Brett replied. “But what...?”
Finn anticipated Brett’s question and cut him short. “This is my wedding present to you and Lady Doc—to say thanks for all the times you were there for Liam and me when we needed you—and even the times when we thought we didn’t,” he added with a touch of whimsy. “And this is, in a small way, to pay you back for staying instead of taking off with Laura right after high school graduation, the way she wanted you to.
“In other words, this is to say thanks for staying, for giving up your dream and taking care of your two bratty younger brothers instead.”
While Finn and Liam were aware of Laura, he had never told them about the ultimatum she’d given him. Had never mentioned how tempted he’d been, just for a moment, to follow her to Los Angeles. All his brothers knew was one day, Laura stopped coming around.
He looked at Finn in surprise. “You know about that?”
Finn smiled. “I’m not quite the oblivious person you thought I was.”
“I didn’t think you were oblivious,” Brett corrected him. “It was just that you saw and paid attention to things the rest of us just glossed over.” His smile widened as he looked around the living room. Finn had outdone himself. “But seriously, this is all more than terrific, but this is our ranch house,” he emphasized, “not just mine.”
Finn looked at him and shook his head in wonder before getting back to work. “You bring that pretty Lady Doc here after you’ve married her and she finds out that she’s sharing the place with not just you but also your two brothers, I guarantee that she’ll walk out of here so fast, your head’ll spin clean off.”
He might not be as experienced as Brett was when it came to the fairer sex, Finn thought, but some things were just a given.
“Now, I don’t know nearly as much as you do when it comes to the ladies, but I do know that newlyweds like their own space—that doesn’t mean sharing that space with two other people. Liam and I’ll go on living at the house. This’ll be your place,” he concluded, waving his hand around the room they were currently in as well as indicating the rest of the house.
“But the ranch itself is still ours, not just mine,” Brett insisted.
“Earl Robertson left it to you,” Finn stated simply. The man, he knew, had done it to show his gratitude because Brett had gone out of his way to look in on him when he had taken sick. That was Brett, Finn thought, putting himself out with no thought of any sort of compensation coming his way for his actions.
“And I’ve always shared whatever I had with you and Liam,” Brett stated flatly.
Finn allowed a sly smile to feather over his lips, even though being sly was out of keeping with his normally genial nature.
“I see. Does that go for Lady Doc, too?”
Brett knew that his brother was kidding and that he didn’t have to say it, but he played along, anyway. “Alisha is off-limits.”
Finn pretended to sigh. “It figures. First nice thing you have in aeons, and you’re keeping it all to yourself.”
“Damn right I am.”
Finn changed the subject, directing the conversation toward something serious. “Hey, made a decision about who your best man is going to be?”
Brett was silent for a moment. He’d made Finn think he was debating his choices, but the truth of it was, he’d made up his mind from the beginning. It had been Finn all along.
“Well, Liam made it clear that he and that band of his are providing the music, so I guess you get to be best man.”
His back to Brett, Finn smiled to himself. “I won’t let it go to my head.”
“Might get lonely up there if it did,” Brett commented with affection. He glanced at his watch. “Guess I’d better be getting back or Nathan McHale is going to think I’ve abandoned him,” he said, referring to one of Murphy’s’ two most steadfast patrons.
Finn laughed. “Wonder how long he’d stand in front of the closed door, waiting for you to open up before he’d finally give up.”
Brett began to answer without hesitation. “Two, maybe three—”
“Hours?” Finn asked, amused.
“Days,” Brett corrected with a laugh. The older man had been coming to Murphy’s for as many years as anyone could remember, motivated partially by his fondness for beer and most assuredly by his desire to get away from his eternally nagging wife, Henrietta. “I’ll see you later tonight.”
Finn nodded. “I’ll be by when I get done for the day,” he said. He was back to communing with another ornery section of floorboard before his brother walked out the front door.
* * *
CONNIE HAD DECIDED to just drive around both through Forever and its surrounding area to get a general feel for the little town. For the most part, it appeared she’d stumbled across a town that time had more or less left alone. Nothing looked ancient, exactly, and there were parking places in front of the handful of businesses rather than hitching posts, but all in all, the entire town had a very rural air about it, right down to the single restaurant—if a diner could actually lay claim to that title.
She’d been amused to see that the town’s one bar—how did these cowboys survive with only one bar?—had a sign in the window that said Hungry? Go visit Miss Joan’s diner. Thirsty? You’ve come to the right place. That had told her that there was obviously a division of labor here with territories being defined in the simplest of terms.
Given its size and what she took to be the residents’ mind-set, Connie doubted very much if a place like this actually needed a hotel—which, she had a feeling, had probably been her father’s whole point when he had given her this project, saying if she wanted to prove herself to him, he wanted to see her complete the hotel, bringing it in on time and under budget. The budget left very little wiggle room.
“Newsflash, Dad. I don’t give up that easily,” she murmured to the man who was currently five hundred miles away.
Challenges, especially seemingly impossible ones, were what made her come alive. At first glance, the sleepy little town of Forever needed a hotel about as much as it needed an expert on wombats.
It took closer examination to see that the idea of building a hotel had merit.
Connie could see the potential of the place forming itself in her mind’s eye. She just needed the right approach, the right thing to play up and the hotel-to-be would not only become a reality, it would also be a success and eventually get its patrons.
But it wouldn’t get anything if it wasn’t first built, and she had already decided that while she could have materials shipped in from anywhere in the country that could give her the best deal, to get the structure actually built, she was going to use local talent, so to speak.
She naturally assumed that living out here in what she viewed as the sticks made people handy out of necessity. Unlike in the larger cities, there wasn’t a range of construction companies, all in competition with one another, all vying for the customer’s
