that to sound pitiful, but she still had to wince. That wasn’t exactly true. She had gone off to Boise for her undergraduate work, then Seattle for her master’s degree. She wasn’t completely a homebody, even if she had jumped at the chance to return to her hometown library to work.
If she was living on her family’s ranch, it wasn’t because of any failure to launch, only because of the tragic circumstances of Travis’s death.
“I live on the ranch but not in the main house,” she told him. “I’m at the foreman’s place, the small log house closest to the entrance.”
“Perfect. Plan on us at seven.”
She was going out to dinner with Flynn Delaney and his daughter. This certainly wasn’t the way to get the man out of her head, but she didn’t see how she could refuse.
The truth was she didn’t want to anyway. She was both touched and flattered that sweet Olivia wanted to spend time with her for her birthday.
“Sounds good. Meanwhile, are you sure you don’t want to check out some books on a temporary library card? We still have a great selection of holiday books available. It’s the section there against the wall.”
“Can we?” Olivia asked her father.
“Just a few,” he said with a reluctant nod. “It might be tough to keep track of more than that while we’re clearing out Grandma Charlotte’s house.”
Olivia headed immediately toward the Christmas storybooks, leaving Flynn alone with Celeste—or at least as alone as they could be in a public library.
A few moms she knew were browsing through the children’s section with their toddlers, and she was pretty sure she caught more than one appreciative glance in his direction. As Frankie said, he was a hard man to overlook.
“Thanks for agreeing to come with us,” Flynn said. “It probably wasn’t fair to spring that on you out of the blue. I would have called first, but I didn’t have a phone number. I guess I could have found the number for the library, but I didn’t think about it until we pulled up.”
“It’s fine.”
“Seriously, you made her day. She has been asking me all afternoon if you could come to her birthday celebration. I didn’t want to disappoint her. It’s still pretty tough for me to deny her anything these days.”
She couldn’t imagine almost losing a child. The fear must have been overwhelming.
“I’m touched, if you want the truth. I don’t believe I’ve ever been anyone’s birthday wish before.”
A strange glint appeared in his gaze, an expression she couldn’t quite identify. After a moment he smiled. “Face it. You sealed your fate the other day when you showed up in person with a new book and a cute stuffed toy. You’re now officially the coolest person in town.”
She had to laugh at that ridiculous statement. “If that’s the case, you both need to get out and meet more people in Pine Gulch.”
Amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes. “We won’t be here long enough to move in social circles around here. Anyway, I think Olivia and I are both quite happy with those we have already met in Pine Gulch.”
Her heartbeat seemed to accelerate all over again at the teasing note in his voice. Her gaze met his and he was smiling at her with a warm look in his eyes that sucked away any ability she might have had to offer a semi-intelligent response.
To her relief, one of the moms came over to ask her a question about the puppet-book packages they lent out—probably more to get a closer look at Flynn, she suspected, than out of any genuine quest for information.
He moved away to join his daughter while she picked a few other books and the moment was gone.
* * *
He had to finish taking care of things at his grandmother’s house and get out of Pine Gulch.
As Flynn drove the short distance from Charlotte’s house to the Star N Ranch, he was aware of a low, insistent unease. This town was growing on him, sucking him in.
He had always enjoyed coming here as a kid to spend time with his grandmother. The setting was beautiful, nestled against the Tetons, with pine forests and crystal clear streams.
The pace here seemed so very different from his childhood home in Southern California, quieter, gentler somehow. Almost like a foreign country, without convertibles and palm trees and self-absorbed celebrities.
He always felt a sense of peace settle over him the moment he passed through the city limits into town.
He thought he loved it here because of Charlotte, because she was such a steady source of love and support despite the chaos of the rest of his world. When he came to Pine Gulch, there were no raging fights that could go on for days, no slamming doors, no screaming voices. Only his calm, funny, laughing grandmother, with her colorful aprons and her bright smile and her small, tidy house beside the Cold Creek.
She was gone now, but he was aware of that same peace seeping through him, so very welcome after the terrible past few months.
It didn’t make sense, he knew. He was only here to finish taking care of Charlotte’s house, not to find some kind of peace.
That was part of the reason he was so drawn to Celeste Nichols, he acknowledged as he neared her family’s ranch. She had a calming way about her that drew him to her.
He couldn’t imagine any two people more different than Celeste and Elise—the sweet children’s librarian and author and the passionate, flamboyant, ambitious actress.
His marriage had been a mistake from the beginning. After growing up with a mother in the entertainment business—and a father who had hated it—and seeing the neuroses and the superficiality of that way of life, he had wanted no part of it.
After high school and college, he had set his business degree aside and obtained a contractor’s license instead. After only a few years his construction company had established a reputation for quality and dependability. Then at one of his mother’s frequent parties, he had met a stunning—and hungry—young actress.
She had pursued him aggressively, and he—like probably most guys in their early twenties—had been too flattered to use his brain. In his lust-addled state, it had taken him several weeks to realize she was more interested in his connection to his mother and her powerful Hollywood circle than in him.
But by then Elise had become pregnant, despite the precautions they had taken. He had done what he thought was right and married her, but it had been the ultimate exercise in futility. Both of them had known from the beginning it would never last. The two years before she had filed for divorce had been among the toughest of his life, sweetened only by his complete adoration for his baby girl.
Everything he did, then and now, was for Olivia. That was the only reason he was driving to pick up Celeste Nichols right now, not because of this powerful attraction he hadn’t been able to shake since that first day in the library.
What was it about her? Yes, she was pretty in a calm, buttoned-down kind of way with those lovely dark-fringed green eyes and dark curls. She had an understated loveliness she seemed to be doing her
