all the tubes and chains and floaty things that made up its innards.
Her phone rang and she grabbed the handset irritably. “Hello.”
“Hi, Raych. It’s me.”
Carly Grant, her sometimes best friend, sometimes pain in the ass, second cousin. They’d been born exactly one week apart, and they’d had each other’s backs for their entire lives. Carly had stuck by her when no one else had after Finn dumped her, and for that, Rachel would put up with a lot of grief from her scatterbrained cousin. Rachel’s irritation evaporated. “Hey. What are you doing?”
“I’m wondering why my home girl didn’t call me to tell me she ran into the love of her life down at the hardware store. Why did I have to hear it from Debbie Russo?”
“How in the heck did she hear about it?” Rachel demanded.
“Floyd Mason told his wife, and she had a hair appointment at Eve’s salon at the same time Debbie was having a mani-pedi.”
Rachel sighed. Telephone, telegraph, tell a woman. Sometimes she purely hated living in a small town. Actually, most of the time. Ever since she’d been a kid she’d dreamed of moving to a big city. Away from nosy neighbors and wide open spaces … and cows. Far, far away from cows.
She’d have left years ago if it wasn’t for her folks. Well, her mom, now that her dad had passed away. A sharp stab of loss went through her. It had been less than a year since Dad’s last, and fatal, heart attack. Sometimes his death seemed as if it had happened a lifetime ago, muted and distant. And sometimes it seemed like only a few days ago complete with piercing grief that stole her breath away. Today was one of the just-like-yesterday days, apparently.
“So. Spill!” Carly urged.
“Finn Colton is not the love of my life!”
“Ha. So you admit that you did see him!”
“Fine. Yes. I saw him. I was crawling on my hands and knees, my rear end sticking up in the air, trying to make a break for it, and he walked right up to me.”
Carly started to laugh. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish I were,” Rachel retorted wryly. “I can report with absolute certainty that his cowboy boots are genuine rattlesnake skin and not fake.”
“Oh, my God, that’s hilarious.”
Rachel scowled. She was so demoting Carly from BFF status. “I’m glad I amuse you.”
“What did he say?” Carly asked avidly.
“Not much. He said my name, and I said his. Then I got the heck out of Dodge as fast as I could.” She added as a sop to Carly’s love of good gossip, “He did knock on the window of my car to tell me that I looked like crap—and that if I was going to faint, I shouldn’t drive.”
“What a jerk!” Carly exclaimed loyally.
Okay, she’d just regained her status as best friend forever.
“You’ll have to fill me in on the details while we drive up to Bozeman.”
Rachel groaned. She’d forgotten her promise to go with Carly to shop for a dress for the big celebration of the high school’s hundredth anniversary, which was scheduled for next weekend in conjunction with the school’s homecoming celebration.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” Carly accused.
“No, no, I’ll see you at three. But right now I have to go back to the hardware store and get more parts for my toilet.”
“Hoping to see your favorite Colton brother again?”
“When they’re having snowball fights in hell,” she retorted. She slammed the phone down on Carly’s laughter and snatched up her car keys in high irritation.
Finn threw his car keys down in high irritation. He remembered now why he hated Honey Creek so damned much.
His older brother, Damien, finished off his sandwich and commented, “Funny how you can want worse than anything in the world to get back home. And then you get here, and in under a week, you’d do anything to get away.”
Finn rolled his eyes. Nothing like being compared to a recent ex-con and the analogy working. Especially since he’d been working like crazy for the last fifteen years to recover the family reputation from Damien’s murder conviction. He dropped a brown paper bag from the hardware store onto the kitchen table. “Here are your fence fasteners. Need some help installing ‘em?”
Damien shrugged. “Sure. If you don’t mind getting those lily-white doctor hands dirty.”
Finn scowled. “I grew up working a ranch. I didn’t go completely soft in medical school.”
“We’ll see.”
An hour later, Finn was forced to admit that compared to his massively muscled brother, he qualified as a bonified sissy. But the sweat felt good. They were restringing the barbed wire along the south pasture fence. His hands were probably going to be blistered and torn tonight, but he wasn’t about to complain after the lily-white doctor-hand crack.
Seeing Rachel Grant again had rattled him bad. He needed to get out and do something physical. Something strenuous that would distract him from memories of her. He’d loved her once upon a time. Been dead sure she was the one for him. And then she’d up and—
“Hey! Watch it!” Damien exclaimed.
Finn pulled up short, swearing. He’d almost whacked off his brother’s hand with the sledgehammer.
“How ‘bout I take that?” Damien suggested warily. “In fact, why don’t we take a break and go get a bite to eat? Maisie made chili this morning.”
As a bribe, it was good one. His oldest sibling might be nosy and overbearing, but the woman made a pot of chili that could put hair on a guy’s chest. He stomped into the mud room of the main house a few minutes later. The warmth inside felt good after the hint of winter in the air outside.
“Hey, boys,” Maisie called. “Pull up a chair.”
Damien led the way into the enormous gourmet kitchen. “Watch out for him—” he hooked a thumb in Finn’s direction “—Honey Creek’s already getting on his nerves.”
Maisie commented slyly, “The way I hear it, it’s someone in Honey Creek who’s getting on his nerves.”
Finn’s head jerked up. How did she do that? That woman knew more gossip faster than anyone he’d ever met. And she wasn’t afraid to use it to get exactly what she wanted. Or to manipulate and hurt the people around her. She saw herself as the real matriarch of the clan in lieu of their reclusive and withdrawn mother and, as such, responsible for shaping and controlling the lives of everyone named Colton in Honey Creek. Maisie had been one of the reasons he’d bailed out of town as soon as he could after high school.
He moved over to the stove and served up two bowls of steaming chili. He plunked one down on the table in front of Damien and sat down
