Her Forever Cowboy. Marie Ferrarella

to hide her uneasiness. “That’s not a brothel, is it?”

      Brett was the first to succumb, laughing at the idea of the vivacious septuagenarian and diner owner who was part of all their lives for longer than anyone could remember running a house of ill repute. Liam quickly followed, and Dan held out for almost a minute, biting his tongue and trying to think of other things.

      But the very image of the redheaded Miss Joan as a madam proved to be too much for him, as well, and he laughed until his sides ached, all the while trying to apologize to a less-than-entertained Alisha.

      “I take it the answer’s no,” Alisha surmised, doing her best to maintain her dignity amid this joke she felt was at her expense.

      It was Brett who answered her because Dan appeared to still be struggling for control. “Miss Joan runs the local diner. She dispenses hot food and sage advice, depending on what you need most. She’s been here for as long as anyone can remember. Longer, probably. The diner’s also the place where everyone goes to socialize when they’re not—”

      “Here, drinking,” Alisha said, reaching the only conclusion that she could, given the facts as she perceived them.

      Brett corrected her. “When they’re not here socializing.” His manner remained easygoing, but he wasn’t about to allow misinformation to make the rounds. Murphy’s wasn’t only his livelihood, a way that had allowed him to raise his brothers while keeping an eye on them; it was also his heritage. The saloon had been passed on to him after his uncle had died. Before that, his late father had run the establishment. To Brett, Murphy’s was almost as much of a living entity as his brothers were.

      “Don’t they come here to get drunk?” Alisha pressed, recalling some of the parties that had gone on after hours while she was attending medical school. Nobody drank for the taste or to just pass away an hour; they drank to get drunk and even more uninhibited than they already were.

      Out of the corner of his eye, Brett saw that his brother was taking offense at the image the young doctor was painting. He wanted to set this woman straight before something regrettable might be said. Liam was soft-spoken and he meant well, but a lasting relationship between his brain and his tongue hadn’t quite been reached yet.

      “Not nearly as much as you would think,” Brett told her, keeping his smile firmly in place. “I’m not sure exactly how it is in New York, but out here, we do look out for each other—and that includes knowing when to cut a customer off.”

      “Except for Nathan McLane,” Liam interjected. The youngest Murphy brother was nothing if not painfully honest—to a fault, Brett sometimes thought.

      Alisha looked from Liam to Dan. “Who’s Nathan McLane?”

      “A man who’s married to the world’s most overbearing wife,” Brett answered. “Nathan has a very strong reason to come here and drown his sorrows.”

      “So you let him get drunk?” she asked, trying to get the story straight.

      Brett caught the slight note of disapproval in her voice. “It’s either that, or raise the bail for his release because the poor guy’s going to strangle that woman someday just to get her to stop nagging him.”

      Alisha frowned. The dark-haired man was making it sound as if he was doing a good thing. “How noble of you.”

      Brett didn’t rise to the bait. He was not about to argue with the woman. He wasn’t in the business of changing people’s minds, only in telling it the way he saw it. “Dunno about noble, but it does keep everyone alive,” he informed her.

      Dan lightly took hold of Alisha’s arm, wanting to usher her out while the young doctor who could very well be the answer to his prayers was still willing to remain in Forever and lend him a hand.

      Glancing over her head, he indicated to Brett that he had a feeling that if his new recruit remained here, talking to him for a few more minutes, she might be on the first flight out of the nearby airport—headed back to New York.

      “Next stop, Miss Joan’s Diner,” Dan announced.

      “Hey, Lady Doc,” Brett called after her. Pausing by the door, she turned to spare him a glance. “Nice meeting you.”

      “Yes,” she replied coolly. “You, too.” The door closed behind them.

      “Wow, if that was any colder, we’d have to bring out the pickaxes to break up the ice around you,” Liam commented.

      Brett saw no reason to dispute that assessment. However, true to his ever increasingly optimistic, positive nature, he pointed out, “That means that we can only go up from here.”

      Liam shook his head. It was clear that wasn’t what he would have come away with. “You know, Brett, when I was a kid, I never thought of you as being the optimistic type.”

      “When you were a kid, you never thought,” Brett reminded him with an infectious, deep laugh. Then he pretended to regard his brother for a moment before saying, “Come to think of it, you haven’t really changed all that much—”

      “Yeah, yeah,” Liam said, shaking his head as he waved away his brother’s comment. Glancing toward the door, he asked Brett, “Think she’ll stay? She didn’t look too impressed with the place.”

      “Neither was Dan when he first arrived,” Brett reminded his brother. “But Forever’s got a lot of positive things going for it, and besides, it’s got a way of growing on people.”

      “Yeah,” Liam laughed shortly as he went back to checking out the musical instruments. “Well, so does fungus.”

      “And that, little brother, is one of the reasons why no one’s ever going to come up to you and ask you to write the travel brochure for Forever,” Brett said wryly.

      Liam looked at him quizzically. “Forever’s got a travel brochure?”

      Brett sighed and shook his head. “Sometimes, Liam, I do despair that all that higher education you were supposed to acquire while I was here, slaving away to pay the bills, was just leaking out your ear as fast as it went in.”

      Liam frowned at his brother, but his mood left as quickly as it had materialized. Ever since he was a child, it was a known fact that Liam didn’t have it in him to stay mad at anyone, least of all his brothers.

      Finished with what he was doing, Liam went on to step two of his process. “I’ve got to go round up the band and make sure everything’s set for tonight.”

      Brett nodded as he went back to cleaning an already gleaming counter. He wasn’t content until there were at least two coats of polish on it, buffed and dried.

      “You do that, Liam,” he told his brother. “You do that—just as long as you remember to get back here by six.”

      Liam stopped just short of opening the front door. “I don’t go on until nine,” he reminded Brett.

      “Right,” Brett agreed, sparing his brother a glance before getting back to polishing, “but you’re tending bar at six. Tonight’s our busy night,” he added in case Liam had lost track of the days, “and I can’t manage a full house alone.”

      “Get Finn,” Liam told him. “He doesn’t have anything else to do.”

      Brett caught his brother’s meaning. That he felt he had found his calling and wanted to be free to put all his energy toward it.

      “Don’t belittle your brother just because he hasn’t found his heart’s passion yet,” Brett chided. “It doesn’t come to everyone at the same time.”

      “How about you, Brett? What’s your passion?” Liam asked.

      “I like running the bar.” He made no apologies for it. His running the bar had been the family’s saving grace. Rather than feel restrained by it, he was grateful for it and enjoyed being the one in charge of the place.

      But Liam looked