the cutest little Brownie who lives next door to me. I bought out her whole troop’s worth of cookies.” There was a gleaming wooden credenza behind him and he pulled open one of its drawers to display box after box of Girl Scout cookies. “I couldn’t help myself.”
His eyes were serious as they met hers. “So the next time you’re in the mood for a thin mint, do me a favor, will you, and eat a whole box?” Then he grinned.
That heated, tingly current rushed like a flash flood toward her. It wasn’t what she wanted, it wasn’t what she was looking for, not in the least, but she didn’t seem to have any choice but to let the feeling sweep over her. Sweep around her.
After two confusing years of marriage and three years during which she’d been both frozen and afraid, it was as if her feminine senses had come awake with one quick jolt. Or with one quick fall to the floor of the gym.
“Lori—” he started, then the phone rang. She jumped for it, but he held her off with his hand and lifted the receiver himself. She could feel his eyes on her, even as he spoke some important-sounding specifications.
Half embarrassed and half scared of what Josh might be seeing on her face, Lori looked away. Her gaze moved to the Girl Scout cookies in the drawer to another photo, this one sitting on top of the credenza itself. It was a framed photo of a blond bride.
Josh’s wife.
She didn’t question her immediate conclusion. He certainly wouldn’t choose to display just one of his sisters, and the beautiful woman looked like the type big, dark Josh would love.
He was married.
A feeling twisted her insides. Relief, she guessed. Whatever current she’d been feeling was imagined, or at the very worst, all on her side.
Josh was a married man. As he completed his phone call, she let that knowledge sink in. He wasn’t any kind of threat to her. She didn’t have to worry about him getting too close.
He was a husband.
At the click of receiver to cradle she looked up. Stood up. “I’ll just get back to my desk.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you all right?”
Lori realized he wasn’t wearing a ring. But for a man who worked with his hands, that was probably a good idea.
“Are you all right?” he asked again.
Of course. Now she was. Whatever was between them was something she’d obviously misread—she was so good at misreading men—and—
“What are you looking at?”
Until that moment, she hadn’t realized she was looking at anything. But then he swung around to follow her gaze. They both stared at the photo of the bride.
Lori swallowed. “Your wife?” She thought her voice sounded normal.
Josh nodded.
“She’s beautiful,” Lori said. Then she smiled at him, because it was going to be okay. He was safe now. He was married.
But he didn’t smile back as a shadow crossed his face. “She was. Kay died five years ago. I’m a widower.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Lori said, her voice soft and sincere.
“Thank you.” Josh looked away from the photo and back at the beautiful woman standing on the other side of his desk, cursing whatever it was about her that made him feel as if his hands, his feet, his Adam’s apple were all too big. But he felt more than just physically awkward at the moment.
When was the last time he’d told someone he was a widower? In the small town of Whitehorn, after that first, awful day, everyone had known.
He cleared his throat.
She shuffled her feet.
“Is there—”
“Why don’t—”
They both broke off.
Josh took a breath. “Ladies first.”
Lori clutched her notebook against her chest. “I was going to ask if there was anything else you wanted to tell me before I went back to my desk.”
Yeah. He wanted to tell her she was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen. It was the damn truth. Dark hair, blue eyes, creamy skin tinged with just a hint of peach. And her voice…it was moonlight. It was Southern, moonlit nights with fluttering lace curtains and bodies tangled on a bed.
He wanted to tell her he’d never considered himself a romantic man, but looking at her filled his thoughts with an embarrassment of bad lyrics to a country western song.
He wanted to tell her he’d fallen to the floor of the gym on Christmas Eve a settled, thirty-seven-year-old man and gotten up a randy teenager again, in instant lust for her long legs, her long dark hair, her full mouth. The way she’d stared back at him, her gaze filled with equal parts attraction and wariness, had done nothing to cool him off. That same gaze from her now didn’t dampen his interest one bit.
Yet, see, there was that wariness, so instead he said, “Sit down for another minute. I want to know a little more about you.”
Snails moved more quickly. Rain clouds appeared cheerier. After she finally returned to her chair, she reached inside her notebook and slid out a sheet of paper. “My resumé,” she said, handing it to him.
He didn’t even glance at it. “Why don’t you tell me?”
She delivered the facts without emotion. “I moved to Montana from South Carolina last week. I signed on with the Whitehorn Temporary Agency. They sent me to Lucy. Lucy hired me.”
Despite the dryness of the details, he could listen to that soft accent all day. South Carolina. Montana. The words were prettier in her Southern voice. “But why?” he asked. “Why Montana?”
She shrugged. “I grew up in the South. It was…time for something different. Someplace different.”
“But why would you pick Whitehorn? We’re not exactly Billings or Missoula.”
She shrugged again, and her gaze dropped to her notebook.
Frustrated, he looked down at her resumé. She was twenty-eight years old. She’d gone to college in South Carolina, in a town he thought he recognized as located at the southern end of the state. She had a degree in business administration. He looked up. “You have a college degree and you’re temping as a receptionist?”
“It’s work,” she said. “Experience.”
That non-explanation sent him back to perusing her resumé. Which made her even more of a mystery. For more than two years following her college graduation, there was no employment listed. And in the past three years she’d held seven different jobs in several
