“That was dirty dealin’, Parks,” Finn said in a near hiss after their lady friends had excused themselves to use the necessary at Flo’s Diner. Gaze narrow, he eyed his best friend over the rim of his cup, his temper steaming more than the coffee. Make that former best friend, he thought with a healthy swig that burned all the way down—not unlike Parks sending Liberty O’Shea to his office. A low blow that had singed his mood as black and crisp as Flo’s deep-fried bacon.
Milo only laughed, Finn’s scowl obviously providing no censure whatsoever. “Why?” he said with a sly smile, hoisting his cup in a mock toast. “She applied for the editorial position, and her resumé was impeccable, not to mention she always could write circles around you and me. Besides, you’re always grousing I never give V&T any free publicity, so I thought this trial interview was the perfect chance.” He paused, assessing Finn through laughing eyes that held a hint of a dare. “Unless, of course … you’re still carrying a torch for her …?”
“Oh, your bucket’s full of cow chips!” Finn’s usually mild manner exploded, igniting his temper hotter than that blasted torch he wasn’t carrying for Liberty La-di-da Bell. The dad-burned richest, prettiest, smartest, touchiest female in the entire county. And, unfortunately, the only one who skittered his pulse by just giving him the evil eye, something downright rare in a town where girls usually hung all over him, giving him way more than the “eye.” His mouth went flat. The only “hanging” Liberty wanted to do was him from a tree, the higher the better. Problem was, all she’d ever tempted him to do was … touch her, hold her, tell her she drove him plum crazy with those spitfire eyes and sassy mouth. Not to mention that keen mind and wildfire passion for life he so ached to channel.
Right into loving him.
Which is exactly why he spent every moment in school harassing the daylights out of her. He was downright vexed how she made him feel inside. Angry that he wanted her. Flat-out crazy she didn’t want him back. And out and out irate that she made every other girl seem like he was settling for second best.
“Come on, Finn, you were going to run into her sooner or later, right?” Milo’s grin couldn’t mask the concern in his eyes. “I just hurried the process along.”
Wrong. Liberty O’Shea was the last person he wanted to run into. It was bad enough she still haunted the deep, dark recesses of his soul, taunting him with a longing as cruel as the taunts he used to hurl at her. Sure, he’d known he’d run into her eventually, but he’d wanted to be prepared when he did, not broadsided by an older, more sophisticated version, browsing his office as pretty as you please.
“Besides,” Milo continued with a lazy sip of his coffee, “you’ve been a regular drudge lately, working day and night, so I thought you could use a little excitement.”
One side of Finn’s lip hooked. “Yeah, well, an agitated bottle of nitroglycerin would have been kinder.” Huffing out a sigh, he set his coffee down to knead both temples with the pads of his fingers. “She all but came out and called me a murderer, actually accusing me of starving women and babies.”
“What?” Milo’s mouth fell open in a smile of disbelief.
“Yep.” Finn hunched over the table, forearms flat as he took another slow sip of his coffee. “Seems my prior connection to Central Pacific has her convinced that V&T not only plans to underpay the Chinese, but blow them up in the process and starve their families to boot.”
Milo’s deep laughter echoed through the chintz-curtained café where he and Milo often took lunch, earning curious glances from the patrons dining around them. “You’re joshing me,” he said, jaw sagging so low, it looked ready to pop its hinges despite the grin on his face. “She’s always been a plucky, little thing, fighting for every lost cause under the sun. I just figured she’d outgrow that, but I guess not.”
Milo leaned in and folded his arms on the table like Finn, eyes sparkling more than polished silver. “Remember the time she begged Miss Willoughby to let us bury the dead frogs with dignity rather than dissect them? Or that time she turned you down at the square dance to dance with Peewee Hinkle despite that nasty cold he had? Claimed he was better looking than you even with that cherry nose and fever blister.”
Laughter bubbled in Finn’s throat, the memory of Liberty limping off the dance floor easing his lips into an all-out grin. “Yeah, she sure had blood in her eyes when I made fun of Hinkle that night.” A chuckle slipped out. “Poor Peewee trailed her closer than a shadow after that, lovesick to the core.”
“Yeah, poor slob …” Milo eyed him with a glint in his eye, the knowing look on his face blasting Finn’s cheeks with an uncomfortable flash of fire.
Finn upended his coffee like it was 100-proof whiskey, gaze flicking across the room to where the ladies were just reentering through the back door. “The girls are back,” he said, relief coursing as he mentally kicked himself for confiding in Parks in high school about his feelings for Liberty.
Jo Beth Templeton caught his eye from across the room, offering a coy smile and a wave as she and her best friend, Bettie Boswell—Milo’s girl—made their way to the table. Jo Beth was the girl Finn stepped out with the most—when he stepped out—which wasn’t often, one of Milo’s chief complaints. Pert near as pretty as Liberty, she was the only daughter of George Templeton, president of Virginia City’s biggest bank, and the holder of Finn’s note on his land.
Finn couldn’t help but squirm a wee bit as he returned Jo Beth’s smile with a stiff one of his own, wishing he didn’t feel so darn guilty about squiring the banker’s daughter. After all, he applied for and received the loan long before he’d begun seeing Jo Beth, but somehow Finn always sensed there were emotional strings attached. As if acquiring that loan committed him far more to Jo Beth than he ever wanted to be. Oh, he liked her well enough and certainly more than any of the other girls he stepped out with. But he made darn good and sure Jo Beth knew he wasn’t beholden to any woman and that marriage was the last thing on his mind for a long time to come.
Say twenty, thirty years.
“I hired Liberty,” Milo said, voice so low, Finn might have imagined it.
Finn blinked. Make that the second last thing.
Milo gave a slight shrug, his crooked smile bordering on an apology. “Just thought you should know, old buddy, since she’ll be working three doors down from you day in and day out.”
Eyes flicking to where Jo Beth and Bettie stopped to talk to a table of their friends, Finn bent in to hover low over his coffee cup, eyes as hard as the clamp of his jaw. “And just why in tarnation would you think I’d be interested in that, old buddy?”
Milo sighed and pushed his cup and saucer away, his smile veering toward dry. “Come on, Finn, you and I both know you’ve always had a thing for her, and I dare you to deny it.”
It was a tossup over which was grinding more—Finn’s teeth or his stomach. “Yeah, I did, Parks, but that so-called ‘thing’ you allude to was a cold chill, my friend, nothing more.”
“Or a warm one …”
“Goodness me, sorry we took so long!” Jo Beth said with a little titter. She whooshed into the seat that Finn rose to pull out for her while Milo seated Bettie as well. Her blue eyes sparkled with mischief. “But Charlene had some juicy tidbits for us, didn’t she, Bettie?”
Her best friend nodded, cheeks flushed with excitement as she leaned close, her voice lowering in volume. “Seems Charlene’s mother saw Debbie Rhoades’ beau in Carson City with another woman.”
“And Doc Peters thinks Cheryl Herndon is going to have twins.” Jo Beth giggled, offering Finn a shy smile.
“But the best news is …” Bettie locked eyes with Jo Beth as the two of them shared a grin. “Liberty O’Shea is home from college, but not for long …”
“What do you mean, ‘not for long’?” Milo said, peering at Bettie through a squint while Finn chugged his water glass clear to the bottom. “I just hired her at the Enterprise, for pity’s sake, so I doubt she’s going anywhere soon.”
“She is if her father has anything to say about it.” Jo Beth wiggled her brows, raising her chin to eye the chalkboard menu on the wall. “She heard from Mary Lou Tanner, who heard from Kelly Reed Brown, who heard from a friend of Libby’s cousin, that Libby and her father are butting heads again.”
“Oh, now there’s a headline for you,” Finn muttered to Milo in a dry tone, Liberty’s notorious rows with her father as common as dirt on Main Street.
Jo Beth paused to give Finn a teasing bat of her eyes. “My, but that peach pie with Flo’s fresh-churned ice cream sounds awfully tempting, doesn’t it, Finn?”
He laughed and shook his head, waving Flo over. “Not sure how you fit all that food in that tiny body, Miss Templeton, but it’s a darn good thing your daddy gave me that loan.”
“I know,” she said with a flirty smile that drew his attention to her lush lips, one of the fringe benefits that had come along with the loan, unbeknownst to her father. She gave his arm a light squeeze. “But don’t worry, Finn, there’s plenty more where that came from …”
“Focus, Jo Beth,” Milo said with a tight smile. “What are Libby and her father going ’round about now?”
Expelling a weary sigh that registered more than a bit of sarcasm towards her archrival, Jo Beth rolled her eyes. “Well, you know Liberty—more interested in a cause than a husband, so she flat out refused the proposal of a wealthy marital prospect in New York, handpicked by her daddy. A senator’s son, no less, with aspirations to be a senator himself, and she turned him down flat.” She wrinkled her nose. “Said she’d rather be a senator than marry one, if you can imagine that.”
Somehow Finn could, and the thought coaxed a smile to his lips.
“Well, I can tell you right now that Liberty plans to stay because I just hired her at the paper after she begged for a chance to prove herself.”
Jo Beth arched a brow. “Well, that’s because her daddy cut off her allowance while she’s home, according to Charlene,” she said with a bit of a smirk, “a little leverage, if you will, but we all know how pig-headed Liberty can be.”
Yes, we do ... Finn flashed a smile when Flo moseyed over, ordering pie and more coffee for the table.
“Although I suspect in the end, her daddy will get his way,” Jo Beth continued. “He usually does.”
Finn frowned.
“Well, well,” Jo Beth said softly, “speak of the devil.”
Finn stopped breathing. A flash of heat jolted through his body at the sight of Liberty O’Shea in the doorway of Flo’s Café with her best friends Kitty Jones and Martha Artyomenko. The devil, indeed. Complete with fiery hair and a pitchfork tongue. Not to mention the heat she evoked in his body every time he laid eyes on her. A smile rested on those luscious lips until her gaze lighted upon him, thinning her mouth considerably along with those green eyes the color of moss on a forest floor.
In a patch of poison ivy.
Flo approached them at the door, and Liberty’s face eased into the sweet smile she awarded everyone but him. That is, until Flo began to lead them to the only empty table in the small café.
Right next to Finn’s.
He couldn’t help it—the blood siphoning from her usually rosy cheeks coaxed a grin to his lips, along with Flo’s not-so-gentle tug of the little brat’s arm when she reared back in a hard slant, feet fused to the floor like her shoes were made of glue. With Flo’s firm grip and Kitty’s gentle prod from behind, they succeeded in dragging her to the table, but not before Finn managed a roguish wink that helped replenish the blood in her face. “Why, hello there, Liberty Bell.”
He casually slid an arm around Jo Beth’s shoulders, knowing full well it would rile Liberty something fierce. She’d always accused him of being a lothario in school, and he took great pleasure in getting her goat. Especially after her father turned him down for a loan her senior year, accusing Finn of being a fortune hunter. Claimed his decision was based on the fact that “his Libby” didn’t trust Finn, calling him “a skunk of a womanizer just like his father.”
Finn had been so irate, he’d stood Libby up for the festival dance he’d finally gotten the nerve to ask her to, taking Jo Beth instead at the very last minute. His jaw hardened at the memory as he stared at the woman who had stabbed him straight through the heart. As sweet as you please during the time they spent together as festival volunteers, but then running back to Daddy to sully Finn’s reputation. He released a silent sigh. He had to admit there were days he regretted the hurt he’d caused her that night, leaving her high and dry in front of the whole town.
But today sure wasn’t one of them.
He casually fondled the lace on Jo Beth’s scoop collar with blatant familiarity just to get on Libby’s nerves. Delivering a lazy smile, he skimmed along Jo Beth’s collarbone with the pad of his thumb. “Say, Miss Bell, you didn’t happen to notice any starving babies or women outside, did you? ’Cause I sure would like to treat them to dinner …”
Libby’s eyes could have been jagged shards of emerald for all the daggers she was shooting his way. “I doubt Flo has nitroglycerin on the menu, Mr. McShane …”
He grinned, adrenalin pumping through his veins at sparring with Liberty O’Shea once again. “Well, I don’t know about that, Miss O’Shea, but Flo’s chili pert near ‘explodes’ on the tongue.”
Her face flushed almost purple, and pleasure coursed through his bloodstream at being able to evoke some sort of emotion from this fire-haired beauty who haunted his dreams. As a God-fearing man, he knew he shouldn’t take such joy in baiting one of God’s own, but blue blazes, he never could help himself where Liberty O’Shea was concerned.
“You are pathetic, Mr. McShame, and I’m sure if you had a conscience, it would be as black as night.” She turned away with a swoosh of that magnificent scarlet hair, and he grinned at Milo, who just shook his head, the smirk on his face stealing some of Finn’s thunder.
“What was that all about?” Jo Beth said, never too happy when Finn paid attention to another woman, especially one she couldn’t abide.
“Oh, just another one of Liberty’s lost causes,” he said loud enough for Liberty to hear. Heat crept up the back of his neck when the thought backfired with a painful cramp in his gut.
Just like me.