Her Forever Cowboy

It wasn’t as if they were standing in a huge loft and she’d somehow missed it. “An invisible bed?” she countered.

Rather than answer her, Brett went over to the closet on the opposite wall and opened it. Just as he did, she crossed to it, thinking that perhaps he was about to lead her into another room. The next thing she knew, Brett was grabbing her and pulling her to one side.

“What the hell are you—”

Alisha didn’t get a chance to finish voicing her indignant question, as the bed that had been upright and hidden behind the closed door came flying down. Its four feet landed with a small thud on the wooden floor, part of it taking up the space where she had been standing just a moment ago.

Stunned, she found herself staring at a bed, comforter and all.

“Just keeping you from being smashed by your Murphy bed,” Brett answered as if she had just asked a perfectly logical question in a normal tone of voice.

The fact that he was still holding her didn’t immediately register. Her eyes widened as she turned her head to look at the bed that hadn’t been there a minute ago.

“A what?” she asked, referring to what he’d just called it.

Damn, but she felt soft and round in all the right places for such a compact woman, Brett couldn’t help thinking.

“A Murphy bed—no relation,” he quipped. “Some people call it a hideaway bed.”

“Just how old is this place?” she asked.

“Old,” he allowed. “The saloon downstairs has been renovated, but I didn’t see a reason to do anything up here since it really wasn’t being used very much.”

Suddenly aware that the man was much too close to her for her comfort, Alisha turned to look up at him, blanketing her vulnerability with bravado and doing her damnedest to ignore the rising heat she felt. “Is anything else going to come flying out at me?”

“Not that I know of,” he replied. A laugh punctuated his words.

“Then I guess you don’t have to go on holding on to me.”

Her tone was cool and authoritative, meant to cover up the fact that just for a split second, she was reacting to this closer-than-necessary contact between them. Reacting in the very worst possible way. Her body temperature had gone up, responding to his before she could forcefully shut everything down.

She’d already been this route before and learned a valuable lesson. Men who looked like Pierce—and Brett—weren’t capable of maintaining lasting relationships. They were far too enamored with themselves to spare the time for anyone else.

She didn’t need to bang her head against that wall twice, she silently reminded herself.

“Oh, I can think of a whole lot of reasons to hold on to you, Lady Doc,” Brett told her with a smile that was half wicked, half arousing. “Reasons that have nothing to do with falling Murphy beds.”

She needed to draw her lines in the sand now, so no mistakes could be made. “If you value hanging on to your limbs, Brett, I’d forget all about those reasons if I were you.”

She expected another dose of his charm and was surprised—and relieved—when Brett raised his hands in an exaggerated fashion, breaking the physical contact he’d established, and took a step back.

“Whatever you say, Lady Doc. I’ve never forced my attentions on a woman yet, and I’m not about to start at this late date,” he assured her. “I wouldn’t have grabbed you now, but if I hadn’t, that bed would have landed right on top of that pretty little head of yours. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I’ll write you that check now.” As she took out her checkbook, another question suddenly occurred to her. This time, she looked around twice before asking, “Where’s the bathroom?”

Brett nodded toward the entrance of the room and the stairs just beyond. “You passed it downstairs.”

He obviously didn’t understand, she thought. “I mean the one that goes with this apartment.”

“You passed it downstairs,” Brett repeated.

Her jaw almost dropped. “There’s no bathroom up here?” she cried.

“Not that I know of.”

“Didn’t your uncle have to relieve himself?”

“I’m sure he did,” Brett replied. “When he did, he went downstairs.”

That still didn’t solve the problem. Just how backward were these people? “What about bathing? Didn’t he bathe?”

“As a matter of fact, he did,” Brett answered, taking no offense at her tone. “That’s why he built a small room onto the back end of the men’s room—so he could take a shower there.”

Part of her couldn’t believe she was actually having this conversation. “Is there one like that in the back of the women’s bathroom?”

Brett shook his head. “Was no reason for it. Uncle Patrick never got married.”

Alisha felt as if she’d somehow fallen through the rabbit hole without realizing it. In an odd sort of way, she wanted to see just how far this would all go. “I can’t go into the men’s room to shower.”

“Don’t see why not as long as there’re no men in it. The place is pretty empty until about two in the afternoon or so, and it doesn’t really get going until about five, six o’clock,” he told her. “Listen, if you like, I can see about having Clarence bring a cast-iron tub upstairs. But you’ve got to remember that it’s going to take up most of the available space in the apartment,” he warned her.

“Clarence?” Who was named Clarence these days? she couldn’t help wondering.

“He took over running the hardware store after his dad retired,” Brett answered. “The man’s an absolute wizard with coming up with ways to get things that you need.”

Alisha laughed shortly to herself and murmured, “How about a brand-new start?”

“You need a new start?” Brett asked her, interested. “Why?”