a sound so forlorn that Tricia’s eyes filled.
“We have your cell number on file, don’t we?” Becky turned to ask Tricia, who was still standing in the same place, feeling stricken. “You haven’t changed it or anything?”
“You have it,” Tricia managed to croak. She felt Conner take a light hold on her elbow. He sort of steered her toward the doors, through them and out into the parking lot.
“Lunch,” he reminded her quietly.
Her cell phone chirped in her purse, and she took it out, looked at the screen, and smiled, though barely. There was a text from Diana’s ten-year-old daughter, Sasha. “Hi,” it read. “Mom let me use her phone so I could tell you that we’re on a field trip at the Seattle Aquarium and it’s awesome!”
Tricia replied with a single word. “Great!”
“No sense in taking two rigs,” Conner commented.
The next thing Tricia knew, she was in the passenger seat of his big truck, the cell phone in her pocket.
It’s just lunch, she told herself, as they headed toward the diner in the middle of town. Except for the upscale steakhouse on the highway to Denver, Elmer’s Café was the only sit-down eating establishment in Lonesome Bend.
All the ranchers gathered there for lunch or for coffee and pie, and the people who lived in town liked the place, too. It was continually crowded, but the food was good and the prices were reasonable. Tricia occasionally stopped in for a soup-and-sandwich special, sitting at one of the stools at the counter, since she was always alone and the tables were generally full.
Today, there was a booth open, a rare phenomenon at lunchtime.
Tricia wondered dryly if the universe always accommodated Conner Creed and, after that, she wondered where in the heck that thought