took a few steps closer to the man. She planted her shapely legs in a wide stance and cocked her hip to one side like the pose of a glamorous model at the end of a catwalk. It would have been comical if she hadn’t looked so damn sexy.
“We’re here for two weeks. By the way, I’m Kendra Sibley, the oldest.”
Quinn quickly stepped next to Kendra and slightly bent forward, exposing the tops of her exquisite vanilla-tinted breasts. “And I’m Quinn, the youngest.”
Charlie knew it was her turn to step forward, but her legs felt too unsteady to consider operating them right now.
Besides, as with most men who stood within radius of the three sisters, Graham Forbes had forgotten that Charlie Sibley—the middle one, as she was more often known—existed.
“I didn’t expect you ladies to actually stay here, not with the state of this place. For a long time, we all thought that your grandpa had forgotten it,” he said, while nodding towards the house.
“Apparently, he did,” Kendra said, darkly, then flashed a smile at Graham. “But, we’re staying here. If it’s good enough for our grandfather, then it’s good enough for us. After his death, we figured what better way to feel closer to him and to understand him than to come to his childhood home. If it was just me, I could handle the dirt and rodents—I’ve dealt with worse vermin on Wall Street, but I don’t think my sisters can handle it. They’re not as accommodating as I can be.”
Charlie didn’t miss Kendra’s emphasis on the word accommodating. Judging from the amused and interested glint that entered Graham’s eyes he hadn’t either. Charlie wanted to smack them both.
“Kendra’s right. I’m not as hardy and masculine as her,” Quinn said, loudly, drawing Graham’s attention. Her voice softened to a bedroom whisper, as she said, “I’m more soft and open.”
Charlie couldn’t withhold her snort of disbelief. Apparently, it had also been a loud snort because all three turned to her. Charlie’s face burned with embarrassment once more as she tried to withstand the laser-sharp gaze of Graham Forbes. Against her will, her gaze dropped to his full lips. His lower lip was slightly more plump than the upper one.
She actually had to fight the urge to cross the dirt lot and take his lip between her teeth.
“So, you must be the middle sister,” Graham said, his tone polite and neighborly. One corner of his mouth lifted as he added, “Judging from the beating you gave that tire, you’re the one I should watch out for in a bar fight, right?”
Quinn and Kendra laughed, while Charlie just stared at him. His voice was so deep and warm. It reminded her of molasses, or grits or something hot and Southern. The baritone sound poured into her body and curled into something warm and welcoming.
Then she realized that she had been rendered mute by a cowboy. It was humiliating. When she still couldn’t force her mouth to open, she averted her gaze again and instantly spied her chocolate-laden bag in the trunk.
She grabbed it, murmured a choked “Excuse me,” and limped towards the house as fast as she could with her foot throbbing with pain and her dignity in shreds.
Chapter 3
“As members of the city council, it’s your job to look out for this town’s best interests. And the best interests of this town…”
Graham Forbes blocked out the rest of the speech being given by Mayor Boyd Robbins. He had heard it all before during the six months he had spent on the Sibleyville City Council, a position he was still trying to figure out how he had gotten. The issue might change, but Robbins always found something supposedly in the town’s best interests that usually involved either he or his two sons profiting in one form or another.
Graham felt an ache growing at his temples and rubbed his forehead to soothe the pressure. He glanced around the small cramped meeting room in city hall. As usual, all the windows were shut tight, even though it was the middle of summer and the old building had never been upgraded to air conditioning. As usual, Robbins’ long-suffering wife, Alma, sat in a chair in the corner of the room, taking notes of everything Robbins said, although she usually stopped writing whenever anyone else spoke. And, as usual, the four other city council members managed to look intrigued, as if they had never heard this exact same speech before. And since the other four had gotten elected to the city council around the same time the telephone had been invented—and Robbins had been making the same speech about that long—Graham knew they must have.
Graham was the youngest person in the room by about three decades, and considering he was thirty-two years old, he wasn’t exactly young, and he was feeling older by the second. He wondered how his father had done this, year after year. Not only this, but everything else that came with living and operating a ranch in Sibleyville. Yet now Lance Forbes was finding it difficult even to endure the physical therapy that would get him back on track after a heart attack six months ago.
What had started as a three-week vacation to visit his father and help his mother with the farm had turned into six months and a city council position. Graham had started avoiding the increasingly insistent calls from his job, because he didn’t know what to say. His father was still playing sick and his mother’s eyes lit up every time she saw Graham walk into the house. The guilt was unbearable, but Graham had vowed to return to Tokyo after planting season ended. There were only three weeks remaining in the season, and given the long hours he and the workers had been putting in over the last month, Graham figured the farm was ahead of schedule.
“We have to get Max Sibley’s girls to see what a great place Sibleyville is, or they could sell the land right from under us.”
Graham snapped out of his brooding at the mention of the Sibleys. He hadn’t been able to get Quinn and Kendra Sibley out of his thoughts since leaving their property an hour ago. There definitely weren’t women like those two in this small town. The women were gorgeous and sophisticated, like the women he dated in Tokyo.
He had to admit there was no one like the other Sibley sister either. She had looked nothing like Quinn or Kendra. She had been thicker than the other women, more curvy than Kendra and less silicone-assisted than Quinn. Her thick brown hair had hung in limp waves to her shoulders.
Also, unlike her sisters, she had looked at him as if he were evil personified. Graham vowed to stay away from her. Bringing his attention back to the meeting at hand, he demanded more sharply then he intended, “What are you talking about, Robbins? The town owns the land.” Robbins glared at him. The two men had a mutual distrust and dislike for each other.
As six pairs of shocked eyes swung to him, Graham grimaced. He had forgotten his rule of not speaking at the meetings.
“We had a small problem in the seventies, Graham,” Velma Spears explained, her oversized eyeglasses obscuring half of her wrinkled, kind face. Velma told every citizen who came to speak at city council meeting that their speech was “lovely.” And she meant it.
“Small problem.” Boyd Robbins snorted at Velma’s understatement. “We had some real issues in this town. If you haven’t noticed, Forbes, this ain’t Tokyo—”
“I’ve noticed,” Graham muttered, dryly.
Boyd’s red face grew even more red. Boyd had been in the military for thirty years and it showed in his ramrod-straight posture, buzz-cut graying brown hair and constantly
