To Wed And Protect. Carla Cassidy
it take to repair the porch?”
“I can’t repair it. It needs to come down altogether and a new one built.”
A frown creased her forehead, and she caught her lower lip between her teeth. She had luscious full lips, and Luke wondered idly if they would be as soft and inviting as they looked.
“How much is all this going to cost?” she finally asked with a sigh.
Luke stood and pulled a measuring tape from his pocket. “Why don’t we go out and get some measurements, then I can give you an estimate.” He had a feeling he wasn’t going to make much profit on this job.
It was obvious that money was an issue. Anyone who chose to live in this ramshackle place had to have made the decision because they couldn’t afford anything better.
“Okay, I’ll be right back.” She got up, hurried down the hallway and disappeared into the first doorway on the right.
Luke once again looked around the room. On second glance, he saw the work that needed to be done. Windowsills needed to be refinished or painted. The hardwood floor was scuffed and worn. But those things were cosmetic. The rotten porch was something different. She was lucky nobody had been seriously hurt on it.
She returned from the bedroom and they gingerly stepped out on the rotten porch. “This is a bad accident waiting to happen,” he said as they stepped off the porch. “If you have me build you a new one, would you want it to be the same size?”
He watched as she gazed at the porch thoughtfully. Lordy, but she was pretty. Her clear, creamy skin looked soft and touchable, and her dark hair was a perfect foil for her startling green eyes.
“It’s a pretty good size, isn’t it?” she said thoughtfully.
“Sure,” he agreed. “It’s big enough to hold a couple of chairs and a potted plant or two.”
“Then let’s keep the new one the same size.”
He nodded. “Let’s get the measurements.”
As she took the end of the tape measure from him, he smelled her fragrance, a soft whisper of something sweetly feminine and clean. It was probably a good thing the woman was married. Otherwise she would be a huge temptation, and Luke was trying not to walk the path of temptation.
“How long have you been here?” he asked as he gestured for her to go to the opposite side of the porch.
“We arrived on Tuesday and have spent the last couple of days having trash hauled off. Apparently my uncle was a bit of a pack rat.”
Luke made a mental note of the measurement, then motioned her to the side of the porch. “Arthur was your uncle? Nobody around here knew he had any relatives.”
“Actually, he was a great-uncle, but I never met him in person.”
“That’s all I need,” he said and hit the button on the tape measure to retract the tape. “He was a bit of a character, your great-uncle Arthur.”
Her cheeks flushed prettily as she met him at the base of the steps leading to the porch. “Poor Uncle Arthur. My father used to say he was a bolt whose nut was screwed on crooked.”
Luke laughed at the apt description of the old man. “He was certainly colorful,” he agreed. “He sometimes showed up in town with aluminum foil antennas wrapped around his head, said he was picking up signals from space.”
She winced, then gave another one of her pretty smiles. “Well, I hate to disappoint the town gossips, but I don’t intend to take up where Uncle Arthur left off,” she replied.
Luke grinned. “Don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of other odd people here in Inferno to keep the gossips busy.” He hated to think how often in the past he had kept the gossip mill busy.
“Where are you from?” he asked curiously.
“Uh…back east.”
He grinned. “Back east as in New York or back east as in East India?”
“Uh…Chicago. We’re from Chicago.”
Luke didn’t know exactly how he knew, but he was fairly certain she was lying. Her gaze didn’t quite meet his, and there was a hint of unnatural color to her cheeks that let him know she wasn’t being truthful. Again he reminded himself that the lovely lady was none of his business.
At that moment the front door opened. Two children stood in the doorway. The little boy looked to be about five or six, and the girl standing next to him appeared to be slightly younger. Both were dark-haired and dark-eyed, and each of them eyed Luke warily.
“Don’t come out here,” Abigail cautioned. “We’ve been using the back door since yesterday,” she explained to Luke.
“Who is he?” the little boy asked from the doorway, his voice slightly belligerent.
“Jason, this is Luke Delaney. He’s going to build us a front porch that we won’t fall through. And Luke, that’s Jason and Jessica.”
“Hi, kids.” Luke smiled at the two rug rats, but neither of them returned his smile. Their dark eyes continued to gaze at him with suspicion.
Luke turned to Abigail. “I’ll get some estimates together and call you with them later this evening.”
“That will be fine,” she replied and again offered him that beautiful smile that ignited a small flame in the pit of Luke’s stomach.
Yes, it was definitely a good thing Abigail Graham was a married woman with two children, he thought as he nodded goodbye and headed for his pickup truck. Although he found himself incredibly physically attracted to her, the fact that she was married with children assured him he wouldn’t follow through on that attraction.
The last thing Luke was looking for was any kind of a permanent relationship. Even if Abigail were single and available, she had that look in her eyes that told him she probably wasn’t a short-term-relationship kind of woman.
He dismissed thoughts of the lovely Abigail and her children from his mind as he pointed his pickup toward the family dude ranch.
Adam Delaney, Luke’s father, had passed away a little over five months earlier, leaving Luke and his three siblings as heirs to the successful Delaney Dude Ranch. However, Adam Delaney, who had been a mean bastard in life, had kicked his kids one last time in death.
He’d left them the family ranch with a condition attached, that each of them spend twenty-five hours a week working on the ranch for a year. If before that time any one of them defaulted and didn’t spend the required time there, the entire estate would transfer to Clara Delaney, Adam’s old-maid sister.
Although Luke had no real love for the place where he’d been born and had spent a miserable childhood, he wasn’t about to be the one to make his brothers and sister lose their inheritance.
His plans were to remain here in Inferno for another seven months, then when the inheritance was won, he’d sell his interest in the ranch, take the money and chase after his real dream of being a star in Nashville.
And there was no way that dream included a woman, children or anything that remotely resembled a long-term relationship.
“I don’t like him.” Jason was tucked into bed, the red Kansas City Chiefs sheet pulled up to his stubborn chin. “I don’t think he should be here. I don’t like the way he looks.”
Abby knew who he was talking about, and she also knew it had nothing to do with like or dislike. It had everything to do with fear.
Men frightened both Jason and Jessica ever since that night a year and a month ago…the night their lives had been irrevocably shattered, the night Abby had lost the one person most dear to her heart.
But Abby couldn’t think of that. She couldn’t dwell on all she’d lost because then she would be lost in grief. She and the kids were in survival