It was the sheer proximity of Julius, his strength, his size, the seductive flash of his smile

She wanted him.

It had begun before the kiss, but after, there was no denying her desire. She grew fascinated with him. The width of his hands, the thickness of his fingers, the sturdy curve of his shoulder. She would gaze too long at his face, the blue eyes that always startled her, the broad cheekbones, the hard chin, until he slowly swung his gaze to her. Even then, she’d last only three seconds more before she looked away, leaving him amused.

She was fascinated by him.

She’d sit past dark and think of Julius. He’d taught her all the things she needed to learn on the farm, but she decided, she would ask him to teach her one more lesson….

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Harlequin American Romance, where our goal is to give you hours of unbeatable reading pleasure.

Kick starting the month is another enthralling installment of THE CARRADIGNES: AMERICAN ROYALTY continuity series. In Michele Dunaway’s The Simply Scandalous Princess, rumors of a tryst between Princess Lucia Carradigne and a sexy older man leads to the king issuing a royal marriage decree! Follow the series next month in Harlequin Intrigue.

Another terrific romance from Pamela Browning is in store for you with Rancher’s Double Dilemma. When single dad Garth Colquitt took one look at his new nanny’s adorable baby girl, he knew there had to be some kind of crazy mixup, because his daughter and her daughter were twins! Was a marriage of convenience the solution? Next, don’t miss Help Wanted: Husband? by Darlene Scarlera. When a single mother-to-be hires a handsome ranch hand, she only has business on her mind. Yet, before long, she wonders if he was just the man she needed—to heal her heart. And rounding out the month is Leah Vale’s irresistible debut novel The Rich Man’s Baby, in which a dashing tycoon discovers he has a son, but the proud mother of his child refuses to let him claim them for his own…unless love enters the equation.

Best,

Melissa Jeglinski

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin American Romance

Help Wanted: Husband?

Darlene Scalera

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Darlene Scalera is a native New Yorker who graduated magna cum laude from Syracuse University with a degree in public communications. She worked in a variety of fields, including telecommunications and public relations, before devoting herself full-time to romance fiction writing. She was instrumental in forming the Saratoga, New York, chapter of Romance Writers of America and is a frequent speaker on romance writing at local schools, libraries, writing groups and women’s organizations. She currently lives happily ever after in upstate New York with her husband, Jim, and their two children, J.J. and Ariana. You can write to Darlene at P.O. Box 217, Niverville, NY 12130.

Books by Darlene Scalera

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

762—A MAN FOR MEGAN

807—MAN IN A MILLION

819—THE COWBOY AND THE COUNTESS

861—PRESCRIPTION FOR SEDUCTION

896—BORN OF THE BLUEGRASS

923—HELP WANTED: HUSBAND?

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 Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter One

He was the largest man Lorna had ever seen. Not that she’d seen that many, having spent three-quarters of her life at the Sacred Heart Academy for Girls, and the other quarter within these county lines. But she’d seen enough. One too many, the population of Hope, Massachusetts, was still saying, and if anyone was bold enough to say it to her face, Lorna would have to agree.

Standing behind the trees she’d been pruning, she watched the mountain of a man as he rounded the rusty pickup. His jeans were worn white, emphasizing sturdy Viking legs. His shoulders were a yard wide. The faded denim jacket stretched across their width normally would be too thin for this time of year, but today’s weather was good. Only the old snow in the woods remembered winter. The man crossed onto her property and with each heavy step, she waited for the ground to give a fine tremble.

He stopped, his gaze on her house. It was an upright saltbox, formerly New England austere until five days ago when Lorna had found some old shutters in the shed and painted them yellow. Not a polite yellow. A screaming yellow. She suspected it was this trimming that held the stranger’s eye. She was going to paint the weathered door next. Blue—a brilliant, peacock-strutting blue. No more somber colors. That was one thing she’d sworn off when she’d buried her husband less than six weeks ago. Life was too short and too brazen for grim colors. Good to her new vow, she’d worn chartreuse to the funeral. She’d sashayed past the pews, the murmurs soft as pillow talk. Still Lorna knew what they whispered. A madness born from grief. Craziness was expected, even excused, when two days earlier your husband had been surprised by a shotgun while in bed with another man’s wife and shot in an area of the anatomy unmentionable in mixed company. Suffice it to say, the tale would never be told without men wincing and women nodding in silent satisfaction that God does indeed work in mysterious ways.

But there’d been no madness for Lorna that day her philandering husband was laid to his eternal rest. If she’d ever been crazy, it was three months before when she’d actually believed her husband had married her for love instead of her family’s money. No, that day as she’d moved past the murmuring congregation, her clarity was as vivid as the casket’s polished brass.

She had made her way down the aisle, squinting at her father already in the front pew, which had always belonged to McDonoughs. Her ancestors had founded Hope, each generation adding acquisitions and properties until today, the family was the richest in the county and its head, Axel McDonough, known to one and all—even his only daughter—as simply “the Boss.”

But that day, as her father had turned to his daughter coming up the aisle, she’d seen the always-present disapproval on his face deeper than the ruts still frozen in the road. And in that moment, sashaying in her chartreuse A-line, with her wonderful clearheadedness, Lorna had known she would never call him or any man “the Boss” again.

The giant hadn’t moved. Lorna levered her arm, testing the weight of the hand cutters. Without a doubt, the stranger had the meat and the muscle, but she had her newly earned lucidity. No man would ever get the best of her again.

The stranger staring at the house suddenly smiled, releasing the years from his face, adding devilish lights. Lorna locked her knees, the pad of her index finger testing the pruners’ pointed tips. She’d seen smiles come easily like that before.

HOPE, JULIUS HOLT thought. It was the town’s name. It was also what had brought him here. He liked it—the name—and that was good enough reason as any for a man with no patience for self-examination. He’d seen the Help Wanted ad and followed the road that shadowed the river’s path to the south, the route so curved he could only see to the next bend and then no farther. He’d seen the fields first, then the orchard stretching to the sky’s line. Many of the trees had been let go too long. Their branches were tangled or reached wide, shivering in the slight breeze, but light showed between the stripped limbs, and their rows were neat and even. He’d let the thick-trunked trees lead him, imagining a farmhouse at their end so old and settled no windows opened without a wrestle. The outside could probably use paint, but snow crocuses would be coming through the moist soil and lilac bushes would soon bud to soften the house’s plain corners. And beneath that shingled roof, there would be a family, a dog that rarely barked and a million memories. Julius had followed the long road, the gray trees to his right and the river too far in the distance to hear its flow, and imagined that house as clearly as he knew no hard-living man such as himself belonged there. Then he’d rounded a curve and been stopped cold by those canary-yellow shutters as out of place as he’d been his whole life. He’d pulled over to the side, gotten out, taken only a few steps when those brassy shutters stopped him once more. He’d smiled and thought, Well, I’ll be damned. Hope.

He was at the orchard’s edge when a sharp green streak flashed between all that gray. A thin, tall woman stepped out from the angled rows in a vivid lime sweatsuit completely at odds with her pinched lips and her brow’s stern set. It was another sight so unexpected his smile came back wider. He stood, grinning ear to ear, knowing he looked as idiotic as the rail of a woman draped in Mardi Gras colors and aiming the pruners’ steel points at his heart.

“Ma’am.” He nodded.

“It’s ‘miss,”’ she corrected, her superior tone harsh to his ears.

“Miss,” he obliged. He reached into his back pocket, she all the time eyeing him, her grip strong on the cutters. He pulled out a torn piece of newspaper, unfolded it. “I’ve come about the job.”

Her eyes narrowed to inspect him. He kept his gaze steady and waited for her to speak. Her eyes were the gray-green of a river and soft as the rest of her seemed hard. She blinked fast. Her eyes narrowed even further. She pressed a hand to her stomach and raised her other arm, brushing it across her brow’s high slope, pointing the cutters heavenward. She blinked hard. Her expression shifted. He saw the surprise in her features such as he’d felt moments ago. Her arm dropped. The cutters hit the ground. The woman swayed like the spare, overgrown limbs behind them.

“Ma’am…I mean, miss…”

He looked into her eyes. Helplessness came into the gray-green waters as the woman whispered in a most confounding feminine plea, “Oh, my,” and keeled over onto his feet.

“Miss? Miss?” Julius squatted and shook the woman’s shoulder. Her eyes stayed closed, but she seemed to be breathing. He shook her shoulder harder. “C’mon, lady, don’t leave me now,” he heard himself plead as if he’d been searching his whole life for a carnival-colored, run-down farm with a mistress to match. He picked up her sharp-boned wrist, grateful for the faint but steady pulse beneath his fingertips. He patted the back of her hand, glancing around. Even if he was the type to yell for help, there didn’t seem to be another soul about the place. He looked down at the long-boned woman. Her face, relieved of expression, had lost its stern lines. Her skin was clear and smooth as the day’s rise.

He checked again but saw no one. “Damn.” He gathered the woman in his arms and lifted her.

LORNA WAS FLOATING, the gentle, rocking motion and pleasant solid warmth too agreeable to give up. She cracked her eyes, stared at a gold glint just beyond her nose, focusing until a saintly face became recognizable. She reached to touch the shining face.

“Saint Nicholas.”

She snapped her head back. Past a thick neck, the gold image suspended on a chain around it, she saw the man. His full lips were dry and naturally curved as if always amused. His eyes were a startling hot blue, the exact shade she’d envisioned painting the front door. The color caught and held her.

“Patron saint of—”

She heard no more, twisting like a wild animal in the powerful arms around her. Her hands flailed at the man’s face. “Let me go.”

“Easy now,” the man said, with such an note of tenderness she was startled into a second of submission. The beat of his heart was beside her ear. The rhythm matched each step he took. She arched her body and thrashed once more.

“There now.” Even as her hands struck at him, caught him square on his jaw, he eased her onto the porch steps with the same surprising gentleness she’d heard in his voice. He stepped back, not even bothering to rub his chin where her blows had landed. He looked down at her with his always-amused expression. Her chest heaving from the fight still boiling within her, she glared at him, gathering details for the police report. His features were strong, blunt, like stone whose lines had been gradually worn by the elements. His eyebrows were thick, black and heavy, emphasizing the lightning blue of his eyes. She could still feel his arms around her.

“You might better sit a moment or two. You went down like a sack of potatoes, miss.”

“I fainted?” she asked, though now she remembered the dizzying wave, the light-headedness that often came when she rose too fast or forgot to eat. Her anger lessened as quickly as it’d been ignited. She sucked in her cheeks and looked away, her irritation only at herself. She felt like a fool. “I skipped breakfast.” Actually she’d tried a few saltines but hadn’t been able to keep them down. She glanced at her watch. “And lunch.”

She pushed herself off the steps.

“You should sit.”

“Thank you, I’m fine.” She ran her hand across her crown, checking for loose strands as she drew herself up. “Thank you for your help.”

The man’s hands reached out to steady her. She stared at those large wide hands, remembering their strength. She raised her head, met those brilliant blue eyes. She made her voice all business. “You’re interested in the position?”

He studied her. She was taller than an average woman and long limbed, long fingered. Her face was long, too, and her lips full but pressed fast to each other. Her nostrils were cut high. Her gray-green eyes were flat as smoke now but closed, their lids were milk-white and fine veined as lace. And when they’d first opened, as he’d carried her in his arms, those eyes had held the sweetness men oftentimes thought about at night.

Those eyes focused on him now with the sober stare of a taskmaster. Turn and run, he thought, self-preservation his first instinct. But behind the woman, he saw those wild yellow shutters, proclaiming their right to be. “Yes, Miss—”

She brushed her hand once more across her smooth crown, looked tired. “It’s Mrs., truth be told.”

She felt the dizziness come again as his blue eyes examined her. She reached for the porch rail, but when his eyes darkened with concern, she straightened and stood without support. “Mrs. O’Reilly.”

“Mrs. O’Reilly.” He considered her a mute moment, then smiled. She saw in that smile a man used to finding favor with women. “If I might speak to the boss?”

Her long frame became even taller. “You’re speaking to the boss, Mr….?”

The surprise in his eyes stayed only a breath, but the smile remained, his face full of a warmth and invitation that made most women instinctively lower their lashes as they returned his smile. Lorna pinched her lips together.

“Holt. Julius Holt, Mrs. O’Reilly.”

She folded her arms across her chest and spoke through tight lips. “Had much experience, Mr. Holt?”

He smiled still. “More than most.”

Her lips pursed, her earlier vexation gaining strength again. “How about at farming, Mr. Holt?”

“Born to it, ma’am, in Oklahoma on my grand-daddy’s farm until it went bust and my father moved us to California to try our luck there. I was about seven I recall.”

His tone had turned conversational, as if ready to tell her anything she wanted to hear.

“And did you have any?”

“Ma’am?”

“Luck? Did you and your family have any luck in California?”

He shook his head, the easygoing smile joined by a dry chuckle. “Not a speck.” His face sobered. “We were living in an old boxcar set on concrete blocks when my daddy had a cerebral hemorrhage.” He leaned in, the laughter gone and those blue eyes electric. “Dead.” He snapped his fingers. Lorna jumped. “Right before my eyes. Just like that.” He leaned back. “The biggest surprise was the drink didn’t get him first. Ma hung on for a while, raised chickens, had a big garden, but eventually the drink did take her.” His delivery became matter-of-fact. “I worked the farms in the valley beside the Mexicans almost a year before the State caught up to my sister and me.”

“How old were you?” She hadn’t meant for the question to come out so soft.

“Thirteen.”

“Thirteen?” Lorna tipped her head, eyeing him. She’d heard lies before.

He leaned in too close again. He knew she wanted to step back, but she didn’t. He liked that in her. “By twelve, I could buck hay all day.”

The woman raised her chin, the high flare of her nostrils giving her a haughty expression that instinctively provoked him. He tilted his own head, about to give her the old once-over when he noticed the garish green of her outfit again. His belligerence slid away to amused appreciation again for this odd woman with a penchant for outlandish colors. He let his grin widen, wearing it as boldly as her flamboyant colors, knowing both their affections were only to deflect focus.

He looked around, casual-like, assessing the farm instead of the woman. Past the set of her shoulders, he saw the buildings, one so dilapidated he wondered why winter winds hadn’t taken it out of its misery. The others needed repair also. He saw stretches of tarpaper where shingles once had been. An old car with no wheels sat rusting beside one low-roofed building. A door hung by one hinge off another. Farther on, he saw fallen trees flattening the brambled remains of plantings. Enough work here for an army of men, let alone one man who never seemed to stay a month or two before circumstances or need drove him on.

Still he had to admire that orchard with its bull-necked trunks stretching out in every direction. Real pretty country once he’d gotten past the new subdivisions beginning to surround the main part of town. He saw the pond in the lower field thawing at its edges, looked to the slopes of the land resting at the horizon. A man could sit, take a breath and feel whole here. Julius’s gaze moved back to the tight-mouthed woman. His pleasure receded. Pretty land and loud colors aside, the schoolmarm and he weren’t exactly a match made in heaven. He met her snooty expression and the urge to needle her arose as naturally as the smile still on his face.

“The ad said starting salary was seven dollars an hour?”

She nodded. “Plus room and board.”

“Seven dollars an hour?” He was incredulous. He didn’t think it was possible, but her mouth pinched even tighter. He was enjoying himself now.

“It’s a reasonable wage.”

He let out a laugh. “It’s an allowance, sister.”

She squared her shoulders. His gaze dropped as her nicely shaped breasts thrust up.

“I am not your—” Her lean, long frame weaved as if to fold up on itself once more.

“Whoa.” He caught her elbow, moved beside her and supported her lower back with his other hand. “No law says we can’t sit while we negotiate, is there now?”

Her body tensed beneath his touch. She shook him off, easing herself onto the steps without his help. He saw the fine flush of sweat across that high, proud brow. He patted his pants pocket, hoping for a tissue. One pocket was empty except for a worn wallet with no pictures and little money. In the other pocket, he found a cocktail napkin with a name and telephone number that he’d never call scrawled across it. He shoved the napkin at the woman.

She glanced down at the wrinkled square he thrust at her.

“The Fat Dog Grille” was imprinted in a curve across its top. Beneath it, the name and number were written in a feminine flourish. The woman looked up at Julius. “Lulu? You actually know someone named Lulu?”

He smiled slowly. “And she’s not even the first Lulu I’ve known…nor the last, God willing.”

She snatched the napkin from him, her gaze stern even as she tucked her lip as if biting back a smile. She paled and pressed the square to cheek. She flattened her hand against her stomach.

“You gonna be sick?” His alarm was real.

The woman took a deep breath and sat up yet straighter, which until then, Julius hadn’t thought possible. Her spine stiff and her expression inflexible, she handed him back the napkin. “There is no negotiation, Mr. Holt. The pay is, as stated, seven dollars an hour with room and board.”

Pursing his lips in imitation of the woman, he studied the acreage as if actually considering her offer.

“You put up those shutters?” He glanced away from the bright rectangles quickly, catching her off guard, her expression unschooled. He didn’t want to see what he saw. He knew she didn’t want him to see it either—the flash of desperation. His impulsive smile disappeared. Those gray-green eyes were going to be her undoing. His, too.

He was about to say goodbye when he saw a keen challenge in her gaze.

“Don’t change the subject, Mr. Holt.”

He sat on the steps, spread his knees so his body took up more space. He plucked a piece of grass. “Are you offering me the job, Mrs. O’Reilly?”

She inched to the opposite side of the steps. “No.”

“So, negotiations are still open?”

“No, Mr. Holt. There are no negotiations.” She stood too quickly, grasped the rail. He reached for her arm but she twisted away from him, steadied herself on the rail.

“Liver,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?” She swiveled her head toward him; her eyes gradually refocused to find him.

“Eat some liver. It’s full of iron.” He took in her slim frame. Her legs were long as a restless night. “You take a multivitamin?”

She folded her hands at her waist. “Thank you for your concern, Mr. Holt, but I’ll be fine. Thank you for coming by.”

He’d been dismissed, but only his gaze moved to his pickup on the shoulder of the dirt road, then back at the woman with her neon-green sweatshirt and her crazy yellow shutters and her colorless face. “Had a lot of others apply for the job?”

“You’re the first.”

He liked her for not lying. He smiled. She sank onto the steps as if even her slight weight was suddenly too much.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I painted those shutters.”

He kept smiling at her. “It’s a fine yellow.”

Her expression stayed tense except those betraying gray-green eyes softened. “Soon as I get a chance, the door’s going to be bright blue.”

He studied the weathered door, nodding as if he could already see it painted. “You like bright colors?”

“Never much thought about it until I wore chartreuse to my husband’s funeral last month.” She shrugged, looked tired. “Now I can’t seem to get enough of them.”

“I’m sorry.”

She looked at him as if she didn’t understand. “About your husband,” he clarified.

“Oh.” She looked out to the road.

Her reaction intrigued him. “You’re not?” Instinctively he knew she wouldn’t lie.

She looked at him. “I wasn’t happy about it, mind you.”

He was silent but not in judgment. He’d also known men who had deserved to die. He didn’t ask what happened. He had no right. Still, if she decided to tell him, he would listen. Everyone deserved that much. He plucked a piece of grass, traced its length and gave her silence should she want to speak.

She watched him from the corner of her eyes, liking the quiet, thoughtful way he touched the grass as if it were priceless.

“He was in bed with another man’s wife,” she said flatly. “The husband found them. They called it a crime of passion. Passion.” She repeated the word and shook her head.

He saw her eyes confused and vulnerable and, without a doubt, a man’s undoing.

He shifted on the step, his hand reaching to tug at the bill of his baseball cap before he remembered he’d taken it off in the truck. He liked to face a new situation bareheaded, barefaced, without his eyes shaded, signaling secrets. Not that he wasn’t like everyone else with one or two hidden truths. He couldn’t help wondering what mysteries the woman beside him concealed?

He shifted again. The woman stared at the dirt road as if waiting for an answer to come walking down its dusty length. The silence stretched out.

“The woman with your husband?” He broke the silence.

She turned to him, her expression sharp.

“Her name wasn’t Lulu, was it?”

Like a traitor, one corner of her mouth crept up, then the other followed. He knew she didn’t want to but she smiled, everything about her softening, and he knew her laughter would sound pretty to a man’s ears. Her eyes gentled again, as if grateful. She brushed her hand across her crown, although not one hair dared stray from the ponytail low on her neck. He had to leave. A vulnerable widow with shrimp-pink lips and gray-green eyes that turned warm when she smiled. Seven dollars an hour. He’d been wrong about those shutters or he would have heeded their warning as soon as he saw that neon yellow. CAUTION.

The smile and the softness left the woman as abruptly as they came. She once more was as brittle and thin as the limbs reaching in the fields. “It doesn’t much matter what her name was. What’s done is done.” The widow stood, brushing at nothing on the front of her sweatshirt. Her hand rested on her stomach. “Seven dollars an hour and room and board is what I’m offering.”

Julius leaned back, on his elbows, settling in to the stairs. He looked around, noting again the neglect. “You just bought this place?”

“My husband inherited it from his aunt. She never had any children, and he was the only son of her sister lost to cancer a few years back. My husband never knew his father. His aunt was all the family he had left, and it was her dying wish he have the farm. As soon as he heard the news, he hightailed it up from New Orleans, the handsomest man ever to set foot in Hope. Charming, too, with his Bourbon Street drawl and his sweet ‘ma chère.’ He was all ready to unload the land and reap the rewards until he learned the property was zoned farmland and couldn’t be sold to commercial developers. Kind of narrowed the field of prospective buyers to zero. He put the land up for sale anyway, and, in the meantime, married me for my family’s money and influence.”

It was the way she recited the words without expression that let Julius know she’d been wounded.

“Two days after his death, I took the farm off the market.”

“You’re a farmer, Mrs. O’Reilly?”

“Barely know the first thing about it.”

He chuckled. She just might be crazy.

“Until a short time ago, I never did anything except what was expected of me.”

He considered trying to make up his mind if she was nuts.

As if reading his thoughts, she said, “They all think I went around the bend from the shock of my husband’s death.” She looked out to the gray, sturdy trees that had first drawn his eye. “But this place is mine…my orchards, my fields, my land to dream on.”

He saw the same strength in her expression as he’d seen in those thick-trunked trees and he understood. The woman wasn’t crazy. She just wanted her own small square of the world where no one told you what to do or the right way to live your life. A place of your own. Home. He’d dreamed the same dream once, but in all his travels and in all this time, he’d never found it. Then he’d stopped looking. Just kept moving.

“There’ll be a bonus though.” Yes, she thought—a bonus, a perk. “At the year’s end, after the first harvest, when the place is up and running—a percentage of the profits.”

Julius looked around the run-down spread. “First, you have to produce profits. A percentage of nothing is nothing.”

“There’ll be profits, Mr. Holt.” Such a strong, determined set to those narrow shoulders.

He pushed at his forehead, remembered his cap back on the seat of his truck and missed it once more. “You never farmed?”

“No.” She didn’t even try to hedge the truth. He again admired that. “But I’m reading everything I can get my hands on.”

“Books?”

She straightened taller. “It’s a beginning, Mr. Holt.”

A beginning he thought, noting the house was built on a slight rise not too far from the road, giving a good view of the property all around. It was a pretty spot.

“So, you’re a farmer, Mr. Holt?”

“Among other things,” he said, appreciating the land’s rise and fall.

“What other things would that be?”

“Let’s see, I’ve been a sign painter, a laborer, an amusement park ride operator. I drove a truck up North, laid pipe in the South, worked the docks along the Mississippi.” His crazy-quilt life spread out before him like the land circling him. “But mainly I’ve worked fields on both coasts and many in between. Apples and cherries in Washington, cotton and corn in Arkansas, peaches and peanuts in Georgia, potatoes in Maine.”

“My, you do get around.”

He eyed her, looking for mockery, but found none.

She ignored his sharp study. “Myself, I’ve never been much farther than the county line…except for school and summers when my father let the Aunties take me to the sea.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Do I look like a kidder, Mr. Holt?” Her smile this time was slim and self-deprecating.

“Never been no place? Why not?”

“Never had the desire, I suppose.” She shrugged. “This is home.”

The way she said it made something inside Julius twist inside out.

“Thank you for coming by, Mr. Holt.”

He didn’t rise from his relaxed pose on the steps. “A percentage of the profits after the first harvest? Is that all you’re offering?”

She tipped her head up, a slight flare to her nostrils. “Exactly what do you mean, Mr. Holt?”

He looked around once more. “What about land?” The words surprised him.

She considered him. A broad, big-shouldered man who radiated power but moved with a surprising grace. His stare was too bold, his smile too easy, but his arms were strong and sturdy, and his wide, work-worn hands held a single blade of grass as delicately as if it were life itself.

“No offense, Mr. Holt, but you don’t seem like a man who would still be here at the year’s end.”

The smile moved into his eyes now. “No offense taken, Mrs. O’Reilly. In fact, you’re probably more right than wrong.”

“Then why would you want land?”

He looked around once more—the ramshackle buildings, the peeling paint. “There’s also a chance you could be wrong, Mrs. O’Reilly.”

Lorna flattened her hand against her abdomen. Beneath the bulky sweatshirt, her stomach curved in. But it wouldn’t be long before it swelled, stretched even beyond the loose fit of her sweatshirt. The ad had run five weeks. This was the first response she’d gotten. The men, even the untrained, unskilled ones, made more loading skids in her father’s mill than she could pay. Maybe she was as crazy as they all said. She remembered the medal hanging around the man’s neck, looked for it now. Saint Nicholas. Patron saint of travelers. Children. Old maids.

He touched the gold circle resting at the base of his throat. She stared at those fingers, that flesh, mesmerized, then snapped her gaze up. She should’ve been born a man.

“Do you want to see the workers’ quarters?”

His mouth lazily curled. Every misgiving rose within Lorna once more. “Are you offering me the job, Mrs. O’Reilly?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” She was hard and straight and stern all over again. “Do you want it?”

His gaze wandered the land, then came back to wrap around her, that easy smile turning into a low roll of laughter. His blue eyes sparkled like temptation itself.

“I haven’t decided yet, Mrs. O’Reilly.”

Chapter Two

“What about land, Mrs. O’Reilly?”

She walked ahead of him, her steps smart as a soldier on dress parade. But her shadow stretched long and lean as pulled taffy. He watched the dark ramble of his own silhouette come up behind her.

“Land, Mr. Holt?” She didn’t break stride nor turn her head.

“Land, Mrs. O’Reilly,” he said to that stiff spine, its knobbiness visible even beneath the baggy sweatshirt. He’d bet her butt was clenched tighter than a miser’s fist. He dropped his gaze, saw the twitch of round curves beneath the soft fabric and couldn’t help but allow a man’s natural admiration for a rear end riper than a California peach in mid-July. He forced his attention back up, let it rest on the jutting bone at the base of her long neck. He put a deliberate saunter into his words. “Seeing as you don’t plan on paying much more than an insult and promising profits that might never exist, land seems to be the one and only sure thing you can afford to be generous with.”

Her clipped steps stopped. Several seconds passed before she turned. He could almost feel her clamping her teeth. He glanced at her clenched butt. God, she was fun.

She faced him, her nose raised and her gaze cooler than a January gale off the Canadian border. “And what would you do with land, Mr. Holt?”

He bent down and plucked a piece of grass as if needing to always touch the ground around him. He didn’t stick it in his mouth to chew on its new end as most would, but held it as before, between his thumb and forefinger, feeling its length. “You can call me Julius, ma’am.”

She stared at those generous lips. His tongue, just the tip of it, flicked against their fullness, took a taste and then was gone. No, I can’t, Mr. Holt. She waited silently for his answer, too aware of his size and strength and heavy, lazy sensuality.

He looked to the orchards leading to the lower fallow fields, the horizon uncluttered by the housing developments springing up outside the town quicker than goosegrass. His heavy gaze came back to her. His lips puckered and parted as if kissing the new spring air. “I’d till it. Turn it until it was soft and moist and ready.” He thought of the home he’d never found. He stared at the straight-backed woman, let his voice become thick with pleasure. “Then I’d take off my clothes and roll across its width just to feel its sweet yield.” He leaned in. “Its sweet yield.”

A shiver moved up her spine, the sensation distressing in its pleasantness. She braced her shoulders, held herself even more erect. “Like a hog, Mr. Holt?” Her words were precise and pointed.

His full, finely shaped lips curved into a luring smile. His voice was languid. “Like a man in love, Mrs. O’Reilly.”

Oh, those black gypsy curls. Those blue eyes where the devil lived. The wonder of that tender touch as his fingers met a common blade of grass. She remembered her late husband—and her vow never to be fooled again by false charm and faithless promises. Now a new moon had barely shone and already temptation had come in the form of Julius Holt. She studied the man before her, the muscled limbs, the powerful, dark sensuality of his face, the ease of his stance that spoke of a man secure in his ability to find and give pleasure. Physically he was twice the man as her deceased husband, and she didn’t doubt twice the lover, for all her dead husband’s pride in his prowess.

Oh yes, Julius Holt, with his leisurely smiles and comfortable sexuality, was the epitome of the type of man she’d vowed never to let get the best of her again—a rambling smooth-talker who made a woman go soft just meeting his smile. Could she have asked for a more perfect reminder of her own past foolishness? Her lips lifted in a tight curl. She could have laughed out loud. She’d never let him know it, but Julius Holt was exactly what she needed.

“I’ll give you a stake of land, Mr. Holt—” she saw the surprise in his eyes “—if you’re here at the harvest’s end.”

The surprise turned to amusement. “Is that a challenge, Mrs. O’Reilly?”

Her gaze was as steady as his. “I imagine it will be for you, Mr. Holt.” Folding her hands at her waist, she spun and marched toward the barns. His low, pleased chuckle followed her. She tensed every muscle. He reached to pull the brim of his cap low in a satisfying tug and settled for another low roll of amusement, instead, as he took three strides and was beside the woman.

“Breakfast will be at five.”

Damn, he hated farmers’ hours.

“Lunch at noon. Dinner at five-fifteen.” She kept her eyes straight ahead, her steps crisp.

“Not five-sixteen?” His tone was innocent. Her gaze cut to him. He gave her a wink. She snapped her head forward.

“You are to keep your quarters clean—including the bathroom.”

“What time’s inspection?”

She didn’t even bother to look at him this time.

“You may use the washer and dryer on Sundays.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier if I just threw my skivvies in with your delicates?”

The woman halted, expressed a breath as she turned to him. “Do you hope to last here until the harvest’s end, Mr. Holt?”

Hope. There it was again. The call that’d brought him here. He looked at the woman before him. Pure foolishness.

“This isn’t going to work,” Lorna decided before he answered. He was about to agree when a flash of soft defeat brought a humanness to her features.

Behind him, a woman’s voice deep and hard as a man’s called, “Lorna?”

Another voice, a high treble but equally adamant, blended with the first. “Lorna, dear?”

Lorna. Julius looked at the woman who’d fired him faster than she’d hired him. Her brow puckered as she expressed another long breath through her fine-cut nostrils. So that was her given name. Lorna. It fit her—the sound of it hard and soft like the woman herself.

“I told you she’d be here,” the deeper voice flatly pronounced.

“Why, of course, she’d be here. Where else would she be on a glorious day like today but outside in the fine air?” the treble retorted.

“You said she’d probably gone to town.”

“And you said she was in need of company. However—” the light voice raised on a speculative note “—it seems we were both wrong.”

Julius turned to see two elderly ladies crossing the grass. The smaller one wore a crocheted cape over a lace-collared dress and took dainty steps in low heels. The other woman wore a trench coat. Knit pants and flat loafers were revealed beneath the coat’s hem.

“Aunt Eve. Aunt Birdy.” Lorna welcomed the women. Julius heard the strain in her voice. “What a surprise.”

The women drew near. The taller one in the trench coat with a helmet of steel-gray hair stared at Julius with open disapproval. “I can’t even imagine.”

The smaller woman, her features crinkling with good nature, stepped forward and extended her hand. “How do you do, young man?”

He shook her hand. “How do you do, ma’am.”

Tipping her head back, the woman took in the length of him, her eyes the same gray-green as Lorna’s but sparkling. “I’m so glad our Lorna is already receiving gentlemen callers. The early bird gets the worm, you know.” Her smile went sly.

Julius gave her a wink.

“Aunt Birdy,” Lorna protested.

“Don’t be a ninny, Bernadette,” the other woman said. “Lorna’s louse of a husband hasn’t even been in the ground for a full season.”

The tiny woman smiled at Julius, holding his hand in both of hers, but she spoke to the one Lorna called Aunt Eve. “It’s been over a month, sister.”

“A rat’s ass. The date was—”

“Aunties.” Lorna stepped forward, disentangling Birdy’s hands from Julius. “Mr. Holt is no gentleman—”

“Indeed,” Eve intoned.

“He’s…” She glanced at him and straightened her shoulders. “He’s my new foreman.”

Julius looked at her with as much surprise as the aunts.

“He ran his family’s farm in Oklahoma,” Lorna continued, “and has also worked at establishments along both coasts as well as several in between. He has a wealth of experience.”

Birdy beamed up at him. Eve glared. He smiled, gave her a wink, too.

“I was just showing Mr. Holt his quarters.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lorna,” Eve snapped. “Your husband already threw away enough of your money—”

“God save his soul,” Birdy interjected.

Eve snorted. “Too late for that. It’s bad enough your husband squandered as much of your trust fund as possible. Now you’re trying to finish the job by throwing the rest away on this sinking ship—”

“You should hear what they’re saying in town, dear.” Birdy’s expression softened with sympathy. “It’s quite upsetting.”

“I know what they’re saying in town. That I’ve gone off the deep end. ‘Loony Lorna.’ ‘Lorna the Loon.”’

Birdy glanced at her sister, then back at her niece, the distress in her eyes confirming Lorna’s claims. Julius saw Lorna’s smile stiffen. Up until that moment, he might even have agreed with the town’s assessment. But, until that moment, he’d never seen above that tense smile, pain so deep in those vulnerable gray-green eyes. Until that moment, he’d also never been a foreman before. Foreman. Even at seven an hour, he liked the sound of it.

“Actually, ladies,” he said, “Mrs. O’Reilly’s—”

“Lord, not that name.” Eve turned to Lorna. “I thought you were going to go back to using the family name?”

Lorna said nothing. She was watching Julius, waiting to see what he was about to say.

“Mrs. O’Reilly’s decision,” Julius began again, “to run this farm was a wise investment.”

Eve snorted. Birdy looked at Julius with her bright eyes. He squatted down to the new grass, pressed it to the ground. “Springs back up.” He looked at the women. “Rich, moist, class-one soil. Fed first by the waters that left us that creek that splits the land, that pond in the lower field. Good irrigation sources. A little time, hard work and innovative planting…” He straightened to his remarkable height and released his killer smile. “In five years, our yields will be the envy of every other farmer around.”

“Humph,” Eve huffed. “The way farmers around here are trying to sell out to contractors, there won’t be any left in five years.”

“Then it’s a good thing we’ll be here. Now, if it’s all right with you, Mrs. O’Reilly, and if you ladies will excuse me—” Julius tipped his absent cap “—I’ll get started inspecting the equipment.”

The women watched him as he headed to the buildings.

“I bet you could play tiddlywinks on that chassis,” Birdy observed.

“Bernadette,” Eve scolded as Lorna genuinely grinned for the first time in what seemed a long spell.

Eve turned to her niece. “Lorna, don’t you pay no mind what the gossips say in town. The entire incident was more excitement than most of these chattering fools around here will see in a lifetime.”

“I’m glad I’ve done the community a service then.”

“Now, there’s no need for a sharp tongue. And not everyone thinks you’re off your trolley, but how can others even express their concern when you’re hiding out here?”

“I’m not hiding out here.”

“Of course you are,” Eve insisted. “I don’t care how many gaudy outfits you wear as if spitting at any offers of sympathy. And land almighty, child, what were you thinking with those shutters?”

“I don’t want sympathy,” Lorna said quietly.

Eve eyed her niece. “‘The meek shall inherit the earth,’ Lorna. And you should make an appointment with Doc Stevenson, have him check you for color blindness if we can get you back into town.”

“I have no intention of staying out of town. In fact, I’m driving in tomorrow for groceries and a few other things.”

“Thatta girl,” Birdy urged. “You walk down Main Street, head high, strutting your stuff. Who cares what they say? What happened wasn’t your fault.”

Lorna’s grin was long gone. “Yes, it was, Aunt Birdy.”

“Nonsense. You were the victim in this entire debacle.”

Lorna cringed. “I let myself be a victim.”

“Enough babbling.” Eve waved her hand. “The bottom line is this has gone far enough. It’s time for you to come home.”

Lorna turned to her aunt. Past Eve rose the white house, once so plain and unadorned, but now distinct. Not far were the sturdy trees that would hang heavy with fruit at summer’s end. She had land. She rested her hand on her abdomen. She had life.

And, now thanks to her impulsive announcement, she also had an employee—an irritating, provoking, wisecracking charmer who probably wouldn’t stay any longer than to earn enough for a night of tall drinks and easy women. Yet, as of three minutes ago, she’d had someone on her side for the first time since she decided to live her life by her rules—not her family’s.

She stretched her arms out as if to embrace all around her. “I am home, Aunties.” For the first time, the words were real.

Eve threw up her hands. “Headstrong. Just like your father.”

Lorna laid a hand on her aunt’s arm. “Just like my father’s sister.”

Birdy agreed with an appreciative laugh. Eve scowled at both of them.

“Come.” Lorna linked her arms through theirs. “Let me fix you a cup of tea and you can tell me what other news there is besides my mental instability.”

Eve tsked with disapproval, but she watched her niece with worry.

Lorna squeezed her arm. “Don’t fret, Aunt Eve. I’m fine.”

“We can’t help ourselves, Lorna. You’re our little girl,” Birdy appealed. “We’re scared for you.”

She pulled her other aunt close. “I’m scared too, Aunt Birdy. But for the first time in a long time, I feel…” Lorna tipped her head back, inhaled. “I feel like I’m breathing. Breathing deep.”

Birdy looked at Lorna with bright eyes.

Aunt Eve snorted. “Foolishness. Farming. You’re not a farmer.”

“Truth is, Aunt Eve, I’m not sure who or what I am.” Lorna held on tight to her aunts’ arms. “Until about six months ago, I spent my whole life doing what one man said, hoping to please him. The next six months I spent trying to please another. And I never had an ounce of luck with either. You know why?” She stopped. Her aunts looked at each other, then warily at their niece. Lorna smiled, understanding even though no one else did. “I finally realized I can’t please anyone else if I’m not pleased with myself.”

“This?” Eve gestured impatiently. “This makes you happy?”

Lorna surveyed the land she was already in love with. She nodded, smiling. “Yes. This.”

“Your father loves you, Lorna,” Birdy put forth. “It’s just that your mother…” Sadness dimmed her eyes.

“I know.” Lorna squeezed her aunt’s arm. “I know he loves me in his way, but I also know he’s never gotten over losing his wife. And hard as I’ve tried, there’s nothing I can seem to do to make it up to him.”

“Well, for starters, you could’ve listened to him when he told you your late husband was after your money,” Eve suggested. “Would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

“I know my marriage was a mistake.”

“Hell’s bells, the whole county knows that.”

“But I don’t regret it. It was that mistake that got me here.”

“Welcome to Paradise,” Eve pronounced.

“Hush. Let the child be.” Birdy’s tone was so uncustomarily stern even Lorna looked at her with surprise.

Birdy smiled at her niece. “Let’s go have tea. I’ll tell you all about the garden club’s election. Myrtle Griffin declared it a coup.”

“Myrtle Griffin wouldn’t know a coup if it jumped up and bit her in her girdled rear end,” Eve declared.

“She called it a ‘coup.”’ Birdy stood her ground. “And Pauline Van Horn said it was an abomination, an affront to the very principles on which the club was founded.”

“Oh no. Sounds like she’s throwing her hat in the ring for town clerk again next year. If the woman spent less time posturing and more time tending her dahlias, she wouldn’t have to blame the failure of her garden on everything from the European earwig to the ozone layer.”

“Dianthus,” Birdy corrected. “She has trouble each season with her dianthus.”

“Dahlias,” Eve insisted.

Lorna smiled, the sound of the Aunties’ incessant quarrels as familiar and comforting as a mother’s kiss.

It was heading toward the day’s darkening hour when the aunts said their goodbyes, Eve adding admonishments and Birdy shiny eyed, looking at Lorna with silent entreaty. Lorna kissed them both, promising to see them soon, and hurried back to the house. She’d find her new employee after she figured out what she would do about supper. Foreman. What had possessed her? He’d want a raise now before he did a day’s work. Well, he’d just have to be satisfied with the title.

She opened the yellowed refrigerator. Maybe if she cooked him a great meal, he’d forget about wages. But what could she cook him? She’d taken nothing out, not expecting to have to feed anyone except herself and her appetite tending toward the odd lately. She looked in the small freezer. There was a steak—not T-bone but not chuck either. She could add some fried onions, perhaps a potato or two if they hadn’t gone and sprouted in the pantry closet bin. And there was that bread-making machine she’d bought on sale right after her elopement. Six weeks later she’d been a widow. Never even had time to get the machine out of the box.

She bent down to the bottom cupboard and found the bread maker behind the stacked bowls and glass casserole dishes. She slid it out, took it from the box and set it on the speckled counter. It was so white in this old kitchen. She stepped back. She should rough up those cupboards, paint them cantaloupe. She could already picture the faux wood doors gone, their dark surfaces replaced with an orange good enough to eat. She lay her palms soft to her stomach. Her late husband had been a cad, and she’d most definitely been an even bigger fool, so starved to hear the words “I love you,” she believed the first man who’d uttered them. Yet, as she’d told her aunts, her mistakes had brought her here. Now she just had to remember the lessons she’d learned, the vows she’d made. She moved back to the counter to start supper. One glance at Julius Holt with his cocksure grin and easy laughter in his eyes and she’d remember just fine.

THE BACK OF THE HOUSE SAGGED and wood showed bare where a piece of siding had ripped off and never been replaced. Julius stomped up the stairs, noting with disgust the second and third ones were loose. Enough work around this sorry place for ten men. But as he reached the back door, he smelled a bakery. Through the door’s window, he saw Lorna standing at the stove, her stern gaze turned to the sound of his heavy steps. Still surprise flashed in her eyes, as if she hadn’t expected him. He understood. He was just as surprised to find himself still here. With a queenly wave, she motioned him to come in.

He opened the door into a kitchen that smelled of sweet heaven, the aroma of baking bread as thick as hay ready for cutting. He stood at the entrance on a brightly woven square of rug that he knew had to be Lorna’s touch.

“Your company’s gone?” He noted the linoleum was lifting in one corner.

She nodded and glanced at the clock over the refrigerator. “Supper’s at five-fifteen. You’re early.” There was no surprise in her eyes this time. Only a scolding in her voice that made him smile. She turned her narrow back to his grin. She was a prickly one, all right. Man could hurt himself on all those sharp bones and hard lengths.

“So you meant it when you said I was the new foreman?”

“I always say what I mean, Mr. Holt,” she told him without turning around.

“So that’s the secret of your charm?”

She moved briskly from the stove to the sink, her profile unsmiling. “Might be a good time to bring your things into where you’ll be staying. Did you see the trailer not far from the barns? It’s open, been aired out. The water’s turned on—”

“Hold up there. I don’t remember exactly taking the job.” His investigation had revealed the farm was in a sorrier state than he’d thought—broken equipment, a rusting tractor, roofs that looked like they leaked, apple boxes so old the pine was splintering away from the nails. It’d be backbreaking hard work getting this place up and running again with no help except for a woman with a hard spine and soft gray-green eyes who thought she could become a farmer by sitting in her front parlor reading.

Lorna turned on the water. “It was my impression we came to an agreement, Mr. Holt.”

“It was my impression you hired me, then fired me faster than rabbits reproduce.”

“Then I hired you again.” Her voice was calm as a country morning, but she was scrubbing her hands too hard, too long.

“This place is in pretty sad shape.”

She turned off the water, shook out a towel, swiped at the water splatters on the sink’s edge. “Are you afraid of hard work, Mr. Holt?”

“No, ma’am. Work hard, play hard. That’s my belief. Keeps life interesting.” It also kept a person from thinking far into the night, remembering things better off buried.

She twisted the towel. “All right, seven thirty-five an hour.”

“Ten dollars.”

She wrung the towel. “Seven-fifty.”

“Eight.”

“Seventy seventy-five but not a cent more, and be sure you’ll earn every penny of it.”

“Plus the bonus at the season’s end,” he reminded.

She slapped the towel onto the counter. He smiled.

“Plus the bonus at the season’s end. That’s my final offer, Mr. Holt.” She flung up the lid of a bulky-shaped, bright white appliance. “If you prefer to pursue opportunities elsewhere, that, of course, is your prerogative.” She lifted out a loaf of perfect bread, brown, smooth crowned, the smell alone enough to make a man give thanks. She set it on a wire rack. “I wish you good luck and Godspeed.”

That loaf of bread. His grandmother had made bread like that. And pies. Oh Lord, his grandma’s pies. He could still see her, standing in a kitchen as old and dingy as this, her hard-knuckled hands cutting the lard into the flour, giving the bowl a quarter turn, cutting straight in again until the dough formed into soft crumbs. In late spring, there’d be rhubarb. Blueberry and peach would follow in the summer; apple and squash in the fall. His mother had been warned early in her marriage to stay out of her mother-in-law’s kitchen, which suited her just fine since she had never been one much for cooking anyway. When they moved out West, whenever his father had mentioned pies, his mother had always declared she’d go to her grave without ever making a pie. She had, too. After his father had died, she’d pretty much stopped cooking altogether.

“Do you make pies?”

“This isn’t a diner, Mr. Holt.”

He smiled, the smell of the fresh bread sweet as a woman. He looked at Lorna, drawn up tight beneath her loose clothes. Even her high-and-mighty gaze couldn’t take away the pleasure of that fresh bread. He breathed in deeply.

She paused a moment before turning back to the counter. “I’ll get you clean sheets after supper…if you’re staying.”

Out the window the sun was making its way home. He smelled the bread, could feel those clean, fresh sheets. He would stay tonight. What he would do tomorrow, he’d decide, as always, when tomorrow came. “I’ll stay.” He turned to go.

“Did you mean what you said earlier?”

He looked at her over his shoulder.

“About the soil being rich, and our yields being the envy of other farmers? Or were you just saying that for the Aunties’ benefit?”

Her expression stayed neutral, but beneath the careful tone of her voice, he heard the low leavening of hope. He remembered the hurt in her eyes earlier when she talked of the gossip about her. Yes, he’d said those things then for her aunts’ benefit, but for her benefit also. Now he saw she needed to believe. And maybe, just maybe, he needed to believe a little, too. For both their benefits—hers and his—he said, “Seeds are no more than possibilities, Mrs. O’Reilly. Plant them, and anything is possible.”

He opened the door. She cleared her throat. He glanced back once more.

“Thank you.” The gratitude was so quiet and right in her voice, she turned away to the counter.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, his voice without overtones. He was still shaking his head when he reached his truck. A raise and a thank-you. Beneath that buttoned-up, tight-lipped exterior, the widow wasn’t going soft around the edges on him, was she?

“Naw,” he told the listening land. It’d take a lot more than an extra seventy-five cents an hour and a weak moment to prove the widow wasn’t wound tighter than a fisherman’s favorite reel. He gave a chuckle as he gathered his duffel bag. He left his sleeping bag stored in the narrow space behind the front seat. Tonight he’d have clean sheets, the thought alone bringing him enjoyment.

He started back across the yard. He couldn’t say what tomorrow would bring, never could, but tonight he’d have a roof over his head, smooth sheets, a belly full of warm, fresh bread…and a promise of land. He looked at the fields’ gentle curves, the trees waiting for new growth, the light coloring the sky. All was possibility.

No, he couldn’t say what tomorrow would bring but, for tonight, he was here in Hope.

Chapter Three

Hell, he was late. He had gone to the trailer. Its rooms were narrow, and his head just missed the ceiling. But the bathroom boasted a stand-up shower with a Plexiglas door, and the bed on a bare metal frame was a double, not long enough for his length but big enough for his width. He’d dumped his bag next to the bed. A tall, plain dresser stood against one wall, but he didn’t unpack. He never unpacked. He’d stretched out on the mattress, finding it surprisingly, pleasantly firm. He had closed his eyes, enjoying the support of the mattress, the ease of his muscles. He hadn’t meant to take a nap. Now it was six thirty-five. He was an hour and twenty minutes late. Hell.

Still he forced himself to stop, catch his breath before he rounded the corner and reached the long length of yard where he could be seen from the house. He crossed the lawn, walking fast but not fast enough to show he was worried. He climbed the steps two at a time. Through the back-door window, he saw Lorna standing at the sink. She didn’t look happy as she scrubbed an iron frying pan. He debated the wisdom of facing an angry woman with a weapon in her hand.

He chuckled low. He was the one going soft around the edges. He was late. That’s all. It wasn’t a felony.

He rapped on the glass, then opened the door without waiting for permission.

Her gaze shot to him, went back to the frying pan. “Dinner was at five-fifteen, Mr. Holt.”

Whatever sliver of favor Lorna had found with him earlier was gone. “I had good intentions of—”

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions, Mr. Holt.” She gripped the frying pan, scrubbing so hard her entire body twitched. He watched her scrubbing and twitching, her chin thrust out, her lips taut. He burst out laughing.

She spun around, soap bubbles and water spraying, and glared at him. “You find rudeness and complete disregard for rules amusing, Mr. Holt?”

Lord, she was more rigid than a cold corpse. Such control when she was about to split at the seams any second. Grinning, he stared at this ramrod of a woman. Was it the sheer challenge of her or the surprising glimpses of softness he’d witnessed earlier? Maybe it was her ironclad control that fascinated him—a man whose own lack of restraint had ruined his life…and taken another’s. He wasn’t certain, but he had to admit that this woman with her odd affections and strict routines and hints of humanness intrigued him as much as she chaffed at his well-developed good nature.

He let his smile go soft and lazy. “Call me Julius, darling.”

Anger drained what little color she had. Her lips pressed into a hard white line. “Supper is over, Mr. Holt. Breakfast is at five.”

He noticed the loaf of bread now wrapped in cellophane on the counter. When he looked back, he saw a thin triumph in those eyes gone the gray of thunderclouds. He would listen to his stomach rumble all night before he asked her for so much as a crust.

Then, as she was apt to do right when he thought he had her all figured out, she sighed and said, “Would you like a slice of bread, Mr. Holt?”

She was a puzzle all right. He glanced again at the bread. His stomach said yes but his pride said no. He didn’t need Miss High-and-Mighty’s charity.

He patted his flat stomach. “Actually I’ve been trying to cut back on my carbs.”

Maybe it was the ridiculousness of his reply. Maybe it was the recognition of his pigheaded pride, as stubborn and strong as her own. Again Julius didn’t know, but then, if he wouldn’t be darned, Lorna’s tightly pressed lips relented and a genuine, amused laugh came from between them. His prediction had been right—Lorna O’Reilly’s laughter did sound pretty. He stared at her. This lady was a complete mystery.

She picked up the dishcloth again. “Kitchen’s closing, Mr. Holt. And I have some reading I’m anxious to get to.”

“On how to be a farmer, Mrs. O’Reilly?” He couldn’t resist.

She rinsed the frying pan and set it carefully in the drainer. She unplugged the sink, wrung out the striped dishcloth and folded it neatly. Finally she faced him, her hands clasped at her waist. “I intend to make this farm a success, Mr. Holt. With or without you.”

“Well, Mrs. O’Reilly—” he scratched his chest as he stared at her “—the jury’s still out on that one.” He turned and left.

AS SOON AS THE DOOR CLOSED, Lorna marched over and locked it. She told herself not to watch him, but she stood there even after his broad, tall figure disappeared around the corner. Inside her, she still heard his rich laughter. Her hands tightened on the door-knob. She looked down to their betraying grasp. They were raw knuckled, red and dry from the dishwater. A spinster’s hands, she thought. She had been married, widowed, but her heart had turned cold in the process. Now she had a spinster’s hands…and a spinster’s soul. She pushed back the sadness that tried to creep in.

She knew Julius Holt, with his deep laughter and easy ways, saw only a dried-up shell of a woman. But she hadn’t always been so self-controlled, so inflexible and rigid that she ground her teeth in her sleep. For a long time, she’d had no will at all and such a low sense of self, she’d done whatever her father deemed best. Then, for a brief time, she’d smiled all the time and walked with such a dance in her step, she’d barely felt her feet hit the ground. She’d been as foolish then as before, letting sweet lies and skilled kisses turn her silly though she’d known she was too tall and rawboned to be called pretty, too brash and efficient in manner to be alluring. Still she’d actually believed her handsome late husband had married her for love instead of the McDonough money. Her father had snorted she had acted just like a “woman.” She’d been doubly humiliated when he’d been proved right.

The darkness was becoming heavier, blending shapes and shadows. But, in her mind, she still saw Julius with his heavy-lidded, dangerously blue eyes that seemed to look straight through to her soul—her spinster’s soul—as if he too knew the longing and loneliness that lived there. The day hadn’t even been done when the low roll of his laughter had caught her with a wash of warmness.

Already he made her feel something other than wariness and fear and vigilant control. He made her feel what she’d vowed she’d never let another human being make her feel again. Vulnerable.

She closed her eyes, leaned her forehead to the cool glass. The hell of it was Julius Holt was perfect for her purpose. Not only was he a larger-than-life reminder of her past foolishness, but he also had the knowledge, the experience and the sheer brute strength she needed to succeed. She pressed her hand to her middle. She had to succeed.

She’d cut out her tongue before she’d admit it, but she needed Julius Holt.

Behind her closed eyes, she once more saw Julius’s infuriating smile, those eyes like a starry night. And even as she gritted her teeth and fisted her hands, she heard the tiny prayer inside her. Please stay.

JULIUS WAS ON the back steps at four-thirty the next morning, smiling smugly as he enjoyed the gray ice sky of pale stars. He didn’t know if it was his empty stomach or his need to show up the schoolmarm that’d led him here at this ungodly hour, but whatever it was, now that he was here, surrounded by the dawn’s brittle dreamscape, he was glad.

He glanced at his watch. Four forty-five and still the house behind him was dark and silent. Wouldn’t that be something if Mother Superior was late? He smiled, even though he knew it was an impossibility.

He was waiting for the sky’s first streaks of blue, although the throbbing in his knee told him today’s weather would be contrary, when he saw Lorna come out of the woods. She walked along the outer boundary of apple trees leading to the house. What’d she do? Stand sentry all night?

She was a bright spot as she moved through the morning, her coat opened, revealing a vivid orange T-shirt and high-perched breasts. The straight-legged denims she wore showcased a slim waist, nicely rounded hips and long, lean legs that scissored smoothly as she walked. She twisted her head side to side, then up toward the stars as if trying to work out a kink in her neck, and he saw her hair loose and soft in the vague light. She moved through the morning, determination and purpose in her every step and a solitariness about her that made him watch her and wonder. She was still some distance away and before she looked to the back porch and saw him, he watched her and thought her beautiful.

She spotted him. Her surprise was instantly replaced by vigilance, her stride checked by tension. Still she favored him with a closemouthed smile as she approached. “I see you’ll not miss breakfast.”

“I was beginning to worry it might be you who overslept this morning.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Patrolling the grounds, warden?”

“Weather cooperating, I usually take a walk at this hour.” She propped a sneakered foot on the bottom step and bent over to refasten a lace. “I find it clears the mind and quiets the heart.”

A thousand teasing retorts were on the tip of his tongue as she raised her head. Their gazes met and for a breath, before she sharply turned, he saw in those still gray-green waters what he himself had known his whole life—faceless, nameless longing.

She straightened. He wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined the moment in the dawn’s crisp dream. Still he didn’t speak. She mounted the stairs. “Last night you were late.” She unlocked the door. “This morning you’re early. Do you ever follow the rules, Mr. Holt?”

His soft laughter followed her up the stairs. “What do you think, Mrs. O’Reilly?”

She paused at the door, her back to him. “I think you wonder what good are rules if you can’t break them?” She disappeared inside the house, his low, heated laughter following her. He sat smiling, enjoying the morning’s beginning a minute more, when her lean shadow stretched across him. He turned to her long figure above him.

She cocked her hips, her hands on their pointy angles. “Are you planning on sitting out there all day?” She spun around before he could answer.

Julius chuckled. “Guess not,” he said to the morning. He moved up the steps and into the kitchen to begin his day with Mrs. Lorna O’Reilly. His smile widened as he smelled the welcome call of coffee and the lingering traces of yesterday’s bread.

“I started the coffee before I went for my walk.” Lorna nodded in the direction of the coffee machine on the counter. “There are cups and spoons there. Creamer’s in the refrigerator. Sugar’s on the counter. I won’t wait on you.”

His eyes followed her as she moved about the kitchen, grabbing the skillet from the drainer, butter and eggs from the refrigerator. With aggravated breaths, she brushed at her hair as it fell from her shoulders and curved around her face, framing her sharp features. He poured a cup of coffee, leaned against the counter, and took a sip. “I like your hair down.”

She cracked an egg against the skillet’s rim. He waited for a stinging reply as she scowled down at the sputtering egg. But then her shoulders sagged. She glanced at him but didn’t say anything.

He was almost disappointed. “Can I pour you a cup of coffee, Mrs. O’Reilly?”

“You don’t have to wait on me either.”

“It’d be my pleasure after all your warm hospitality.”

She shot him a cool glance, but again said nothing. She reached and opened a drawer near the stove, fished out a rubber band and slammed the drawer shut. She flipped the eggs, moved the skillet off the burner, then marched into the hall. When she came back, her hair was secured into a low ponytail.

He chuckled and offered her the cup of coffee he’d poured. “Cream and sugar?”

Unsmiling, she shook her head as she took it from him and set it on the table, but as she moved back to the stove, she muttered, “Thank you.” She slid the eggs onto a plate, angled the toast beside them and set the plate on the table. “I’ll be going into town later to do some shopping. Tomorrow there’ll be bacon or ham.”

“Why, this is just fine,” Julius assured her in his exaggerated way. She regarded him as if trying to determine whether he was sincere or sarcastic.

“Sit,” she ordered, and turned back to the stove as if she’d reached a conclusion.

He sat down in the worn but clean kitchen smelling of coffee and baked bread on this clear, cool morning with sudden promise. He stared at the butter melting across the freshly toasted bread. It’d been a long time since anyone had cooked for him. He never stayed for breakfast. He looked up at the stern-faced woman. A few strands of hair had missed the rubber band and hung free and delicate along her elegant neck. “This is just fine,” he said once more, softer.

She faced him, arched a brow. “You’re not cutting back on proteins, too, are you, Mr. Holt?”

He grinned at her, then dug into his breakfast like a starving man. From the corner of his eye, he swore he saw a small smile on her face before she turned away.

“Aren’t you going to join me?”

“I think not.” She looked at the cup of coffee he’d poured her. Usually she had two to three cups, black, strong, relishing the bite of the bean. Now just the smell made her queasy.

He shoveled half an egg into his mouth. She felt her stomach roll. He waved his fork at her. “You’d better eat something or you’ll be swooning in my arms once more.”

“Excuse me.” She bolted from the room. He chewed thoughtfully, then shrugged his shoulders and picked up another piece of toast.

He wiped traces of egg clean from the plate with the last triangle of toast, pushed the plate away, leaned back and sighed happily as he lifted his coffee cup. He’d had dreams as great as most men once, but he’d learned the luxury of a good meal and the freedom to get up and go when it was over was great happiness. Lorna still hadn’t returned. He carried his dishes to the sink, considered them a second, then shrugged and washed and rinsed them. He grabbed the frying pan off the stove, filled it with soapy water but left it to soak. Can’t make her completely happy, he thought, drying his hands on a paper towel. He considered pouring a second cup of coffee, but with his stomach full and the early morning contentment still flush upon him, he was anxious to get out to the land with its kind old roll. He looked to the doorway through which Lorna had fled, waited another second, then went to find her.

He walked down a hallway of scuffed bird’s-eye maple to the first closed door. Beyond he heard labored breaths, then, with surprise, he recognized the liquid spill of retching.

“Mrs. O’Reilly?” He rapped on the door. “Are you all right?”

There was only silence, punctuated seconds later by another attack of illness. He winced, laid a hand to his own full stomach. He’d known such moments himself, but they were always preceded by a worthwhile night of hard drinking. He knew Lorna didn’t at least have the satisfaction of a good night’s drunk to take away some of the current situation’s unpleasantness. He doubted Lorna had ever had a drink in her life, let alone gotten drunk. He doubted she’d danced much either or rolled in the hay for no reason other than she liked a man’s look. He listened to her retching and couldn’t help but feel bad.

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