LITMIR.BIZ

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go home.”

      Jessie laughed. “Be careful. I’m the mother of four—I don’t get offers for other people to cleanup too often and I never turn them down when I do.”

      That made him smile back at her—a wide grin that showed perfect white teeth and drew ever-so-appealing lines around the corners of his mouth. And the very fact that his smile made her flush was a phenomenon Jessie didn’t want to delve into.

      “Go,” he urged with a nudge of that sexy, slightly dimpled chin.

      “If you’re sure …”

      “I’m sure. It’s nothing.”

      So he’s not only hot, but he’s also a nice guy, Jessie thought, remembering the previous day’s conversation with her sister.

      But that, too, wasn’t something she should be caring about and she decided that before she started to actually like this guy, she’d better go home where she belonged.

      “Okay, I’ll take you up on that, then,” she announced, scooting around on the drier so that she could get down.

      But that set the tarp into motion and it began to slide, taking her with it until Flint lunged forward to catch her.

      And in a split second Jessie found herself with Flint Fortune’s handsome face scant inches from hers, his arms on either side of her, his hands flat against the tarp but so close to her rear end that she thought she could almost feel them.

      And her own hands somehow clasped to his powerhouse shoulders to catch herself.

      Wide-eyed, she stared into his dark eyes and wasn’t quite sure whether it was the near fall from the drier or Flint that had stolen her breath. But one way or another, for a moment she was frozen there, so close that they could have kissed had either of them moved an inch.

      And why that went through her mind, she had no idea.

      “Mama?” Ella said with some shock in her voice.

      It took Jessie a moment to remember herself, to breathe, to veer away from Flint and pull her hands from shoulders she was enjoying the feel of much too much …

      “Whoops,” she said feebly.

      “Mama aw-most fawed off—tha’s funny,” Adam said with a giggle.

      “Thanks for the catch,” Jessie muttered, leaning as far back from Flint as she could.

      But still he stayed where he was, anchoring the tarp, looking into her eyes, while a much more intimate smile slowly spread agile lips. So intimate that it made something skitter across the surface of Jessie’s skin—a sensation she hadn’t had in longer than she could remember.

      “No problem,” he said in a voice that had a deeper, almost sensual timbre.

      Then he pushed off the drier and took hold of the tarp from behind her. “Okay, now slide off,” he advised.

      Under the watchful eye of two of her children, Jessie did, wondering at the scowl that had come onto Ella’s pretty, freckled face as the little girl glared at Flint as if he’d done something wrong.

      “Okay, we better get going before Gramma sends more troops,” Jessie said in a tone she hoped sounded normal. Inside, though, she was a jumble of excitement and confusion and something that seemed to remind her she was a woman—a feeling she hadn’t experienced in a very, very long time.

      As she guided her kids out of the laundry room she couldn’t help glancing back just once because she thought she could feel Flint watching her.

      He stood with his hips leaning against the front of the drier, his arms crossed over his wide chest. And he wasn’t merely watching her—there was something else in those eyes that almost seemed appreciative …

      Why that again set off that tingling-across-the-surface-of-her-skin feeling, that reminder that she was a woman, she didn’t know.

      She only knew that it needed to stop.

      And it needed not to happen again.

      She was a mother, first and foremost, and she couldn’t let herself be distracted from that. She already had her hands full.

      And yet just the thought of having her hands full made her mind wander back to the feel of Flint’s rocksolid shoulders.

      And whether she wanted to admit it or not, she’d liked the way they’d felt.

       Chapter Three

      Flint stood high atop his brother’s roof early Tuesday morning. He was supposed to be checking for loose shingles. Instead he was so intent on watching Jessie cross from her backyard into Cooper’s through the connecting gate that he was late in realizing that a car had pulled up in front of the house.

      Only when Jessie had disappeared from sight was Flint’s attention drawn in the opposite direction, just as his other brother Ross was getting out from behind the wheel.

      “Hey, down there! This is a surprise!” Flint called.

      No one had said anything about Ross coming by today, or about his bringing their uncle William and William’s fiancée, Lily. But there they all were.

      “I have some news,” Ross yelled back as he closed the driver’s side door.

      Growing up, Ross, the oldest of Cindy’s children had looked out for his siblings and in that same vein, Flint saw him making sure that the elderly couple got safely out of his car as Flint climbed down the ladder and met them at the front porch.

      William and Lily were supposed to be married in January. The match between William and his late-cousin Ryan’s widow had been kept quiet until they’d both felt the family could accept their relationship. The relationship that had come about despite the fact that William and Ryan had been close, despite the fact that Lily had adored her husband until his death six years before from a brain tumor. Two years ago, the also-widowed William and Lily had found their way to each other, and what had begun as a family connection turned into a friendship that had blossomed into love.

      Their wedding had been set for January first—a New Year’s Day celebration. But William had never made it to the church. There had been speculation that he’d run off with another woman, that he’d been kidnapped, that any number of things had caused him to leave Lily at the altar voluntarily or involuntarily. His car had been discovered days later, having gone off a road near the neighboring town of Haggerty, almost completely concealed in a wooded ravine. William was nowhere around.

      For months it hadn’t been known where he was, or whether he was dead or alive. Then, just a few weeks ago, he was located living on the streets in Haggerty, suffering from amnesia, not even aware of who he was.

      Since being returned to Red Rock, to his family, to Lily—who had always believed William would return to her—he was getting better at recognizing the people who cared about him. And because he had a particular soft spot for Anthony—for no reason anyone could explain—Flint knew that whenever she got the chance, Lily liked to expose William to the baby in hope that something about Anthony was reaching William’s deeply buried recollections and helping to draw them to the surface.

      “I don’t know what news you have, but it’s good to see you all,” Flint greeted the small group. “How are you feeling, Uncle William?”

      “A little like I’m walking through a fog, but okay,” the older man answered, still sounding slightly befuddled.

      “I thought it might be better if I brought Lily and Uncle William with me rather than tell what I have to tell twice,” Ross said then.

      “Sure. Why don’t we go inside?” Flint suggested, ushering the threesome up the porch steps and hollering “We have company,” as he went in behind them all.

      From upstairs came Coop, and from the kitchen at the rear of the house came Kelsey and the newly arrived Jessie.

      And

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