LITMIR.BIZ

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no more.” Poppy waved to end the conversation. “Brett has a pile of beautiful and stacked ladies he’s left behind.”

      “Hey,” he protested. “I’m right here, you know.”

      His sisters ignored him. “This one’s different,” Mac insisted. “Get this. She’s a rich flatlander who also worked on that big auction event for the historical society you and Ryan went to last summer. Glory Hallett recruited her.”

      “She also works at Hallett Hardware,” Brett heard himself interject again.

      “Interesting,” Mac said, sparing him a glance. “And if you kept up with the financial news—”

      “I don’t,” Poppy and Shay admitted together.

      “—you’d know that her father was a megapowerful hedge-fund manager who just swindled a boatload of people out of their life savings. It’s been reported he took his only daughter’s money before he was arrested.”

      Poppy, with her tender heart, looked stricken. “Oh, no. Those poor people. And poor Angelica, too.”

      “You don’t even know her,” Brett growled.

      Poppy’s big gray eyes fastened on his face. “Well? Did she deserve it?”

      “No,” he said, though it felt as if the word was pulled out of him. “I suppose not.”

      And there she was, front and center in his head again. The rest of the meal he heard the family talking and laughing around him, and he didn’t join in, aware he was brooding but unable to yank himself out of the dark place.

      See? She was bad for him in so many ways.

      On the way home, he turned left instead of right, deciding to take a cruise through town before heading for the highway. He wasn’t ready for the isolation of the cabins just yet. Maybe he’d stop off for a beer at Mr. Frank’s. On a whim, he slowed as he passed Hallett Hardware. It was closed for the night, of course—

      But there was Angelica’s flashy convertible parked in the lot beside it.

      Slowing, he could see her figure in the driver’s seat.

      Move along, he told himself.

      His feet and hands didn’t listen and he pulled into the spot beside hers. In the dim light from an overhead streetlamp, her face was a pale blur. When he approached her window, she rolled it down.

      An inch.

      “Can I help you?” she asked.

      “That was my line.”

      “I’m great, thanks.”

      Before she could push the button that would move the window back into place, he curled his fingers around the edge. The glass was cold against his palm and his fingers registered that the interior of the car wasn’t much warmer. “What are you doing out here?”

      “Communing with nature, not that it’s any if your business.”

      The nose of her convertible was pointing directly at a battered Dumpster. “Lovely view,” he said.

      “I like it.”

      He bit back a smile. This was new, this prickly snideness, and some piece of him liked it. Liked her. Of course, that had always been the problem. How much he wanted to like her. How much he wanted her.

      How soft—well, and hard—that wanting might make him.

      “Good night,” she said.

      How are you really doing? he wanted to ask. What’s going on with your father? Is there anything you need? How can I help you?

      Fuck, he thought. There it was again. The urge to serve and protect. Keep her warm. Feed her. Soothe her with kisses. Distract her from her woes with sex.

      Okay, that last might be a more selfish wish. But God, you couldn’t blame a guy. Even in the shadows her face could stop his heart. The thought of her kiss could make him stiff even when it was thirty-four degrees outside and he was in shirtsleeves.

      “Stay away, Brett.” Her whisper floated through the centimeters of space she’d left open between them.

      He removed his fingers from around her window. Staying away had been his intention from the beginning. But when she insisted on it now, wouldn’t you know that the perverse side of him no longer wanted to agree. Now it clamored to do the opposite.

      All his common sense, all those hard lessons he’d learned, receded in the background. He ran a hand over his face and into his hair, feeling the scars beneath his callous palms. When Angelica was around, it was as if every bit of wisdom he’d gained fled.

      “Go home, Brett.”

      “Your wish is my command, princess,” he said. But he still didn’t move.

      As if sensing his internal struggle, she glanced at him. “Really. I’m not your problem.”

      But she seemed to be his concern, no matter how hard he tried to shake that fact. Not until she rolled up her window, effectively cutting off communication, did he return to his car and drive away.

      * * *

      KYLE SCOTT CARRIED over the threshold of Hallett Hardware a rotund deli bag and an unfamiliar sense of excitement. Inside, it smelled of a pleasing combination of WD-40 and a light feminine fragrance. Pausing a moment, he breathed it in.

      His muscles, especially those in his arms and shoulders, were sore. That was unfamiliar, too. He was more accustomed to a stiff lower back and legs frozen from time spent at a desk or at a conference table. But this pain felt good and he flexed his free paint-speckled left hand.

      Looking down at his flesh peppered with green dots made him frown. Maybe he should have done a complete cleanup before his impromptu visit to see Hardware Hottie, aka Glory Hallett. But the idea had come to him like the flash of a lightbulb and he obeyed his sudden inspirations as a general rule. Over the years, they’d fattened his bank account—though at the same time draining all the life out of the social side of his world.

      Anyway, he thought Glory would forgive his disheveled state. She was aware he was painting a house. For now, that was all she had to know, right?

      Maybe he should feel bad he’d encouraged her impression he was a mere handyman who hoped to stay in the mountains, but the freshness of a woman being interested in him without knowing his net worth was irresistible.

      He could hear her voice at the rear of the store. Clearly she was helping someone in plumbing supplies. And wasn’t that novel, too? He sure as hell didn’t know anything about angle stops and wax gaskets and he only found it more intriguing that this young woman was obviously well versed in the steps required to change out a toilet.

      His father would appreciate that trait, he was sure. As a gastro-intestinal surgeon he’d likely have a lot to talk about with her.

      A lot more than his father, mother, sister or brother had to say to him. They were all in medicine: two surgeons and two orthopedists, and they considered Kyle the cuckoo that had been left in their well-feathered nest. It had shocked the hell out of them that he refused to take his place in medical school.

      What he did after that had left them completely flummoxed.

      But now he was at Blue Arrow Lake, painting a house and bringing a woman he barely knew lunch. The idea had come to him as he was using the roller on the porch ceiling.

      Bring Hardware Hottie lunch, an inner voice urged. Become better acquainted with her in the guise of Kyle Scott, home-maintenance dude. Feel out the way things are going with her and if it seems right, then hit her with the whole truth.

      He was still standing just inside the hardware store’s door when she came around the corner. Her feet stuttered at the sight of him and she reached out to clutch an endcap featuring various sizes and colors of duct tape

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