She was taking a shower, getting clean.

While he was hot, sweaty, dirty and felt pretty much like he’d been hired out to be on a chain gang, not raffled as someone’s dream date. Definitely not appreciated.

And, unfortunately, not very well equipped to look good while he was mucking around doing chores the rest of the male world could probably complete with one hand tied behind their backs.

He had a huge pull in the front of his brand-new designer shirt, a cartoon bandage on his elbow, smears of dirt all over his khaki slacks and it seemed that he’d somehow gotten something green stuck in his hair that Janna hadn’t bothered to tell him about.

He could cheerfully strangle the woman.

What really bothered him, and what he really wished he wouldn’t be considering, or worrying about, was what a really rotten impression he must be making on Janna Monroe.

Not that he liked her…

Raffling Ryan
Kasey Michaels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Sally Hawkes, just because.

KASEY MICHAELS,

the New York Times bestselling author of more than two dozen books, divides her creative time between writing contemporary romance and Regency novels. Married and the mother of four, Kasey’s writing has garnered the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Medallion Award and the Romantic Times Magazine’s Best Regency Trophy.

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

Epilogue

Chapter One

Almira Chandler rode along the Appalachian trails to the sound of birdsong, the wind rippling through the tall trees, and the sound of her own heavy breathing. Three miles, uphill, and then she could coast awhile, as the bike traveled downhill.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, came the sound of voices raised in near whoops. Outlaws about to attack? The end of the world? Somebody knocking on the door to announce that the long-suffering Chandler housekeeper, Mrs. Ballantine, had won some million-dollar sweepstakes?

Almira had little time to reflect, as the door to her ground-floor exercise room flew open, banging hard against the doorstop as Maddy Chandler O’Malley burst into the room, flapping her arms as if about to take flight.

Almira kept pedaling, kept her eyes on the moving screen in front of her that showed she had less than half a mile to go before she could coast. It was, after all, only Maddy. Maddy got excited when one of her roses bloomed. She went into ecstasies when her soufflés didn’t fall—which they never did.

Whatever it was that Maddy had to tell her, it could wait until Almira was on the downhill side of the mountain.

Maddy skidded to a halt in front of her grandmother, waved her hands to get the woman’s attention. When that failed, she did the unthinkable. She turned off the exercise video.

“That’s it, kiddo, you’re out of the will,” Almira gasped breathlessly, her pumping legs slowing down without the incentive in front of her. Incentive like a carrot in front of a donkey, she’d always said, but it worked for her. At seventy, she needed whatever worked for her.

“This can’t wait, Allie,” Maddy told her. “Jessica’s back from the doctor. Remember? She and Matt went today for that sonogram, ultrasound—whatever. You’ll never guess. You’ll never, never ever guess!”

Allie let go of the handlebars and checked her pulse. Calming wonderfully, right on schedule. This bike-riding stuff just might help her heart, along with her calves. Although it was her calves that concerned her, had gotten her on the bike in the first place. Not that Almira Chandler was vain.

Well, maybe just a little. There had been those cosmetic surgeries, hadn’t there? But she had long ago convinced herself that if she was to keep up with her three grandchildren, she couldn’t give in to age and go sit in a corner somewhere, watching soap operas.

“I’d never guess, huh?” Allie said now, stepping off the bicycle and accepting the white terry towel Maddy tossed in her direction. “Let’s see. Twins?”

“Allie! Why are you always doing that?”

It had been a logical assumption, not that Allie wanted to point that out to her youngest granddaughter. She had two guesses otherwise: boy or girl. But Maddy had said she’d never guess. That ruled out any fifty-fifty shots. Besides, Almira was too busy being stunned, from the hot-pink terry band around her forehead, straight down to her designer sneakers. “Twins? Jessica really is carrying twins?”

That was what Maddy had wanted to see—her grandmother flustered. It didn’t happen often, and Maddy wished she’d thought to pick up a camera and bring it into the exercise room with her. “Twins, Allie,” she repeated. “Jess had to drive back here from the doctor’s, because Matt seems to be in shock. Joe’s with them in the other room, fanning poor Matt with the sports section of the morning paper. Oh, and neither one will tell us the sex, although they already know. That’s mean.”

“And Jessica?” Allie asked carefully. She knew this pregnancy hadn’t been planned—had even preceded the late-July marriage ceremony by about two months. Now, in only mid-September, Jessica had been reluctantly wearing maternity clothing, moaning about her weight gain, and swearing she’d be as big as a house before she finally delivered.

Maddy dismissed her sister’s reaction with a wave of her hand. “Oh, her. She’s just so happy that the doctor has upped the amount of weight she can gain. In other words, she copped that last doughnut you were saving until after your ramble through the Appalachians. Ever see someone wearing powdered sugar all over a smile she can’t seem to wipe off her face? Disgusting. Come on, Allie, let’s go congratulate them.”

Allie was already reaching for a robe, and led the way out of the room with Maddy following close behind. “You know, Allie,” Maddy said, “it’s really funny, isn’t it? Jess having babies before me? I thought I wanted them so much, and I do, but Joe and I are having so much fun that we’ve decided to wait awhile, while Jessica is happily learning how to crochet booties. And now? Two for one? Man, am I ever going to have some catching up to do, huh? And Ryan. Not that anyone expects big brother ever to marry.”

“Speak for yourself, darling,” Allie said, then pulled a ticket out of one of her pockets, handing it to Maddy. “Here, read this.”

Maddy looked over the announcement. “‘Date for a Day?”’ She regarded her grandmother, then read more. “It’s for the children’s wing of the hospital. Charity event…bid on the man of your dreams who’ll do your bidding for one entire day…all proceeds go to—Allie! You’ve signed Ryan up for this, haven’t you? Don’t answer me, I can see the answer in your eyes. Omigod! He’s going to have a cow!”

“Nonsense, Maddy,” Allie said, tying the sash of her robe tighter around her slim waist. Almira Chandler, thanks to cosmetic surgeries and an active lifestyle, both physically and mentally, looked twenty years younger than her seventy years…and if doing mischief took years off a person’s life, she’d look even younger.

“I’ve settled you and Joe, haven’t I? Settled Jessica and Matt? Not that I’m expecting miracles, you understand, but if Ryan were just to get off his duff, get out more, I’m sure he’d soon find someone suitable. Even better, he might find someone unsuitable. That’s really who he needs, you know. Someone to get him out of his rut.”

Maddy was still looking at the ticket, still shaking her head. “Maximum security prison will get him out of his rut, Allie. Because he is going to kill you.”

“No.”

“Yes, Ryan,” Allie countered evenly as Ryan stood up from behind his desk and began to pace.

A tall man, taller than the average, he reminded her so much of her late husband that sometimes her heart ached just looking at him. Hair as black as coal, with a tendency to wave, and with the chance of tumbling onto his forehead if only he’d let it grow past a near military shortness. His grandfather’s same brilliant green eyes, sparkling with intelligence but, alas, rarely with mischief. Already thirty-three, Ryan was heading toward a settled, boring middle age.

At least he would be, if Allie left him alone, which she wasn’t about to do.

He still held the ticket, and stabbed at it with the index finger of his other hand. “This—this is ridiculous. Auctioning off bachelors to giggly women? How much money could anything like this raise, anyway?”

“Thirty-six thousand dollars last year, I understand, with only fifty bachelors. They outfitted a whole new playroom for the in-patient children. This year there will be at least sixty, including you, darling,” Allie slid in reasonably. “I believe now they want to be able to hire a full-time play activities director for the unit. It’s for the children, Ryan. You can’t say no.”

“I can’t say no because you’ve already signed me up!” He mashed the ticket into a ball and threw it into the wastebasket. Thanks to his high school basketball days, he had a pretty good shot, and rarely missed what he aimed at. “Okay, so I’ll send a donation instead. It’s a good project. But that’s it. Who do I call? Who’s in charge?”

“Marcia Hyatt,” Allie mumbled, speaking into her own chest as she bowed her head. It was either that or laugh out loud, which probably would get her in trouble with her only grandson.

“Who? Marcia? Did you say Marcia?” If Ryan had something else to throw, he’d have whipped it hard against the wall. “Of all the people…”

“That was years ago, Ryan, and you were never suited for each other. I certainly knew that. Besides, it would take a pretty big ego to think that she’s still pining for you all these years later. And I don’t think Marcia Hyatt is the pining type. Barracudas don’t pine. They attack. Oh, dear. That would be unfortunate, wouldn’t it? Are you sure you want to back out, darling? It might be dangerous.”

Ryan bent his head, used both hands to rub at the back of his neck. “I can’t call her. She’d know I was backing out over some personal reason and, knowing her, think I was backing out in case she’d bid on me. Damn it, Allie, I’m stuck, and you know I’m stuck.”

Allie delicately coughed into her hand, covering her near purr of satisfaction. “Anyone would think I was hiring you out for hard labor in some coal mine. It’s a date, darling. Wine and dine some woman for a single day, for a good cause. What could go wrong?”

Everything was going wrong.

From the moment Ryan showed up at Allen Country Club the night of the auction, everything had gone from bad, to worse, to damn near miserable.

Marcia had met him at the door, kissing both his cheeks as she stuck a paper badge to his tuxedo jacket touting him to be Hunk Number 22, and told him to “Circulate, darling, circulate, and whip the ladies into a bidding frenzy. Too bad that tux doesn’t show your butt. Charlie Armstrong, also on the tux list, went against the rules and wore jeans to show his, and a sorrier choice of attire I’ve never seen. Bruce Springsteen he isn’t! We’ll be lucky to get two hundred dollars for that idiot. But you,” she said, patting his cheek, “well, we’re expecting some big money for you. You look so…so James Bond. I knew you would, when I added your name to the tuxedo list.”

Ryan knew he must have responded to Marcia’s near monologue, but he would never be quite sure what he said as he smiled and moved away from the foyer, into the large ballroom already crowded with “Hunks” and their prospective bidders.

The country club had huge facilities, but the auction had been limited to the barnlike addition to the clubhouse, a huge, parquet-floored ballroom with dark, open-beamed ceilings and a stone fireplace you could roast two pigs in at the same time, with room left over for a small cow.

The chandeliers that hung from the rafters had been dimmed considerably, throwing the corners of the room into shadow and creating a more intimate atmosphere. If you were into atmosphere and, at least for tonight, Ryan most certainly was not. He was too busy reminding himself of the location of all the exits.

There were other tuxedos sprinkled throughout the crowd, he saw, as well as men dressed in casual khakis and golf shirts, some even with cardigans draped over their shoulders, the sleeves tied across their chests—a “look” Ryan had always considered too studied to be really “casual.” There were men in jeans and cowboy shirts, a few in tennis whites and carrying rackets.

He even saw one guy walk by in nothing but swim trunks and thongs, a towel draped around his shoulders—and looking about as “casual” as the too deliberately casual khaki men. He also looked as if the self-adhesive paper badge pressed to his bare chest proclaiming him as Hunk Number 47 was playing hell with his few chest hairs. Which served him right, in Ryan’s opinion.

Some of the men looked embarrassed. But the majority, Lord help them, seemed to be enjoying themselves very much.

Pitiful. Absolutely pitiful. He was ashamed of his own gender.

Within moments Ryan began feeling like a side of beef, as giggling women circled him, writing down his number, and then moving on. His mouth having suddenly gone as dry as a desert, he snagged a glass of wine from a passing waiter and drank it down in one gulp, then looked for a place to hide the glass, and himself, until his number was called.

As he smiled and excused himself through the crowd, he saw the temporary construction at one end of the ballroom and his knees nearly crumpled. A runway. For God’s sake—a runway.

He couldn’t believe it. He was going to have to walk down that runway? Probably while Marcia Hyatt read some drivel from a card about how rich and eligible he was.

How did Miss America contestants stand it?

“Hi. You’re one of the bachelors, aren’t you? I think this is where I’m supposed to say hubba-hubba, and act like some brainless twit or sex-starved career woman on the prowl for fresh meat. You won’t mind if I ask you where you got that glass of wine instead, would you? I think my tongue is soon going to be stuck to the roof of my mouth.”

And not a moment too soon, Ryan thought, sighing, as the near-mocking female voice finally came to a halt. Then he turned to look at the woman who’d spoken to him, surprised to see that she was taller than most women of his acquaintance, a good five feet nine in her stocking feet, he decided.

But that wasn’t the only thing she didn’t have in common with the women he knew, the women he occasionally dated, less frequently bedded.

For one thing, she didn’t seem to have a clue as to who he was—or care, for that matter. That in itself was unusual.

And then there was the matter of her clothes. He guessed they were clothes. Either that, or she had grabbed a tablecloth off a restaurant table and wrapped it around her as a skirt on her way over here. Combined with a lemon-color ribbed sweater, her wildly flowered skirt wrapped around her like a sarong, and hung nearly to the tops of her shoes…which were brown boots. Hiking boots, it looked like. Maybe combat boots. No. That couldn’t be. Combat boots? Boots, he finally noticed, which sort of matched the brown knapsack hung over one shoulder.

Her hair was dark red as a ripe persimmon, and curled wildly around her head, framing her huge brown eyes and making her creamy white skin look even more pale. The woman wasn’t even wearing lipstick, although her lips were naturally pink…and full…and looked great against her teeth as she smiled…as she was smiling now.

Whoa! Hold it! She’s just different, that’s all. Way different. Too different. Practically a late-night test pattern for a color television.

“I snagged this from a passing waiter,” he said at last, once he’d realized he was staring. And she’d known it, he could tell from the smile on her face, the sparkle in her eyes. “If you want, I could go look for him?”

“No, that’s all right. I’d really rather have a soda, anyway,” she answered, then stuck out her hand. “It’s Janna. Janna Monroe. And you’re…?”

“Ryan Chandler,” he answered, automatically taking her hand in his, surprised by the firmness of her grip. “Are you here for the auction?”

Her eyes were doing it again. Twinkling. “Yep,” she said, retrieving her hand, which he had somehow forgotten to let go. “I’m here looking for a good man. Are you a good man? It’s hard to tell, especially as you really look like you’re hunting for the nearest way out and a quick run for the border.”

Ryan smiled in spite of himself. “That obvious, huh? The truth is—” and why he was telling her the truth he’d never understand “—my grandmother set me up…signed me up, that is. But it is for a good cause.”

“Well, that’s good. Getting roped into it is understandable. Volunteering to be auctioned off like a prize horse or something is…well, it’s sorta weird, don’t you think?”

Charlie Armstrong passed by at that particular moment, dressed in jeans as Marcia had said. What she hadn’t said was that he was also wearing a homespun white shirt, a black leather vest, cowboy boots and a bright-white ten-gallon hat. And if that wasn’t a hunk of chew ballooning out the side of his cheek, Ryan was a monkey’s uncle. Especially since good old Charlie took that moment to spit into the paper cup he carried with him.

He wore the number 21 on his vest.

Charlie Armstrong was, in “real life,” a pediatrician, and fifty-five if he was a day, though he looked sixty. But tonight? Tonight he was Kid Armstrong, King of the West, chewing tobacco, wearing too tight jeans, middle-aged paunch and all.

It was pitiful. And sort of funny.

Ryan looked back at Janna as Charlie sashayed through the crowd, to see her rolling her eyes and laughing in pure delight. “I don’t know. Do you think I should bid on him?”

“It would be a pity bid, to hear the committee chair’s opinion,” Ryan said, then was immediately embarrassed for himself. Still, this wasn’t exactly cutting up Charlie, or cutting him down. It was just a little good clean fun in the midst of a night that promised to be less than enjoyable. “He’s really a good guy, you know. His wife left him two years ago, and I think he’s just starting to get out and about again.”

“And doing it with a real flair,” Janna added, giggling some more. “Well, I’ve got to move on. I’m looking over all the tall ones, you understand.”

“Tall ones?” Ryan repeated, but Janna Monroe was already gone, disappearing into the crowd, although he could still see her flaming red head as she moved along. Then he shrugged. She was probably looking for the tall ones because she was tall herself. She probably wanted a man of some size, for dancing, for whatever.

Whatever?

Ryan grabbed another glass of wine from a passing waiter. What would be whatever?

He reluctantly went off in search of Marcia, and a list of the rules.

Ryan stood behind a portable curtain, conjuring up tortures for his grandmother. Date for a Day?

That might have been the original name, but Allie had forgotten to tell him that name had been changed. The auction was now dubbed Yours for a Day, and the possibilities that opened up to inventive minds had packed the ballroom.

There were rules, of course, and he’d found a listing of them in the foyer, on the registration table. One rule, actually. It just said that everything had to be “mutual.”

Now, to define mutual. Mostly, to define everything.

He’d tell his grandmother he thought he saw a wrinkle next to her nose the next time she smiled. Yeah. That would do it. Allie would be looking in mirrors for days, trying to see that same wrinkle, and it would serve her right, considering it was her mission in life these days to do everything necessary not to look like anyone’s soon-to-be great-grandmother.

But, for right now, all Ryan wanted to do was get out of here. Get up on the runway, listen to himself be auctioned off, and get out of here. He was number 22, and there were sixty-three bachelors. Did he really have to stay after his number was called?

Yeah, and like whose team of wild horses was going to keep him here?

Once the bidding started, it became pretty heated a few times, especially when the band had broken into Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?,” and Bob Rogers, one of the senior partners in the prestigious Rogers and Whitcomb Securities Inc., no less, had begun stripping off his artfully draped beige sweater and wiggling his pelvis at the women. Hit heartthrob Ricky Martin comes to Allentown, complete with banker-striped tie. Scary, that’s what it was. Positively scary.

Okay, so Ryan had laughed along with everyone else, but Bob had pulled in nearly one thousand dollars for the children’s wing. A person could forgive a lot of inane nonsense for one thousand bucks, right?

There had been a short intermission, during which the ladies had nibbled on small cakes and tea as they sharpened their bidding skills for the next round, and now the second bidding session was about to start.

Marcia, who had indeed taken on the role of master of ceremonies with a will—and a little more verve than necessary, to Ryan’s mind—was counting heads behind the curtain, making sure all of the second round of bachelors had shown up. She spied Ryan, winked at him, and whispered dangerously, “You’re mine, Chandler,” before heading back out to the microphone; a statement that cheered Ryan not a bit.

“Good luck, Charlie!” other bachelors called out as Charlie Armstrong’s number was called and the pediatrician hiked up his jeans, tried to rearrange his paunch somewhere closer to his chest, and stepped through the opening in the curtain.

He was met by a roar of approval and the band’s vocal rendition of Garth Brooks’s fast-paced “Something with a Ring to It.”

The crowd, as the saying goes, went wild.

And the bidding only got hotter when Charlie began singing along to the music.

“Two hundred!”

“Three-fifty!”

“Six! Six!”

“One…thousand…dollars.”

Ryan raised his eyes toward the ceiling, running that last, definitely authoritative voice through his head, processing it, and then pushed through the crowd of bachelors peeping through the curtain to take a look for himself.

He’d been right. Good Lord, he’d been right. There she was, his grandmother, standing right at the end of the runway, waving her checkbook in the air.

“Going…going…sold, for one thousand dollars!” Marcia crowed from the podium, bringing down the gavel she’d probably borrowed from her father, the judge.

One thousand dollars. And Ryan was next. How was he going to top one thousand dollars?

Hell, did he want to?

Not really.

“Number 22!” Marcia called out, and Ryan took a deep breath, then stepped through the curtain. Strobe lights immediately blinded him as the room went dark except for the wildly moving colored lights that danced around the stage while the band—really pushing it now—tried their hand at the theme from Jaws.

Ryan fought a compulsion to turn and run for his life. Only the fact that Allie was no longer standing at the end of the runway—and making faces at him or something equally horrible—kept him going.

“Here we are, ladies, one Ryan Chandler. Tall, dark, sinfully gorgeous. And R-I-C-H, ladies. Oh, my goodness, yes. Could he be anything else but extremely talented? Ryan? Take a stroll down the runway, please, as I open the bids at…three hundred?”

The bids got to seven hundred quickly, with Ryan stiffly looking out over the crowd, his eyes concentrated on some vague point in the far distance. Marcia had the top bid, and it appeared that no one else wanted to go against the chairperson on this one—not if they wanted to be invited back next year.

And then, as Marcia was saying, “Going…going…” another voice piped up from the rear of the room. “Eight hundred!”

Marcia stopped the gavel in midslam and, with narrowed eyes, looked out into the darkness. “Eight-fifty,” Marcia muttered from between clenched teeth.

“Nine,” came right back at her. Closely followed by a giggle.

Ryan turned at the head of the runway, and started walking back toward Marcia. Interesting. The woman was so sleekly blond, so very controlled. And now, suddenly, her cheeks were flushed, her lips thin with anger.

He didn’t know who had dared to overbid her, but whoever it was, he was certainly enjoying himself, which he just as certainly had never expected to do.

“One…thousand…dollars,” Marcia said, throwing back her head, exposing the length of her throat, the height of her arrogance.

The answer came in less than a heartbeat. “One thousand five hundred. Oh, the heck with it—two thousand even!”

The crowd, which had gone silent, began murmuring, shuffling in their seats as they turned to see who was doing the bidding.

Ryan turned with them, putting a shielding hand to his forehead to try to see through the ridiculous strobe lights.

All he saw was a bright red head and a wide, happy grin as Marcia, bred never to cause a scene, brought the gavel down. “Sold! Please go to the registration desk to write your check and meet your bachelor.”

Applause broke out, as Ryan had brought in the largest donation of the night thus far, and he saw Allie standing right up front again, having appeared there like a genie out of a bottle and clapping for all she was worth, giving out a few good “cowgirl” yells while she was at it.

She’s enjoying this! I’m really going to have to hurt that woman, Ryan thought as he went back through the curtain and accepted the back-slappings and “you dog, you” congratulations of the other bachelors.

As another bachelor stepped through the curtain, this time to the strains of “Young at Heart”—a fitting song for the eighty-year-old George McDonald, chairman of the board of the hospital—Ryan made his way through the crowd in search of his grandmother.

He found her at the registration desk, having gone there right after the bidding on Ryan, she told him, in order to pay for Charlie and arrange their date.

“How…why…what the devil do you think you’re—”

“Oh, Ryan, close your mouth,” Allie scolded. “I’m not looking for romance, if that’s what you think. Charlie Armstrong is the best pediatrician in town, and Jessica’s babies need the best pediatrician. I’m only buttering him up, considering that I’ve heard he’s not taking new patients right now—which will change when we’re done speaking, I assure you. Besides, Charlie is taking Western line dancing lessons, and I want him to take me with him.”

Ryan shook his head. “Do you ever just do anything, Allie? Or does everything you do have a purpose? And, that being said, are you going to let me in on the purpose behind putting me up on that runway tonight?”

Allie reached up, patted his cheek. “I just want you to have some fun, darling. Live a little, loosen up. Ah, and here comes your date now. Isn’t she…different. Be nice, Ryan. She’s probably more fragile than she looks.”

“She’s hardly built like a linebacker, Allie,” Ryan said out of the corner of his mouth as Janna stopped, bent from the waist to untangle her skirt from her boot, showing off the limber grace of form inherent in her long-waisted, dancer-slim body.

“Yes, but that flamboyant coloring, those clothes. I think she’s hiding behind them a little, Ryan, to make up for some courage she lacks. In fact, I’m willing to wager she’s had her heart broken at some time.” She patted his cheek again. “But you’ll fix that, won’t you?”

“I’ll fix—damn,” Ryan ended. He was talking to the air, for Allie was already back in the crowd, hanging on Charlie’s arm and making the pseudocowboy look good for it.

“Hi, again,” Janna said as she walked over to stand in front of him. “Quite the mad bidding war, wasn’t it? I was going to give up, but the auctioneer was so sure she had you that I just knew I had to rescue you. You can thank me later, unless you really wanted to be caught in her clutches for a whole day and evening. Besides, I was also being selfish. You’re the tallest man here.”

“Tall. Yes, you mentioned that before. What does my being tall have to do with anything?”

Janna’s smile dazzled more brightly than the strobe lights that had begun to flash again. Ryan would have looked to the runway to see what was causing the women to begin howling in delight, but he didn’t think he had the courage to see much more of the auction. Not if he had to face whoever was up there across a table at a business lunch anytime soon.

“What does it have to do with anything? Didn’t you read the rules?” she asked. “You’re mine for the day, for whatever—as long as it’s legal, I’m assuming. Well, I need a handyman, and you’re it. And you’re tall because, even on a ladder, you have to be tall to replace the lightbulb in the fixture over my front door. Oh, I could do it myself, but I get sort of dizzy up high, so I’d rather you do it. See?”

“No, no I don’t see. You just paid two thousand dollars to use me as a handyman for a day? You could have hired three handymen for that price. Half a dozen.”

“True, true. But I wouldn’t have this nice charity write-off, now would I? And besides, have you ever tried to find a handyman who just wants to do small jobs?” She threw back her head, showing her own long neck, and it was longer, and whiter, than Marcia’s. “Lots of luck, that’s what I say, trying to find a man like that.” She grinned. “So I bought you.”

“Because I’m tall. Because I can reach the light fixture over your front door. That’s it? That’s your reason?”

She stuck out one leg, and her rather adorable chin, and braced one hand on her hip. “No,” she said, her smile gone. “I picked you because of those killer bedroom eyes of yours. I took one look and wanted to jump your bones, big boy. There, happy now?”

Ryan had the grace to look ashamed, even feel ashamed. “You really do want me to be your handyman for the day. I—I’m sorry I didn’t understand from the first.”

“That’s all right,” Janna said, patting his shoulder, the way he imagined she’d pat a puppy who’d just got nervous on her carpet. She handed him a piece of paper. “Here. This is my address. According to The Weather Channel—if you’re into wild prognostications—this Saturday is going to be a lovely Indian summer kind of day. Perfect for handyman jobs. Be there at 8:00 a.m., okay? Now, I’ve gotta go see someone about a check.”

He pointed toward the registration desk. “You’re going the wrong way. You pay over there,” he told her, still trying to figure out what had just happened to him. Was he happy to have been rescued from Marcia? Or had he just been tossed from the frying pan straight into the fire, as the old saying went?

Janna grimaced, looking as comical as a pretty woman could, which, in her case, was pretty comical. Rather like watching a young Lucille Ball coming down the stairs in a ball gown, then looking into the camera lens and deliberately crossing her eyes. He had to smile, in spite of himself. “I know. But first I have to see…I have to…well, don’t you worry about me. I’ll see you Saturday morning.”

And then she was gone, and Ryan was standing there, holding the note, written, it appeared, in dark-brown eyebrow pencil: “Janna Monroe. 540 Washington Avenue. Eight o’clock. Be there or be square.”

Chapter Two

Janna stood at the kitchen sink, looking out the window at the sun as it rose slowly in the sky. It was Saturday, the sun was shining, and The Weather Channel had been right on target, because the expected high today was seventy-two degrees.

She glanced at the clock on the wall above the cabinets, watching for a moment as the turquoise-blue plastic cat wagged its tail as each second passed, bringing the time closer to eight o’clock. The cat’s big yellow eyes also moved with the second hand, shifting side to side in true feline fashion, and she grinned at it, thinking it was grinning at her, anticipating an interesting day.

Tansy, her real-life blue-cream shorthaired cat and boon companion since she’d rescued the then small, fuzzy kitten from the animal shelter eight months earlier, politely rubbed up against her jean-covered leg, reminding Janna that she hadn’t been fed yet. “Always the lady, Tansy. Good for you. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

The cat looked up at her hopefully, then hopped onto the counter without seeming to move at all. She was just on the floor one moment, and standing next to the soapy water-filled sink the next. Tilting her head to one side, Tansy began to “talk” to Janna.

And she really did talk, Tansy did. Just because nobody understood her didn’t mean she didn’t talk, or so Janna had explained to Zachary when her son teased her for talking back to a cat.

“Yes, yes,” Janna said, “I’m washing your dishes now. Yes,” she continued after Tansy held up her end of the conversation, “the pink one with the flowers on it. I know it’s your favorite.”

Seemingly satisfied with that answer, Tansy began her premeal ablutions, licking her front paw and then rubbing it over her whiskered face.

Janna shook her head. “I really should get out more,” she said, not to Tansy but to herself. “Next thing you know, I’ll be talking to the clock, too.”

Her musings were interrupted by Zachary’s footsteps thundering down the hallway. He slid into the kitchen, stopping precisely next to his chair at the table. “Hi, Mom,” the nine-year-old said as he picked up the granola bar Janna had laid there for him. “Bye, Mom,” he continued around his first mouthful, already heading for the door.

“I don’t think so,” Janna said, rinsing Tansy’s dish under the tap and placing it in the dish drainer. “Haven’t you forgotten something?”

Zachary, a brown-eyed, red-haired, freckle-faced miniature of his mother, screwed up his face in thought. “Oh, yeah, right. I’ll be over at Tommy’s. We’ve got soccer practice at ten, remember? We’ve got to practice.”

“You’ve got to practice for the practice,” Janna said, nodding. “Understandable. Now, what else have you forgotten?”

Zachary comically screwed up his face once more, concentrating. “Nope. Can’t think of anything,” he said, trying not to smile.

“Now you’ve done it,” Janna said, advancing on him as he retreated toward the back door. She grabbed his face with her wet, soapy hands and planted a big, fat kiss on his forehead, then rubbed soapsuds into his cheeks, just for the fun of it.

“Aw, Mom,” Zachary complained, but his heart wasn’t in it. He was in too much of a hurry to run past her and scoop up some soap bubbles of his own. Once armed with two near mountains of bubbles, he advanced on Janna, heh-heh-hehing like the evil landlord about to toss poor, defenseless Little Nell out into the blizzard.

Janna rapidly retreated, looking for weapons as she went. Nothing. Not close enough to the refrigerator to get the canned whipped cream; too far away from the sink to reload there.

There was nothing else to do but make a break for it. Still watching Zachary, she struggled to open the back door, her slippery hands not making much progress on the doorknob.

Emitting eeks and acks and various other exclamations meant to show her “terror,” she finally wrenched the door open, then sidestepped quickly as Zachary, hot on her tail, couldn’t stop himself from running straight outside…and smack into the man standing on the back stoop, holding up his hand as if ready to knock on the door.

The two small mountains of soap bubbles became a casualty of the collision, some of them slamming into Ryan Chandler’s chest, some of them flying up and finding new homes in Zachary’s hair, on Ryan’s nose.

Ryan’s hands came down on Zachary’s shoulders to steady him, and he looked past the boy to the mother, who was leaning against the back door, laughing, and not trying to be quiet about it, either. Her laugh rang out pure and full and with genuine enjoyment, even as she pushed herself away from the door and grabbed a dish towel, handing it to Ryan. “Hi, Mr. Chandler,” she said. “You and Zachary have already bumped into each other, I see. Do come in.”

“Gotta go, Mom,” Zachary said, wiping his hands on his sweatpants. “Tommy’s mother drives today, so I’ll be home around lunchtime, okay? See you, um, Mr. Chandler. Oh, and sorry about that.”

With that, Zachary was off, racing across the backyard to his friend, and Janna didn’t bother to stop him. After all, he had apologized, hadn’t he?

“I didn’t know you had a son,” Ryan said, handing back the dish towel as he entered the house behind Janna and looked around the kitchen, pretty much as if he’d never seen one before today.

Janna looked around with him. She really loved her kitchen. It was the one room in the house where she had definitely let herself go, indulging her love of color as well as cramming every available space with one of her first loves: gadgets.

The kitchen set was a genuine antique, a sort of Art Deco chrome-legged set with Formica top—a turquoise Formica top, with matching padded chairs. She’d seen a set much like it at a local furniture store, new, and had laughed to think that her grandmother’s cast-off set from the fifties had stuck around long enough to show up in decorating reruns.

The walls were also turquoise, bright against the high old, glass-fronted cabinets she’d covered with not one but six careful layers of white paint and decorated with chrome pulls and handles in the shape of pineapples.

Then there was the bright-white tile floor she’d laid herself, with turquoise, pink and yellow tiles scattered throughout, ruffled curtains of turquoise, pink and yellow stripes she’d patched together out of remnants, the colorful prints on the walls, the dozen or so birdhouses and green, trailing plants in the space between the cabinets and the ceiling, the turquoise Formica countertops covered with bread maker, toaster oven, can opener, blender, pasta maker and several other can’t-live-without-it gadgets and…well…it was a “full” kitchen. No doubt.

One might even call it cluttered. To look at Ryan Chandler, he was one of those who definitely would.

“Would you like a cup of coffee before you get started?” she asked, drying off her hands and setting the flowered bowl on the floor, filling it with dry cat food. “Of course you do. You sit down over there while I get it. Oh, and the list is on the table.”

When she turned away from the coffeepot to approach the table holding two stoneware cups, one pink, one turquoise, Ryan was staring at her. In fact, she got the feeling that he had done nothing but stare at her since his first inspection of the room.

She looked down at herself, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. She was wearing jeans. Okay, old jeans. Okay, very old jeans. Very old, soft, and somewhat tight jeans, worn low on her hips and hugging her very long legs.

What else would she wear if she and Ryan were going to be working on odd jobs all day? Well, a knit sweater, for one thing. And she was wearing one. A dark-gray sweater-vest once belonging to her late husband—which had shrunk badly in the wash—that she sometimes wore with a blouse, and sometimes without.

She looked down at herself again. Okay, so she should probably have worn a blouse under it today.

And maybe a bra.

She winced as she looked at herself.

Definitely a bra. I mean, she thought, how was I to know the guy would turn catatonic on me, for crying out loud? They’re just nipples. Everybody’s got them. He’s got them, for crying out loud.

Okay, and so maybe her venerable, shrunken sweater also didn’t quite meet the waistband of her jeans. Hadn’t the man ever seen a belly button before, either?

Still…did she look that bad, that terrible? She had pulled her thick, long, unruly mop of redder than red hair up on top of her head, securing it there with a rubber band, so that curls tumbled all over the place—back, front, sides. She always thought she looked like a really, really big chrysanthemum when she wore her hair this way, but it was comfortable, and it kept the mop out of her eyes and…“What?” she exclaimed at last, exasperated, and nearly spilling the coffee. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Ryan answered her, taking one of the cups from her and sipping its contents, his gaze now carefully lowered. “What’s this?” he said before taking another sip. “It’s coffee, yes, but there’s something else….”

“They’re French vanilla coffee beans, with a dash of apple cinnamon strudel flavor tossed in,” she told him, sitting down across the table from him. “Like it?”

“First thing in the morning? No. But, since I’ve already had two cups at home, yes, it tastes pretty good. Some special blend?”

“I pick it up at the mall, actually. There’s a gourmet coffee kiosk on the upper level. Every time we’re at the mall, I pick up another flavor. I’ve got a Jamaican blend that would put hair on your fingernails, I swear, but I didn’t think you’d like it. So,” she said, putting down her cup and bracing her elbows on the table, “what do you want to do first?”

His smile did something very strange, setting off a small explosion somewhere in the pit of her stomach. “Do first? Frankly, I’d like to offer you your money back and the services of a first-class handyman. But somehow I don’t think you’d go for that. Or would you?”

She pretended to consider this for a moment, then shook her head, her mop of curls speaking quite eloquently as they bobbed back and forth. “Nope. No deal. We have a bargain, right?”

She’d stick to that answer: a bargain. She wouldn’t mention anything else, couldn’t mention anything else. Not when she didn’t really understand it herself. She only knew she was doing a nice old lady a favor, and she would never renege on her promise.

Especially when her To-Do list was nearly as long as one of Ryan Chandler’s long arms.

Janna picked up the paper, scanned it. “I think you should start with the garage. Zach thinks it’s his private dumping grounds, but I need more storage space for my own stuff. I bought some shelving—you can put shelving together, can’t you?—and after you take everything out of the garage and hose down the floor, we can get everything arranged. Oh, and I’ll help put the shelves together, I promise.”

He looked at her as if she had just told him to climb to the top of Mount Everest and bring her back a tutti-frutti flavored icicle. “You’re kidding, right?”

She looked back at him blankly. “Kidding? Nope. Why would I be kidding?”

He reached up, scratched at a spot behind his left ear. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I thought you’d want to go for a drive, have lunch at some country inn, maybe take in dinner later? Dancing? You know, the sort of thing every other bachelor is probably doing this weekend with the women who bid on them. But clean a garage? Put up shelves?”

“Put together shelves, then put them up. There’s a difference. These are just inexpensive metal thingies, freestanding shelves we sort of smash back against the walls to load my junk onto.” She rolled her eyes at him. “I mean, I wouldn’t ask you to put together real shelves. We have too much else to do to fool with something like that.”

Now he rubbed a hand across his jaw. He really was quite expressive with his hand movements, although he probably didn’t know that. “Got any aspirin, Ms. Monroe?” he asked after a moment.

She got up quickly to get the aspirin bottle down from the cabinet, keeping her eyes on him. Look how he frowned. He was so cute when he frowned. Tall, dark, green-eyed…and really, really cute. Almost cuddly, although she doubted anyone had ever told him that! She nearly dropped the aspirin bottle, realizing that her mind had taken a quantum leap from dirty garages to…well, she’d think about all of that later, wouldn’t she? “You have a headache?” she asked.

“No, but I’m pretty sure I will any minute now,” Ryan said, accepting the two tablets she handed him, swallowing them down with a sip of coffee, and then heading for the back door.

Janna felt the sudden, irresistible need to make a stupid fool of herself, something she could usually do with quite a flourish, especially considering she hadn’t felt foolish about a man—especially a man like Ryan Chandler—in a very, very long time.

“The garage door has one of those electronic openers,” she told him, hands on hips as she felt her tongue begin to run on wheels. “The code is 0000, as it’s easy to remember—and because zero is the lowest number on the keypad and Zachary could reach it by the time he was five and we put it up—and then you press the Enter button and the door goes right up. Sorry if I’m rattling on. I was just giving you a bit of Monroe folklore, or whatever. You don’t mind, do you? No, of course you don’t.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, shaking his head as he pulled the door shut behind him.

Janna put her hands on her hips and stared at the closed door for some moments. The colorful room suddenly seemed drab, now that he’d left it. “The man’s obviously in a daze,” she told herself with false concern and a pot full of ulterior motive. “He’ll forget the code on his own,” she said out loud finally, and went after him.

Three hours, four bandages, and several muttered curse words later, the garage was clean. Hell, it sparkled, if a garage could be said to sparkle.

And, much to Ryan’s surprise, he was beginning to enjoy himself.

Janna had been as good as her word, and had helped screw together the inexpensive, freestanding metal shelves, using an electric screwdriver that had enough attachments to be standard issue on a manned Mars landing-and-recovery module.

As she had put the last bandage on his scraped elbow, a maneuver he couldn’t quite manage himself, she’d kissed the cartoon-covered strip to “make it all better.”

He hadn’t even felt insulted, being lumped into Zachary’s age group, where kissing to make things better must be standard operating procedure.

Besides, it worked.

“Where to now, boss?” he asked, still feeling pretty good about himself. He was, after all, in very good shape. He worked out three times a week in his own home exercise room—without resorting to Allie’s motivational exercise tapes. He golfed. He played the occasional game of tennis—although never against Allie, who cheated blatantly. “Out” to his grandmother only counted if she called it.

“Where to now? Upstairs, to the main bathroom,” Janna answered, already leading the way.

The trip to the second floor meant that Ryan was going to get a look at her house, which intrigued him mightily. Outside, it was a typical redbrick Cape Cod, although the bright-yellow shutters and woodwork were, to say the least, out of the ordinary. However, once inside her kitchen, he’d known that here lived a woman who was either color blind or in love with color. Bright colors. Sunshiny colors. Happy colors. She’d even painted the interior of her garage a sunny yellow—with blue stripes, no less.

They passed through the kitchen and directly into the dining room. Ryan stopped in his tracks, instantly mesmerized by the hand-painted mural on the wall shared with the kitchen. It was a scene from a park, a Paris park, in fact. He recognized snippets from his art history classes. The tree in the foreground. The lady in the hat, exposing her profile and the bustle of her long skirt.

“Isn’t that Monet?” he asked, pointing to the mural.

Her grin flashed at him, once again nearly blinding him—he’d really have to get used to the fact that she seemed so damned happy all the time. “Nope. It’s a Monroe,” she corrected, idly tracing a finger over the lady’s profile. “See? That’s me under the hat. And the little boy? That’s Zachary, although he was only five then, of course. Oh, it might have started out as a Monet, but I added a few touches of my own. Like the parrot in that tree over there. Like it?”

Ignoring the parrot, Ryan peered closely at the woman’s face. Damn if it wasn’t Janna Monroe, complete with burnished curls. He slowly shook his head. “Remarkable. You’re quite good, you know. A little flaky, maybe, but good.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. The little bit flaky part, especially. Mark, my husband, said being flaky was my most endearing trait.”

“Your husband,” Ryan repeated, surprised to feel so shocked to learn about this man called Mark. Maybe he had thought Zachary had been hatched under a cabbage patch. Maybe he’d thought she’d had a youthful fling. But a husband? Why hadn’t he considered the fact that she might have—or had—a husband?

“Mark, yes,” Janna said evenly. “He’s not in the mural because I couldn’t…well, I couldn’t bring myself to paint his portrait after he died. That was when Zachary was eighteen months old, a few years before we moved here from Soho, in fact. Shall we go upstairs now?”

Ryan followed her to the center hall and the stairs, only vaguely taking in the old but comfortable-looking faded chintz couches in the living room, the round oak pedestal table that sat in the dining room. It was the furniture of castoffs, of well-loved hand-me-downs. The sort of things found in a first apartment, or a newlyweds’ home. And, he thought fleetingly, not the sort of home or furniture that cried out that Janna Monroe had an extra two thousand dollars lying around to fling at a charity, any charity. “Soho? You lived in New York City?”

“We had a loft,” she told him, climbing the stairs ahead of him, giving him a good view of her jean-covered rear. Ryan deliberately looked away. He was much too enthralled with the view not to look away. “Mark was an artist, and quite good. Sculptor, actually. Much better than me. A couple of his works are in parks in New Jersey and Connecticut. But there was no sense staying, not after he was gone, and we’d always wanted Zachary to grow up with grass and trees and Little League. So I finally decided to leave, closed my eyes and stabbed a finger on the map, and we moved here.”

“What if you had ended up with your finger stuck in the middle of Lake Erie, or even the Atlantic Ocean?” Ryan asked, wondering if, just maybe, he’d fallen down a rabbit hole and was now doing his version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The gray-blue-and-orange-mottled feline perched at the top of the steps didn’t look like the Cheshire Cat, but the thing was grinning at him, damn it.

Janna turned at the top of the stairs, looking back at him. “Oh, that wouldn’t have happened,” she told him.

“Why not?” he asked. Then the word that had been chanting in his head off and on for the past two hours chimed out again: hippie. Was it possible Janna was a neo-hippie, if there were such things as neo-hippies, considering most of the real hippies were soon going to be old enough to apply for retirement benefits from the Establishment they’d vowed never to trust. Still, he gave it a shot. “Or do you think it was your karma or something?”

“Karma? Gee, I haven’t heard that one in a while,” she said, turning to lead the way toward the bathroom. “No, it wouldn’t happen because I researched several cities carefully, checked out schools and crime levels and all that stuff, made my choice, then peeked before I poked. But don’t tell Zachary. He thinks I’m brilliant. Besides, it pays to have children believe their parents just might have special powers, or eyes in the backs of their heads. At least until they’re old enough to know better than to touch matches or play with unknown dogs, or take candy from strangers. Right now, I’m omnipotent to Zachary, and he believes everything that comes out of my mouth. Believes and obeys. And that’s the way I’m going to keep it, at least until he’s heading for college.”

“How old is he? Nine? Ten?”

“Nine and three-quarters,” Janna told him, pulling a face. “I’m running out of time, aren’t I? I mean, last week he asked me how he got here.” She rolled her eyes. “I told him, of course, as you should always answer serious questions truthfully, but I didn’t say much—no more than he’d asked. But I won’t say it isn’t hard for a mother and son, especially in situations like that. There are times when I miss Mark so much….”

Then she grinned again, her eyes coming alive once more. “Here we are. How good are you with a caulk gun?”

Ryan didn’t answer for a moment. He was too busy thinking about what Allie had said. What was it? Oh, yes, something about Janna Monroe putting on those bright colors and happy smiles to hide something sad inside her. How he hated when his grandmother was right.

And then there was the fact that he had, without really noticing, somehow walked down the hallway and straight into what could only be Janna’s bedroom.

This room, compared to the other rooms he had seen, seemed plain, almost stark. A virgin room, with a single bed, and no sign of color or froufrou lace he’d come to expect in a woman’s bedroom.

For all the verve, the color, the absolute joy of the rest of the house, this room could have been plucked straight from an eighteenth-century nunnery.

Yes, Ryan told himself. This was a woman who held a few secret sorrows. A widow with a son and a lot of memories she was either trying to banish or hold to herself, cling to by not surrounding herself with womanly things, loverlike things.

“Ryan—yoo-hoo? Caulk guns? Are you familiar with them?”

He looked at the thing Janna was now waving in front of his face. Big. Gray metal. Sort of like a gun, but not like a gun. And totally incomprehensible to him as to how the thing could and should be used.

He gently pushed the caulk gun to one side, so that it was no longer pointed at him, even if it wasn’t loaded. “My mother never allowed me to play with guns,” he said, hoping a little levity—no matter how bad—might defuse this potentially embarrassing situation.

“You don’t know, do you?” Janna asked, but he could tell that it was a rhetorical question, so he didn’t answer. “Do you want to learn?”

“Why don’t you ask me if I want a root canal? That answer might be yes, as it seems more painless. What do you do with that thing?”

Janna proceeded to demonstrate, loading a container of caulk into the gun and then motioning for Ryan to follow her into the bathroom.

“Gun, tub. Caulk, crack. Aim, fire,” she said, each word punctuated by hand movements that certainly brought her point across, but that did nothing to make Ryan feel as if she were Tom Sawyer and he should now be looking longingly at a pail of whitewash and a mile of fence.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Janna tipped back an imaginary cowboy hat with the plastic tip of the caulk insert, then rubbed a hand under her nose as she leaned against the shower stall. “Whatsa matter, bucko? You chicken? Here,” she declared, all but throwing the caulk gun into his hands. “I’ll even hum the theme from High Noon, if that will help.”

Chicken? How dare she…how dare she laugh at him! And look so damn cute while she did it, which only made him angrier than he’d been, and he had been getting pretty peeved at this whole idea. Cleaning a garage was one thing. Not a great thing, but he had felt some stupid sense of accomplishment once the chore had been completed. But to be dared—pretty close to double-dared—into getting down on his hands and knees inside a cramped shower stall and shooting gunk into the cracks between the bright-pink tiles?

Not in this lifetime, he wasn’t!

Yes, he was. Because she had dared him, and the twinkle in her huge brown eyes told him she already knew she’d won.

Janna stepped past him, back into the hall. “I don’t think I can watch this. I’ll be downstairs, starting the grill for lunch. You do like charbroiled hamburgers, don’t you?”

“If I said I was hypoglycemic and needed red meat now, would you let me start the grill and kill the shower stall after lunch?”

Janna tipped her head to one side, considering his offer. “You’re not, are you? Really hypoglycemic, that is? No, of course you’re not. But I have to hand it to you, that was a good excuse. Just don’t ever repeat it around Zach, okay?”

“So I get to start the fire?” Ryan asked, wondering if he sounded as pathetic as he felt. Here he was, a grown man, and he hadn’t the faintest idea how to do a simple household repair. But then, why should he? He’d been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, and had never done any more onerous chores than making up his own bed. He didn’t know if he could justify his lack of mechanical skills, or if he was just plain embarrassed by that lack.

Either way, he figured starting a gas grill won hands down over caulking tub tile.

“Tell you what. You start the fire and I’ll caulk the tiles. Deal?” Janna said, and if she was laughing at him or rescuing him he didn’t know. He just knew he felt a sudden urge to grab her up, kiss her senseless for her compassion.

Still, like a man fighting over a lunch check, he did the polite thing and responded, “No, no. There’s no need. I can fix the tile after lunch. Really.”

“Really?” Janna shot right back at him. “Now, is it my turn to say you shouldn’t be silly, that I’ll do it? Because if it is, you’re plain out of luck, bucko, because you’re on. You can do the job after lunch.” She put down the caulk gun, laying it carefully on a plush rug with a huge pink rose sort of blossoming in the middle of it. “I’m feeling filthy after wading through the dirt in the garage. I think I’ll just go take a shower in the other bathroom, then come downstairs when I smell the burgers cooking.”

Ryan watched her go, tried very hard not to imagine her in the shower. Her wet skin glistening. One of those weird “net” things all soapy as she ran it over her skin.

Down her arm. Across her legs.

Bending to soap her leg.

He closed his eyes tight, tried to banish the image. Shame, shame, shame on him.

Go downstairs and light the fire? He wouldn’t even have to turn on the propane. Hell, all he’d have to do was look at the coals and they’d ignite!

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