A/N: This is a Team Lucona fic, pairing Lucas Bouchard and Fiona Miller. If they're not your cup of tea, please scroll on by. :) I've loved the idea of Lucona for a very long time. I think her edgy spunk and sprightly independence would be a good match to balance and unbalance the perpetually unruffled "charm" — and upend the style of wooing — we've seen in the S7 version of Lucas's character. Let the shenanigans begin! ;)
I'm back to writing after a long hiatus! Gotta work the dust outta these writing fingers! ;)
Please feel free to drop your thoughts, reactions, hopes, swoons, or gleeful chortles in a review! :) You can find my other WCTH/WHC fic under my profile. :3
Disclaimer: I own nothing herein except my ideas for the characters. All rights reserved by (and belong to) Hallmark Crown Media, LLC.
— Chapter 1 —
Unexpected Hands
THEY WERE surprisingly strong hands.
Hard fingers. Quick, solid grasp in a greeting. His palm firm against hers.
That was one of the first things Fiona Miller noticed about Lucas Bouchard. She surprised herself with the noticing. He wasn't her type.
And she was surprised that his hands displayed such warmth and firmness. He looked too sleek and polished, too metropolitan, to have hands like that.
His smile had been quick but sincere, his approach to her deliberate. His dark eyes assessing, but with a swift interest and quiet, almost amused acknowledgement of something unspoken just under the surface. She'd ignored that and greeted him as cheerfully as she would anyone who had approached her so forthrightly. His lips smiled warmly from amid the dark, close-cropped beard that hugged his jawline.
Saloon proprietor. It fit. His way of instantly assessing people suited someone who was well-versed at the gambling table, where reading people could make or break Lady Luck.
Fiona was nobody's fool. She saw the guarded veil drop over his eyes, the subtle shift on his face at her mention of being from San Francisco. The dark broadcloth of his suit, spread across wide shoulders, pulled taut for the space of a heartbeat, and then relaxed as he smoothly avoided answering her query about ever having been to the city she'd been born and raised in, and excusing himself, pivoted back to Mr. Yost at the counter.
Gathering his parcel of shrimp and caviar, he continued almost without pause, "I hope to see you at the Grand Opening Friday night."
Fiona's eyebrows arched like dark wings above her eyes, a certain weighing suspicion now in her voice and visible in her eyes.
"Perhaps," was the only answer she gave, coolly.
There was a split second of awareness visible on his face at her change in tone, and their gazes held with subtle tension, then he nodded swift acknowledgment to Ned. "Mr. Yost."
His shoes sounded on the boarded floor, the door opened, and he was gone.
He didn't look back.
Fiona gave his disappearing back – down Mr. Yost's front steps – a brief look from narrowed eyes. Lucas Bouchard, saloon proprietor, was a bit of a surprise in this small town.
She hadn't been expecting to find a man of his . . . opaqueness . . . in a place like Hope Valley.