Cowboy for Hire

Calvin Carmichael didn’t believe in pulling any punches.

Rather than sharing a warm family dinner, Connie had rarely felt more alone. She felt utterly isolated—and distance was only part of the reason. Before the call came in, her father had insisted that she sit at one end of the table while he sat at the other.

“Like civilized people,” he’d told her.

He was at the head of the table and consequently, she was at the foot—with what felt like miles of distance between them.

If merely sharing a meal had been her father’s main objective, it could have been more easily attained than this elaborate command performance. Connie was aware of restaurants that were smaller than her father’s dining room. She’d grown up in this enormous house, but it had never felt like home to her.

She watched Fleming, her father’s butler, retreat out of the corner of her eye. It was no secret that Calvin Carmichael enjoyed with relish all the perks that his acquired wealth could buy, including not just a cook and a housekeeper but a genuine English butler, as well. The latter’s duties included serving dinner, even if the only one at the table was her father.

Connie sighed inwardly, wondering when she could safely take her leave. She knew that if her sigh was audible, her father would make note of it. Moreover, he’d grill her about it once his phone call was over, finding a way to make her feel guilty even if he was the one at fault.

Sitting here, toying with her food and watching her father, Connie felt a numbing malaise, a deadness spreading like insidious mold inside her. Surrounded by wealth, able to purchase and own any object her heart desired, no matter how extravagant, she found she desired nothing.

Because nothing made her happy.

She knew what she needed.

She needed to feel alive, to feel productive. She needed to accomplish something so that she could feel as if she finally, finally had a little of her father’s respect instead of always being on the receiving end of his thinly veiled contempt.

“You’re not eating. I invited you for dinner, you’re not eating. Something wrong with your dinner?”

Connie looked up, startled. Her father had been on the phone for the past twenty minutes, but the slight shift in his tone made her realize that he had ended his conversation and had decided to find some reason to criticize her.

Connie lifted her shoulders in a careless, vague shrug. “I’m just not hungry, I guess,” she replied, not wanting to get into an argument with the man.

But it seemed unavoidable.

“That’s because you’ve never been hungry. Had you grown up hungry,” Calvin stressed, “you would never waste even a morsel of food.” Crystal-blue eyes narrowed beneath imposing, startlingly black eyebrows. “What’s wrong with you, little girl?” If the question was motivated by concern, there was no indication in either his inflection or his tone.

Little girl.

She was twenty-seven years old, and she hated when her father called her that, but she knew it was futile to say as much. Calvin Carmichael did what he pleased when he pleased to whomever he pleased and took no advice, no criticism from anyone. To render any would just get her further embroiled in a heated exchange. Silence usually won out by default.

“Haven’t I given you everything?” Calvin pressed, still scowling at his only daughter. His only child according to him. He had long since disowned the older brother she had adored because Conrad had deigned to turn his back on the family business and had struck out on his own years ago.

Connie looked at her father for a long moment. This feeling wasn’t about to go away, and if she didn’t say anything, she knew it would only get worse, not to mention that her father wouldn’t stop questioning her, wouldn’t stop verbally poking at her until she told him what he claimed he wanted to know.

As if he cared.

“I don’t want to be given anything,” she told her father. “I want to earn it myself.”

His laugh was belittling. “Earn it, right. Where’s this going, little girl?”

She pressed her lips together for a moment to keep from saying something one of them—possibly both of them—would regret. Her father didn’t respond well to displays of emotion.

“I want to helm a project.” It wasn’t really what was bothering her, but maybe, just maybe, it might help squash these all but paralyzing doldrums that had infiltrated her very soul.

“You? Helm a project?” Piercing blue eyes stared at her in disbelief. “You mean by yourself?”

She tried not to react to the sarcasm in her father’s voice. “Yes. My own project.”

He waved a dismissive hand at her. “You don’t know the first thing about being in charge of a project.”

Anger rose within her, and she clutched to it. At least she was finally feeling something. “Dad, I’ve worked for you in one capacity or another for the last ten years. I think I know the first thing about being in charge of a project—and the second thing, too,” she added, struggling to rein in her temper. An outburst would only tilt the scales further against her.

Her father was a formidable man, a man who could stare down his opponents and have them backing off, but she was determined not to allow him to intimidate her. She was fighting for her life—figuratively and, just possibly, literally.

Calvin laughed shortly. But just before he began to say something scathing in reply, his ever-present cell phone rang again.

To Connie’s utter annoyance, her father answered it. It was time to leave, she decided. This “discussion,” like all the others she’d had with him over the years, wasn’t going anywhere.

But as she pushed her chair back and rose to her feet, Connie saw her father raise a finger, the gesture meant to keep her where she stood.

“Just a minute.”

She wasn’t sure if he was speaking to her or the person on the other end of the call. His next words, however, were definitely directed at her.

“Forever.” For a moment, the word just hung there, like a single leaf drifting down from a tree. “Let’s see what you can do about getting a project up, going and completed in Forever.”

Something in her gut warned her she was walking into a trap—but she had no other choice. She had to do it—whatever “it” turned out to be.

“What kind of a project?” she asked warily.

Her father’s attention already appeared to be elsewhere. “I’ll have Emerson give you the particulars,” he said in an offhanded manner, referring to his business manager. “Just remember, little girl, I started with nothing—I don’t intend to wind up that way,” he warned her, as if he was already predicting the cost of her failure.

Adrenaline was beginning to surface, whether in anticipation of this mysterious project or as a reaction to her father’s condescending manner, it was hard for her to tell—but at least it was there, and she was grateful for that.

“Thank you,” she said.

But her father was back talking to the person on the other end of the cell phone, giving that man his undivided attention.

She had a project, Connie thought, savoring the idea as it began to sink in. The world suddenly got a whole lot brighter.

Chapter One (#ulink_37fc6994-6b8c-5eeb-8398-4eab86e557ae)

“I can’t believe what you’ve done to the place,” Brett Murphy said to Finn, the older of his two younger brothers, as he looked around at what had been, until recently, a crumbling, weather-beaten and termite-riddled ranch house.

This morning, before opening up Murphy’s, Forever’s one and only saloon, he’d decided to look in on Finn’s progress renovating the ranch house he had inherited from one of the town’s diehard bachelors. And though he hadn’t been prepared to, he was impressed by what he saw.

“More than that,” Brett added as he turned to face his brother, “I can’t believe that you’re the one who’s doing it.”

Finn never missed a beat. He still had a lot to do before he packed it in for the day. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” he asked. He’d been at this from first light, wrestling with a particularly uncooperative floorboard trim, which was just warped enough to give him trouble. That did not put the normally mild-tempered middle brother in the best frame of mind. “I built you a bathroom out of practically nothing, didn’t I?” he reminded Brett. The bathroom had been added to make the single room above the saloon more livable. Until then, anyone staying in the room had had to go downstairs to answer nature’s call or take a shower.

Brett’s memory needed no prodding. It had always been a notch above excellent, which was fortunate for his brothers. It was Brett who took over running Murphy’s and being financially responsible for them at the age of eighteen.

“Yes, you did,” Brett replied. “But don’t forget, you were the kid who always wound up smashing his thumb with a hammer practically every time you so much as held one in your hand.”