A Difficult Woman

Not much. In fact, he had a strong feeling that the less he knew, the less involved he got with anyone in this town, the better.

CHAPTER TWO

THE BOSS LADY was hot about something. Matt could see her pacing the porch as he turned his truck into her long gravel driveway. As soon as she heard his engine, she tossed her braid over her shoulder and stalked into the house. He could practically hear the door slam.

This should be fun, he thought as he pulled to a stop. He hadn’t slept much the night before and he wasn’t sure he was ready to face Tara in a snit. She reappeared almost immediately with a cell phone, scanning the horizon as she held it to her ear. The boss lady had cleaned up, and rather nicely, too. Instead of baggy jeans, she wore tan denims that did justice to her long legs and a scoop-necked blue shirt that hugged her breasts and flat abdomen. A chain with some kind of a pendant nestled in an interesting hint of cleavage. She looked…different.

She watched him get out of the truck, still holding the phone to her ear. It was fortunate, Matt thought, taking in her killer expression, that he had expertise dealing with people in all kinds of moods.

“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly as he came to the bottom step.

“Brothers.” She let out an aggravated breath as she lowered the phone, but Matt saw anxiety as well as irritation in her eyes.

“Anything I can do?”

She opened her mouth to answer, and then her expression changed. Matt followed her gaze and saw a plume of dust in the distance. When the vehicle came close enough to identify, Matt shifted his attention to Tara, watching as her face first softened with relief, then tightened again. This did not bode well for the troublesome brother.

Tara stalked down the steps and brushed past Matt as an older silver Dodge pickup pulled in between his truck and a Toyota Camry. A fair-haired kid in his late teens or very early twenties was at the wheel and Matt could tell that he knew he was in trouble.

“You said you’d be home last night,” Tara hissed at her brother, who tried a sheepish grin, then gave up. “I had assumed that meant before the sun came up!”

The brother got out of the truck. “I’m sorry, T. Josh and I got stuck up behind Bounty Peak.” He gestured at the muddy undercarriage of the Dodge. “My cell wouldn’t get service there.”

Tara sucked in a breath and let it out again. “Listen to me. In the future, you call. I don’t care if you have to hike to the top of Bounty Peak to get service, you call.” She pushed a piece of paper into her brother’s hand. “And I’m sure I don’t want to know why you were behind Bounty Peak in the first place. Here’s the list we talked about. Do what you can. I’ve gotta go.”

Matt had seen the same look on his mother’s face more than once during his own turbulent teens—fully justified fear, followed by relief, and then anger at being made to worry unnecessarily. He felt a little sorry for both Tara and the kid.

“I’m late for an appointment,” Tara explained abruptly. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. You’re pretty well lined out, aren’t you?”

Matt nodded and Tara gave her brother one more smoldering look before walking swiftly to the Toyota, muttering under her breath. Matt and the brother stood side by side as the car peeled out of the driveway and turned onto the county road.

“She yells at me when I do that.” The blond kid turned to Matt. “I’m Nicky Sullivan.”

“Matt Connors. You worried her,” Matt said as he shook the kid’s hand.

“Yeah. I guess I should have called when we got out of that mud hole,” he admitted, “but I figured I’d be home in an hour.” He tilted his head, his blue eyes narrowing. “And I think I’m old enough to stay out all night if I want to.”

“Probably not to her.”

“I guess,” the kid agreed. “Hey, you want some breakfast before you get started?”

Matt shook his head. “I had the special at the Owl.”

Nicky grimaced. “Sorry, man.”

Matt smiled in spite of himself. Dinners weren’t bad at the casino, but breakfast had proven to be an adventure. Eggs came in one form. Bouncy. Bacon bordered on scorched. The toast was usually okay, though, and that was what he’d ended up eating that morning after trying all the various components of the special.

“Come on, at least have some coffee. Tara makes great coffee.”

A thermal carafe sat on the counter of the obviously recently renovated kitchen and Nicky shook it. It sloshed reassuringly and he reached for two mugs.

“If I had been any later, she’d have dumped it out,” Nicky reflected as he poured.

“Important appointment?”

“It is for her.” Nicky settled on one of the antique chairs and stretched out his legs. He took a drink of coffee, closed his eyes, took another. “Long night,” he muttered. “Anyway, the local school is celebrating its centennial this year and there’s going to be a big reunion of all graduates. Tara wants a piece of the action.”

“How so?” The coffee smelled great. Matt took a seat on the opposite side of the table and sipped. Star-bucks, move over.

“She wants to use the reunion to help her kick off her bed-and-breakfast business. She’s trying to host a function here.”

“Bed-and-breakfast?” Matt almost dropped his cup. Tara Sullivan was going to deal with the general public? Nicky smiled at him.

“She’s good with paying customers,” the kid said, accurately interpreting Matt’s expression. “We lived in the basement apartment of a bed-and-breakfast for five years while she was going to college. She ended up running the place from time to time for the owners, so she knows what she’s doing. Of course, getting the house ready in time is kind of a challenge.”

“The kitchen’s not bad,” Matt said tactfully. Only the worn linoleum needed replacing. Everything else, from the fancy retro range to the huge fridge, looked new.

“You should see the rest of the place—and I’m only here for ten days. I’ll do what I can, but frankly, I have no idea what I’m doing.” Nicky rolled his shoulders, working the kinks out. “Believe it or not, I’m an engineering student. But I’m a lot better with calculations than I am with a hammer and a saw.”

Matt enjoyed the kid’s candor. “Why doesn’t she just hire a contractor? Money?”

Nicky grew serious. “She has to watch the budget, but the problem is all the local contractors are ‘booked.’” He said the word in a way that caught Matt’s attention.

“What do you mean ‘booked’?”

Nicky’s mouth tightened into a semblance of his sister’s smirk, but it wasn’t nearly as deadly. “She’d kill me for talking about this, but it’s nothing you won’t hear in town. There’s this family that runs an inn nearby. Real successful.”

“Somers Country Inn?”

“That’s the one. They’re ticked off that Tara is opening a competing business.”

Matt frowned. He’d seen the Somers Country Inn when he’d been driving around a few days before, trying to fill the empty hours, trying not to think. It was a few miles away from the Sullivan place—a huge two-story cedar ranch-style building surrounded by picturesque cabins, outbuildings, split-rail fences and giant cottonwood trees. It smacked of luxurious hospitality with a pseudorustic flavor. The kind of exclusive out-of-the-way place where the rich would go to rough it. There was no way that Tara’s little Victorian, even if it were fixed and decorated, could compete with that place.

“Rumor has it, and it’s only a rumor,” Nicky added in a way that made it clear it was anything but a rumor, “old man Somers has fixed it so that nobody wants to work with Tara. I mean, we had no trouble getting help with the roof, the foundation and the kitchen. It wasn’t until the plumbing…”

“What happened with the plumbing?”

“When we changed it over from iron to PVC, she had the guys plumb in a bunch of bathrooms—one for each bedroom, you know. That’s when the community found out she was planning to open a bed-and-breakfast, and suddenly no one was available.”

Matt gave the kid a long look before draining his cup. Nicky filled it again without asking.

“She finally got an electrician to come from Elko, but he was twice as expensive as the local guy. Now all that’s left are the floors, walls and stuff that needs to be fixed like the doors and the porch. Luke tries to do what he can around here, but he gets those arthritis attacks.” Nicky nodded at Matt over his coffee cup. “It’s decent of you to help him out.”

“No problem,” he replied, looking at his watch. “Any idea what time your sister will be back?”

Nicky shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.” He pulled the paper Tara had given him out of his pocket and smoothed it on the table. “But since this list is twice as long as it was the last time I saw it, I think I’d better get busy.”

TARA PUSHED OPEN one of the double doors of the convention room at the community center. She was late for her first meeting of the Night Sky Business Association and she would have to make an entrance instead of slipping in as she’d originally planned.