Amy felt her heart catch and her breath stall in her lungs.

Nick Culhane was nothing at all like she remembered him.

He seemed far more imposing now, and infinitely more disturbing, hard and honed, a mountain of muscled masculinity in worn denim and work boots. Maturity had carved character into a face that had already been impossibly handsome.

She didn’t remember him being so big. Or his eyes so blue as his guarded gaze moved slowly over her f ace and slipped down her slender frame.

Never in her life had she met a man who knotted her nerves or stole the breath from her lungs simply by glancing at her.

And Nick Culhane—the man she’d once secretly worshipped, the man who had broken her sister’s heart—was the last man on earth who should elicit such heated reactions….

Dear Reader,

What if…? These two little words serve as the springboard for each romance novel that bestselling author Joan Elliott Pickart writes. “I always go back to that age-old question. My ideas come straight from imagination,” she says. And with more than thirty Silhouette novels to her credit, the depth of Joan’s imagination seems bottomless! Joan started by taking a class to learn how to write a romance and “felt that this was where I belonged,” she recalls. This month Joan delivers Her Little Secret, the next from THE BABY BET, where you’ll discover what if…a sheriff and a lovely nursery owner decide to foil town matchmakers and “act” like lovers….

And don’t miss the other compelling “what ifs” in this month’s Silhouette Special Edition lineup. What if a U.S. Marshal knee-deep in his father’s murder investigation discovers his former love is expecting his child? Read Seven Months and Counting… by Myrna Temte, the next installment in the STOCKWELLS OF TEXAS series. What if an army ranger, who believes dangerous missions are no place for a woman, learns the only person who can help rescue his sister is a female? Lindsay McKenna brings you this exciting story in Man with a Mission, the next book in her MORGAN’S MERCENARIES: MAVERICK HEARTS series. What happens if a dutiful daughter falls in love with the one man her family forbids? Look for Christine Flynn’s Forbidden Love. What if a single dad falls for a pampered beauty who is not at all accustomed to small-town happily-ever-after? Find out in Nora Roberts’s Considering Kate, the next in THE STANISLASKIS. And what if the girl-next-door transforms herself to get a man’s attention—but is noticed by someone else? Make sure to pick up Barbara McMahon’s Starting with a Kiss.

What if… Two words with endless possibilities. If you’ve got your own “what if” scenario, start writing. Silhouette Special Edition would love to read about it.

Happy reading!

Karen Taylor Richman,

Senior Editor

Forbidden Love
Christine Flynn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHRISTINE FLYNN

admits to being interested in just about everything, which is why she considers herself fortunate to have turned her interest in writing into a career. She feels that a writer gets to explore it all and, to her, exploring relationships—especially the intense, bittersweet or even lighthearted relationships between men and women—is fascinating.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you this restless, Amy. Are you sure everything is all right?”

Amy Chapman ran her fingers through her short dark hair, the motion as agitated as her pacing. With a quick, distracted smile, she focused on the list in her hand. “I’m positive, Grandma. There’s just a lot to do before I can get you out of here. Now, I’ve called these contractors—”

“It’s not like you to pace.”

“Honest. I’m fine.”

“Well, you don’t seem fine,” the elderly woman insisted. “I’ve never seen you fidget as much as you have since you’ve been home. You’ve always had energy, but this is different. You’re acting…unsettled.”

“I’m not ‘unsettled,’” Amy replied, still pacing. “I just want to get this taken care of.”

“You’re tense, then.” Her grandmother’s thin, rose-red lips pinched. “Do you know what I think you need?”

“What’s that?”

“A man.”

Amy came to a dead stop at the foot of the raised nursing-home bed. Her grandmother sat propped against a crisp white pillow, her long white hair hanging in an enviably thick braid over the shoulder of her fuchsia bed jacket and her hazel eyes sharp behind her silver-rimmed bifocals.

“Well, you do,” Bea Gardner pronounced, casually eyeing the uninspired cream camp shirt her youngest granddaughter had tucked into a pair of equally understated khaki slacks. “You’re almost twenty-eight years old, and you haven’t had a serious boyfriend since you stopped seeing Scott last year. I’m sure there are plenty of nice, eligible men over there in Eau Claire. Why aren’t you going out with any of them?”

“Because no one has asked.”

“I don’t believe that for an instant. You’re a beautiful girl, Amy. You’re kind. You’re smart.”

“You’re prejudiced.”

“You’re right. But I don’t buy your reasoning. If it’s true no one has asked you out, then why don’t you find someone interesting and ask him? It’s not like when I was young, and a girl had to wait around for the man to call her. From what I hear, men nowadays like it when a woman takes the initiative. It takes the pressure off them.”

Amy’s mouth curved in a smile that looked like affection but felt more like defeat. It was truly pathetic when a woman’s eighty-two-year-old grandmother was gutsier than she was. She couldn’t begin to imagine making the first move on a guy.

“You say ‘find someone interesting’ as if all I’d have to do is put my hand in a hat and pull out the man of my dreams. It’s not that easy out there. The good men are all gone.” She gave a casual shrug. “The hat’s empty.”

“That’s nonsense. There are plenty of good men out there. It’s just a matter of giving them a chance to prove themselves.” The frown on Bea’s gracefully aged face added another row of wrinkles to her forehead. “You’re just never going to find the one who’s right for you if you keep turning down the interesting ones and turning the rest into buddies.”

“Grandma,” Amy said patiently, “I’m here to get you back into your house. Not discuss my nonexistent love life.” Prepared to move on to something more productive, she held up the list, only to lower it as her brow pinched.

“Who did I turn down that was interesting? You don’t mean Scott, do you?”

“My heavens, no,” came the gently chiding reply. “I know your parents thought he was perfect for you. And he would have fit right in at your father’s accounting firm. But frankly, dear,” she said, dropping her tone in deference to her room’s open door, “whenever I saw you together, I never had the feeling there was any passion there. A woman needs passion in her life,” she informed her, much as she might speak of the need for a good mechanic.

“She needs a man who makes her melt when he touches her and makes her feel that she’ll simply not be the same without him in her life. That is not what I sensed between you and Scott. I’m talking about that new man in your apartment building. The geologist. Didn’t you say he was attractive? And what about the new principal at your school?”

Amy glanced toward the doorway herself, though there wasn’t anyone in the bright hallway who would have been able to overhear, much less care about what they were discussing. It just disconcerted her to know that her grandmother had been aware of something like passion—or the lack thereof—in her relationship with Scott Porter.

The woman was absolutely right, though. There never had been any spark or fire between her and the promising young accountant. Not even in the beginning of their two-year relationship. But then, there had never been any real passion in her life. Period.

She was not, however, going to get depressed about it now. Being home for the summer was enough to cope with at the moment.

“The geologist isn’t interested in a relationship. Not the kind I’m interested in, anyway,” she replied, knowing for a fact that she’d find no passion there. She preferred fidelity in a man. “He was going out with the nurse in Three B and the masseuse in One C until they found he was two-timing them. Rumor has it he’s currently working on the Rosenburg twins on the first floor. As for our principal,” she said, glancing again at the paper she held, “we play softball together, but he’s just a friend. It’s never a good idea to date someone you work with, anyway.”

From the corner of her eye Amy saw Bea peer at her over the tops of her bifocals. Before her grandmother could pursue the subject, however, Amy changed it. She simply didn’t feel like explaining that the problem probably wasn’t with the men, but with her.

“I called all the contractors on this list,” she repeated, referring to the sheet of aqua stationery covered with Bea’s surprisingly bold script. “Triple A Renovators will be there this afternoon, but they won’t give you separate bids for the wheelchair ramps and the room addition. With them, it’s all or nothing. Cedar Lake Construction will have someone out to give us an estimate Thursday morning. And Four Pines Remodel and Repair can’t take another job before September, and I’ll be gone by then.”

Bea made a faint tsking sound. “That’s too bad about Four Pines. They do such good work.” Straightening the sheet tucked at her waist, she watched Amy bend over one of the Danish Modern visitor’s chairs by the plant-lined window and stuff the paper into her oversize canvas tote bag. “There’s really no one you’re interested in?”

Amy didn’t consider herself a particularly virtuous person. Her faults were myriad and, compared to certain members of her family, her accomplishments few. If she could claim any redeeming trait at all, it would be patience. The virtue helped enormously when working with six-year-olds, which she did nine months out of the year, from September to June. But patience was an absolute necessity when it came to surviving her family.

“No, Grandma,” she replied quietly. Of all her relations, she most admired the outspoken and energetic octogenarian watching her so closely now. Her mother’s mother was her own woman. She did things her own way, whether or not convention approved, and she possessed the energy and outlook of a woman twenty years her junior. It had taken a broken hip to even slow the woman down. And then, she’d fallen while painting her kitchen cabinets fire-engine red. To add a little life to the place, she’d said.

If Amy had had the nerve, she would have loved to emulate her grandmother’s sometimes outrageous sense of style. But she had grown up to realize that she was really just a practical, beige sort of person, and whatever sense of whimsy she found herself wanting to indulge, she shared only with her first-graders.

“There really isn’t anyone I’m interested in,” Amy finally concluded.

Recognizing a dead end when she saw one, the elderly woman picked up three bottles of nail polish from the tray table straddling her bed. “Pity,” she murmured, and finally let the matter go.

“By the way, dear.” Glass clicked lightly as she tried to decide between shades of bright coral or a more subtle mauve. “I called Culhane Contracting for an estimate, too. Michael Culhane is sending his nephew over this morning so he can look at the house.”

Amy’s head snapped up. Her grandmother was studying one gnarled hand, her rose-tinted lips pursed in concentration.

“Culhane?”

“Mmm,” Bea hummed, still undecided about the color. “I heard from Mae Cutter that Nick is working for his uncle’s construction company now. He’s finishing up a medical office for her grandson and his partner over on Maple Grove. He’s doing nice work, too. From what I hear. Mae said her grandson is pleased, anyway.”

Confusion swept Amy’s expression as she watched her grandmother calmly hold the bottle of coral next to her skin, then do the same with the mauve. It made no sense that Nick Culhane would be working for a builder in such a small town, no matter who owned the company. The last she’d heard, he was an architect in New York. A very successful one, at that. It made even less sense that her grandmother would want anything to do with him.

“What’s he doing in Cedar Lake?” She shook her head, her confusion compounding by the second. “And why are you even talking to him? Have you forgotten what he did to Paige?”

Bea’s weathered hand remained splayed as she patiently glanced up at her youngest grandchild. “Contrary to what your mother sometimes thinks, Amy, there’s nothing wrong with my memory. I remember exactly what he did to your sister. He walked out on her a month before their wedding. That was ten years ago. And it has nothing at all to do with getting an addition built onto my house. The more companies I get bids from, the more informed a decision I can make about who to hire. A woman should always have options.”

She glanced back at the bottles, choosing coral. “Stop scowling, dear. It causes wrinkles.” Behind the bifocals, her eyes narrowed on the hall beyond the wide doorway. “I do believe I see Nick coming now.”

Amy dutifully straightened the scowl, but her usual easy smile was conspicuously absent as she watched her grandmother push aside her polish in preparation for her company. The recalcitrant woman certainly sounded lucid to her, but she couldn’t help but think that her favorite relative’s mental acuity had finally slipped. Bea Gardner tended to disagree with half of her family and barely tolerated the rest, but she was loyal to every last member when it came to defending them to the rest of the world. Amy had inherited that unquestioned loyalty in spades. She’d barely been seventeen when Nick Culhane had told Paige he couldn’t marry her, but she could still remember how badly he’d hurt her older sister.

The sound of heavy footsteps grew closer, the rhythm steady and certain—until it went dead silent at the doorway.

“Nick,” Bea said, by way of greeting.

“Mrs. Gardner,” came the deep, rumbling reply.

“Well, do come in.” Extending her hand, the gesture faintly regal, she motioned toward the foot of her bed.

“You remember Amy, don’t you?”

Amy wasn’t in the habit of being rude. Refusing to develop the tendency now, she turned with the thought of offering a polite hello—and felt her heart catch as her breath stalled in her lungs.

He stood six feet behind her, a mountain of leanly muscled masculinity in chambray, worn denim and work boots. Maturity had carved character into a face that had already been impossibly handsome, deepening the creases bracketing his chiseled mouth, fanning the tiny lines from the corners of his eyes.

She didn’t remember him being so big. Or his eyes so blue. His dark hair was meticulously cut, his face and forearms tanned from working long hours in the summer sun. He was hard and honed, the sort of man who dominated whatever space he occupied, and Amy felt an overwhelming urge to back up as his guarded glance slowly moved over her face and slipped down her slender frame.

“Yes. I do,” he replied in that polite way people have when a memory is there, but vague. Clearly cautious, he turned his attention to the woman holding court from the bed. “Since you have company, maybe we should discuss our business later.”

“Amy isn’t company,” Bea countered, sounding every bit as businesslike as he did. “She’s family. And your business is with her. My granddaughter has kindly come from Eau Claire to rescue me from this…place…my daughter has stuck me in and is handling what I obviously can’t. She’ll take you out to the house so you can do whatever it is you need to do to figure your estimates.

“As I told you on the phone,” she continued, ignoring both Amy’s look of surprise and Nick’s sudden and definite hesitation, “I need a new bedroom built downstairs. I won’t be able to climb the stairs to my old one,” she explained, sounding more annoyed with the inability than inconvenienced by it. “And I need a wheelchair ramp so Amy can get me in and out of the house. I can’t leave here until the ramp is in, and I would really like to return to my home.”

A wistful smile touched her once-full lips. “I’ve already missed seeing my lilacs bloom, and I know my roses need tending. Would your uncle’s company be able to take on the work now, assuming we agree on a price, or would there be a wait?”

“I can’t answer that until I know exactly what you have in mind for the addition.”

Bea inclined her head at his hedge. “Well, then, there’s nothing for me to do other than leave you in Amy’s capable hands. She can explain what I need, and we’ll go from there.

“You’ll call me this afternoon?” she asked her granddaughter.

“Of course.” She could count on it.

“Good. Then, if you’ll excuse me, I want to do my nails before bridge this afternoon.” She picked up her polish again, her shrewd glance cutting to the man who’d taken a step back to let Amy pass. “Thank you for coming, Nick. I wasn’t sure you would.”

Amy could practically feel his big body stiffen, though all she saw for certain was the jump of a muscle in his jaw a moment before he spoke. To his credit, not that Amy was inclined to give him much, his deep voice betrayed no reaction at all to her grandma’s doubt.

“My uncle owns the company, Mrs. Gardner. It’s not up to me to turn down business. It’s good to see you looking so well,” he concluded, deftly refusing her a chance to unearth what he’d rather leave buried. “I’ll get back to you with an estimate as soon as I can.”

Taking another step back, he caught Amy’s eye and arched one dark eyebrow. “Shall we?”

He looked remarkably unhurried as he stood waiting for her to precede him out the door. Or so it seemed until she noticed the little knot of muscle still twitching near his ear. Uneasy herself, rather wishing she hadn’t given her grandmother carte blanche with her services, she picked up her bag and slipped the straps over her shoulder.

This was one little twist she hadn’t imagined in the scenarios that had plagued her every time she’d thought about coming home the past couple of weeks. She’d known she would run into resistance from her mom about moving Grandma Bea back into her home. And she’d known Paige would side with their mom for reasons that had nothing to do with their mother’s objections, but which would still leave Amy to deal with the task by herself. She’d just never dreamed she’d have to deal with the man who had broken her sister’s heart.

Amy knew what it was to lose a friendship because love just wasn’t there. But she couldn’t imagine a worse breach of trust than for a woman to put all her faith and hope in a man, then have him leave her for another woman.

Amy knew for a fact that was what Nick had done. She’d even heard him admit there was someone else. The night he’d broken up with Paige, they’d been arguing beneath her bedroom window.

Telling her grandmother she’d talk with her later, she moved past him and into a bright hallway that smelled strongly of disinfectant and the lilies in the open day room. From a room behind them a frail voice kept up a constant litany of indistinguishable phrases. Ahead of them, a nurse steadied an elderly gentleman out for a stroll with his chrome-plated walker. The facility was the best available in Cedar Lake. Her mom had seen to that. Still, Amy couldn’t blame her grandmother for wanting to get out of there.

“What’s wrong with her?” Nick asked, his deep voice low as he fell into step beside her.

“I’ve been asking myself the same thing.” She simply could not believe her grandmother had called him.

“I mean physically,” he muttered.

Feeling a tug of chagrin, Amy protectively crossed her arms as they headed for the double doors of the exit. “She broke her hip a few months ago. That’s why she won’t be able to use stairs. I know she wants an addition built onto the house for a bedroom,” she continued, deliberately keeping her focus on her task, and the man with the walker. “But it might be faster to close in the back porch.”

“It sounds like you’re in a hurry to get out of Cedar Lake.”

“I’m in a hurry to get my grandmother settled back in her home,” she countered. “She needs to be in her own bed. She isn’t resting well here and I’m worried about her.”

And you’re right, she thought, though she wasn’t about to admit it to him. She did want to leave. Whenever she was in Cedar Lake, there was always part of her that wanted badly to get back to Eau Claire. There were things she truly loved about the charming east Wisconsin town where she’d grown up. Mostly she loved the quaint feel of it and the friendliness of people whose families remained, year after year. It was small enough that a person couldn’t walk down Main Street without running into someone she knew. But it was big enough that not everyone knew everyone else’s business.

The only reason she’d left was that she wanted to be out from under the collective thumb of her family. Except for her grandmother, they treated her as if she’d never quite grown up. As her grandmother had just pointed out, she was nearly twenty-eight years old. Would be, in fact, in less than a month. She had been on her own since she’d graduated from college at twenty-one. Yet all she had to do was come back home, and she felt all of twelve again.

“I’ll take a look at the porch and see what I can do.”

“Thank you.”

Nick reached past her, pushing open the glass door by its horizontal metal bar. As he did, she swept past him, leaving behind the scent of something light and airy and impossibly, inexplicably erotic.

The muscles in his gut tightened, the response adding yet another dimension to the other frustrations that had been clawing at him all day—every one of which had seemed to compound itself in the past five minutes.

Amy was two feet in front of him on the wide walkway. Catching her arm, he felt those frustrations merge as he pulled her to a stop.

“Hold on a minute.”

The noonday sun caught shades of amber in her short sable hair as she jerked her head toward him. Her eyes were a rich, deep chocolate, her fine features delicate, and she had a tiny dimple in her left cheek. It was there when she smiled, anyway. He’d seen it when she’d smiled at her grandmother. But she wasn’t smiling now. She was looking at him with the same caution he’d felt since Bea Gardner had called his uncle’s company yesterday and asked him to bid on a job for her.

“Who else is going to be there?” he asked.

“Where?”

Beneath his hand he felt the tensing of smooth, supple muscle. Her warmth seeped into his palm, the softness of her skin registering somewhere deep in his consciousness.

“At your grandmother’s house. I’m not up for any more surprises today.” He had enough to deal with as it was. Between a delivery problem with materials, an associate in New York who wanted his drafts yesterday and butting heads this morning with his uncle over the need for the man to slow down, his patience was precariously close to nonexistent. “I want to know who’s there. Any more of your family?”

She shook her head, feeling wary, trying not to sound it. “There’s no one.”

“Your sister isn’t waiting out there?”

“I said there’s no one.” Amy eased from his grip, fighting the urge to cover the spot where the heat of his hand still lingered. “I’m staying alone at the house.”

She thought he might look relieved by the assurance. If anything, the furrows in his brow only deepened as he stepped back. The muscle in his jaw wasn’t jerking anymore, though. It had simply gone rigid.

He must have decided he had no choice but to believe her. His guard firmly in place, he turned toward the nearly empty parking lot. “Do you have a car here?”

“It’s right over there.” Reaching into her tote for her sunglasses and her keys, she nodded toward the crayon-yellow Volkswagen sitting alone by the tree-lined curb. Her mother thought the thing looked like a windup toy. Her students loved it.

“I’ll follow you,” he muttered.

Nick could have sworn he saw relief flash in her eyes an instant before she slipped on the dark glasses and told him that would be fine. She was clearly no crazier than he was with the idea of having to make small talk if they took the same vehicle. But he didn’t want to think about his ex-fiancée’s little sister. Amy was just doing what her grandmother had asked her to do. It seemed far more prudent to consider the motives of the elderly woman inside the long, low building they’d just left.

He hadn’t seen Bea Gardner since the night before he’d left town after breaking up with her older granddaughter. That had been ten years ago. The decade had taken its toll on her, too, put more wear on a face that had probably once been quite beautiful, made her aging body that much more fragile. She wasn’t a big woman. He doubted she’d ever been taller than Amy’s five-three. But she’d always had a presence that more than made up for her diminutive size.

That presence had never been more impressive than when she’d come across him on the highway that long-ago evening and stopped to give him a ride. He’d had way too much to drink after he’d left Paige’s house, but he’d had enough sense left to walk home rather than risk plowing the first new car he’d ever owned into a pole. Somewhere out on the highway between the Twin Pine Tavern and his uncle’s house on the opposite side of town, Bea had come sailing by in the old boat of a Cadillac she’d driven since 1966.

She’d opened her window, told him he should be ashamed of himself and to get in before he wound up like the deer that crossed the highway to the lake and some sleepy trucker turned him into roadkill. Beyond that, what he remembered most was that she’d mercilessly prodded him with questions about why he’d broken up with her granddaughter—and that after he’d wound up spilling his guts to her, she had agreed that he’d had no choice but to do what he’d done, and to leave.

As uneasy as he’d felt facing the old woman again, his caution had doubled the instant he’d laid eyes on the slender young woman with the doe-soft brown eyes and the short dark hair. Amy had been the polar opposite of her bubbly blond older sister. She’d possessed a natural vitality, but it had been more innocent, more unassuming. He’d recognized her instantly, though. He just hadn’t been prepared for how truly lovely she’d become.

Chapter Two

A rain shower, so typical to the area in summer, had moved through that morning. The quick, heavy cloudburst had left the air heavy with the scents of damp earth and blooming wildflowers. Amy normally would have taken pleasure in the way the wetness intensified the deep green of pines, the shimmering sage of aspen, the emerald of oak and maple. She loved the nuances of shade and color. But she barely noticed any of what surrounded her. As she pulled off the narrow road that looped around one of the area’s secluded lakes and headed down the shaded lane that led to her grandmother’s house, her only thoughts were of the man turning onto the lane behind her.

Nick was nothing at all like her memory of him. The man who’d endeared himself to her family had possessed a congenial manner, a quick smile and a kind of charm that put everyone around him at ease. He seemed far more imposing now, more dominant and infinitely more disturbing. Never in her life had she met a man like him whose tension knotted her own nerves, or who stole the breath from her lungs simply by touching her.

Remembering how she’d responded to him had her hands tightening on the wheel. Nick Culhane was the last man on earth who should elicit such reactions from her. She could still recall her sister sobbing in her room the night he’d broken up with her and the frantic dash over the next couple of days to undo plans that had been taking shape for months. While Paige had remained behind her locked door, their mom and Grandma Bea had canceled the church, the reception hall and the caterers. They’d called the florist, the photographer, the bakery and Marleen’s Hair Affair, where they’d all had appointments for shampoos, blow-drys and manicures the morning of the big event.

Grandma Bea had been the only person gutsy enough to defend the enemy by pointing out that Nick had at least possessed the decency to call everything off the day before the invitations had gone into the mail. He and Paige were to have taken them to the post office together the next morning. But right after that, she’d said she was glad he was gone because he’d just have hurt Paige more if he’d stayed. Then she’d taken the billowing gown of satin and pearls from where Paige had hung it outside her bedroom door and given it to Amy to hang in the attic.

The fabulous creation had stayed there until her sister had sold it at a consignment shop a few years later, and when Paige had married Dr. Darren Hunt six years ago, the gown she’d worn, along with the ceremony and reception, had been simplicity itself. Even years after the fact, she’d obviously wanted no reminders of the elaborate affair she and Nick had once planned.

Amy pulled the car to a stop under the sweeping arms of an ancient maple and glanced at the rearview mirror. As she watched the dark blue truck rumble to a stop behind her, she wondered if Paige knew Nick was back.

The slam of his door reverberated like a gunshot in the stillness surrounding her grandmother’s venerable old house. Her own door echoed the sound a second later, birds scattering from the high pitch of the gabled cedar roof to settle in the trees and along the telephone line running in from the road.

Wishing she could bolt, too, she watched him walk toward her in the dappled sunlight. Pine needles and gravel crunched heavily beneath his boots as he looked from the pristine white house with its butterscotch-yellow trim to the rippling blue water of the deep glacial lake.

A wooden dock, its boards weathered to silver gray and edged with lichen, jutted alongside a boathouse painted with the same cheery trim as the main house. Except for the broad expanse of lawn carpeting the land to the bare earth near the water’s edge, the property was surrounded by woods.

The set of Nick’s guarded features never changed when his glance shifted to her.

“I can think of worse places to spend the summer.”

It really was lovely there. Quiet, peaceful. The nearest neighbor was on the other side of the little lake, too far away to be seen, much less heard.

“It’s probably the best part about being here,” she conceded, hoisting her bag over her shoulder as she headed past the wide side porch to the back where the porch was enclosed. She had truly loved every moment she’d spent there as a child, swimming in the cool, clear water, sunning on the dock with her friends while they listened to the radio and giggled over bags of chips and Seventeen magazines.

“I don’t know if you remember much about the house from before,” she continued, determined to stick to business, “but Grandma wants her new bedroom to be the same size as her old one. The back porch is a little bigger, but I think it would work.”

“I don’t remember anything about this place. I was never here.”

“You weren’t?”

The genuine surprise in her eyes faded the instant she looked up at him. She’d thought for certain that Paige would have brought him out here when they’d been together. This house was like the cornerstone of their family. But the way he was watching her, studying her as if he might be trying to figure out what he recalled about her, short-circuited the thoughts.

Doubting he remembered much about her at all, she glanced from the compelling blue of his eyes and focused on climbing the back steps.

He was right behind her, the wooden stairs groaning at his greater weight.

“When did you move to Eau Claire?” he asked over the squeak of a loose board.

As soon as I could, she thought. “About seven years ago.”

“I take it that the rest of your family has moved away, too.”

Not sure why he would assume such a thing, she opened the screen door, holding it back for him. “Everyone is still right here in town.”

“Your parents and Paige still live in Cedar Lake?”

“You sound surprised that they’re still here.”

“I am.”

Truly puzzled, she glanced behind her as he grabbed the door. “Why?”

“Because it doesn’t make any sense.”

“That they’d still be here?”

His tone went as flat as the lake. “It doesn’t make any sense that you came from two hours away to take care of this for your grandmother when your mom, dad and sister live within ten minutes of the place.”

He stood with one arm stretched out as he held the door, his broad chest blocking her view of the overgrown garden, his carved features knitted in a frown. She was aware of his nearness, his size and his obvious incomprehension. Mostly, she was aware that she wasn’t moving.

She stepped onto the enclosed porch, ignoring for now the chairs and chaises that needed to be wiped down and the potted plants she’d watered when she’d arrived yesterday but still needed to trim. Her mother simply hadn’t had time to give them their usual care while Bea had been convalescing. After three months of hit-and-miss tending, Amy figured they were lucky to still be alive.

“My family is busy,” she defended, on her way to the middle of the expansive, screened-in area. “Summer is Mom’s busiest time of year for house sales. Dad has been spending a lot of time out of town on a big audit. And Paige has a husband, two little girls, a big house and her Junior League committees to keep up with. No one else has the time except me.”

She’d thought for certain that mention of Paige and her family would give him pause. At the very least, the mention of her being married should raise an eyebrow, providing, of course, that he didn’t already know.

All he did when she stopped to face him was give her a slow, disbelieving blink.

“So they go on with their lives while you put yours on hold.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” she replied, not caring for the way the thought made her feel.

“I would.”

She already felt disquieted by him. The feeling only increased with his flatly delivered statement. “My only plans this summer were to take a course I need to keep my teaching certificate current and to spend a month in Europe prowling museums. I can take the class in the fall and do the museum tour next year. I’ve already postponed it twice, anyway.”

“I wouldn’t have thought that Junior League was more important than classes and a vacation.”

“Junior League does charity work,” she informed him, determined to maintain her position. “Being involved in the community is important, too.”

Nick’s brow furrowed as he watched her glance slide from his. A person would have to possess the sensitivity of a stone not to notice how completely she’d minimized and dismissed her own plans, or how staunchly she stood up for the more self-focused members of her family. Especially Paige. His ex-fiancée had probably been the first to come up with a list of excuses about why she couldn’t handle the responsibility Amy had so willingly taken on.

“Why do I have the feeling you’re the only one who thinks your grandmother doesn’t belong where she is?”

Because you’re incredibly astute, she thought. “I don’t know,” she replied, preferring not to discuss family disagreements with him, or be impressed by his insight. “Why do you?”

“For one thing, you’re the only one willing to be inconvenienced.”

“I told you—”

“Yeah. I know. They’re busy,” he muttered. “You don’t need to defend your family to me, Amy. I was just trying to make conversation.”

He wasn’t sure what annoyed him the most. Her coolness, or the fact that he was letting her get to him. That coolness didn’t even suit her. There was too much generosity in her spirit, too much warmth in her soul. Or there had been, anyway. It took amazingly little effort for him to recall how she’d befriended nearly every small child and animal in her neighborhood, or how easily her shy smile could come once she’d gotten to know someone. Her warmth was still there, toward her grandmother, anyway, and her generous spirit still thrived, but she’d clearly choke before he’d get a smile out of her.

“Look,” he muttered, knowing no way around the problem but to address it. “I know I’m not your family’s favorite person, but what happened between me and Paige happened a long time ago. It sounds like she’s moved on. So have I. There’s no reason—”

“You don’t need to defend yourself to me.”

“I’m not defending myself,” he shot back, not caring for how neatly she’d turned around what he’d said to her moments ago. “I’m just stating facts. And one of those facts is that it was your grandmother who asked me to come here, so I’d appreciate it if you’d drop the chill.”

He looked about as flexible as a granite post with his eyes boring into hers and his hands jammed on his hips. Amy didn’t doubt for a moment that he expected her to back down and, if not drop her guard, then at least be a little more hospitable.

As a woman who went out of her way to avoid confrontations, who made her students apologize and play nice whenever there was a difference of opinion, she normally would have found his expectation to be the more diplomatic course of action. Especially since he looked a little short on patience at the moment. But she didn’t feel diplomatic. What she felt was unnerved. His glance had slipped to her mouth, lingering there long enough to heat the knot of nerves in her stomach. If she was feeling anything at all at the moment, it was a strong and distinct need for distance.

“I realize Grandma called you. And as long as we’re stating facts,” she echoed politely, “I’m not totally convinced that her doing that is rational behavior. It makes no sense that she would do something that could bring back bad memories for a member of her family. She can be a little unconventional at times, and she’s certainly outspoken, but she’s not inconsiderate.

“You hurt her granddaughter,” she reminded him.

“Which reminds me,” she continued, loyalty to her sibling melding with a heavy dose of feminine self-defense, “did you ever marry the woman who stole you from my sister?”

She got the distance she was after. In the space of a heartbeat, Nick’s expression closed like a windblown shutter.

“No. I didn’t marry her. I have no intention of ever marrying anyone,” he informed her, his voice low and certain. “And just for the record, no one can steal someone from another person. If a man doesn’t care enough to stick around and make a relationship work, there were fundamental problems to begin with.”

The tension in his big body was almost palpable as his glance shifted over her face, his eyes revealing nothing as his gaze penetrated hers. That gaze was disturbing, intimate, and whatever it was he saw in her face caused the telltale muscle in his jaw to jerk before he turned away.

With his back to her, he drew a breath that stretched the fabric of his shirt against his wide shoulders.

“Where does your grandmother want the ramp?”

Amy swallowed, her heart hammering.

“We thought putting it by the back steps would be best.” There was no escaping his irritation. It seemed to follow her even as she stepped back. “It’s closer to the driveway and the path to the lake.”

“That won’t work if you want this area converted.” He pointed beyond her, turning his head enough for her to catch his strong profile. “What’s that door on the side porch? The one we passed coming in.”

There had been an edge to his manner before. Now, having dispensed with any conversation other than the absolutely necessary, that edge felt sharp enough to slice steel.

“It leads from the dining room,” she replied.

“The ramp will have to be either there or by the front steps.”

“I suppose the dining room would be more convenient.”

He gave a nod, the confirmation to himself, not to her. “I’ll need to look around out here for a minute and get some measurements. This is the size of room she wants? This space here?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He took a step away. “Thanks.”

He didn’t need to say another word for her to know her presence was no longer required. With his back still to her, he pulled a pencil and paper from his shirt pocket and unclipped a silver measuring tape from his belt. Even as she headed for the door that led into the kitchen, she could hear his heavy footfall moving away from her.

The door opened with a squeak. Nick practically sighed with relief when it closed with a quiet click. It was as clear as the collection of crystal obelisks lining his office credenza, design awards bestowed on his work over the past ten years, that Amy wanted as little as possible to do with him. That was fine with him. He wanted as little as possible to do with her, too. Seeing her again only brought back memories of a time that had forced him to face a few hard truths about himself. Life-altering truths that had affected everything from how he’d planned his future to what he thought of himself as a man. Though he’d learned to live with his flaws, he could hardly blame her for her disapproval of him.

He pulled out the tape, running it along the far edge of the wide space. He couldn’t fault the way she felt, but that didn’t mean he had to like her attitude. He didn’t have to like much of anything about being there.

He especially didn’t appreciate his physical responses to her.

The thoughts had come into his mind unbidden, unwanted. Just noticing the gentle curve of her mouth, the taunting fullness of her lower lip, had been enough to put a distinct ache low in his gut. But the thought of how it would feel to taste that fullness, to taste her, had him feeling as tight as his tape when it snapped back into its coil.

He made short work of measuring the other wall and headed outside to study the foundation. He really didn’t want to be there. From Amy’s response about this place being the best part about being in Cedar Lake, he strongly suspected she didn’t want to be there, either. But she was clearly going to do what she had to do for her grandmother. And despite the fact that he was still wary of Bea Gardner’s motives for giving him her business, he’d do what he had to do, too. His uncle Mike’s construction company was deeply in debt. He couldn’t afford not to bid on the job.

“Triple A Renovators wants me to sign all this before they’ll even give me an estimate?” Amy’s grandmother frowned at the three-page agreement Amy had just given her and promptly pushed it aside. “I don’t think so. Did Cedar Lake Construction come this morning?”

“Their estimator called yesterday to reschedule. He’s coming at two this afternoon.” Paper rustled as she pulled from the sack the People magazine her grandma had requested and set it on her tray table. So far, she’d been to the grocery store, the library and the plant nursery. As soon as she stopped by the hardware store, she could take another stab at cleaning up the paint that had splattered all over her grandmother’s kitchen. It had dried before anyone could clean it up after Bea’s fall. “I haven’t heard back from Culhane Contracting.”

“I have. Nick’s uncle called last evening.”

Amy’s motions slowed as she folded the sack and glanced toward the woman in the purple plaid bed jacket. Bea was already flipping through her magazine.

“Either he or Nick will be out in a couple of days to start on the ramp,” she added.

Disquieted by the announcement, trying not to look it, Amy stuffed the sack into her tote to recycle. “You don’t want to wait for the other bid?”

“The only estimate he gave me was for the ramp. And that’s all I’ve agreed to for now. How are you doing with the paint? Is it coming off?” she asked, seeming perfectly oblivious to her granddaughter’s consternation.

“Sort of,” Amy murmured absently, tucking the sack a little deeper.

This really isn’t a problem, she hastily assured herself. The fact that Nick’s uncle had called Bea told her that Nick wanted as little to do with her and her family as possible. He’d obviously worked up the bid, given it to his uncle and bowed out. No doubt he’d do the same when it came to the job itself. She couldn’t imagine him doing anything else. By the time he’d left the lake house, conversation had been reduced to only the polite and the necessary.

That had been roughly forty-eight hours ago. And in that forty-eight hours she’d tried everything short of self-hypnosis to put the encounter out of her mind. Yet, try as she might, she couldn’t shake her unwanted but undeniable curiosity over why he’d sounded so adamant about his lack of interest in marriage, something that made no sense at all to her and shouldn’t matter even if it had.

“Amy?”

Her brow was still furrowed when she glanced up from her tote.

“I asked what ‘sort of’ means.”

“Oh, sorry,” she murmured, distractedly running her fingers through her hair. “It means the remover I bought yesterday will work on the appliances, but I need something different for the floor and cabinets.”

“I told you I can hire that work done, dear.”

“There’s no need for that. I want to do it. I need to do something while I’m here.” Other than pace, she thought, feeling the urge to do just that. It had to be the weather. She always got restless when the heat and humidity rose.

“Unsettled” her grandmother had called it. Until a couple of days ago, Amy honestly hadn’t felt anything she couldn’t attribute to simply being in a place she didn’t really want to be. She hadn’t felt unsettled until she’d had to deal with Nick.

She glanced at her watch and promptly grimaced. “I’m late,” she announced, refusing to tell her dear grandmother that she’d only added to the restlessness she’d been so concerned about. “I was going to go to the hardware store on the way to the house, but I don’t have time now. The guy from Cedar Lake Construction is supposed to be there in ten minutes.”

The man was late, too. “J.T. from CLC,” as he identified himself, left a message on the answering machine her sister had bought her grandmother two Christmases ago saying he was still running behind and that he’d be there later that afternoon.

J.T. had underestimated his delay. He hadn’t shown up by the time Amy had trimmed and fertilized all thirty-one of her grandmother’s potted plants. Nor had he arrived by the time she’d given the forgotten African violets in the upstairs bathroom a decent burial, washed out their little ceramic containers and repotted them with the fresh plants she’d purchased at the nursery. When five o’clock came and went, she wondered if the man possessed the manners to even call again. Then she heard the doorbell ring as she was positioning the last plant on the upstairs windowsill at six-fifteen, and figured he’d decided to show up after all.

Shoving her hair out of her eyes, she hurried down the open staircase to the little foyer with its faded Aubusson rug and mahogany entry table. A quick glance in the mirror above the table drew an immediate frown. Plucking a leaf from the shoulder of her nondescript white cotton tank top, she shoved it into the pocket of her denim shorts and kept going. Her hair looked as if it had been combed with her fingers, which, in fact, it had. She had a streak of dirt on her shirt, and she had abandoned her sneakers hours ago. Knowing her mother would be appalled that she was answering the door looking like an urchin, certain “J.T.” wasn’t going to care, she pulled open the door—and felt her heart slide neatly to her throat.

Nick stood on the front porch, his hands jammed at the waist of his worn jeans, and a faint V of sweat darkening the gray T-shirt stretched over his wide shoulders. The blue of his eyes looked as deep as sapphires as his glance ran from the scoop of her top, down the length of her bare legs and jerked back up to her face.

“I just wanted to let you know I was here before I started working,” he said without preamble, and turned away.

“Wait a minute.”

He was on the last of three steps leading from the wide wraparound porch when the door banged closed behind her. She stopped on the top one as he reached the walkway and reluctantly turned around.

“Grandma said no one would start for a couple of days.”

“Is my being here now a problem?”

She wasn’t surprised by the challenge in his tanned features. What struck her was the fatigue. It etched more deeply the faint white lines around his eyes, took some of the edge from his tone.

“I just wasn’t expecting anyone from your uncle’s company right now.” And I wasn’t expecting it to be you at all.

“My uncle’s already put in a full day,” he replied, explaining his own presence when she would have so clearly preferred someone else’s. “I had the time now, so I thought I’d get started.”

“So late?”

“There’re still a couple good hours of daylight left. My uncle said he’d have someone over in a couple of days,” he acknowledged, “but we can’t pull anyone off the other job we’re working just now. I know your grandmother wants to come home soon. If I work until dark for the next few evenings, I should have the ramp finished in less than a week.”

He looked from the steep pitch of the stairs to run another glance the length of her slender body. The look didn’t hold an ounce of interest or flattery. It was merely appraising, which was pretty much the same expression that had creased his features when he’d inspected the underpinnings of the side porch yesterday.

His attention caught on her raspberry-pink toenails before returning dispassionately to her face.

“By the way,” he said, looking as if he might as well get all of his business with her taken care of while he had her there, “when I ran the work order by the nursing home for your grandmother to sign a while ago, she said you were having trouble cleaning up some paint. She had me promise I’d show you the easiest way to clean it up. She also nitpicked the contract and talked me down ten percent on our bid. You can stop worrying about your grandmother’s mind,” he muttered flatly. “The woman knows exactly what she’s doing.”

He turned then, leaving her standing on the porch while he headed for the battered blue pickup he’d parked behind her bright yellow “bug.” None of the weariness she’d seen in his face was evident in his long-legged stride, or in his movements as he reached into the truck’s bed and pulled out a pick, a shovel and a bundle of wooden stakes.

She lost sight of him as he headed for the side of the house and disappeared beyond the showy blooms of the huge gardenia bush trellised at the corner of the building. From the dull clank of metal, she assumed he’d dropped what he’d carried somewhere opposite the double French doors leading from the dining room. He didn’t reappear. And she didn’t move. She just stood there staring at the foliage, feeling chastised and more than a little guilty.

There was no doubt from the fatigue in his eyes and the condition of his clothes that he’d already put in a full day. Yet he was willing to work evenings so an elderly woman wouldn’t have to spend any longer than necessary in a place she didn’t want to be.

He’d also made the effort, grudging as it was, to let her know he’d seen nothing to indicate there was a problem with her grandmother’s mental faculties. The fact that she’d insulted him when she’d expressed her worry about that particular concern only made his gesture that much more generous. He hadn’t had to bother with the reassurance at all.

She couldn’t believe how deeply his consideration touched her, or the ambivalence it caused her to feel. The thoughtfulness he’d just shown was the very sort of thing the man who’d been engaged to her sister had done in the past, the sort of consideration that had endeared him to her entire family. Yet he’d gone on to so callously betray Paige’s trust.

Amy hated what he had done. She hated why he’d done it. But if she were to be perfectly honest with herself, what she hated most was that, in a way, he’d hurt them all. He’d made himself a part of them, made them care about him, then walked out of their lives as if their existence hadn’t mattered to him at all.

The guilt she felt jerked in a different direction. Thinking of herself as an injured party was petty and selfish, and entirely irrelevant. Her dad had shelled out a small fortune in nonrefundable deposits for the wedding, so his anger had been understandable. Only the fact that Nick had sent him an unsolicited check a month later had stemmed the flow of his ire. And their mom had spent months excitedly planning with Paige, followed by weeks of consoling her heartbroken daughter. If anyone other than Paige had the right to feel injured, it would be them. Her own role had been completely insignificant.

They would be the first to point that out, too.

The hollow sensation in her stomach was too familiar for comfort. Determined to ignore the thoughts her family provoked, annoyed with herself for indulging them, she turned for the door just as Nick appeared by the gardenia bush on his way to the truck. Not caring to have him see her still standing there, she hurried inside.

She had run back upstairs to make sure she’d turned off the bathroom light and was passing through the dining room on the way to the kitchen when she caught sight of him through the panes of the glass doors. He was back on the porch, tape measure in hand.

She kept going, only to hear him tap on one of the small panes. Glancing past the long mahogany table with its white lace runner and huge ruby glass compote, she saw him hold up a quart-sized can.

“I might as well give this to you now,” he said the moment she swung in one of the doors. He held the can of solvent toward her. “Be sure to let it sit at least an hour and use it with gloves. Then scrape it off with a putty knife. If that doesn’t work, I’ll get you something else to try.”

He was doing what her grandmother had asked, telling her how to remove the paint. He also clearly intended to limit his assistance to supplying her with products and advice, not elbow grease, which was fine with her. Working with him would only add to the strain of his presence.

As long as she had advice available, however, she would take it.

“How do I make it sit on a vertical surface? It’s on the front of the cabinets.”

“She told me you were trying to get paint off linoleum.”

“That’s the only part I told her about,” she admitted, looking down at the directions. All she actually saw were the buckle of his belt, the worn white threads on the zipper of his faded blue jeans and the creases in the fabric above his powerful thighs.

“I’ll take a look at the cabinets,” he muttered, resigned.

“I need power, too.”

Her glance jerked from his groin, incomprehension covering her flush.

“Electricity,” he explained. “Is there an outlet I can use for a few minutes? I have to cut out a section of railing, and there are no outlets out here.” He nodded to the power saw and a huge coil of what looked like orange rope. “I have an extension cord that’ll reach just about anywhere.”

There was an outlet behind the buffet, but it would be easier to access one straight through in the kitchen. She told him that as she turned away, aware of his glance moving down her back as she padded across the hardwood floor and into the big, old-fashioned kitchen.

For as long as she could remember, the cabinets lining the room had been pale yellow and the floor black-and-white tile. The walls had been the variable. Over the years, orange paper scattered with swirls of avocado green had given way to paper of mauve and blue. Five years ago, her grandmother had stripped the walls bare, painted them shiny, enamel white and hung brilliantly colored stained glass birds in the windows to throw swaths of azure, magenta and chartreuse into the room.

On days when the sun was brightest, being inside the room was like being inside a kaleidoscope. Bea’s most recent alteration would have slashed color into the room even on the dreariest of days.

“What the…?”

Amy knew exactly what had brought Nick to a dead halt behind her. She’d had the same reaction when she’d first let herself in and seen the mess her grandmother’s accident had created. Her heart actually felt as if it had stopped—just before she broke into a grin at her grandmother’s daring.

The paint her grandmother had chosen for her cabinets was called Crimson Cherry—and when she had fallen from the ladder while painting the upper trim, nearly a gallon of the bright bold red had splattered over the counter, the floor, the front of two upper cabinets and all but three of the lower ones.

Amy had managed to clean the streaks and splatters off the white enamel of the old stove, a project that had taken her most of yesterday, but the shock of scarlet stood out in macabre relief against the yellow and black and white of everything else.

“It looks like a crime scene in here.”

“I know,” she replied. “That’s what I thought when I first saw it.”

“This is what she was doing when she fell?”

Amy nodded, watching his frown move from the worst of the spill on the floor to a rather artful spray of bright droplets on one of the cabinets under the sink. A thick splotch of solid red the size of a dinner plate graced the cabinet next to it.

“Why?” he asked.

“She said she wanted to add a little life to the place.”

“I mean, why didn’t she pay to have it done?”

“Because she wanted to do it herself.”

The frown intensified. “A woman her age has no business doing something like this by herself. She’s—”

“Capable of making her own decisions,” Amy interrupted defensively. “She knows her own mind and once it’s made up, no one can change it.”

“You make her stubbornness sound like a virtue,” he muttered. “The woman broke her hip doing this.”

Amy turned, can in hand. “You sound just like my mother,” she muttered back, and set the can on the yellow Formica counter. The sound, like the admission, was far sharper than she intended. Drawing a breath of air that smelled faintly of paint thinner and the gardenia-scented breeze coming through the open windows, she did her best to tamp down the annoyance eating at her.

“It doesn’t matter now what she did,” she quietly amended. It wasn’t his fault this particular subject so sorely tested the only real virtue she had. “All that matters is getting this cleaned up and getting her back home. There’s an outlet over there,” she said, motioning to her right. “That’s probably the most convenient.”

She wanted him to get on with his task so she could get back to hers. Nick had no problem with that. Getting his job done and getting out of there was infinitely wiser than standing there wondering at how quickly she’d buried the frustration that had been so evident seconds ago. She’d done it too quickly not to have had considerable practice.

Spotting the outlet, he turned to leave.

With some reluctance, he turned right back and motioned to the splatters. “Mind if I ask how long ago this happened?”

“About three months. Why?”

“I just wondered why no one cleaned it up before now.”

The late-afternoon sun slanted through the window over the sink, catching the brilliant colors of the stained glass birds hanging across the upper pane. A slash of ruby touched fire to the dark sweep of her bangs.

A memory stirred at the sight of that light in her hair, but all that surfaced was the thought that her hair had felt incredibly soft and that it had once smelled like…lemons.

“Mom wanted to bring someone in to clean it up,” she said, jerking him from the flash of buried memory. “But her idea of cleaning up was to repaint the cabinets yellow like they were. Grandma said she didn’t want yellow anymore. She wanted red, and that it made no sense to pay for them to be painted a color she didn’t want. So no one did anything.”

“I see,” he muttered, getting a better understanding of the frustration he’d just witnessed. Her mom hadn’t gotten her way, so she’d simply refused to help. “And your sister?”

“She agreed with Mom. She thinks yellow is a kitchen color and red isn’t.”

“I mean, why didn’t she step in and help?”

“Because she’s—”

“Busy,” he concluded, sounding as if he should have already known what she would say.

So that left you, he thought, forcing his attention from the faintly exasperated look she gave him. Standing there in her little tank top and shorts, the long lines of her body firm and lithe, her feet bare, she didn’t look much older than the seventeen she’d been when he’d last seen her. Only, when he’d met her when she was seventeen, her hair had been long and streaked from the sun, her skin had looked like golden satin—and it had felt as soft as silk.

He’d known how soft her skin was even before he’d felt it under his hand in the nursing-home parking lot.

The memories drew a scowl. They were unwanted. Pointless. Dangerous.

Ruthlessly shoving them aside, he crouched down, knees cracking, to inspect a lower cabinet. “This would have been easier if it hadn’t been left to dry,” he muttered, pushing his thumbnail into the plate-sized blotch. “To do these right, the doors need to be taken off, stripped and sanded.”

Looking straight ahead, all he could see was the long length of her shapely legs. Feeling his gut tighten, he jerked his glance upward.

He fully expected to see dismay or displeasure. What he saw in the delicate contours of her face was contemplation.

“Should I strip them all? Even the ones that aren’t messed up?”

“If you want them to match, yeah. You should.”

“Okay,” she said.

Just like that. No questions. No hesitation. Just “Okay.”

Amazing, he thought, rising.

“You can use the same stuff I gave you for the floor. But take the doors into the sunroom or outside. The ventilation is better. Are there any sawhorses around here?”

“I have no idea.” Amy glanced in the direction of the storage shed on the far side of the house. She hadn’t a clue what was out there.

“The job will be easier if you use them.”

She gave him a nod, then saw the muscle in his jaw jerk as he waited, giving her a chance to ask any questions she might have. He was clearly only doing what her grandmother had asked of him—showing her how to best clean up the paint. So she told him she’d be sure to look for sawhorses, and watched his glance settle where her arms crossed over the odd little knot of nerves jumping in her stomach.

He said nothing else. He just gave her a look she couldn’t read at all and, having complied with her grandmother’s request, he headed to the porch for the extension cord. Within minutes, he’d shattered the early-evening stillness with his power saw as he cut a five-foot-wide chunk out of the beautiful porch railing opposite the dining room’s double doors.

He worked until dusk, pounding stakes, running strings, loosening two circles of soil with a pick. Then he left without saying a word.

He also left a pair of his sawhorses for her on the back porch.

Chapter Three

Amy climbed down from the ladder, stripped off her gloves and hoped fervently that she’d be able to put her grandmother’s kitchen back together now that she’d dismantled it. She’d taken all the doors off the cabinets on the sink side of the room and stacked the dishes and glasses that had been in them on the delft-blue table in the breakfast nook. The stained glass pieces that had hung in the window were over there, too. Newspaper covered the counters to keep the thick goop she’d spread on the cabinet’s center supports from dripping onto the Formica.

She was winging it here. Other than to help a friend paint her baby’s nursery, the only painting projects she’d ever tackled involved finger paints or watercolors with her first graders. It wasn’t the painting she was concerned about, anyway. It was the stripping and sanding part she knew nothing about. The directions on the can of solvent seemed explicit enough, though taking off the doors had presented a challenge, until she’d found the proper screwdriver.

She was just grateful to be busy. As long as she was busy, she wasn’t worrying about whether or not her mother was still annoyed with her, or wondering how long she could put off talking to the man who’d arrived nearly two hours ago and started to work without bothering to tell her he was there. She needed to thank him for the sawhorses. She just wasn’t overly anxious to approach him.

Aside from that, since he hadn’t made any effort to talk to her, it was apparent that he wanted only to do his job.

He wasn’t wasting time doing it, either. While she’d climbed around on the counter, taking down the stained glass and painting on the solvent, he had dug two holes the size of beach balls twenty feet out from the side porch and centered a short length of four-by-four in each hole. He was now filling the holes with concrete he’d mixed with a hoe in a wheelbarrow.

As she looked out the window now, she could see him wiping his forehead with his forearm. Unaware of her, he turned, his back to her as he shoveled more concrete around the support. He made the task look effortless, but beneath the gray T-shirt straining against his shoulders, strong muscles flexed and shifted with his every move.

It took little imagination for her to picture how beautifully developed those corded muscles were. The cotton and denim he wore molded to him, betraying a body formed as perfectly as the Greek sculptures she’d once studied with such dedication. She’d even created those compelling lines herself in art classes with handfuls of clay, shaping, perfecting, struggling to get every line and curve right. The human body had fascinated her. Its movement. Its expressions.

Nick had fascinated her, too, and by the time she had entered college he had become her own standard of perfection. As she’d worked the clay, she had imagined the feel of those muscles beneath her hands, the strength in them, the smoothness of his skin. She had imagined the corrugated plane of his belly, the leanness of his hips, and how it would feel to be held against his very solid chest.

Watching his biceps bunch as he lifted more cement, she wondered the same thing now.

The breath she released sounded faintly like a sigh.

The one she drew caught, her eyes widening as she realized she was remembering how she’d once fantasized about him. Conscious of the fact that she was doing it again, she jumped back from the sink.

The ceiling fan rotated slowly overhead. Turning it up a notch against the lingering heat of the day, she headed for the refrigerator and pulled out a can of diet cola. With the cold can pressed to the skin above the U of her pink T-shirt, she swallowed a flash of disbelief and guilt and tried to decide between grilled chicken breast or a hamburger for dinner. It was nearly eight o’clock. If she didn’t fix herself something decent to eat soon, she’d wind up doing what she’d done last night and settle for an apple and Oreos.

The disconcerted sensation that had jerked her from the window eased with the diversion. What replaced it was an equally discomfiting sense of obligation. She still needed to talk to Nick. To thank him.

Since putting it off would only give her more time to dread it, she grabbed another can of cola and closed the fridge with her hip. He might not be interested in talking to her, and she still thought him terrible for what he’d done to her sister all those years ago, but she couldn’t ignore the need to return his thoughtfulness. Not just for leaving the sawhorses. But for what he was doing now—pushing himself so an elderly lady could return to her home.

The metallic clank of colliding metal greeted her as she walked onto the porch outside the dining-room doors. Beyond the gap in the porch railing, she saw Nick turn from where he’d just tossed the shovel and a hoe into the wheelbarrow. A dusting of fine gray powder coated his work boots, his worn jeans sported a frayed hole above one knee, and a streak of something dark bisected the Manhattan Athletic Club logo on his faded gray T-shirt.

She was wondering if he’d belonged to the prestigious-sounding club when he’d lived in New York when his eyes, blue as lasers, locked on hers.

Caution immediately clouded his face.

“You look thirsty.” Aware of the faint flutter of nerves in her stomach, she walked to the edge of the porch, her sneakers silent on the wide yellow boards. She held out a can of cola. “I noticed that your water bottle is empty,” she said, nodding toward the clear plastic container on the strip of lawn between them and the driveway. “I hope you don’t mind diet. It’s all I have.”

Warily eyeing the can she held, he walked over to where she stood in the center of the gap.

She was thinking about telling him she hadn’t poisoned it when he reached up.

“Diet’s fine. Thanks,” he murmured, taking what she offered.

“Are you about finished for the day?”

“Just about. I just need to wash out the wheelbarrow and clean up the tools.” He popped the top on the can, the sound sharp against the evening stillness. The sun skimmed the treetops, slanting long shadows in what was left of the hour before dark. “The footings didn’t take as long to put in as I thought they would. If I’d brought lumber with me, I could have started framing the ramp tonight.”

From the self-deprecating frown that creased his brow as he raised the can to his mouth, it was apparent that he wished he had realized how quickly the work would go. The hour he could have put into the project now would have put him that much closer to getting the job finished.

Not wanting to hold him up now, she figured it best to do what she needed to do so he could leave. “I just wanted to thank you,” she said, watching him tip back the can and swallow. “For leaving the sawhorses,” she explained. “That was very kind of you. But especially for what you’re doing for Grandma. It can’t be easy working all day then coming out to do this.”

He’d drained half the can before he lowered it. Contemplating its pull ring, he muttered, “It’s not a problem.”

“I appreciate it, anyway.”

“Then, you’re welcome.”

“Did you have dinner before you came here?”

The question was out before she realized she was going to ask it, much less have time to consider where it would lead.

Nick looked caught off guard by it, too.

“Uh…no,” he murmured, glancing at his watch as if he might have been putting off knowing exactly what time it was. “I didn’t want to waste the daylight.”

Amy’s conscience tugged hard.

“I was just getting ready to grill a hamburger,” she said, aware of exactly why he hadn’t wanted to waste it. He wanted to help an old woman go home. The very least she could do was repay his kindness. On behalf of her grandmother, of course. “If you don’t mind staying, I’ll make one for you, too. I can have dinner ready by the time you get your things cleaned up.”

For a moment, Nick said nothing. He just stood with the can of cola dangling at his side while he considered the wariness in Amy’s eyes, along with the delicate curve of her jaw, her throat. She did nothing to call particular attention to herself. Her makeup, if she was even wearing any, was minimal. Her clothes were loose and practical. Yet her tousled hair fairly begged a man to sink his fingers into it, her lush ripe mouth taunted him with its fullness and her willowy little body was as tempting as sin itself.

If you don’t mind staying, she’d said. He would have laughed at the irony of the suggestion had he been in the mood to find anything even slightly amusing about being there to begin with.

In the past couple of hours, he’d done what would have taken some men twice as long to accomplish just so he could get away from her. It seemed as if every time he’d looked up, he’d caught sight of her as she’d worked by the open kitchen window above the sink. And each time he’d seen her, he’d found himself having to try that much harder to shove her out of his thoughts.

The first time he’d noticed her, she had been reaching to take down the little stained glass birds that had hung along the top of the window. Her waist-length top had ridden up, exposing the strip of flesh between the waistband of her ragged cutoffs and the band of her bra. He hadn’t known which he’d found more tantalizing: the glimpse of ice-blue lace or the smooth expanse of her flat stomach.

He still hadn’t decided, even though the images were burned into his brain.

The last time he’d noticed her, she’d been standing on the counter painting something—solvent, probably—on a cabinet. Mostly what he’d seen then was the sweet curve of her backside and the long length of her legs.

Certain he’d have to be unconscious not to be aware of her, and mindful of his less-than-illustrious history with her family, he told himself the wisest thing to do would be to leave. But he was a pragmatic man. And a logical one. His job there would be infinitely easier if he and Amy could somehow call a truce. Since she was offering the opportunity, it seemed only reasonable to meet her halfway.

Aside from that, he was starving.

“Do you still burn them?” he asked, his tone mild.

“Excuse me?”

“Hamburgers. The last time you made them when I was around, they were charred on both sides and gray in the middle. We wound up having cold cuts.”

She blinked at the unexpected hint of teasing in his eyes. But before she could ask what he was talking about, she remembered, too.

The exact sequence of events was fuzzy, but she remembered him being at her parents’ house with Paige for a family barbecue. Amy had been left in charge of the grill, and she’d knocked over a cruet of salad oil that had been set on its sideboard. The resulting ball of flame had turned the meat into little lumps of coal.

“I can’t believe you remembered that.”

“I remember a lot of things about you,” he replied, his glance holding hers. “And yeah,” he murmured, “a hamburger would be great.”

The carved lines of his face were inscrutable in the moments before he swiped up the empty cement bags and carried them to the truck parked in the drive. He sounded as if remembering her was merely a matter of fact, as unremarkable to him as recalling his own name. She just had no idea why he would recall anything about her beyond the fact that she’d simply been around.

Unless, she thought as she headed into the kitchen to search drawers for matches, it was because he’d been aware of how awkward she’d felt around him, or because he’d been present during some of her more embarrassing moments. At least, they’d been embarrassing to a shy girl of seventeen with a desperate need to please her family.

She’d certainly been embarrassed the day she’d incinerated the family meal. Yet Nick hadn’t let on if he had noticed how badly she’d wished she could twitch her nose and disappear. As gallant as the hero in any young girl’s fantasies, he’d come to her aid, quietly removing the smoldering evidence to the trash while everyone else had come down on her for not paying attention to what she’d been doing. Then he’d told her with a wink that he hadn’t been in the mood for hamburgers anyway, that any one of them could have done the same thing, and whisked Paige off with him to the deli around the corner for packages of turkey and ham.

She had felt pitifully grateful to him for his kindness, and had thought him quite wonderful for defusing her little disaster. But she’d already thought him pretty wonderful, anyway. The problem was that she’d grown to feel more than simple gratitude. She had begun to feel things she had no business feeling toward a man who was going to be her brother-in-law. Things that had made her heart hurt when she’d realized he wouldn’t be part of their family. Things that had actually made her feel relieved when he’d gone, because her feelings toward him had started making her feel uncomfortable with her sister. She and Paige had next to nothing in common and Paige had always done everything so much better than Amy felt she ever could, but Amy had never in her life felt envious or jealous of her until she’d fallen so hard for Nick herself.

No one had known she’d had such a crush on him. And a crush was all it could have been at seventeen. No one but her grandmother. When her confused feelings had driven her to confide in the dear woman, Bea had gently assured her that it wasn’t at all unusual for a young girl to become infatuated with an unattainable older man. It was simply part of growing up.

Amy absently adjusted the flame on the grill. The flash of guilt and attraction she’d experienced earlier as she’d watched Nick from the window was back. Only now, the disturbing feelings were a little harder to tamp down, a little harder to deny.

She pointedly turned to the house, putting her heart into the effort anyway. She had been young and impressionable then, but she was adult enough now to know that it was only memories making her feel those old conflicts. That, and being back in Cedar Lake, back in a place where she would perpetually feel the insecurities of being seventeen.

“Mind if I go inside and wash up? I could use some soap.”

Nick’s deep voice vibrated over her nerves like the roll of distant thunder. Her stomach jumped. Pressing her hand to it, she turned to see him a few feet behind her on the concrete patio.

He’d washed out the wheelbarrow with the hose at the side of the house. Skimming a glance past the water-darkened spots on his jeans, she dropped her hand to her side. “Go ahead,” she murmured, wondering if he’d ever suspected how she’d felt about him. She would have died of mortification if he had. “Take the door to the left inside the kitchen. It’s the first door on your right in the hall.”

He glanced from the gas jets sending flame over the metal coals. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I’ll call if there’s a fire.”

She saw the corner of his mouth kick up in what almost passed for a smile, then watched him take the six back stairs two at a time and disappear into the house. Moments later, she followed, making herself concentrate only on the task of feeding him. The man was probably famished. Considering what she’d seen some of the older boys at school pack away, she had the feeling one little hamburger wasn’t going to cut it.

It took her mere minutes to throw the patties on the gas grill, pile sliced tomato, onions and cheese on a plate and gather condiments and buns and set them on the table on the back lawn. She was on her way back in after flipping the meat when she met Nick coming into the kitchen.

He’d washed his face. Splashed water on it, anyway. The neck of his shirt was damp and his thick hair was darkened to almost black from the water he’d used when he combed it. She didn’t know if it was because he’d combed his hair straight back or because it was darker, but his chiseled features seemed more elegant, somehow, the blue of his eyes more intense.

Preferring to ignore the catch in her pulse, she set a small sack of chips on top of a container of deli salad she’d taken from the fridge.

“Go on out,” she said, balancing the salad and chips in one hand as she reached for the napkins, utensils and plates. A bunch of grapes she’d rinsed sat in a bowl by the sink. “It’s just about ready,” she told him, thinking she’d have to make one more trip.

“What do you want me to take?”

“Nothing. I’ve got it,” she insisted, and decided to stack the plates on top of the bowl.

Seeing what she was trying to do, ignoring her disclaimer, he took the bowl himself.

“Is this everything?” he asked.

She hesitated. “I could heat some baked beans if you want. There’s canned goods in the pantry. Or I have some yogurt. Except for cereal, this is all I have. I didn’t buy much at the store.”

Confusion flashed in his eyes. Seconds later, comprehension replaced it. “I’m not talking about what you’re fixing for dinner, Amy. Whatever you have here is fine. I mean to take outside. There’s no reason for you to carry all this by yourself.”

“Oh,” she murmured, aware of the brush of his hand against hers as he took the chips and salad. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he murmured in return, and moved ahead of her so he could hold the door.

The sun had just dropped below the horizon, the pale light of evening turning the pine trees a dusky shade of blue. The calm water of the lake reflected nothing but shadows, crickets called to each other and from the rocks along the water’s edge the deep croak of frogs filtered through the balmy air.

Amy was acutely aware of the twilight stillness as she took what Nick carried for her and placed it on the old redwood picnic table that sat halfway between the house and the water. It was a time of day she had once found welcoming and restful. Since she’d been in Cedar Lake this time, it had simply seemed lonely.

She attributed the unfamiliar feeling to the isolation of the place, and the fact that she was there by herself. She was accustomed to feeling isolated when it came to her family, but this was different. She’d never been at the lake house alone before, and it felt odd without her grandmother around. As Nick lowered himself to the long bench opposite her seat, she had to admit it felt even more strange to be alone there with him.

Her glance caught his across the table. The way he was watching her, he didn’t look all that certain about being there, either.

Refusing to let her gesture turn uncomfortable for them both, she handed him the relish plate. “Help yourself,” she said, and reached for the salad she really didn’t want.

He immediately took her up on her suggestion, piling tomato slices on his cheeseburger. “I always thought it would seem like one long vacation living in a place like this. On the water, I mean. I used to really envy the kids who could hang around a lake during the summer.”

“You make it sound as if you never had access to one. There are dozens of lakes around here.”

“That doesn’t mean I had the time,” he informed her, adding lettuce. “I spent every summer from the time I was ten years old working construction with my uncle. We’d go out to Blue Springs for a Sunday picnic once in a while,” he said, speaking of one of the public lakes in the area, “but there was never time to spend a whole day just hanging out.” Adding the top bun to the three-inch-high sandwich, he nodded toward the water. “It’s nice here.”

His tone was conversational, his manner less guarded than it had seemed just a short while ago. She figured that had to do with the fact that she was feeding him. It would be rude of him to be sullen.

“You worked construction when you were ten?”

“From then through college,” he confirmed, taking the container of salad she handed him.

“That’s awfully young.” It was also unconscionable, she thought. A ten-year-old was merely a child.

An image of him as a young boy wavered in the back of her mind as she watched him spoon pasta salad onto his plate. She could easily imagine the fresh, eager faces of her male students and all that budding manhood trapped in their energetic little bodies. But there was too much of an edge to the man sitting across from her for her to imagine him that innocent.

He handed the salad back.

“I was hardly an abused child, if that’s what you’re thinking.” From the troubled look on her face, Nick had the distinct feeling that it was. The woman was as transparent as window glass. She always had been. “I had to beg Uncle Mike to take me with him at first. If I remember right, I promised I’d wash his truck for him if he’d let me go.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want to stay with my aunt and cousins while my mom was at work. It’s not that I didn’t like my relatives,” he qualified, in case she got the wrong idea there, too. “It was just that they were all female. There was more appeal to being with the guys and wearing a hard hat than being around a bunch of girls.”

Realizing she was still holding the salad, she set it aside and absently reached for the tomatoes herself. She had no problem imagining a young boy preferring the company of men over girls. She just couldn’t imagine a responsible adult allowing a child to deliberately be where it wasn’t safe. “But wasn’t that dangerous? A child being at a construction site, I mean?”

“It sounds more dangerous than it was.” Nick took a bite of burger, wondering as he did if she realized how much of her guard had slipped. By the time he swallowed, he’d decided she hadn’t simply forgotten to be wary. He actually detected real concern. “Mike had a partner back then,” he explained, wanting her to know there was no way his uncle would have put him in jeopardy. “And the company was bigger. He and Roy, his partner,” he clarified, “supervised the jobs, rather than actually working on them the way Mike does now.”

The way he’s had to do since his partner retired last year, Nick mentally muttered, hating how hard his uncle was working just when he should be slowing down himself. But Mike couldn’t slow down. He’d borrowed to buy out his partner’s interest in the business and he’d also lost money on contracts because it was taking him longer to complete them with less help.

Feeling his stomach knot with the thoughts, Nick glanced across the table and met the quiet interest in Amy’s guileless eyes. Drawn by that interest, distracted by it, he felt the quick surge of frustration fade.

“He would let me watch some of the craftsmen as long as he was nearby,” he told her. “The rest of the time, he stuck me out of the way with a stack of wood and a hammer. Or I’d sit in the truck after he explained what they were working on that day and try to figure out where they were on the blueprints. He didn’t really put me to work until I was a little older.”

“And you really liked it,” she quietly concluded.

“I couldn’t learn enough fast enough. Building something from nothing fascinated me. That’s when I first decided to become an architect,” he admitted, eyeing his hamburger again. “Except I wanted to live in a city and build skyscrapers.”

He offered his last comment casually, as if his ambition were a mere aside in life, and turned his attention to his meal. It didn’t seem to Amy that it bothered him to be working once again for his uncle. If anything, he seemed completely accepting of it. Yet, as curious as she found that, considering the brilliant future her parents and Paige had once thought he had ahead of him, what struck her most was what he’d said about his family.

She knew nothing about them. Though he and Paige had gone out together for nearly a year in college, he had been around the Chapman house only for a few months—mostly on weekends because he’d taken the job in New York by then—before he’d disappeared from their lives. If mention had been made of his family, it had never been around her.

She told herself it was only to keep the silence from growing awkward that she asked about them now.

“I didn’t realize you have so many relatives here.”

“I don’t have anymore. Just Uncle Mike, Aunt Kate and one cousin. The rest have moved away.”

“Your mom, too?”

It occurred to Nick that she had yet to touch her meal, something that struck him as odd, since she’d had him do all the talking. Reaching across the table, he nudged her plate closer to her and told her that his mom had taken a transfer to Florida a few years ago when the insurance company she worked for opened offices there. Because Amy asked if he and his cousins had been close, he then told her that all six of them were like sisters to him. At least, as he imagined sisters would be, since he had no siblings of his own. He and his mom had lived only a couple of blocks from them, and his aunt and uncle’s chaotic house had been like a second home.

He had no idea why he told her that. It wasn’t like him to talk about the things that had mattered to him the most when he’d been growing up. Until he stopped, he hadn’t even realized how easily he’d been talking. But the quiet didn’t feel uncomfortable. At least, it didn’t until Amy casually lit the citron candle on the table to ward off the bugs and the dark now that the sun had set and asked about the one person in his family he hadn’t bothered to mention.

“What about your father?” she asked, her skin glowing golden in the candlelight.

His glance slid from hers. “What about him?”

Amy tipped her head, watching as he distractedly traced the logo on his empty cola can. He looked almost as nonchalant as he sounded. It was the way he’d so quickly looked away that gave her pause. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how relaxed he’d become with her.

And she with him.

“You haven’t said anything about him.” She offered the observation quietly, thinking it obvious that he had great affection for his extended family. It was just that he and his uncle seemed to have been the only two men in it.

“There’s nothing to say.” The light of the flame glinted like a spark off the silver metal as he nudged the aluminum container aside. “He left when I was nine.”

“So Mike is more like a father to you than an uncle.”

At the quickness of her quiet conclusion, he met her eyes. “You could say that. Yeah,” he admitted, since it didn’t feel right to be vague about the role the man had played in his life. “He is.”

His glance skimmed her face, drifted to her mouth. Realizing how closely he was studying her, he forced his attention away. He didn’t want to wonder why she was interested in any of this. He didn’t want to be curious about her at all. But more than anything else, he didn’t want to sit there with that soft light playing over her delicate features and think about how appealing he found the melodic sound of her voice and how comfortable he felt at her table.

“Speaking of Uncle Mike,” he muttered, wanting to cut off the thoughts that had crept in anyway, “I really have to get going. I need to talk to him before he goes to bed.” He also had another job to tackle tonight. He only hoped that, unlike last night, he wouldn’t fall asleep at his drafting table.

“But before I go,” he said, pulling a pen from his pocket, “I need you to tell me more about the room addition your grandmother wants. Your idea to close in the porch is good, so we’ll start with that.”

Pushing aside their plates, he slid a clean napkin toward her. “Show me what you have in mind.” Half a dozen bold slashes and he’d roughed out the shape of the porch and indicated the entrance to the kitchen. “Mark where you think she’d want windows and doors. And give me an idea of the space she’ll need for a closet.”

He leaned closer, repositioning the candle between them, and handed her the pen.

She took it, aware of the odd flutter of her nerves at his nearness, and tried to concentrate only on doing what her grandmother had asked of her as she explained what she thought the older woman would want. She also tried very hard not to feel flattered by the glints of approval she caught in his eyes when she offered a couple of suggestions her grandma hadn’t mentioned, or to feel pleased when he thanked her for dinner and told her her cooking skills had definitely improved. After all, she was no longer the naive girl she’d once been, and he was no longer the white knight she’d believed him to be.

He was the man who had hurt her sister.

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