He got up and held out his hand. “Here.”
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s no way I’m trying to get up until someone rescues us. I had a hard enough time getting down here once. I’ll probably split my dress if I try it again.”
Harlan grinned. “Wouldn’t want you to do that.” He picked up the coat he’d been sitting on that he thought was Logan’s. “Here you go.” He folded it over a couple of times, then gave it to her. “Sit on that and see if it helps.”
She managed to wedge it underneath her butt. “That does help a little. What are you going to sit on?”
He laughed. “The floor. A little dirt won’t hurt me.” He sat down beside her.
Her dress covered her legs. He tried not to stare at her cleavage but that was nearly impossible. Her coat hung off her shoulders, open over her chest, and the smooth, pale skin above the bodice of her dress looked soft, sexy, and very tempting. “It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting out of here anytime soon,” she said.
“Might as well relax. Someone will want their coat sooner or later.”
“I suppose so. But if they don’t hurry I’ll miss the silent auction announcements and Avery will kill me.”
“She’ll understand. It’s not as if you did it on purpose.”
She lapsed into silence, then said, “Have you—”
“Tell me—” Harlan said at the same time. “You go ahead,” he said with a laugh.
“Have you been building houses since you moved away?”
“No, but I’ve been in construction most of the time. Not all of it building houses. I bounced around a while, working construction for different companies. Eventually I started my own company and here I am.”
“Somehow I doubt it was as easy as you make it sound.”
He smiled. “No, it wasn’t easy. But it was fun. And challenging.”
“You’ve been in Dallas all this time?”
“No, just the last seven or eight years. I’ve lived all over Texas.”
She shifted, pulling her coat closer around her shoulders. “What made you decide to come back to Whiskey River?”
“My brother Travis told me about your boss wanting to sell Whiskey River Construction. Both he and my sister have been after me to move back here for a long time. And I was ready for a change. I’ll still build houses, but there are a number of other projects here that I’m interested in.”
“Oh, what are they?”
“A winery and the airport, to name two. I might build a house on spec. See how well that goes.”
“I know your brother and his friends are expanding the airport. We extended the runway for them, but Bill decided to retire after that and didn’t want to take on anything else.”
“Travis brought me up to speed. Expansion of the airport will be one of my first jobs here. Along with the winery.”
“I guess it isn’t rumor, then, that Elijah Lane wants to build a winery and Logan Calloway is backing it.”
“No, it’s true. I’m going to build the structures, once they decide exactly what they want.”
“The three of you were friends back in high school, weren’t you?”
“Yes. Still are. We kept in touch, loosely.”
“I never knew them other than by sight. But we didn’t know each other’s friends, did we?”
“No.” They’d only been interested in each other. Besides, they’d been anxious to keep their relationship secret so they’d never gone out with each other’s friends. They hadn’t exactly run in the same circles, anyway. “Have you lived here in Whiskey River all this time?”
She nodded. “A lot of it, but not all. I went to college in San Antonio. I lived there briefly after I married too. Once we got divorced I came back here and I’ve been here ever since.”
