Real Vintage Maverick. Marie Ferrarella

need hung up?”

      Catherine smiled as she shook her head. “Not at the moment,” she replied.

      In response, he nodded his head and continued on his way. He replaced the ladder where he had found it, along with the hammer.

      “I would, however, like to get your input on a few things,” she said, raising her voice so that it followed him into the back room.

      He didn’t answer until he came out again. “Well, I’m here, might as well use me. Ask away,” he told her.

      Might as well use me. Now there was a straight line if ever there was one, she couldn’t help thinking as she bit her tongue to keep quiet.

      Instead, she beckoned Cody over to the counter where she had her laptop up and running. She’d set it up the minute she’d come in this morning, thinking to get a little online shopping done whenever she felt like taking a break. She had all the sites bookmarked.

      “I’ve been looking through some eBay auctions of things I thought would be perfect for the shop,” she told Cody.

      “So get them,” he advised.

      “I’d like a second opinion,” she told him honestly. And that second opinion was where he came in. That was the deal.

      “Why?” he wanted to know. “Don’t you trust your own judgment?”

      “Yes I do,” she said. “But it’s always good to have reinforcement.”

      He considered her words. The woman wasn’t headstrong, but she wasn’t wishy-washy, either. He found himself nodding in silent approval of this woman he’d just barely met.

      Catherine Clifton was a good blend of various personalities, he thought. She was definitely different from most of the women he had interacted with since Renee’s passing. It wasn’t that he was in the market for another wife—one heartache in his lifetime was more than enough for him—but hell, at his age he wasn’t looking to up and join a monastery, either.

      Only problem was, most of the women around here fell into two groups. The first group was mainly concerned with trivial things—things like what outfit or hairstyle looked best on them. Mindless things. And then there was that other group. The women who made no secret of the fact that they felt he was “broken” and they knew just how to “fix” him.

      He wasn’t about to let that group get their hands on him, not by a hell of a long shot, he thought. He wasn’t “broken,” at least, not in a way that any of them could even begin to heal, and he wasn’t lonely, either. At least, not lonely enough to take up with any of those women for more than a couple of days or so. After that, he just lost patience with them, preferring his own company or the company of his horses to being subjected to endless, mindless chatter that somehow always managed to work the phrase “How do I look?” into the conversation.

      Any conversation.

      Looking at Catherine now, he couldn’t help wondering if ultimately she was going to fall into one of those two categories. He was probably wrong, but he had a hunch that she wasn’t.

      A larger part of him felt that it really didn’t matter either way.

      But just the smallest part of him hoped that he was right.