A Good Old-Fashioned Cowboy Read online

  But Charity’s soothing tone got under his skin like poison ivy, making him itch.

  He tried to ignore it.

  “My grandpa named the store,” he said, keeping his tone hard and flat. “Gran loved it. It was a memorial to him and you can’t just change it on a whim.”

  The crease between Charity’s brows deepened. “Okay, I get that it’s important. But I’m not changing it on a whim. I put a lot of thought into the new name.”

  “I don’t care how much thought you put into it. Knitting and Thingz is what it’s called and it’s staying.”

  “Well,” Charity said with a patience that was starting to grate, “with all due respect, it’s a little old-fashioned, don’t you think? Plus, it would be good to have a clear distinction between the past owner and the new one.” She smiled again. “The new name isn’t quite as...obvious.”

  If he’d been in a better mood, he might have found her smile adorable. Now, it was patronizing. “Obvious is good. Obvious tells you exactly what the store is about.”

  “Sure and I totally agree. But I wanted something more evocative.”

  “Evocative?” he echoed. “‘Knitting’ is evocative. And so is ‘things.’”

  “Things with a z.” Her smile held gentle amusement.

  She wasn’t making fun of it, he got that, but right now he wasn’t in a place for gentle amusement. Not with her standing there, her blue eyes sparkling the way they had all those years ago when she’d had to explain a math problem to him and was trying to get him interested. And all he’d been interested in was the way her breasts pushed against her T-shirt and how her eyes were so blue they didn’t seem real.

  They still didn’t. And her breasts were still just as distracting as they had been when she was seventeen.

  “There’s nothing wrong with a z,” he growled, really starting to get annoyed now, both with himself and her. “Grandpa was specific about the z. He said it added a point of interest.”

  Charity examined him once again in that careful way, which in turn only worsened his annoyance. It didn’t help being very aware that his gran would have been appalled at his grumpy behavior. She’d always been a stickler for manners.

  “I’m sorry,” Charity said with what looked like absolute sincerity. “I shouldn’t have said that. But do you want to hear my alternative?”

  “No.”

  She ignored him. “I was thinking of calling it A Simple Thread.”

  “A Simple Thread,” he repeated, wanting to hate it and being even more irritated that he didn’t. “What’s that evocative of? Not knitting.”

  “It does indicate yarn, though.”

  “The store was about more than just yarn. There were...things too.” Great. Now not only did he sound incredibly rude, he also sounded like a complete idiot.

  Charity opened her mouth, no doubt to say something calming and placating again, but he was done. He had to get out of there before he said something really stupid.

  “You’re not changing it,” he said. “And that’s my last word.”

  Then, before she could respond, he turned around and walked out.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHARITY CARRIED A tray of drinks into the living room of the sweet old Jasper Creek farmhouse that she, Hope, Pru, and Kit had rented for the summer, trying to keep a lid on the irritation that had been simmering inside her all day.

  It was time for their weekly meeting, where they shared their progress on their collective store rehabilitation projects. She was debating whether or not to complain about Garrett Roy and his extremely irritating objections to her changing the name of the yarn store.

  On balance, and considering that though his manner could have used some work his objections were completely fair, she decided she wouldn’t complain. It seemed petty.

  Not to mention that it’s not really his objections that you find so annoying.

  That was true. It was his hotness that had really annoyed her. That was the problem. He was all tall, dark, and muscular, filling the yarn store with a raw, masculine energy that had made her breathless and giddy.

  And it had seemed that the calmer and more soothing she was, the more that energy radiated from him. It had been kind of addictive, if she was honest...as if some part of her had liked making him angry, which couldn’t be true, surely. Not when she hated conflict. Still, that had been better than the complete indifference he’d shown her years ago, even though she really wasn’t supposed to care about that now.

  “So how’s the yarn store going?” Kit asked as Charity put the tray of mojitos, made with mint from the farmhouse’s herb garden, down on the coffee table.

  “It’s fine.” She sat down in the armchair near the fireplace. “I just didn’t realize that knitting could be so fraught.”

  “Fraught?” Kit raised a brow as she reached for a mojito. “How?”

  Charity was annoyed with herself. Why had she said that? She hadn’t been going to mention him. “Oh, nothing.” She pasted a smile on, waiting until Pru and Hope had taken their drinks before she reached for hers. “Just, you know, the usual...yarn difficulties.”

  “What usual yarn difficulties?” Pru asked, leaning back against the couch next to Kit. “Is there something problematic about wool?”

  “No.” Charity sipped on her drink, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t prompt a whole lot of questions. “I just...had a visit from Garrett Roy. Remember him?”

  “Oooh, the bad boy you used to tutor and who you had a giant crush on?” Hope looked at her with big eyes. “That Garrett Roy?”

  Charity could feel her cheeks getting hot, which was extremely annoying. “I did not have a crush on him.”

  “Sure you did,” Kit said, looking elegant and delicate in her usual black. “It was a well-known fact.”

  Calm. Be calm.

  Charity ignored the whole crush discussion. “Whatever. He came into the store today to tell me he didn’t like the new name and he didn’t want me changing the old one.”

  “Huh.” Pru took another meditative sip of her drink. “Why not? I thought the name was great.”

  “So did I,” Kit agreed.

  “Ditto,” Hope offered.

  Charity had told them her plans for the new name the day before and she knew they’d all liked it. Their support should have warmed her but for some reason, tonight, it didn’t. All she could see was Garrett’s stupidly handsome face and his stupidly mesmerizing silver eyes, telling her in that hard, flat tone, leaving no room for argument, that she couldn’t change the name. And quite frankly, the only warmth she felt was the cleansing fire of anger.

  But anger wouldn’t help and it only made things worse, so she forced it away.

  “The store was his grandma’s,” she said, trying to keep her voice measured, “which I’d forgotten. Apparently the name came from his grandpa, so I guess he feels some ownership over it.”

  “Yeah, but he’s not the owner now,” Pru said. “You’re the one holding the lease, not him. You can do whatever you want.”

  It was true. Garrett’s grandma might once have owned the store, but she wasn’t around anymore. It was Charity’s store now and she had every right to change the name if she wanted to. And it wasn’t as if she was going to change it to something awful, so really, his hostility was a tad out of proportion. Especially when she hadn’t been rude.

  You did enjoy making him mad, though.

  It was true, and that seemed a bit petty and wrong now. Still, a part of her had liked the silver glitter of irritation in his eyes, a sign that she’d gotten to him on some level, though why that should matter after all these years, she had no idea.

  The crush she’d once had on him was well and truly dead, and the flutter of her heartbeat when he’d walked into the store had simply been an autonomic reflex—her female body responding to his male
one. Nothing to do with him at all.

  Anyway, she wasn’t here to get all hung up on him again. She was here to get the yarn store up and running, and have a couple of months of peace and quiet before she returned to work.

  “I guess so,” she said. “You think I should go with the change then?”

  “Duh, of course.” Pru rolled her eyes.

  “But his grandmother...” Charity couldn’t stop herself from saying. “I don’t want to dishonor her memory.”

  “Look, if you were going to turn it into a sex shop then that might be dishonoring her memory,” Kit pointed out. “But you’re not. You’re keeping it a yarn store. All you’re doing is changing the name.”

  Hope’s blue eyes gazed at her from over the top of her mojito. “Don’t go being all nice, Char. You put a lot of thought into that name and besides, like Pru said, it’s not his store. It’s yours.”

  Again, true. Yet the urge to smooth things over the way she always did when it came to conflict tugged at her again. It made her even madder.

  She was always the peacemaker, always pouring oil on the troubled waters, a habit ingrained in her ever since she’d been a kid and trying not to be any trouble to her father. Her mother had died when Charity was a baby, so her dad had brought her up, and she knew she’d been a lot of work for him. He had always been very busy with his medical practice and would sometimes get stressed, so she’d made sure she was always calm and never a bother to him.

  That ability had come in useful in her job, and her colleagues had valued her talent for remaining calm in the high-stress environment of a hospital ER. It had certainly been a good way of coping with the near-constant state of conflict that was an ER doc’s working life, and it had come in handy with her friends when it came to keeping the peace too.

  But sometimes, just sometimes, it would be nice if she didn’t have to be the calm one all the time. If she was allowed to be angry and difficult the way the others sometimes were.

  You chose that role for yourself, remember?

  Oh yes, she was well aware. Which was part of the problem.

  “I’m not going to be all nice,” she snapped, adding an immediate, “Sorry,” that didn’t help her mood.

  The others were silent a moment, all of them regarding her with varying degrees of curiosity, mostly because she never snapped.

  “What?” She tried not to sound irritated.

  “Sounds like someone needs to have it out with a certain bad boy,” Hope murmured.

  “Indeed,” Pru agreed.

  Charity glared at them, her irritation climbing from a light simmer to a full-on boil. “Garrett’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “Sure he hasn’t.” Kit was staring very pointedly at her mojito.

  “You should go and talk to him,” Hope said. “And don’t apologize for once, for God’s sake. Just tell him you’re changing the name and that’s final.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him.” Charity fought not to sound cross. “I can keep the name, it’s no drama.”

  “If you do, please don’t leave the z on the end of ‘things,’” Kit murmured and sniffed. “It offends me.”

  “Except that you don’t want to do that, either,” Pru said. “We all know what you really want is to go and stare into Garrett’s dreamy eyes, and you’re really annoyed about it.”

  Charity felt her cheeks get even hotter than they already were. “No, I don’t. In fact, I’d be quite happy to never see him again.”

  “Uh-huh,” Kit tutted. “No lying is a house rule, remember?”

  The other two grinned.

  “The jar is over there.” Pru pointed to the mantel where the jar full of scraps of paper with old-fashioned dating advice on them stood.

  They’d all decided that if any one of them broke a house rule, they had to take a slip from the jar...and use it. Hope had thought the idea a fun one and despite privately finding the rules annoying, Charity didn’t complain. It made Hope happy and her friend needed some happiness after the disaster of her canceled wedding. Plus, complaining would only get her another slip, and she really didn’t want that.

  “You can use it on Garrett,” Hope said, clearly delighted at the prospect.

  Charity, feeling cornered, debated simply getting to her feet and leaving the room. Which of course would give away far more about her feelings concerning Garrett Roy than she wanted to—not that she had any feelings concerning Garrett Roy, but still. No point in giving her friends any more ammunition.

  “Fine,” she said. Calmly. “I don’t mind.”

  “Sure, sure,” Hope said. “Take a slip, girlfriend.”

  Charity put her drink down, gathered what dignity she could, rose from her seat, and went over to the jar that sat on the mantel. She put her hand inside, grabbed a slip of paper, and drew it out. Then she opened it with a certain amount of ceremony.

  They all looked at her expectantly.

  “‘Point out to him that the death rate of single men is twice that of married men,’” she read out. Okay, so it could be worse. She could have got the Band-Aid on the cheek that Pru had drawn.

  Hope and Pru grinned, while Kit nodded approvingly. “Perfect,” she said. “I feel you can inform Garrett of this while you’re telling him you’re changing the name come hell or high water.”

  Charity opened her mouth to say that she would not be informing Garrett of anything, because she wasn’t going to be seeing him again. Then shut it. Arguing about the dating advice was another house rule and besides, they’d probably then demand she use it on some random stranger, which also wouldn’t be happening.

  “Fine,” she said, trying not to snap, since snapping wouldn’t help.

  “Tonight,” Pru added.

  Charity frowned. “What do you mean tonight?”

  “I mean, go and tell him tonight.”

  Well, this was getting better and better. Charity wanted to tell Pru that she wasn’t going tonight, or even tomorrow, and possibly not even the day after that, but she knew that doing so would only put off the inevitable.

  “I would go tonight,” she said levelly. “If I knew where he was. But since I don’t—”

  “He’ll be with Brooks at the Rusty Nail,” Hope interrupted.

  “Oh really?” Kit glanced curiously at Hope. “And are you going to be joining him yet again tonight?”

  Hope colored. “I couldn’t possibly say.”

  “That’s the third night in a row,” Charity said, relieved not to have the spotlight on her.

  “Don’t change the subject.” Hope dismissed the question with a wave of her hand. “Pru will lend you the keys to her truck, won’t you Pru?”

  “Sure.” Pru gave her a pointed look. “We’ll be expecting an update, okay? So no weaseling out of it.”

  Clearly there was going to be no escape.

  Her friends could be relentless when they wanted to be, yet Charity knew it was coming from a place of love. As much as they teased her about Garrett, they wouldn’t want her stewing about it, which she would—not a good thing when she was supposed to be getting less stressed here, not more so. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps dealing with it quickly and amicably was the answer.

  She might as well get it over and done with and do the stupid dating advice thing too, then have more of a discussion with Garrett about the name change. Get him to see it her way.

  “Okay,” she said, like it was no big deal. “And don’t worry, there will be no weaseling.”

  “There’d better not be.” Kit gazed sternly at her. “Remember to hold your ground. You’re a strong, capable woman who doesn’t need a man, right?”

  “I believe the exact phrase is, ‘don’t need no man,’” Hope pointed out.

  “Whatever,” Kit waved away the correction along with the bad grammar. “You know what I mean.”

 
She did. It was something they’d told each other over the years, through each heartbreak and heartache, and she appreciated the reminder. Because she was strong and she was capable. Even though having to take stress leave from her job made her feel like she wasn’t, and even though she felt guilty for not telling her friends about it.

  She hadn’t told anyone about it, most especially not her father.

  They were all so proud of her and it wasn’t that she thought they wouldn’t be understanding or would think any less of her if they knew about her difficulties. It was more that she wanted to be the person they believed her to be. The “mom friend.” The calm one, the one who had her life together. If they knew, she wouldn’t be that person anymore, and she didn’t want to lose that like she’d lost the faith she had in herself.

  But she wasn’t going to think about that now. She was here in Jasper Creek to find the thing that had been missing from her life for too many years to count: happiness.

  And that happiness had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Garrett Roy.

  * * *

  GARRETT WAS ALLOWING himself a single beer and very much enjoying it after his crappy day, when the door to the Nail was pushed open and Charity Golding walked in.

  Every muscle in Garrett’s body tensed.

  Brooks, sitting opposite him in the booth, frowned. “Something up?”

  Garrett didn’t hear him. He was too busy staring at the woman standing in the middle of the bar, her red curls shining and looking so pretty and wholesome it ought to be downright illegal.

  Goddamn. He’d only just managed to stop thinking about her and now she’d just waltzed in like his fevered imagination had somehow conjured her up.

  What the hell was she doing here?

  Perhaps she’s looking for you.

  Garrett ignored his hopeful brain. No, he didn’t want her to be looking for him. Didn’t want to see those dark blue eyes and that gorgeous, red pouty mouth turned in his direction, curving in that damn patronizing smile that if he’d had any sense, he’d have kissed from her face at the earliest opportunity.