Lassoed by Fortune. Marie Ferrarella

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      “That you’re seriously thinking about trying to get the Fortunes to bring their big-city blight right here to Horseback Hollow.”

      “If you’re still referring to my wanting to encourage Wendy and her husband to open up their second restaurant here, she would probably say, ‘Go for it, Julia.’” She raised her chin like someone bracing for a grueling battle. “My mother has always been very supportive of my dreams and I’ve had this one for a very long time.”

      His eyes became blue laserlike slits as he regarded her. “So you’re telling me that it’s your dream to destroy Horseback Hollow?”

      She wasn’t saying any such thing and he knew it, Julia thought angrily. How could she have ever been attracted to this Neanderthal? She must have been out of her mind.

      “No,” Julia contradicted with feeling, struggling not to raise her voice and yell at him. The last thing she wanted to do was to have her mother overhear her giving Liam a piece of her mind—even if he did sorely need it. But she’d had just about all she could take of his holier-than-thou pontificating. “It’s always been my dream to build the town up.”

      He laughed shortly. “Right now, that’s the same thing from where I’m standing.”

      And just who had died and made him the reigning authority on things like this?

      “Well, then, maybe you’d better move and get the sun out of your eyes because you certainly aren’t seeing things clearly.”

      “The town’s doing just fine as it is,” he insisted. What was wrong with her? “Why can’t you see how destructive it would be to allow outsiders’ interests to take over Horseback Hollow? What do we need with another restaurant, anyway?” he challenged her.

      Just how blind was he? she wondered, frustrated. “Does the term ‘freedom of choice’ mean anything to you?” she returned frostily.

      His mouth curved in a humorless smile. “Only if it means I’m free to ignore you.”

      “Go right ahead,” she declared, gesturing toward the door. “But you’re going to have to do it outside my store.”

      The next moment she’d suddenly put her hands against his back and began to push him toward the door.

      She managed to move Liam a few stumbling feet only because she’d caught him by surprise. But once he regained his balance, Liam employed his full weight as a counterforce and there was no way she could budge him more than a couple of shaky inches.

      “I just want to say one more thing—” he began.

      Exhausted by her effort to move him any farther toward the door, Julia dropped her hands to her sides. “I’ll hold you to that,” she told him sharply.

      “How are your folks going to feel when this store is forced to close down?” His tone was surprisingly mild as he put the question to her. He looked like a man who felt he’d scored his winning goal and was just waiting for the fact to sink in with the opposing team.

      Julia, however, looked at him as if she thought he’d just lost his mind.

      “Why would this store be forced to close down?” She wanted to know his rationale.

      Like a parent introducing a new concept to a child, he began to patiently explain. “Hey, chain drugstores aren’t going to be the only thing that’ll be turning up here once you open the floodgates and start ‘building the town up.’ Big chain supermarkets will be horning their way in here, too.” Liam paused to look around the grocery store that had remained relatively unchanged for most of his lifetime. He found that rather comfortingly reassuring. “And this store, with its neat little aisles and limited selections will be boarded up faster than you can say ‘I told you so,’” he concluded.

      “I wouldn’t be saying ‘I told you so.’” There were small, sharp daggers coming from her eyes, all aimed at his heart—if he actually had one. “That would be your line,” she retorted.

      “Yes,” Liam agreed, grinning from ear to ear. “It would be.”

      The strange thing about that grin, Julia later recalled, was that it didn’t seem to reach his eyes. In her experience, any smile or grin that was genuine in scope always included the eyes. Without the eyes being involved, the person who was smiling was only trying to fool people as to his mind-set.

      Sometimes, she couldn’t help thinking, they were out to fool themselves, as well. The first time she noticed the difference between real smiles and ones that were entrenched in deception, consciously or otherwise, was when she’d caught a glimpse of her own face in the mirror on her wedding day.

      Her eyes hadn’t been smiling then, either. At the time, she was doing what she felt was the “right thing.” It had taken her three years before she’d admitted that to herself.

      “Look,” she told Liam, “either buy something or leave. I’ve got work to do and I don’t have time to let you go on badgering me like this because you’re so small-minded you can’t see that you either progress or wither and die on the vine. And you might be content to let Horseback Hollow stagnate, but I want it to flourish.”

      He looked at her for a long moment, as if he was debating saying anything to her or not. Finally he said, “There’s a third alternative in that multiple choice of yours.”

      She didn’t see it and couldn’t imagine what his point was. “Enlighten me,” she told him.

      He laughed at her choice of words. “That’ll take a lot longer than I have right now. But let me just tell you what that third choice is.... It’s maintaining the status quo.”

      That was just theme and variation of one of the two choices she’d presented to him.

      “In other words, stagnating,” she declared. But before he could say anything further to contradict what he’d just labeled his so-called “third” choice, Julia started talking rapidly to get her point across.

      “Nothing ever remains the same, no matter how much you might want it to. Change is inevitable and you can’t stop it or stand in its way. But you can guide it,” she emphasized.

      Liam frowned as he shook his head, the ultimate immovable object to her irresistible force. “Sorry, it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than that to convince me to surrender to the boys with the deep pockets. I’d rather just go my own way.”

      “Why don’t you?” she said encouragingly. The next moment she’d crossed the floor to the door and held it wide open for him, her meaning clear. “Nobody here will stop you, that’s for damn sure.”

      Rather than do exactly that and just leave, Liam pulled himself up to his full height and seemed to just loom over her, his bearing fully emphasizing just how much taller than her he really was.

      “No, but someone should really stop you,” he told her in a voice that was completely devoid of any humor. “Before it’s too late and we all wind up suffering the consequences.”

      Again Julia raised her chin defiantly, her eyes flashing as she barely managed to suppress her anger.

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