A Ready-Made Family

She grinned. “You smell like an especially pungent spaghetti sauce.”

“Great.” He pointed to the first cottage to the west of the main house. “Here’s the one you want. It’s the biggest.” As they walked by the car, Sam’s blue-tipped head popped up. She’d probably snap if he told her she looked like a blue jay.

Her glare bored holes into Jake’s skull, but he’d been glowered at by a two-star general with a Napoleon complex and hadn’t backed down. One sullen teenager could be conquered. Not that he had any intentions of getting involved in their lives beyond today.

“Thank you for being so sweet to Howie,” Lia said on the crumbling cement doorstep. “And the rest of us.” She held the creaky screen door while he put his shoulder to the wooden door that had swollen shut.

It flew open and Jake’s boot thudded onto the dusty floorboards. He coughed. “Sweet? What’s that? Hell, woman, I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”

Lia wasn’t having any. “In case you didn’t notice, my son’s kinda dazzled by you. You’re like a G.I. Joe doll brought to life.” She continued past Jake’s snort of disapproval. “Anyway, I appreciate your tolerance. I’ll try to keep him out of your way as much as possible while we’re here.”

“He’s no trouble.”

She laughed drily. “You say that now, but just wait.”

Jake brandished a hand at the interior of the house. “What do you think? It’s not much, but at least there’s a working bathroom and two double beds.”

The cottage had a couple of rooms, plus the small bath. They’d stepped into the living room area, furnished by a thrift-store sofa and two of the rustic twig armchairs his father used to build in the off-season. Uncomfortable as hell for sitting. A couple of cabinets, a tiny sink, mini fridge and microwave made do as the kitchen. Thick stone walls and small paned windows overhung with ivy and climbing roses made the room seem dark and unappealing to Jake. He switched on the lone hanging light—a cast-iron chandelier with yellowed lampshades festooned with cobwebs.

Lia saw differently. “Oh, wow. It’s charming, Jake. A real storybook cottage.”

He drew a line through the dust on the floor. “Needs a good cleaning.”

“I can do that. In fact…” She poked her head inside the bedroom, where two iron bedsteads were pushed up against the walls, sparing only enough room for an old pine dresser and a night table with a birch-bark lamp. She withdrew. Her bright eyes fixed on Jake. “I can clean all the cottages for you. In return for rent, as long as we stay. Maybe even afterward, if you need me as part-time help. How does that sound?”

He bobbed his head. “Like a deal.”

Immediately he could see that the discouragement weighing her down had lightened considerably. She bounded forward and shook his hand. “Deal.”

He didn’t let go as easily as he had earlier. Maybe three seconds, that’s all it was, but color leaped into her cheeks and she made a breath-catching sound as she pulled away.

Jake resisted the urge to clench his fingers. He knew chemistry when he felt it. Taking on three kids and a single mom was bad enough, but that complication he did not need, unless it led only to a fast, uncomplicated lay. He was betting that a cheap lay was strictly off-limits with Lia. Especially with her kids around.

So back off now, man. You don’t need this.

Of course, that wasn’t what Rose had been saying since Jake’s return, with all her teasing about him following suit and finding a good woman and settling down. He’d claimed that her brain had turned into romantic mush because of the wedding, but maybe she had a point.

He was thirty-nine and regimented in his ways. If he was ever going to give the marriage-and-family thing a legitimate shot, it should be soon. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined hooking up with a woman with three kids, especially when everything about them spelled trouble. Yet there was a certain efficiency about the situation that suddenly appealed, regardless of his ingrained habit of detachment.

Maybe he was thinking crazy, but suddenly he saw that with Lia he might be able to skip all that romance and courting malarkey in favor of forming a mutually beneficial alliance. One tight family unit, based on function rather than emotion. Emotion wasn’t reliable. Neither was sexual attraction. He’d learned that the hard way.

Most women wouldn’t go for a practical union, even if they were in dire straits. But Lia had already learned marriage wasn’t pretty, and divorce even uglier. She might be ready to listen to reason.

Jake recognized that he was jumping the gun. Still, the notion wouldn’t let go.

One stop, no shopping.

A ready-made family.

CHAPTER FOUR

BY ALL RIGHTS, LIA should have slept like the proverbial log, six of which Jake had hauled into the cottage and set up in the woodstove in the corner, saying they could have a fire if they got chilly at night. He’d showed her how to arrange the kindling and the logs and open the damper, with a fascinated Howie hovering nearby, taking everything in.

But it wasn’t the cool northern air that kept Lia from sleep or even the nightmare she sometimes had about being followed and cornered by a menacing figure. She’d have almost preferred the nightmare. No question where it came from.

Nope, what had awakened her from an already less-than-sound sleep was the disturbing way Jake had looked at her after they’d struck the deal about the cottage. Sober, speculative, far too intense. As if he’d seen something about her, something surprising, something…secret.

Had he guessed about Larry?

Icy prickles slid along her spine at the possibility and what that could mean if Jake was a law-and-order type. She hadn’t figured him out on that point. His military experience said he’d operate by the book and turn her in. Yet there was also an untamed, renegade aura about him. Vestiges of the wild brother from Rose’s tales of their adolescence, she assumed. Prone to fisticuffs and breaking the law.

Quietly Lia slid from the bed and into her robe.

The other possibility of what Jake had been thinking flickered at the back of her brain like a moth at the screen door. She couldn’t seem to brush it away.

It’s nothing. Just a biological urge. You’ve been without a man for too long.

She and Rose used to call themselves reluctant nuns. They’d goad each other into accepting occasional dates and then pick apart the poor men afterward, calling them “the slobberer,” “the mama’s boy,” “the braggart,” discarding them as if the two women were such prize catches themselves.

But Jake…

He was a man. A real man. A man’s man. The kind of guy she’d always been intimidated by, which was how she’d wound up with Larry, the supposed nice boy.

Stop it. You’re making too much of nothing. It was just one look.

She glanced at Kristen and Samantha. Sleeping like angels. Even Sam had been too tired—or too resigned—to complain about sharing a bed. Lia pulled the blankets up to Howie’s chin. He looked naked without his glasses. Younger, too. At times she forgot that he was only ten. Having a good, strong male influence like Jake in his life, if only for a short while, would be invaluable to him.

Jake. He simply refused to leave her mind.

She belted the robe and quietly let herself out of the cottage, easing the screen door shut on her fingertips. The trees grew together so thickly they cast one big, deep shadow, but dawn glowed between the uppermost branches.

Lia shivered on the doorstep in her stocking feet. So what if Jake had looked at her? He hadn’t said a word. Yet she couldn’t deny that she’d been shaken. She’d covered up by making a production about rounding up the kids, sweeping out the cottage, bringing in their gear.

She closed her eyes, sucked in the fresh, fragrant air. You’re on your own. Truly on your own. You can make it.

“I heard the screen door. Couldn’t sleep?”

Lia’s lids flew open. Jake stood on the path, wearing a thermal shirt with the sleeves pushed up, his hands tucked in the pockets of a pair of jeans. God, he looked good.

“I’m antsy, I guess.”

“Want some coffee? I’ve got a pot brewing.”

“Love some.” She stepped down. “You’re an early riser.”

“Habit.”

She sucked in a breath. “Smells good.”

His mouth twisted. “Me?”

Her eyes widened. “The coffee.”

“I took another bath.”

“I’m sure you smell good, too, but forget it—I’m not sniffing you again.”

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