knew she had laid it on a little thick, and his irritated expression reflected that. “I’m already getting badgered by my brother, plus I have two more set to show up today. I don’t really need you chiming in and pressuring me too. If you want to make your mark on the town, go right ahead. But stop trying to put your Lane stamp on me.”
She sighed, feeling exasperated. The man was the most enraging human on the planet sometimes. Stubborn, crabby and resolutely determined to keep his head up his ass. “But I’m right,” she insisted.
“My grandfather ran the ranch for forty years. He kept it going through all manner of economic hardship. Why would I act like I know better than him?”
“That isn’t what you’re doing,” she said. “You’re not acting like you know better than him. You’re just finding a new way to succeed in a new world.”
“Expand all you like, Lane, but I’ve had enough change. I won’t tell you where to stack your damned caviar if you don’t tell me what to do with my cows.”
She sat down on the stool behind the counter, crossing her arms, knowing that she looked like she was pouting, and not really caring. “Fine. Have that control you’re so fond of. What are you here for anyway?” She realized that she had bulldozed right over whatever he might have wanted to say when he’d come in.
“Coffee beans,” he said, picking up a bag. “Also, I was kind of hoping you could bring something by for dinner tonight. You know, enough for a crowd of people. But since you always have mass amounts of food in that freezer of yours that I spared last night...”
“You don’t have to do something for me to get food. Your very presence in my life merits food.” She never stayed annoyed with Finn, even when he was annoying. It was impossible.
He had too long a track record of being wonderful for her to take a disagreement seriously. Plus, when he smiled at her, and his blue eyes lit up, she couldn’t feel anything but affection for the man.
He treated her to that smile she could never stay mad at. Then he brought the bag of coffee up to the counter.
She set about ringing it up. “You know, you probably have enough food that you don’t need anything new. Wasn’t it just yesterday that you were trying to turn down the casserole I slaved over?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t really want to piece leftovers together. And if I remember right, Liam and Alex are bottomless pits. Of course, my memory of them might be firmly centered on their teens and early twenties. So maybe now that they’re both in their thirties they’ve started eating reasonable portions.”
“I’ll make something. Pasta, probably. That will be easy to make in the little store kitchen in the back. Don’t worry. I won’t let you starve.”
“Perfect,” Finn said, sounding weary. “Could you also figure out a way to handle my brothers for me?”
“Sorry, buddy. Maybe I can sing the ‘Song That Never Ends’ all night and annoy them out of town. Then again, once they eat my pasta they’re going to end up wanting to stay forever. I could put strychnine in it,” she offered.
“Maybe don’t poison my brothers, Lane.”
“Then I guess you’re stuck with them.”
“Hopefully not for too long,” he said, his smile turning rueful.
“How do you plan to get rid of them if not poison?” she asked.
“The way you normally get people to do what you want. Money. Of course...until then, they’ll be staying in my house. On second thought...” He looked down at the pound of coffee in his hand. “I better get two of these.”
“Just grab the second one on the way out,” she told him. “It’s on the house.”
“Pity caffeine,” he said. “But, at this point, I don’t have too much pride to take it.”
He picked up the bag and lifted it. “See you later?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll bring the food by after I close up here. So it should be around about five thirty.”
He grunted.
“Actual human beings with people skills just say thank you, Finn,” Lane said.
“Thank you,” he said before turning and walking out of the store. She watched him through the window as he adjusted his black Stetson and looked up and down the street.
She caught sight of a table of women sitting out in front of The Grind drinking coffee and admiring the view that was Finn Donnelly.
She turned away, a rush of heat filling her cheeks, and her stomach. She felt weird. Weird that she had been looking at Finn, and that she had been borderline sharing a moment with the women across the street, who were clearly not just looking at him but checking him out.
But she had not been checking him out. Not really. She looked up again, and he was gone. She ignored the slight kick in her stomach.
If she noticed the fact that his jaw was square, and that the muscles of his forearms were well-defined, that didn’t really mean anything. Not a thing except the fact that she wasn’t blind. He was a man. He was a good-looking man.
And she wasn’t immune to it. She had just been thinking that his smile and eyes always got him out of trouble with her. It was just—just in a friend way.
She gritted her teeth. That fact had been driven home in kind of a strange way a few months ago when he and Rebecca had nearly hooked up at Ace’s one night. Though Rebecca had been adamant that nothing at all had happened, and that really, nothing would have, since she’d only been using him to try and forget about Gage, the man she was determined to stay away from at the time.
But it had all worked out in the end.
Rebecca and Gage had resolved their differences and Lane didn’t have to deal with the weirdness of two of her friends dating each other. Which would have been the worst part of Rebecca and Finn hooking up.
Just the thought made her shudder a little bit. Because weird. It would just be weird. Just like it was weird that someone she knew really well, and had taste she respected, had seen Finn as bangable.
Yes, Finn was an attractive man. She knew that. But all the fantasies about his hands that she’d had centered on things he could fix in her house.
The door opened again and she jumped when the women who had just been ogling Finn walked in off the street.
“What can I help you find today?” She put on her brightest smile. And she did her very best to cast all thoughts of Cord, the eventual expansion, Finn and Finn’s stubbornness out of her mind.
* * *
HIS BROTHER ALEX showed up looking like a military cliché. He was wearing dog tags and a tan shirt, covered mostly by a dark jacket. What looked to be all of his earthly possessions were shoved in a giant bag he had slung over one shoulder, held like a backpack.
The only indicator he hadn’t been in the military for the past few months was that his dark hair was no longer high and tight, but was hanging down into his
