Real Vintage Maverick

If possible, the woman was making even less sense to him than before.

Hell, if she was trying to find out what would attract guys like him, all she had to do was look in the mirror, Cody couldn’t help thinking. Because, confusing though she seemed to be every time she opened her mouth, this new shop owner was a damn sight easy on the eyes. If she stood in the doorway—or near her show window—that would definitely be enough to bring men in on the pretext of shopping.

But, curious to see if there was something more to what she was suggesting, Cody asked, “Why would you want to pick my brain?” His taste was plain and, if it were up to him, he wouldn’t have set foot in here in the first place.

In answering his question, Catherine didn’t go with the obvious: that there was something compellingly fascinating about this vintage cowboy who had strolled into her shop just in time to keep her from breaking something vital. Instead, she gave him something they could both live with.

“Because what you like is what would appeal to other people in your age bracket.”

He’d never thought of himself as being like everyone else. Not that he saw himself as unique, just … different. The gadgets out there that held such fascination for men—if he was to believe the occasional commercial he saw—held no interest for him. He was a man of the earth, a plain, simple man who’d never felt the need to be part of the crowd or to join anything at all for that matter.

With a shrug, he finally got around to answering the initial question she’d put to him. “I’m thirty-five.”

That was about where she would have put him, Catherine thought, feeling triumphant.

“Perfect,” she declared out loud, stopping short of clapping her hands together. “You’re exactly what I’m looking for. Business-wise,” she quickly qualified in case he got the wrong impression. She didn’t want him thinking she was staking him out for some reason. The last thing she wanted was to chase this cowboy away.

Cody looked at the exuberant woman for a long moment. He sincerely doubted that he was the type that any woman was looking for, at least not anymore. There was a time when he would have been. A time when he’d been eager to plunge into life, to be the best husband, the best father he could possibly be. A time when he greeted each day with hope, thinking of all that lay ahead of him and Renee.

But all that had changed once Renee had died. Whatever he’d had to offer in terms of a normal relationship had died and had been buried along with his wife.

He was tempted to tell her she was wrong in selecting him, but he could see that there was just no putting this woman off. She had a fire lit under her, and if he wasn’t careful, that fire could burn them both.

Still, he supposed he had nothing to lose by going along with her in this. She’d undoubtedly find his answers boring, but until she did, he could view this as a distraction. God knew he was always looking for something to distract him. Something to block his dark thoughts so that he didn’t have to dwell on just how empty his existence had become and continued to be.

Eight years and nothing had changed. He was still just going through the motions of living, placing one foot in front of the other.

“I don’t know about perfect,” he finally said to Catherine with a self-deprecating laugh that sounded as if it had come rumbling straight out of his chest, bypassing his throat, “but if I can help—” he shrugged “—sure.”

If possible, her eyes brightened even more. It made him think of the way a satisfying, steaming cup of hot coffee tasted on a cold winter’s day.

“Really?” Catherine pressed, this time actually clapping her hands together as if he was some magical genie who had just bestowed the gift of three wishes on her.

Cody shrugged again in response to her question. “Why not?” he said even as a part of him whispered a warning that he had just taken his first step on a very narrow ledge. A step that could result in his tumbling down into an uncharted abyss at a moment’s notice.

All things considered, he supposed that there could be worse things.

Chapter Two

“So exactly how is this going to work?” Cody asked her after a beat. As a rule, he wasn’t a curious man, but in this case, he had to admit that this woman had managed to arouse what little curiosity he did possess. “Are you going to be showing me pictures of the stuff you’re thinking of selling at the store, or what?” Before she could answer the question, Cody felt it only fair to inform her of something. “Think you should know right from the start that I’m really not too keen on broken-down old furniture.”

As far as he was concerned, furniture didn’t have to be fancy, but it had to be functional—and not look as if it belonged in some garbage heap.

Catherine laughed. “That’s good, because neither am I.”

She was still feeling her way around as to the kind of focus she wanted to bring to the shop. Right now, she was pretty much making it up as she went along.

Catherine wondered if admitting that to this down-to-earth cowboy would be a mistake. Would it make him think less of her? Or would he just dismiss her present indecision as a “woman thing”? An inconsequential whim on her part? She realized that it would bother her if he did.

His expression registered mild surprise. Cody looked around at the showroom. Everything here was way older than he was. If it wasn’t for the fact that Caroline had a weakness for this kind of thing, he would have just called it all “junk” and dismissed the whole place out of hand.

If this woman was really being on the level with him and felt the same way he did, that brought up another question. “Then what are you doing with this store?”

“Changing its image,” Catherine answered without hesitation.

How was she going to do that with the things she had to work with? “To what?” he wanted to know.

“To a shop that sells vintage items, whether it’s clothing, books, furnishings, whatever.” It was a slight matter of semantics she supposed, but there was still a difference.

One she was apparently going to have to explain because Cody moved back his Stetson with his thumb and squinted at the merchandise in the immediate area. “Just what’s the difference between something being an ‘antique’ and being classified as ‘vintage’?”

That was easy enough, Catherine thought.

“Price mostly,” she answered with a grin that he had to admit—if only to himself—he found rather engaging.

Cody rolled her words over in his head, then nodded. He was willing to accept that. But there was something else.

“Still haven’t answered my first question,” he pointed out. When she raised an eyebrow, silently asking to be reminded, he said, “What do you want with me?”

I could think of ten things right off the bat, Catherine thought in reply. But out loud she simply said, “I intend to use you for market research.”

Cody laughed shortly. “Only market I know is the one I go to buy my supply of eggs, milk and bread.”

That was not the kind of market she meant. “Think bigger,” Catherine coaxed.

“Okay,” he said gamely. “How about if I throw in a chicken, too?”

Obviously this wasn’t going to be as simple as she’d hoped. “I’m talking about the general buying market out there,” she explained. “You’re just the age bracket I’m trying to attract.”

Cody’s eyes met hers. “You ask me, you keep on smiling like that and you’ll attract more than your share of men my age—and older.”

The remark pleased her, amused her and embarrassed her all at the same time. Not only that, but she could feel her cheeks growing hot. From the way he looked at her, she knew it wasn’t just an internal thing or her imagination. Her cheeks were turning pink. She had an uneasy feeling that her new “researcher” could see the color creeping up into them.

Great, now he probably thought of her as some naive, innocent little girl playing at being a store owner.

“I’m not looking for attention,” she told him with feeling. “What I’m looking for are paying customers who are interested in buying what they see.”

The way he looked at her told Catherine that she was only making matters worse by talking. But she wanted him to take her seriously, to understand that all she was after at the moment was a business arrangement and a little input from him.

She cleared her throat. “There has to be something that you want—to buy,” she tacked on when she realized that she was still sinking into the grave she had verbally dug for herself. She tried one more time, taking it from the top. “When you walked in here, what were you hoping to find?”

“Like I said, I was looking for something for my sister.” As usual, he had put getting something for her off, telling himself he had plenty of time until he suddenly didn’t.

“Such as?” she coaxed, trying to get him to give her something to work with.

The broad shoulders rose and fell again as Cody shrugged carelessly. “I figured I’d know it when I saw it.”

She could accept that. Shoppers didn’t always have a clear picture of what they were looking for. “Then look around,” Catherine urged, gesturing around the store. “See if anything appeals to you.”