item they could get away with passing off as legitimate in court. They hadn’t believed in her at all. She was a placeholder. And this would be another failure in her life.
Merry raced down the steps of the wide front porch and jumped into her car, wanting to escape before the tears fell. She almost made it, but the first fat drops slipped off her cheeks before she’d slammed the car door.
They hadn’t meant for her to succeed here. They hadn’t meant for her to do anything. “Those shitty old…coots.” God, she couldn’t even bring herself to call them something they really deserved. She wasn’t tough that way. She wasn’t hard enough. She was dandelion fluff, floating in the wind.
Angry at her own self-assessment, Merry threw the car into Reverse and hit the gas pedal. This was a good place to get her emotions out with a wild ride. After all, she was out in the middle of nowhere at the end of the dirt road. There was nothing out here except sagebrush and—
A hard clunk interrupted her daring thoughts and sent her stomach tumbling. She slammed on the brakes as her mind raced through all the possibilities. That hadn’t been sagebrush, but it had been solid. Not a sweet sheepdog or a barn cat or… She pulled forward a few feet and then scrambled out, her eyes flying over the dried-out grass at the edge of the yard.
The mailbox. The mailbox. Oh, shit. It was a white wooden number with the name Bishop spelled out in custom black letters across the top of the box. And now it was lying on the ground like the victim of an assassination.
Oh, God. She glanced toward the house. She couldn’t just leave it there. It would look as if she’d done it deliberately because they’d insulted her. And she couldn’t go back in and confess, because she’d left in a huff and their only apparent attachment to her was her cheap price tag.
“Oh, God!” The tears flowed freely now, inspired by panic and anger and the awful knowledge that she could feel as humiliated as she wanted but she couldn’t lose this job. She couldn’t.
Merry looked helplessly down at the mailbox, feeling as if she’d murdered some precious icon. The thick white post wasn’t broken. Maybe she could just stick it back in the ground. A glance at the house confirmed that no one else had left yet. They were probably still bickering over whether it had been dishonest to hire her for a job that didn’t exist.
A job that didn’t exist. The perfect job for a bit of fluff like her.
Rage pushed her past her guilt over the mailbox, and Merry bent down and wrapped her arms around the box, lifting it with a grunt of impatience. She slid it a few inches and fit the tip of the post into the hole. It dropped right in.
“Thank God.” After pressing down a little, she let it go…and watched the mailbox tilt toward the left. Crap. Merry wrapped her arms around it and straightened it again, then pulled down as hard as she could. She lifted her feet and let her body weight hang for just a second. This time, when she stepped back, it only tipped a tiny bit. Like the erection of a man just registering that you’d made a Star Wars joke in the middle of foreplay.
Not that that had ever happened to her.
Merry took a few more steps back, hands raised as if she could catch the mailbox if it fell. But it held steady, and with one last look at the house, she darted to her car and drove away.
But as she drove down the gravel road, watching dust billow behind her like a plume of guilt, Merry set her jaw and steeled her heart.
It didn’t matter why they’d hired her. It didn’t matter who they thought she was. She’d come here to make a place for herself, and that was what she was going to do.
* * *
SHANE HARCOURT WAS so damn tired he wasn’t sure he could make it up the front steps of the Stud Farm. Two weeks of carpentry work on a ranch in Lander, followed up by a week of fencing on the high plateau outside Big Piney, and he was dead on his feet and nearly weaving side to side as he opened the door and headed for his apartment.
Not for the first time, he thanked God that Cole had finally gotten back on his feet and out of Shane’s ground floor place. Shane couldn’t have trudged up to the second floor today. Not in this state. He watched his key disappear into the lock like he was watching the perfect porn movie. A beer. A hot shower. Bed. Then he planned to sleep for two days straight. Sheer pleasure.
He turned the key.
“Shane!”
Shane blinked at the idea of his neighbor Grace greeting him with such unbridled excitement. Frowning, he slowly turned around, hand still hopefully clasped to the doorknob.
“Hi!” a woman who was definitely not Grace said.
He took in the tall brunette in the Oscar the Grouch T-shirt and automatically touched the brim of his hat in greeting. “Morning,” he said.
“It’s afternoon now,” she answered.
“Is it?” He realized he was just standing there staring while she grinned at him. Her long dark hair framed a harmless round face and an open smile. “Do I know you?”
“Seriously? Wow. I’m kind of insulted.”
Shane’s brain scanned quickly through the past few sexual encounters he’d had, just in case. But there weren’t that many, and he was almost immediately sure he hadn’t slept with this girl. “Sorry?”
“Shane, I’m Merry.”
Mary? He stared.
“Merry Kade. Grace’s friend?”
“Oh,” he said. Then “Oh! Merry. Right. Hi.”
Her wide smile had faltered at some point, so Shane tried again. “It’s good to see you. Are you visiting?”
“No, I moved here. I’m living with Grace for a little while.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Good.” His eyes nearly crossed with exhaustion.
“Anyway, I’m glad you’re finally back. You’re a carpenter cowboy, right?”
“I’m just a carpenter, not a cowboy.”
“Sure you are.” She waved a hand up and down his body. “Look at those boots. And the hat.”
“Being a cowboy is a job. It’s got nothing to do with the boots.”
She looked pointedly at his Stetson.
“Or the hat,” he said wearily.
“Okay, but you are a carpenter.” When he nodded, her smile returned, lighting up her fresh face. “You’re just what I need!”
Too tired to bother with a sly reply, Shane just nodded. “Need some help with a bookshelf or something?”
She laughed so loudly that her voice rang through the entry. “Sure, something like that.”
He forced a smile. “Okay, I’ll come by later. Right now—” He held up a hand to stop the words forming on her lips. “Listen, I’ve been working twelve-hour days for two weeks. I would normally come over straightaway and
