“I don’t know you well enough to be nervous or annoyed.”

“Want to?”

His belly muscles quivered. “Look, Ms. Kimball—”

“All right, don’t get huffy.” She waved him off. A pity, she thought. She preferred being direct, and he, obviously, didn’t. “I find you attractive, and I got the impression you were interested, initially. My mistake.”

“You make a habit of coming on to strange men in your mother’s toy store?”

She blinked, a quick flicker of temper and hurt. Then she shrugged. “Oh, well. Ouch.”

“Sorry.” Disgusted with himself, he held up both hands. “Way out of line. Maybe you do annoy me after all. Not your fault. I’m out of practice when it comes to…aggressive women. Let’s just say I’m not in the market for any entanglements right now.”

“This is a blow—I’d already picked the band for the wedding, but I expect I’ll recover.”

His lips curved. “Oh, well. Ouch.”

He had a great smile when he used it, Kate thought. It was a damn shame he was so stingy with it where she was concerned. “Now that we have all that out of the way. What do you think?” She spread her arms to encompass the room.

Since here he was on solid ground, Brody relaxed. “It’s a great old place. Lots of atmosphere and potential. Solid foundation. Built to last.”

The little prickle of annoyance that still chilled her skin faded away. Warmth radiated. “That’s it. Now I love you.”

It was his turn to blink. He’d already taken a defensive step in retreat when Kate laughed. “Boy, you are out of practice. I’m not going to throw myself into your arms, Brody—though it’s tempting. It’s just that you’re the first person who’s agreed with me on this. Everyone else thinks I’m crazy to sink so much time and money into this building.”

He couldn’t remember having a woman make him feel like an idiot so often in such a short space of time. He shoved his hands into his pockets again. “It’s a good investment—if you do it right and you’re in for the long haul.”

“Oh, I’m in. Why don’t you tell me how you’d do it right?”

“First thing I’d do is have the heating system looked at. It’s freezing in here.”

She grinned at him. “We may just get along after all. The furnace is in the basement. Want to take a look?”

She came down with him—which he didn’t expect. She didn’t bolt when they came across a startled mouse—or the old shedded skin of a snake that had likely dined on the rodent’s relatives. And that he had expected.

In his experience, women—well, intensely female women types—generally made a quick retreat when they came across anything that slithered or skittered. But Kate just wrinkled her nose and took a little notebook out of her jacket pocket to jot something down.

The light was poor, the air thick and stale, and the ancient furnace that squatted on the original dirt floor, a lost cause.