A Cold Creek Secret

He unbuttoned his soaked coat and she tried not to notice the muscles of his chest that moved under his sweater as he worked his arms out of the sleeves.

“It’s long past time.”

He was quiet for several moments. “The reality is, I’m only here a few weeks of the year, if that, and it’s too hard to take care of the place long-distance, even with your friend Gwen keeping an eye on things for me. Anyway, Gwen’s leaving, too. She told me she’s buying a house outside Jackson Hole and that just seemed the final straw. I can’t even contemplate how daunting it would be to find someone to replace her. Not to mention keeping up with general maintenance like painting the barn.”

It was entirely too choice an opportunity to pass up. “This is perfect. I’ll help you.”

Again that eyebrow crept up as he toed off his winter boots. “You want to paint the barn? I’m afraid that might be a little tough, what with the snow and all.”

She frowned. “Not the barn. But this.” She pointed with her soapy towel. “The whole place needs a good scrubbing, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

He stared at her. “Let me get this straight. You’re volunteering to clean my house?”

She set the soapy towel back in the bucket and perched on the top rung of the ladder to face him. “Sure, why not?”

“I can think of a few pretty compelling reasons.”

She flashed him a quick look, wondering what he meant by that, but she couldn’t read anything in his expression.

“The truth is, I need a place to stay for a few days.”

“Why?”

“It’s a long, boring story.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” he murmured, looking fascinated.

“Trust me,” she said firmly. “I need a place to stay for a few days—let’s just leave it at that—and you could use some work done around here to help you ready the place for prospective buyers.”

“And you think you can help me do that?”

The skepticism in his voice stung, for reasons she didn’t want to examine too carefully. “Believe it or not, I’ve actually helped a friend stage houses for sale before and I know a little about it. I can help you, I swear. Why shouldn’t we both get something we need?”

He leaned against the counter next to the refrigerator and crossed his arms over his chest. As he studied her, she thought she saw doubt, lingering shock and an odd sort of speculation in his eyes.

After a moment he shook his head. “I can’t ask you to do that, Ms. Howard.”

“You didn’t ask. I’m offering.”

Five days. That was all she needed to avoid Hollywood’s biggest wedding in years. With a little time and distance, she hoped she could figure out what she was going to do with the mess of her life.

“I really do need a place to stay, Major Western.”

She thought she saw a softening in the implacable set to his jaw, a tiny waver in his eyes, so she whipped out the big guns. The undefeated, never-fail, invincible option.

She beamed at him, her full-throttle, pour-on-the-charm smile that had made babbling fools out of every male she’d ever wielded it on. “I swear, you’ll be so happy with the job I do, you might just decide not to sell.”

Though she saw obvious reluctance in his dark eyes, he finally sighed. “A few days. Why not? As long as you don’t make any major changes. Just clean things out a little and make the rooms look better. That’s all.”

Relief coursed through her. Simone, sensing Mimi’s excitement, barked happily.

“You won’t regret it, I promise.”

He shook his head and reached into the refrigerator for a bottled water. In his open, honest expression, she could see he was already sorry. She didn’t care, she told herself, ignoring that same little sting under her heart. Whether he wanted her here or not, somehow she knew that Major Brant Western was too honorable to kick her out after he’d promised she could stay.

Chapter Three

What kind of game was she playing?

That seemed to be the common refrain echoing through his brain when it came to Mimi Van Hoyt. He still hadn’t come any closer to figuring her out several hours after their stunning conversation, as they sat at the worn kitchen table eating a cobbled-together dinner of canned stew and peaches.

First she was pretending to be someone else—as if anyone in the world with access to a computer or a television could somehow have been lucky enough to miss her many well-publicized antics. The woman couldn’t pick up her newspaper in the morning without a crop of photographers there to chronicle every move and she must think he was either blind or stupid not to figure out who she was.

But that same tabloid darling who apparently didn’t step outside her door without wearing designer clothes had spent the afternoon cleaning every nook and cranny of his kitchen—and doing a pretty good job of it. Not that he was any great judge of cleanliness, having spent most of his adult life on Army bases or in primitive conditions in the field, but he had grown up with Jo Winder as an example and he knew she would have been happy to see the countertops sparkling and the old wood cabinets gleaming with polish.

He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it himself—Mimi Van Hoyt, lush and elegant, scrubbing the grime away from a worn-out ranch house with no small degree of relish. She seemed as happy with her hands in a bucket of soapy water as he was out on patrol with his M4 in his hands.

She had even sung a little under her breath, for heaven’s sake, and he couldn’t help wondering why she had dabbled in acting instead of singing since her contralto voice didn’t sound half-bad.

That low, throaty voice seemed to slide down his spine like trailing fingers and a few times he’d had to manufacture some obvious excuse to leave the house just to get away from it. He figured he’d hauled enough wood up to the house to last them all week but he couldn’t seem to resist returning to the kitchen to watch her.

The woman completely baffled him. He would have expected her to be whining about the lack of entertainment in the cabin, about the enforced confinement, about the endless snow.

At the very least, he would have thought her fingers would be tapping away at some cell phone as she tweeted or whatever it was called, about being trapped in an isolated Idaho ranch with a taciturn stranger.

Instead, she teased her little dog, she took down his curtains and threw them in the washing machine, she organized every ancient cookbook left in the cupboard.

She seemed relentlessly cheerful while the storm continued to bluster outside.

Somehow he was going to have to figure out a way to snap her picture when she wasn’t looking. Otherwise, his men would never believe he’d spent his mid-tour leave watching Mimi Van Hoyt scrub grease off his stove vent.

But he was pretty sure a photograph wouldn’t show them how lovely she looked, with those huge, deep green eyes and her long inky curls and that bright smile that took over her entire face.

Though he knew it was dangerous, Brant couldn’t seem to stop watching her. Having Mimi Van Hoyt flitting around his kitchen in all her splendor was a little overwhelming for a man who hadn’t been with a woman in longer than he cared to remember—sort of like shoving a starving man in front of one of those all-you-can-eat buffets in Las Vegas and ordering him to dig in.

He’d had an on-again, off-again relationship with a nurse at one of the field support hospitals in Paktika Province, but his constant deployments hadn’t left him much time for anything serious.

Not that he was looking. He would leave that sort of thing to the guys who were good at it, like Quinn seemed to be, though he never would have believed it.

Brant treated the women he dated with great respect but he knew he tended to gravitate toward smart, focused career women who weren’t looking for anything more than a little fun and companionship once in a while.

Mimi was something else entirely. He didn’t know exactly what, but he couldn’t believe he had agreed to let her stay at his ranch for a few days. Hour upon hour of trying to ignore the way her hair just begged to be released from the elastic band holding it back or the way those big green eyes caught the light or how her tight little figure danced around the kitchen as she worked.

He shook his head. Which of the two of them was crazier? Right now, he was willing to say it was a toss-up, though he had a suspicion he just might be edging ahead.

“Would you like more stew?” she asked, as if she were hosting some fancy dinner party instead of dishing up canned Dinty Moore.

“I’m good. Thanks.”