LITMIR.BIZ

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needed rescuing from this charming, handsome man before the dozens of people watching them—all of them failing miserably at being covert—got the wrong impression. Leslie knew that if even one person thought there was a spark between her and Sawyer, the sweet, well-intentioned matriarchs of Gauthier would wage an all-out campaign to get the two of them together.

      Why couldn’t the people in this town mind their own damn business?

      It was as if a green light had been turned on the day after the first anniversary of Braylon’s death. Once the acceptable grieving period had passed, all of Gauthier had been on a quest to find her a man, as if she was on the verge of collapsing from loneliness if she wasn’t paired with someone soon.

      Because, of course, she had all the time in the world to be lonely.

      She was a single working mother with two daughters determined to take part in every extracurricular activity they could sign up for, and a full-time job that demanded more from her than she had to give. She barely had time to breathe.

      But that didn’t stop the fine people of Gauthier from foisting their single friends and relatives on her.

      Sawyer Robertson was just one in a passel of men who had been paraded before her, all of them the perfect man to help her raise her poor little fatherless daughters. But Sawyer had proved to be more dangerous than any of the other men thus far. She had been introduced to her share of visiting nephews or friends of a friend of a friend, but the full-court press she’d faced since Sawyer’s return was unprecedented.

      And unlike the visiting nephews, Sawyer wasn’t just passing through town. He was in Gauthier to stay. In a house just a few blocks from hers. All of Gauthier was determined to see this love connection happen.

      This town! These nosy, prying people! She needed a break from it all.

      “Mommy!” Kristi, her youngest, who had just turned five and was no longer her little baby, came running up to Leslie, the front of her white dress stained with purple Popsicle juice. “Mommy, are we still putting the swinging bed in the backyard after church?”

      “Yes, we are!” And Kristi would get extra dessert for rescuing her from this painful situation. “Why don’t you get your sister so we can leave?” Leslie turned to Sawyer and explained, “It’s a hammock. I promised the girls we would finally hang it today.”

      “Sounds like a lovely way to spend a lazy afternoon.”

      Yeah, that smile was really nice. There was no way to deny it.

      “Do you need any help hanging the hammock?” he asked.

      “Oh, no,” Leslie said quickly. “The instructions are pretty straightforward. My girls and I can handle it.”

      A perfectly shaped brow arched before he asked, “Are you sure? I wouldn’t mind coming over to help.”

      Leslie heard an excited gasp come from somewhere just over her shoulder. Lord, she needed to leave. Now.

      “Yes, I’m sure,” she said.

      More silence. More awkwardness. More reasons to get the heck out of here.

      She pointed to the double doors of the church hall. “I should probably go.”

      Sawyer nodded and stepped aside so she could pass. As she skirted around him, he called, “Uh, Leslie?”

      Her eyes darted to him and she held her breath.

       Please don’t ask me out. Please don’t ask me out.

      Sawyer stuck both hands into his pockets and quickly glanced to the side where Eloise, Clementine and Claudette were staring openly. He lifted one shoulder in an indelicate shrug and said, “I was wondering if maybe you’d like to grab dinner sometime?”

       Oh, good God. He asked me out.

      The effort to keep the pained expression from taking over her face was a valiant one, but it was impossible to stop it. She mentally cursed every interfering busybody in this town. Sawyer was a perfectly nice man. He didn’t deserve this.

      “I’m sorry, but I can’t,” Leslie said. “I’m so busy with work and my girls, and I’m also president of the PTO at the school this year. I just can’t spare the time. Thank you for the invitation, though.”

      He did a fantastic job of hiding his disappointment, but Leslie still caught a glimpse of it in the way his mouth pinched at the corners.

      She hated this. She hated being this perpetual stick-in-the-mud who constantly shot down advances from genuinely nice men. But finding a man was the very last thing on her agenda. She didn’t care that the people in this town thought it was time for her to jump into the dating pool again. She was not putting herself out there until she was good and ready.

      “Maybe some other time,” Sawyer said.

      Leslie didn’t give him an answer, only another of those half smiles before she quickly made her way toward the door. She caught sight of Clementine, Claudette and Eloise standing off to the right. All three looked shocked and agitated, as if she’d messed up their well-laid plans.

      That was too bad. She didn’t need a matchmaker.

      Unfortunately, she was living in a town that was chock-full of them.

      * * *

      Hammock hanging was not all it was cracked up to be.

      What she’d anticipated to be a quick and easy project had turned into a quiz on deductive reasoning. Leslie lost track of how many times her eyes had darted between the creased instruction guide and the thick trunks of the two elms in her backyard. At one point she had seriously considered jogging over to that cute colonial on Willow Street and taking Sawyer up on his offer to help. But once she figured out the correct height—thus saving her butt from hitting the ground when she lay in it—it had been smooth sailing.

      She’d spent the past half hour gently swaying in her newly hung hammock while Cassidy and Kristi attempted to play tennis in the backyard. It wasn’t easy with Buster, the Yorkshire terrier Leslie had been bamboozled into adopting for the girls, stealing the tennis ball whenever she could get her little paws on it.

      “You have to be quicker than that,” Leslie called out to Kristi when the dog snagged the ball yet again. Her daughter plopped her hands on her bony hips and gave her a look that screamed Duh, Mom.

      Chuckling at their plight, Leslie went back to the novel she’d been reading for the past month. She remembered a time when she could get through a book in a week. These days she was lucky to find twenty free minutes a day to indulge in her old pastime.

      She’d become so engrossed in the book that it took her a while to realize that she had been steadily losing light. Leslie looked up through the branches overhead and noticed the ominous cloud directly above them.

      “Girls,” she called. “I think it’s time to go inside.”

      There was a low rumble, then a loud crack of thunder. Just like that, the sky opened up and a deluge of hot rain poured down. Cassidy and Kristi both squealed as they raced to the back porch. Leslie swung the hammock to the right and tried to climb out, but it flipped over before she could steady herself, planting her right on the ground.

      She groaned.

      That was her, graceful as a swan.

      By the time she made it to the back porch she was soaked. Kristi and Cassidy both pointed and laughed like a couple of hyenas.

      “Well, thanks a lot,” Leslie said. She wrung out her soaked shirt and flung the water at them. They both squealed again, jumping away from her. Buster scurried around the porch, trying to become a part of the game.

      “Let’s get in the house,” Leslie said. “I’m starving.”

      Kristi pointed and giggled. “And wet.”

      “Oh, yeah?” Leslie wrapped her

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