the best of it. And because Flint was going to be her sister’s brother-in-law, she decided she might as well get to know him.
“I’m Hunt-Myers,” Jessie answered, hoping it wasn’t unduly belated and also hoping that the fact that she’d been climbing to sit cross-legged on the tarp covering the drier so she could paint the wall behind it offered a reason for the delay. “I hyphenated when I got married. I guess it was a way of maintaining some independence and then it stuck.”
They’d begun painting at the door, gone in opposite directions but were now both working on the long wall behind the appliances. The lower half of the wall was tiled and so didn’t need paint, and unlike Jessie, Flint was tall enough to reach the half above the appliances just by leaning over the washing machine.
He was dressed in a pair of old, ragged, torn jeans, and an equally as worn chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. They were clearly work clothes and yet they still managed to look good on him—and to accentuate his every asset. Assets that Jessie was all too aware of when his well-shaped rear end, or muscular jean-encased thighs, or broad shoulders or expansive chest were always mere inches away from her.
“What about you?” she countered. “You and Coop are both Fortunes, but you’re Fortunes on your mother’s side, aren’t you?”
“We are,” he said amiably. “My mother never took any of her husband’s last names. Maybe she knew none of her marriages would last.”
Beyond the fact that Cindy Fortune was not well thought of, Jessie knew nothing about Flint and Cooper’s mother. But even though she was curious—especially about that comment about multiple marriages—it seemed beyond the realm of small talk to ask for details. So with the name-related questions answered, she opted for moving on.
“You live in Denver, right?” she said then.
“Right. Just outside of the city itself.”
“Do you have a house or—”
“I rent an apartment. I like to have a home base, but not with roots that are too deep. If I end up with a neighbor I don’t like, or the grass looks greener somewhere else, I want to be able to pack my stuff and move on without much fuss. That’s what I grew up with, and I guess it stuck.”
“The Fortune family are staples around here—ranchers, businessmen, philanthropists—they’re pillars of the community. But you grew up rootless?”
“Oh, yeah,” he answered with a mirthless laugh.
But again he didn’t offer an explanation beyond that and again Jessie thought that to push him for more might be prying.
He didn’t let there be an awkward silence, though, before he said, “What about you? Do you own the place next door?”
“I do,” she answered, liking that he didn’t put her in a position of quizzing him, that he asked questions of his own. Although she tried not to think that he might actually be interested in her, and told herself he was likely just being polite.
“Owning a house of our own was my late-husband’s and my biggest goal when we got married,” she went on. “It took us five years of saving, but we celebrated our fifth anniversary by moving into that house.”
“And you’re still there after how long?”
“Eight years.”
“That’s an eternity to me. You must be all about deep roots.”
“Stability is important to me.”
“And family, too, I’m guessing—because your parents live with you and now you have Kelsey right next door.”
“You could definitely say I’m all about family,” she confirmed. “I don’t know what I would do without them.”
“That’s nice,” he said just when she was wondering if he was approving or disapproving of her closeness to her family. But he sounded as if he honestly did think it was nice and she wondered if he regretted that he wasn’t closer to his own family.
But again he kept their chat going by saying, “It was you who gave Coop the heads-up when this place became available, wasn’t it?”
“It was. That’s how it all came about so fast.”
“And they’re renting with an option to buy, right?”
“With the first three months rent-free because none of this work is being hired out.”
“That’s a big change for Coop, too—that putting down roots thing. But he seems really happy.”
“I think he is. I know Kelsey is.”
“Good for them!” Flint decreed. “And Kelsey is okay raising Anthony?”
“She is. I don’t think she would love him any more if he were her own.”
Jessie knew that Anthony was the product of an earlier relationship Cooper had had with a woman named Lulu. There were many questions about Anthony turning up in Red Rock at the same time Flint and Cooper’s Uncle William had had his car accident in January. Ultimately Anthony had been linked to the Fortunes through a small gold medallion that had been draped around his blanket-cocooned little body by a fragile chain. A medallion that had been traced back to Cindy Fortune’s children, narrowing the possibilities for Anthony’s father to Cooper or Flint.
“I’m really glad it all worked out for them the way it did,” Flint said. “It looks like Anthony will have a good home.”
“Were you disappointed that he wasn’t yours?” Jessie asked.
Flint laughed spontaneously. “No,” he answered forcefully. “I was a wreck thinking he might be mine and wondering what I was going to do with him if he was. I can’t even keep plants alive. Believe me, this was a much better way for things to turn out.”
“What would you have done if he’d been yours?” Jessie ventured, challenging him just a bit.
He laughed again. “I probably would have cried like a baby myself,” he joked.
Jessie smiled at the wall she was painting, amused by the thought of the man she’d been thinking of as supermacho quaking at the mere possibility that he might be a father.
“I would have stepped up,” he said then, without hesitation, winning him points. “But I’m afraid poor Anthony would have suffered for it.”
Jessie laughed at him. “Well, I know you travel for work and that would have made it a lot more complicated, so you’re probably right—it’s for the best that things ended up the way they did.”
But what she didn’t know was much about his work and that seemed like another avenue for conversation, so she said, “You’re in sales, aren’t you?”
“Buying and selling, yeah.”
“What is it that you buy and sell?”
“I buy Western-themed arts and crafts and novelty items, and I sell them to gift shops and galleries and some private clients all
