Читать книгу A Forever Family - Mary J. Forbes - Страница 11

“Dangit,” she muttered, clunking her head a second time under the kitchen sink. She’d tried to tighten the drainpipe for a good half hour and still it leaked like a sieve.

At least the cabin was spotless. The kitchen appliances gleamed, and the bathroom fixtures smelled of Lysol. Even the aged planked floor had a coat of wax. And the mattress in the main bedroom was new—a crucial detail when her mornings began at four.

All she required was for him to buy an elbow seal.

Clambering to her feet, she stretched a twinge from the small of her back. Ten-fifteen. The day nearly half gone and the boxes she’d piled into the Chevy’s bed some seven hours ago with a grousing Jason at her heels remained unpacked.

She swiped her stinging eyes. Her baby bro. Nineteen years they had shared. She’d changed his diapers, sent him to first grade, watched him walk across the stage at his high-school graduation. Ah, Jase. You’ll go places, dear heart.

Through a grove of fir, she caught sight of the sorrel stallion. Soldat D’Anton—Soldier of Old—according to Oliver, the barn cleaner, whom she’d met this morning. The name suited the animal.

For a moment, he stood still, chin held high, pin ears erect, tail winging the breeze. Then he pawed the earth and shook his big head.

“Me-o mi-o, but you are some piece of work, buddy.”

Like his owner. Arrogant, strong-headed and extravagantly stunning.

Movement on the cabin’s path caught her eye. A calico cat, its tail flagpole-straight, strutted in front of a little girl. Five or six, the child clutched her yellow daisy-dotted skirt, swishing it side to side as she walked. Dark curls framed rosy cheeks and bounced on tanned shoulders. Shanna smiled. Lost to her own will-o’-the-wisps, this little one.

Shanna’s smile faded. Where was the girl’s mother?

The doctor’s Cherokee sat parked in the driveway next to the farmhouse. Had he brought the child with him?

She was outside in seconds, walking down the path toward the pair. “Hey, kitty.” Shanna hunkered down, offering a hand to the feline. The animal sniffed her fingertips daintily.

Dropping her skirt, the girl pressed her knuckles together and approached Shanna one cautious step at a time. Through the evergreen boughs above, sunlight sifted gold sugar onto the girl’s curls.

The cat butted its sleek mottled head against Shanna’s knee and purred.

“Her name is Silly.”

As if surprised to see someone else, Shanna looked up. “Silly, hm?”

“Uh-huh.” A small giggle escaped. “It was s’pposed to be Sally. But when I was little I couldn’t say Sally. Isn’t that silly?” More giggles escaped. “Ooh.” She clamped a hand over her mouth.

Shanna’s throat pinched. Her arms ached for the snuggle of a small cuddly body.

“Oh, stop it,” she muttered.

“Are you talking to yourself?” The child edged closer. Her fingers worried her skirt. Silly, purring like a tiny fine-tuned motor, plopped to the grass.

“Actually, I was telling Silly to stop being so noisy because she’ll scare the chickadees off.”

“Chick-a…?”

“Chickadees.” Shanna pointed up to the trees. “See those little birds with black caps on their heads?”

“Nooo…uh-hm.”

“They fly real fast. See, there goes one.”

A breathless little gasp. “Oh!” Round hazel eyes centered on Shanna, then back up to the trees. “Oh…oh, lookit! There’s another!”

“Cute, aren’t they?” Shanna watched the child. An adorable half-toothed grin plumped her freckled cheeks.

“Mmm-hmm.” Curls swung as she nodded and sidled closer. Their knees bumped. Elfin face serious, the child looked at the cat, which stared upward with its tail twitching. “Will Silly catch one?”

“I don’t think so. They’re too quick and smart. They know she’s here.”

Relief swept into the girl’s eyes. “Good. I don’t want the little birdies to die. My mommy and daddy died an’ it wasn’t nice.”

Shanna’s heart stumbled.

Of course. The accident. She’d read about it killing the doctor’s sister and her husband. When had it happened? April? No, March. Mid-March. Over three months ago. A freak accident that had left a child the lone survivor. This child.

The girl’s eyes filled.

“Aw, sweetie.” Shanna tucked the child to her side. Her cheek found soft warm curls smelling of sunshine and lemon shampoo. “Hey,” she said, swallowing back the lump behind her tongue. “I bet your name is Sally. That’s why you got Silly’s name mixed up.”

Another round of giggles. “Nuh-uh. My name’s Jenni.”

Shanna offered a palm. “Well, hello, Jenni. I’m Shanna.”

Little fingers skimmed bigger ones. “You’re pretty.” The half-toothed grin. “Know what?”

“Nope.”

“I’m six.”

Shanna whistled mock surprise. “Whoa, that’s getting old.” Had the birthday been with her parents? Shanna prayed it had.

“Nuh-uh, it’s not.” Jenni hunched a shoulder to her ear, smiling shyly. “Grammy is old. She’s got white hair an’ lots and lots of wrinkles…right here.” Two fingers bracketed her eyes.

Shanna laughed. It felt good. “Is she here with you?”

“No, just Uncle M. He looks after me most. Grammy looks after me when he has to work at the clinic.”

Shanna envisioned Estelle. Kind heart. Soft, plump arms. A nurturer, the way Meredith, Shanna’s mother, had never been.

“Sometimes,” the child went on, “like when Grammy’s in California, I go to the day care.”

“Where’s Uncle M. now?”

Jenni pointed to the house. “Home. It’s Sunday. Sometimes he doesn’t work Sunday. Right now he’s doing ’portant stuff upstairs.”

What stuff kept the doctor too busy to keep an eye on his niece? Shanna looked to where the stallion grazed in the paddock.

He bites.

A shudder chased up her spine. Had the cat headed toward the barnyard, where would that have left Jenni? Crawling through the fence? Walking up to a twelve-hundred-pound beast who gouged out a strip of earth with one slash of his hoof?

Shanna pushed to her feet. “Let’s see if your uncle needs any help.” Or a wake-up call.

“C’mon, Silly,” Jenni sang to the calico. “I’m going back to the house now.”

Curling her little palm around two of Shanna’s fingers, she walked up the path, cat in tow.

“Uncle Michael doesn’t like me bothering him,” Jenni volunteered.

“Did he say so?”

“No.” She took a little skip. “But I know.”

“How?”

“He looks at me a lot.”

“Maybe he thinks you’re cute.”

Jenni shook her head, jiggling her sun-dappled curls. “Uh-uh. He never smiles. And sometimes—” she touched the bridge of her button-nose “—he gets two splits here.”

Shanna understood. Grief accounted for the pain in those gray eyes and that unsmiling mouth. But it didn’t explain Michael Rowan’s apparent disregard for his niece. Not for a second would she have left Jason unattended at this age. Or her darling Timmy, had he lived. Jenni ran ahead and squatted in front of a confusion of marigolds growing along the stone walkway. Someone obviously loved the sunny-faced plants. “This one’s the prettiest,” she said, plucking a fat bloom. “Do you like it?”

“Very much. Want to put it in some water?”

The child shook her head shyly. “In your hair.”

“My hair?” With a self-conscious hand, Shanna pushed a thick chin-length clump behind her ear. “Why?”

“’Cause Octavia wears flowers in her hair. They make her happy.” Jenni tugged Shanna’s hand. “Bend down.” Little fingers whispered like leaves in a breeze at her temple. “Mommy told me Octavia means eight.”

“Yes, it does.”

“Octavia’s my dolly. Her hair’s the same as yours…kinda messy and all over the place. Tavia—that’s what I call her when she’s good—has a bad time combing it. Do you?”

Shanna kept a sober expression. “Sometimes. Especially in the morning after I wake up.”

The little girl stepped back to survey her handiwork. “Tavia doesn’t like getting up.”

Tavia or Jenni? Reverse role playing was common among children experiencing severe trauma. After her mother left, Shanna had done it herself—heaping daily problems on a fictional friend. Hers had been Anne Frank. At school, she’d read the girl’s diary and followed Anne’s resigned, courageous year concealed in a narrow back annex of the now famous house on Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht. Shanna had been Anne’s age when Meredith left.

Anne, Shanna’s partner in austerity in a small notebook.

The calico purred around their ankles. “See, even Silly thinks it’s nice.”

There on the stone walkway, with the smell of a sun-warmed child saturating her senses, Shanna leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Jenni’s brow. “You’re nice.”

The child stiffened.

“What is it, sweetie?”

Jenni’s button lip quivered. “I want to go in now.” Whirling, she scrambled up the steps and fled into the house.

Shanna stared at the door. She should have kept her heart wrapped completely in its cool detached cocoon—the one self-preservation had driven her to create nine years ago. The one she never allowed to chip or splinter for fear of what could happen.

Like now.

Ten minutes and she’d formed a sweet covenant with a sad little girl. One kiss and she’d ruined it. The child hadn’t been ready—and Shanna too anxious. “It’ll serve you right if she never comes near you again,” she muttered.

Heart heavy, she rose. She had to set things right.

But how did one go about trying to explain to a six-year-old that a peck on the head meant nothing more than thank you? That it didn’t mean a stranger wanted to replace her mother?

Michael flung a second stack of Leigh’s jeans into a large cardboard box sitting outside the door of the walk-in closet. A month after the accident, he had removed his brother-in-law’s wardrobe from this same closet, heaped the clothes into his truck and driven to the Lady of Lourdes church.

Easy street compared to this.

This was ugly.

A sacrilege.

And the reason nearly three months had elapsed before he’d dared enter the bedroom a second time.

He hadn’t been able to touch her things. Hadn’t been able to look at them without the ache in his gut doubling him over.

She wasn’t supposed to be dead, his only sibling, his twin. Here is where she belonged. Laughing, her rich voice invading the rooms. Giving Bob those foxy looks—

“But why, Uncle Michael?”

And answering her daughter’s questions about this horrible after-death ritual.

“Uncle Michael?” His niece’s tiny voice quivered.

“I’ve already told you, Jen. She won’t need them any more.”

“Mommy’s never coming back, is she?”

“No. She’s not.”

He glanced out of the walk-in closet. Leigh’s daughter stood near the packing box, clutching her shabby doll to her chest. The large L-shaped bedroom with its pine furniture and its queen bed spanned out behind her. In the toe of the L was a vanity and chair. Soon, he’d eradicate all of it. Brushes, makeup—

“Ever?”

One word, filled with confusion, trepidation and disbelief. In his twelve years at the hospital he’d heard those emotions often, but he recalled the first time best. When he was ten and they’d brought his parents home from Canada, broken and burned and no longer alive. Leigh had asked the same question of their grandmother, in this very room. He’d stood next to his sister, their hands clasped tight, and Katherine had shaken her head and walked out. Leigh had started crying. In his brain, the sound shattered him once more. And once more he felt the cool welcome of loathing what he could not change.

Jenni stared at the box. Leigh’s silver, pearl-buttoned shirt draped over a flap, in a beam of sunlight.

“No,” he said brutally, grief molding his anger into an invisible defensive sword.

The child sniffed and buried her face in the doll’s drab hair. He wanted to go to her, apologize for his tone, try and—

“Jenni?” A woman’s voice. Her voice.

In the dim closet interior, Michael’s hands froze on a cluster of hangers. What was she doing here? He watched his niece pivot, eyes swimming with hurt and fear.

“Uncle Michael’s taking away Mommy’s clothes, Shanna. He says she’s never, ever, ever coming home.”

“Aw, peachkins…”

Jenni’s mouth trembled. She darted a look his way, then dropped her doll and ran from his line of view. An instant later he heard her muffled whimper: “I hate him.”

“Jenni—”

“Please, make him stop. Please, Shanna. Please.”

Michael closed his eyes and released a sigh. When would life be normal again? Never, he thought and stepped out of the closet.

His lanky-limbed employee stood five feet inside the doorway with Jenni wrapped around her thighs like a tiny tenacious wood nymph. Tears crept down the little girl’s uplifted face and rolled into the curls smoothed by mothering hands.

Shanna raised her eyes. He hadn’t anticipated the fury in them. Or the pain.

“So,” he said, ignoring a snip of guilt—and jealousy. “Three days ago you introduce yourself to my horse. Today, my niece.”

“She was wandering around outside. By herself.” The last two words hung like stone pendulums.

He stepped around the box and picked up the doll. “Jen, take…” What did she call it? “Take your doll downstairs and feed her some of your favorite tea.”

The child gave him a teary, pouty look. “Don’t want to.”

“Jenni.” Ms. McKay pushed Leigh’s daughter away gently. She knelt and cupped Jenni’s small shoulders. “It’s okay. Do what Uncle Michael asks. He’s…” She threw him a quick, cool look. “He’s worried Tavia might be hungry. It’s nearly lunchtime, you know.”

Rubbing a palm up the side of her nose, the child shot him another look. “’Kay.”

“That’s a sweetie.” Without so much as a glimpse his way, Shanna McKay reached for the doll. When he laid it in her hand, she straightened its frilly dress and delivered it to Jen. “I’ll be down soon,” she whispered.

She watched the girl head out of the room. Annoyed that he studied his employee with her sun-gilded thighs and patched denim shorts, rather than his niece, Michael said, “What’s with the aloha look?”

Her head slowly turned. The wistfulness he’d seen in her face evaporated. Coldness settled in. Ah, but her wide, feminine mouth stayed soft as a ripe peach. He drew closer.

She pushed to her feet. Her eyes were severe. He fancied his battered boots, tired Wranglers and wrinkled T-shirt scored a thumbs down. Her chin elevated. “Are you talking about this?” She pointed to the flower.

He nodded, unable to look away. The foolish thing reminded him of a sultry night dancer. Sultry and night was a combination he wanted—no, needed—to avoid, especially around her. Purposely, to regain his balance, he glanced at the box draped in Leigh’s clothes, and was jolted back to reality. “Looks all wrong,” he muttered, mind back on his task.

Her laugh was soft and husky. “Well, Doc, your opinion isn’t worth a hoot. But your niece is another story. She’s smart, sensitive and has this charming idea that flowers make people happy. I happen to agree with her.”

Michael turned again to the woman standing pole-straight in front of him. Her lean, tanned arms were folded under small, round breasts. Below his navel he felt a rush of blood.

He took in the blossom above her ear and the jumble of her hair. Silky, he thought, and itched to take up a fistful.

His eyes found hers. Wide, wary.

Boldly, he stepped into her space. “Happy, huh?” He watched air affect her nostrils as he touched her cheek. “Are you happy, Ms. McKay?”

“Doesn’t matter if I am or not.” She caught his wrist and plucked the marigold from her hair. “Question is,” she said softly, placing the flower in his palm, “Are you?”

His skin throbbed where their fingers curled together and the knot of petals pressed. “Happiness isn’t the issue here.”

“Wrong. It’s the only issue when it concerns your niece.” Her eyes gentled. “Don’t trash her mother’s clothes.”

He backed away. “I’m not trashing them. I’m taking them to the Lady of Lourdes church.” Defeat enveloped him. He pushed out a long breath. “I didn’t expect Jenni to come up here, okay? She was to stay downstairs.”

“Well, she didn’t. She went outside. Luckily, she wandered toward the cabin instead of the barns. Do you have any idea what she might have run into down there?”

Guilt gnashed his gut. “Look, Ms. McKay—”

“No, you look. Your niece needs you. At the moment, she’s got one person to fill those vacant spots her parents left. You. Give her some attention. Show a little concern. Heck, a pat on the head would do the trick fine.”

“Playing shrink now?”

She ignored the insult. “Jenni told me you don’t like being bothered. In my books that means she’s in your way. No child should ever be in the way.”

Michael stared at her. Bothering him? Was that how Jenni saw herself? Why not? You barely see her.

The woman before him scraped back her uneven bangs. “Fire me for pointing it out. I don’t care. The well-being of a child is more important than a job.”

He could see she didn’t give one spit if he did fire her. To her, Jenni was at risk in his custody. He didn’t know whether to feel humbled, guilty, angry or all three.

Bending to her level, he said softly, “Who do you think you are, Ms. McKay? Mother Theresa? You don’t know flip from flap about raising kids, or how it feels to live without parents. But you’re right about one thing. If you want to retain this job, keep your opinions to yourself.”

Her pupils dilated. She clamped her lower lip. Retreated a step. “I think…” Another step. “I think it’s…best I go.”

Regret spiked his belly. “Ms. McKay—”

“Shanna,” she corrected, shaking her head. “My name is Shanna,” she whispered. “Just like yours is…is Mike.”

“Mike? No one calls me Mike.” But he liked it. Across her lips it was an intimate, seductive little breath. Yeah, he liked Mike—a lot.

A quavery laugh escaped her lips. “I’ll try and remember that next time we meet.”

She left the room, and he stood alone with silence and a delayed whiff of her scent closing in on him.

Jenni sat on the floor between the couch and the coffee table. She wished Shanna would come downstairs. She knew Uncle Michael and her new friend were talking about what happened.

The tears she had wiped away started plopping on Tavia’s jumper again. It was getting really spotty. Octavia was so upset, and Jenni didn’t know how to calm her.

“It’s okay, Tavia,” she whispered against the doll’s hair. “I’ll look after you. I won’t let Uncle M. yell at you no more.”

But Tavia just kept crying, wishing for Mommy and Daddy to come down from heaven instead of staying up there and helping God all the time.

She didn’t like them being angels. She wanted them to be people like Shanna and Grammy. Even like Uncle M.

Jenni wouldn’t let Tavia tell her to say mean things to Uncle Michael, either. That wasn’t nice. She really didn’t hate him. She just didn’t want him to throw Mommy’s things away.

“’Cause,” Jenni whispered. “If he throws Mommy’s clothes away, he might throw mine away. Maybe he’ll even throw me away.”

She bit her lower lip and palmed her nose. If Uncle M. threw her away, then she and Tavia would just go and live with Shanna or Grammy. Sniffing, she swiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Yeah, that’s what they’d do. They’d live with Shanna. Shanna was fun and showed her things like the chick’bees.

Stroking Tavia’s hair, Jenni rocked back and forth, singing softly. She and Tavia felt better.

He’d been a jackass.

Again.

If she called him worse names when she opened her door, he’d bow his head and take them in stride.

All day he’d kept watch on the white log house through the trees. The battered two-toned pickup, parked in the narrow driveway, meant she hadn’t left as he’d feared during the hour he’d been to Blue Springs. Shortly after lunch his grandmother had called to announce her return from her six-week visit to her brother in Anaheim, and she’d demanded to see her great-granddaughter. Grateful for an excuse to get out of the house, he took the tyke into town. After this morning, he had no delusions about Jenni’s eagerness to leave him for a few hours.

Damn. They should be drawing closer. Bonding, not pulling apart. They shared a loss. As the adult, and a doctor, he knew how to lessen the trauma for Jen and for himself.

Except, he couldn’t.

Shanna’s right, he thought, walking the pathway toward the employee quarters. As a stand-in parent he was a bozo.

Shanna. The name hummed through his blood. He didn’t understand the attraction. She wasn’t his type. Tall, slim to the point of being gangly. He preferred women with hourglass figures. Soft. Yet, a glimpse of her had his jeans in an uncomfortable fit.

He regarded the cabin, then the ridiculous marigold in his hand, and scowled. Seven months without so much as a dinner date was more than any normal red-blooded American man should endure. The last, with a divorced radiologist, had evolved into a date of ear tonguing and crotch palming—from her—that he would rather forget.

Not Shanna. He’d be the one tonguing and palming. Lean limbs, that skin slick and damp…

Booting a pinecone off her stoop, he raised a hand to knock. No use denying it. The sight of her spun something between them.

The door flung open.

Her sapphire eyes were cool. Cool as the jewel they emulated. “Hey, Doc. Come to see if I’ve cut and run?”

Michael shoved off a flicker of displeasure. So she held grudges. He understood. Grudges held off pain. Thumbs catching his jeans pockets, he asked, “May I come in?”

“Why? As you see, I’m not going anywhere. I realized I do need this job.”

“I’d like to talk.”

“About what?” Her tone dipped below ice-blue, like the blouse she wore. “We said it all this morning. I stay out of your hair, you stay out of mine. When it’s over we’ll say adios and that’ll be that.”

“Dammit, Miss—”

“Drop the formalities, Michael. I’m just the hired help not one of your associates at the clinic, not a patient.”

He’d have preferred Mike—and the way it seared the air from her lips. Shifting, he stared down the hill at the barns. “I shouldn’t be taking my problems out on you.”

“Better me than your niece.”

He looked at her. She had such pretty eyes. “You don’t mince words, do you?”

“Seldom.”

Again he observed the barns and fields. “I never used to be like this.”

“Tragedy changes us in ways we don’t expect.”

And the tragedy I’ve seen in your eyes? “You’re different.”

“From who?”

“Most people.”

“Is that good or bad?” Her tone gentled.

He studied her soft mouth. “Good. Very good.”

“Well, that’s a first. Come in. I’ll put on a pot of tea.” She gestured to his hand. “That poor marigold needs water.”

She headed for the kitchen, leaving him to close the door—and to watch her backside in cropped denim pants. Baked chicken and a medley of spices hailed him. She could cook.

“Supper at three in the afternoon?”

“I skip lunch.” She pulled down the oven door and checked the meal. “So I try to eat early.”

He wandered around the tiny living room. “Next to breakfast, lunch is the most important meal of the day. There’s a saying that goes: king, prince, pauper. It’s how you should treat daily meals.”

This time her laughter was rich and a little smoky and floated into his belly. “I hate to put a crimp in your diet plans, Doc, but I eat when the growlies arrive. For me that happens twice a day.”

“You’re too thin.”

“Well,” she huffed. “Sorry if that offends you.”

“It doesn’t.” He liked her frame just fine. In fact, inordinately so. But he couldn’t snub his observations—from a medical viewpoint.

He looked around. It was the first time he’d been in the cabin since long before Leigh died. What he saw shamed him. The place was old. The walls needed painting.

“Would you like some chicken?” She tossed oven mitts on the Formica and readjusted one of the two barrettes holding back her hair. Her arms were graceful as a figure skater’s. He imagined them around his rib cage, his neck.

“You can’t live here.”

“Beg pardon?”

“The place is a dump. My sister—” How to tell her the cabin had been Leigh’s responsibility and that since her death he’d neglected it. Just as he neglected the animals, the books…Jenni.

“It’s not so bad.”

Not bad? One of the curtains hosted a foot-long tear. He hated to think of what lurked behind the doors of the bathroom and two bedrooms. Even after the maid’s cleaning.

Shanna took a brimming bucket from under the sink.

Striding into the narrow kitchen, he tossed the flower on the counter. “The sink’s leaking?”

“Good one, Doc. You get the prize.” She handed him the bucket. “Would you empty it in the toilet, please, while I put on the kettle?”

Just like her not to mention the condition of the house. He headed for the bathroom and dumped the water. About to leave, he stopped and looked. This was her space. Her secret space. Female essentials mussed the narrow, beige Formica around the antiquated sink and lined the chipped tub. Two blue-and-yellow combs, a big tube of hand lotion, glycerine soaps stuffed in a woven basket, a wooden tree strung with those ear danglers, Scooby-Doo lip balm— He did a double take. Scooby-Doo? Snorting softly, he shook his head. She was a rare something, this Shanna. And you’re in trouble, Rowan.

“Toilet working okay?”

He whipped around, the bucket clanging against a drawer. Arms crossed, she leaned in the doorway, one bare ankle slung over the other. Behind him the tiny round window let in the day’s light, tipping her cheekbones with rose.

“Yes,” he said, voice gruff. “It works.”

She smiled, glanced at the counter where he’d tarried. “Find anything interesting?”

He stepped toward the doorway. Her smile faded. A bouquet of meadows in summer caressed him. Oh, yeah. All woman. Easy angles, sweet-eyed. “Maybe I have.”

Her nostrils flared. “And it would be…?”

Today, three filigree chains swung like wind chimes from each of her tiny lobes. He tapped a trio. “Just…” You. “Little things.”

“Is there one in particular you favor?” Those blue eyes ringed in black swallowed him.

He perused the edge of her jaw, the line of her throat. “There is.”

A snippet of air against his knuckles. Hers.

Once, twice, his thumb grazed the satin of her neck. He tilted her chin. Her sweet mouth. Waiting for him. God, decades down the road he’d look at her features and be captivated. Still.

Paralyzed, he stared. Giving one woman, this woman the rest of his life? Out of the question. He wasn’t about to chance fate. Fate could involve kids. Fate had taken his parents’ plane into a mountainside. Left him and Leigh orphaned.

Like Jen.

Settling down was not in his Tarot cards. Neither was waking up beside the same woman until he was ninety-plus. Trouble was, within the space of two days his ethics had taken a lopsided turn out to left field. Because of her. Shanna.

Caught in her eyes, finger crooked under her chin, he wanted to wrap her up like a Valentine’s gift, kiss her till the cows came home, lead her through the open door of the bedroom five feet away, fly her to the stars.

But not forever.

“Mike?” she whispered.

He dropped his hand and stepped back.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have to go.” Two strides and he was down the hall. “I’ll find a guy in town to paint this joint.”

In a flash she was on his heels. “My brother can do it.”

He stopped. “Your brother.”

“Why not? He could use the money.”

“Fine.” She was close again. Too close.

The kettle whistled. He headed for the door, yanked it open.

“Where do I buy the supplies?” she called.

“Spot O’ Color. It’s on Riverside and—”

“I know where it is.”

“Great. Tell your brother to get on it ASAP. I want the dairy sold before fall.”

He slammed out of the cabin before she answered. Before he changed his mind, stormed back inside and kissed her like…hell, like a crazy man.