Designs on the Cowboy Read online

  Smiling, she nodded. “Yes, I don’t doubt it. Only here in the rural areas do people leave their houses unlocked. In the city, that’s an open invitation to thieves.”

  When he didn’t respond, she gave a small wave and turned to leave. Once she was outside, she breathed a sigh of relief and hurried to her car, where she unloaded the things she’d need for the day.

  She chose to work in the dining room, hoping that doing so would keep her out of Dylan’s way. Unpacking, she sorted and stacked her material on the long dining table. Then she opened the door into an enclosed stairwell and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Her notes from the day before were hastily scribbled, and she double-checked the measurements of the upstairs rooms.

  When she returned to the dining room, she found Dylan standing near the table, her drawings from the folders in his hands.

  He looked up as she came farther into the room. “Is this what you’re going to do?”

  She wasn’t sure if he’d understand that they were simple sketches. “Yes and no,” she said, watching his face as he studied the pictures.

  “You could do this?” He pointed to a photo of a kitchen she’d found.

  Still unsure, she gave a small nod. “Something similar, yes. Do you like it?”

  He shrugged and replaced the papers and pictures on the table. “It’s okay.”

  “Those are just ideas,” she hurried to say. “I hadn’t really decided on anything, so if you don’t like—”

  “Never said I didn’t.”

  The deep timbre of his voice took her breath away, and she ignored it. At least she now had an idea of what he might like to see in the way of changes. Unable to stop her smile, she let her enthusiasm carry her away. “I have more pictures and ideas for the other rooms. Do you want to see them? We can go over them, and you can choose the ones you like.”

  He shook his head and shoved away from the wall. “No reason to do that.”

  Her smile died along with her excitement, while a sinking feeling replaced her enthusiasm. Gathering some papers in the hopes of appearing more professional than she felt at that moment, she searched for something to say, with no luck.

  “Look,” he said, “I wouldn’t be doing this if—” He lowered his head, shaking it.

  Glory thought of what Erin had told her about Dylan still having a hard time with the memory of losing their mom and dad. She couldn’t blame him. She could still remember when it happened, a few weeks before graduation. Dylan had looked so sad and lost as he’d walked across the stage of the high school to accept his diploma. Like many others, she’d had tears in her eyes and reminded herself that, no matter how hard things sometimes were for her at home, it was nothing like what he was going through.

  “Yes, okay,” she said. “I’ll do my best.”

  “So you think you can do it? In two months?”

  Her spirits lifted. “I’m sure I can. You won’t even recognize the place when I’m done.” Her mind raced with ideas. “I’ll work on a few more sketches and make a list of supplies I’ll need to have delivered. There will be a lot of changes, and they won’t be quick. New cabinets and counters in the kitchen—”

  “Whatever works.”

  Her heart sank again, and she tried to gather her wits. He didn’t care or at least he pretended not to, and she needed to accept that. This wasn’t the way she had imagined her first decorating job would be, but she’d find a way to do it, whether he was involved or not. She needed to be a success, and this was her chance.

  “Just how much am I paying you for this?” he asked, breaking into her thoughts. When she named a figure she’d roughed out, his dark, heavy eyebrows drew together over his green eyes. “That much?”

  Panic hit, but she squared her shoulders. His sister had assured her that she’d be well paid, no matter what he said or did. Lifting her chin with all the pride and determination she could gather, she said, “If you think it’s too much, maybe we should—”

  “Is it?”

  For a moment, she was totally taken aback. “No,” she said. “No, it isn’t. Certainly not in today’s market.”

  “Will you be here tomorrow?”

  “First thing in the morning,” she said. “If that’s all right.”

  He looked away. “Whatever works for you. I don’t care.”

  When he didn’t say more, she took a step back. “I don’t know exactly what time I’ll be here.”

  “It’s always unlocked.” Without saying anything else, he disappeared into the kitchen.

  She heard the sound of his boots on the floor and the screen door closing. Although she was a little shaken, she decided she’d handled their little encounter fairly well. She would have to get used to the fact that he obviously didn’t have much to say, unless he thought it was important. That was all right with her. She didn’t need the distraction. Getting involved with someone again was the last thing on her mind, no matter how green his eyes were.

  Later, when she’d finished looking over each of the rooms again and making copious notes she probably wouldn’t use, she climbed into her car and drove away. When she pulled out onto the paved road, headed for town, she took her cell phone from her purse and hit an autodial button. “Erin?” she said when a young woman answered. “I wanted to let you know that I’ve begun work on the house.”

  “Wonderful!” Dylan’s sister replied. “I know you’ll do a terrific job and I can’t wait to visit the first chance I get. Is he cooperating?”

  Glory wasn’t quite sure how to answer. “Well, he didn’t throw me out.”

  Erin laughed, and they talked for a few more minutes about what Glory planned to do. When the call was over, she hoped Dylan would be happy with the changes, too. But it was hard to tell much of anything about him.

  * * *

  “WHO’S THAT?” LUKE ASKED.

  Standing in the opening of the big barn, Dylan looked out to see Glory’s car coming up the lane. Before he could answer, a pickup with Mercer’s Hardware painted on the door turned into the lane behind it.

  Luke took a step outside. “So you’re really going to do some work on the house?”

  Turning to his brother, Dylan shrugged. “I told you that Erin said I needed to do something. Renovate, fix it up, whatever.”

  “Well, yeah, but I didn’t know that meant you were going to go through with it.” Luke was silent for a moment as they both watched the vehicles come to a stop near the screened-in porch. “Wait a second,” he said when Glory climbed out of her car and walked over to the pickup. “She doesn’t work at Mercer’s.”

  “No, she—”

  “Hey, that’s Glory Caldwell.”

  “Andrews.”

  Luke turned to him. “What?”

  “Used to be Caldwell. She married Kyle Andrews.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Luke said, turning back to watch what was going on. “So they’re back in town?”

  “I guess.” But Dylan didn’t know for sure. She still hadn’t mentioned anything about her husband. Not that there was any reason to.

  “You’d think we would have heard they were back. From what I remember of Kyle, he wasn’t shy about tooting his own horn.”

  “Yeah, that was Kyle.” But Dylan hadn’t been surprised when Glory married the guy. After all, she was the Prom Queen and Kyle had been the King. Everybody said they belonged together. Dylan hadn’t questioned that. He’d just watched her from afar, like all the other guys had. Watching was all he’d done. There’d been no foolish ideas about asking her out. He’d known better, even then.

  “Why is she here?”

  Dylan wasn’t real happy about having to answer the question, but he couldn’t ignore it, so he hedged. “She has a decorating business.”

  Luke looked at him. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah
.”

  “In Desperation?”

  Dylan was getting tired of answering questions. “Yeah, in that building her grandmother still owns. The one with her grandfather’s workshop in the back.”

  “And she’s doing the decorating stuff here, at your house?”

  Not that he wanted to, but Dylan nodded.

  Glory had walked around to the back of the pickup with the driver, who was unloading several gallons of paint, along with some boxes. While the driver took the buckets toward the house, she walked in the opposite direction, stopped and lifted her hand to her eyes. She was looking for him.

  Dylan had planned to be absent when she arrived. In fact, he’d decided it might be best to stay clear of her as much as possible, considering that he never felt quite like himself when she was around. But when he saw her wave, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do.

  “Go on,” Luke said. “I’ll meet you at the house in a minute. I need to fill my water jug.”

  “Why should I?”

  On his way to grab his jug from the back of his pickup, Luke stopped and looked back. “Because she probably needs to talk to you.”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  Luke didn’t move. “It’s your house.”

  “Right.”

  “You make the decisions about what happens with it.”

  Dylan knew he should agree, but then he would have to explain about their sister and how she’d managed to hornswoggle him into agreeing to let someone—who turned out to be Glory—work on his house.

  “Like I said, it was Erin’s idea to make some changes,” he said, ending the discussion.

  It was obvious that he wasn’t going to be able to avoid Glory. As he walked toward where she stood, he saw her say something to the driver, who then got in the pickup and drove away.

  “I didn’t mean to take you away from your work,” she said when he drew closer to the house.

  Wishing his brother had been anyplace else besides next to him at the barn when Glory pulled in, he spied the paint and boxes by the door to the porch. “Need a hand getting this stuff inside?”

  “Oh! Yes, I guess I could use a little help. Thank you for noticing.”

  He loaded his hands and arms with paint cans, and she hurried to open the door for him. “Where do you want them?” he asked, carrying them into the house.

  “Here in the kitchen is fine.”

  He set them down by the door, and then stood there, wondering how to get out of this uncomfortable situation he was now in. He’d never spent a lot of time talking to women, except for the occasional “howdy, ma’am” or to answer a question about his health, which was always good. Not that he’d been celibate. There were ways. But standing in the kitchen with nothing to say while Glory looked around the room from top to bottom was proof that he wasn’t at the head of the class when it came to his conversational skills.

  He watched as she walked across the room and stopped at the doorway that led to his bedroom. Not that he particularly needed to watch, but he couldn’t help it. There was something in the way she moved, but he managed to turn his attention away from her. After all, she was a married woman. She and Kyle had been together for forever.

  “Have you ever considered using this for a ranch office?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at him.

  “No, I never have.” He tended to do paperwork at the kitchen table and store that same paperwork in a corner in his bedroom or the dining room. He’d always thought it was foolish for him to have the house, but that was the way it had worked out. Once Luke turned eighteen and graduated from high school, Erin left for the rodeo circuit and rarely came home. He and his brother had shared the house. When Luke decided to marry Kendra, she’d vetoed the idea that Dylan would move out and let them have the house. Instead, she’d insisted on a big, new house, and Luke had had it built.

  Glory’s eyes shone. “I have some great ideas for it.”

  “For what?”

  “For an office. It would be perfect.”

  “So I guess I’ll sleep upstairs, then,” he said, thinking aloud and not realizing he’d actually spoken.

  Nodding, she faced him and asked, “Which room do you think you’d like?”

  Before he could tell her that none of them would suit him, he heard the screen door on the porch open and close. He could almost taste the relief when Luke stepped into the kitchen.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Luke said, looking from Glory to Dylan.

  “Nope,” Dylan answered, ready to escape the house.

  “We were just discussing the idea of making an office in here for ranch business.” She pointed to the room behind her. Her smile grew and she laughed, shaking her head. “I can’t believe I’m standing here in this house with the Walker brothers.”

  “It’s good to see you, Glory,” Luke said, glancing at Dylan. “I heard you’ve opened a new business in town.”

  “I have. Glory Be Antiques and Decorating. We aren’t officially open yet, but when Erin and I ran into each other in Texas and she learned about my plans...” She shrugged and smiled at both of them.

  “I remember your grandad’s leather shop,” Luke said. “There was nothing like it for hundreds of miles.”

  Glory’s smile dimmed, and Dylan recognized the sadness in her eyes. “He loved making saddles,” she said. “It broke his heart when he couldn’t work anymore. And then he...” She took a breath. “But the shop is still there. I think Gram has been thinking of selling his tools. She’s mentioned it. I’m not sure what we’ll do with the space. I—” She lowered her head for a moment, and then raised it again, smiling. “Maybe I’ll use it for a workroom myself. Someday. It’s— Let’s just say it’s difficult for both of us to go in there without thinking of him.”

  Luke glanced at Dylan, and then nodded in agreement at Glory. “I understand completely. So you’ve moved back to town permanently?”

  This time her smile was sincere. “I hope so. I’ve missed Desperation. And I hope we can make a success of the business.”

  “The town hasn’t changed that much. And with Kyle’s connections, you shouldn’t have a problem getting customers.”

  Dylan, who’d been watching her throughout the conversation, noticed that her smile dimmed considerably when his brother mentioned her husband’s name.

  “Kyle and I have been divorced for some time,” she said, avoiding eye contact with either of them.

  Dylan was too surprised to hear what Luke was saying. Her announcement left him stunned, and he wondered just how big of a fool Kyle Andrews was to have let Glory Caldwell go. Not that it changed anything, he told himself. Whether she was married or not made no difference. She’d been hired to fix up his house. But in the back of his mind was the thought that he definitely needed to give her a wide berth. He’d already thought about her too many times, and it wasn’t the kind of thing he should be doing.

  * * *

  “ARE YOU GOING to the Walker place today?” Louise asked.

  Glory nodded. She placed her coffee cup on the kitchen table and rolled up the plans she’d worked on in the evenings during the past week. “The man who’s tearing out the kitchen cabinets will be there in about fifteen minutes, so I need to get going.”

  “Is everything working out all right? I mean, with the Walker boy.”

  Glory turned to look at her grandmother and wondered how to answer. It wasn’t Dylan’s fault that she’d begun to form an unwanted attraction to him. She certainly couldn’t tell her grandmother about that. Gram would be thrilled, she was sure. Dylan, not so much. He barely knew she was there. Which, she reminded herself, was as it should be.

  “Dylan is a very nice man,” she answered as she headed for the door. “He isn’t crazy about me being there and doesn’t care what I do to the house, but I
have faith it will all work out.”

  “Oh.”

  Her grandmother’s disappointment was so clear that Glory had to bite her cheek to keep from laughing, even though it wasn’t funny. It would break Gram’s heart to know she had absolutely no desire to form any kind of relationship with Dylan Walker or anyone else, no matter how often she thought of him and enjoyed getting glimpses of him throughout her day. After all, he was more than easy on the eyes. But she was determined to keep her mind on business, not on him.

  “I’d better get going,” she said, needing to escape her grandmother’s questioning eyes. “I have some things I need to talk over with him before he gets busy with ranch work. I’ll see you later.”

  After kissing her grandmother’s cheek, she hurried out the door and to her car. A quick look at her watch told her she didn’t have time to enjoy the drive, and she turned her mind to the work she needed to do that day.

  When she arrived at the ranch, she immediately noticed that Dylan’s pickup was parked near the barn. Her heartbeat picked up. She pressed her lips together and reminded herself that she was there on business. And business was all she was interested in. Focusing her thoughts on the job ahead, she decided that the things she needed to talk to him about could wait.

  She’d just climbed out of her car when another pickup, this one pulling an empty trailer, turned into the long drive and parked behind her. “Good morning,” she called to Jim White, who climbed out of the vehicle and approached her.

  With a touch to the brim of his cap, he nodded. “Morning, Miz Andrews. The town’s buzzin’ with the news that you’re back.”

  She felt the heat of a blush on her face, but smiled. “I hope it’s a happy buzzing.”

  He followed her up to the house. “It is, for sure,” he assured her. “Now what all is it you want me to do here?”

  Ready to get to work, Glory led him into the kitchen and explained what needed to be done. Gathering the photos from the dining room, she showed them to him, so he’d have an idea of what she envisioned it would look like, once the old was gone and the new was finished.

  “It’s mighty nice,” he answered. “Who’s doin’ your cabinetry?”