to block his dark thoughts so that he didn’t have to dwell on just how empty his existence had become and continued to be.
Eight years and nothing had changed. He was still just going through the motions of living, placing one foot in front of the other.
“I don’t know about perfect,” he finally said to Catherine with a self-deprecating laugh that sounded as if it had come rumbling straight out of his chest, bypassing his throat, “but if I can help—” he shrugged “—sure.”
If possible, her eyes brightened even more. It made him think of the way a satisfying, steaming cup of hot coffee tasted on a cold winter’s day.
“Really?” Catherine pressed, this time actually clapping her hands together as if he was some magical genie who had just bestowed the gift of three wishes on her.
Cody shrugged again in response to her question. “Why not?” he said even as a part of him whispered a warning that he had just taken his first step on a very narrow ledge. A step that could result in his tumbling down into an uncharted abyss at a moment’s notice.
All things considered, he supposed that there could be worse things.
Chapter Two
“So exactly how is this going to work?” Cody asked her after a beat. As a rule, he wasn’t a curious man, but in this case, he had to admit that this woman had managed to arouse what little curiosity he did possess. “Are you going to be showing me pictures of the stuff you’re thinking of selling at the store, or what?” Before she could answer the question, Cody felt it only fair to inform her of something. “Think you should know right from the start that I’m really not too keen on broken-down old furniture.”
As far as he was concerned, furniture didn’t have to be fancy, but it had to be functional—and not look as if it belonged in some garbage heap.
Catherine laughed. “That’s good, because neither am I.”
She was still feeling her way around as to the kind of focus she wanted to bring to the shop. Right now, she was pretty much making it up as she went along.
Catherine wondered if admitting that to this down-to-earth cowboy would be a mistake. Would it make him think less of her? Or would he just dismiss her present indecision as a “woman thing”? An inconsequential whim on her part? She realized that it would bother her if he did.
His expression registered mild surprise. Cody looked around at the showroom. Everything here was way older than he was. If it wasn’t for the fact that Caroline had a weakness for this kind of thing, he would have just called it all “junk” and dismissed the whole place out of hand.
If this woman was really being on the level with him and felt the same way he did, that brought up another question. “Then what are you doing with this store?”
“Changing its image,” Catherine answered without hesitation.
How was she going to do that with the things she had to work with? “To what?” he wanted to know.
“To a shop that sells vintage items, whether it’s clothing, books, furnishings, whatever.” It was a slight matter of semantics she supposed, but there was still a difference.
One she was apparently going to have to explain because Cody moved back his Stetson with his thumb and squinted at the merchandise in the immediate area. “Just what’s the difference between something being an ‘antique’ and being classified as ‘vintage’?”
That was easy enough, Catherine thought.
“Price mostly,” she answered with a grin that he had to admit—if only to himself—he found rather engaging.
Cody rolled her words over in his head, then nodded. He was willing to accept that. But there was something else.
“Still haven’t answered my first question,” he pointed out. When she raised an eyebrow, silently asking to be reminded, he said, “What do you want with me?”
I could think of ten things right off the bat, Catherine thought in reply. But out loud she simply said, “I intend to use you for market research.”
Cody laughed shortly. “Only market I know is the one I go to buy my supply of eggs, milk and bread.”
That was not the kind of market she meant. “Think bigger,” Catherine coaxed.
“Okay,” he said gamely. “How about if I throw in a chicken, too?”
Obviously this wasn’t going to be as simple as she’d hoped. “I’m talking about the general buying market out there,” she explained. “You’re just the age bracket I’m trying to attract.”
Cody’s eyes met hers. “You ask me, you keep on smiling like that and you’ll attract more than your share of men my age—and older.”
The remark pleased her, amused her and embarrassed her all at the same time. Not only that, but she could feel her cheeks growing hot. From the way he looked at her, she knew it wasn’t just an internal thing or her imagination. Her cheeks were turning pink. She had an uneasy feeling that her new “researcher” could see the color creeping up into them.
Great, now he probably thought of her as some naive, innocent little girl playing at being a store owner.
“I’m not looking for attention,” she told him with feeling. “What I’m looking for are paying customers who are interested in buying what they see.”
The way he looked at her told Catherine that she was only making matters worse by talking. But she wanted him to take her seriously, to understand that all she was after at the moment was a business arrangement and a little input from him.
She cleared her throat. “There has to be something that you want—to buy,” she tacked on when she realized that she was still sinking into the grave she had verbally dug for herself. She tried one more time, taking it from the top. “When you walked in here, what were you hoping to find?”
“Like I said, I was looking for something for my sister.” As usual, he had put getting something for her off, telling himself he had plenty of time until he suddenly didn’t.
“Such as?” she coaxed, trying to get him to give her something to work with.
The broad shoulders rose and fell again as Cody shrugged carelessly. “I figured I’d know it when I saw it.”
She could accept that. Shoppers didn’t always have a clear picture of what they were looking for. “Then look around,” Catherine urged, gesturing around the store. “See if anything appeals to you.”
She’d been the former Tattered Saddle’s legal owner—using her life savings as a down payment—for almost a month now. During that entire time, she’d spent her days clearing away cobwebs, cleaning up and trying to put what she had gotten—the items in the store were included in the price whether she liked them or not—in some sort of manageable order.
To be honest, there was a lot here that she was tempted just to toss out, but she decided that she should seriously consider calling in an expert to appraise everything
