Dr. Colton's High-Stakes Fiancée. Cindy Dees

had happened a lifetime ago, muted and distant. And sometimes it seemed like only a few days ago complete with piercing grief that stole her breath away. Today was one of the just-like-yesterday days, apparently.

      “So. Spill!” Carly urged.

      “Finn Colton is not the love of my life!”

      “Ha. So you admit that you did see him!”

      “Fine. Yes. I saw him. I was crawling on my hands and knees, my rear end sticking up in the air, trying to make a break for it, and he walked right up to me.”

      Carly started to laugh. “You’re kidding.”

      “I wish I were,” Rachel retorted wryly. “I can report with absolute certainty that his cowboy boots are genuine rattlesnake skin and not fake.”

      “Oh, my God, that’s hilarious.”

      Rachel scowled. She was so demoting Carly from BFF status. “I’m glad I amuse you.”

      “What did he say?” Carly asked avidly.

      “Not much. He said my name, and I said his. Then I got the heck out of Dodge as fast as I could.” She added as a sop to Carly’s love of good gossip, “He did knock on the window of my car to tell me that I looked like crap—and that if I was going to faint, I shouldn’t drive.”

      “What a jerk!” Carly exclaimed loyally.

      Okay, she’d just regained her status as best friend forever.

      “You’ll have to fill me in on the details while we drive up to Bozeman.”

      Rachel groaned. She’d forgotten her promise to go with Carly to shop for a dress for the big celebration of the high school’s hundredth anniversary, which was scheduled for next weekend in conjunction with the school’s homecoming celebration.

      “You forgot, didn’t you?” Carly accused.

      “No, no, I’ll see you at three. But right now I have to go back to the hardware store and get more parts for my toilet.”

      “Hoping to see your favorite Colton brother again?”

      “When they’re having snowball fights in hell,” she retorted. She slammed the phone down on Carly’s laughter and snatched up her car keys in high irritation.

      

      Finn threw his car keys down in high irritation. He remembered now why he hated Honey Creek so damned much.

      His older brother, Damien, finished off his sandwich and commented, “Funny how you can want worse than anything in the world to get back home. And then you get here, and in under a week, you’d do anything to get away.”

      Finn rolled his eyes. Nothing like being compared to a recent ex-con and the analogy working. Especially since he’d been working like crazy for the last fifteen years to recover the family reputation from Damien’s murder conviction. He dropped a brown paper bag from the hardware store onto the kitchen table. “Here are your fence fasteners. Need some help installing ‘em?”

      Damien shrugged. “Sure. If you don’t mind getting those lily-white doctor hands dirty.”

      Finn scowled. “I grew up working a ranch. I didn’t go completely soft in medical school.”

      “We’ll see.”

      An hour later, Finn was forced to admit that compared to his massively muscled brother, he qualified as a bonified sissy. But the sweat felt good. They were restringing the barbed wire along the south pasture fence. His hands were probably going to be blistered and torn tonight, but he wasn’t about to complain after the lily-white doctor-hand crack.

      Seeing Rachel Grant again had rattled him bad. He needed to get out and do something physical. Something strenuous that would distract him from memories of her. He’d loved her once upon a time. Been dead sure she was the one for him. And then she’d up and—

      “Hey! Watch it!” Damien exclaimed.

      Finn pulled up short, swearing. He’d almost whacked off his brother’s hand with the sledgehammer.

      “How ‘bout I take that?” Damien suggested warily. “In fact, why don’t we take a break and go get a bite to eat? Maisie made chili this morning.”

      As a bribe, it was good one. His oldest sibling might be nosy and overbearing, but the woman made a pot of chili that could put hair on a guy’s chest. He stomped into the mud room of the main house a few minutes later. The warmth inside felt good after the hint of winter in the air outside.

      “Hey, boys,” Maisie called. “Pull up a chair.”

      Damien led the way into the enormous gourmet kitchen. “Watch out for him—” he hooked a thumb in Finn’s direction “—Honey Creek’s already getting on his nerves.”

      Maisie commented slyly, “The way I hear it, it’s someone in Honey Creek who’s getting on his nerves.”

      Finn’s head jerked up. How did she do that? That woman knew more gossip faster than anyone he’d ever met. And she wasn’t afraid to use it to get exactly what she wanted. Or to manipulate and hurt the people around her. She saw herself as the real matriarch of the clan in lieu of their reclusive and withdrawn mother and, as such, responsible for shaping and controlling the lives of everyone named Colton in Honey Creek. Maisie had been one of the reasons he’d bailed out of town as soon as he could after high school.

      He moved over to the stove and served up two bowls of steaming chili. He plunked one down on the table in front of Damien and sat down beside his brother to dig into the other bowl.

      He heard arguing somewhere nearby and looked up. Damien’s twin brother, Duke, and their father, Darius, were going at it about something to do with the sale of this year’s beef steers. Those two seemed to be arguing a lot since he’d gotten back two days before. Not that he had any intention of getting involved, but Duke seemed to have the right of it most of the time. But then, Darius always had been a dyed-in-the-wool bastard. A hard man taming a hard land.

      Maisie sat down across from him. “So tell me. How’d your meeting with that Jezebel go?”

      No need to ask who she was talking about. Maisie always had called Rachel “that Jezebel.” He also knew Maisie would badger him until he told her exactly what she wanted to know.

      He answered irritably, “We didn’t have a meeting. I bumped into her in the hardware store.” Amusement flashed through his gut at the recollection of her crawling for the door as fast as she could go. Her pert little derriere had been wiggling tantalizingly, and her wheat-blond hair had been falling down all around her face. Which was maybe just as well; it had partially hidden the sexy blush staining her cheeks.

      “Come on. You know I’ll find out everything anyway,” Maisie said.

      He sighed. Like it or not, she was right. “That’s all there was to it. I saw Rachel, she saw me, she walked out. I bought Damien’s fasteners and came home.”

      “You men. No sense of a good story. I swear, we’ll never get on The Dr. Sophie Show unless I do all the work.” She scowled and pressed, “What was she wearing? How did she look at you? Did she throw herself at you? Did she look like she’s still scheming to land herself a Colton?”

      Actually, Rachel had looked pissed. Although he didn’t see why she had any right to be angry. She was the one who’d betrayed him and wrecked what they had between them. He supposed he did have Maisie to thank for finding out the truth about her before he’d gone and done anything dumb like propose to Rachel. How could she have—

      He broke off the bitter train of thought. Her betrayal had happened a lifetime ago, when they were both kids. It was time to let it go. Beyond time. He was so over her. And as long as he was home in Honey Creek, he damned well planned to stay over her.

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