Here Comes Trouble. Leslie Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ week. Something about the place had appealed to him, unlike anything else in Trouble. Certainly unlike the moldering, cuckoo-clock-infested ruin in which he was currently residing with his happy-as-a-pig-in-mud grandfather.

      He supposed there were benefits to being the grandson of a town owner, because he’d been able to get the power to this park turned on. Not that it seemed to have done any good. The poor carousel motor hadn’t made so much as one long groan of agony in the days he’d been tinkering with it, even if he had managed to get a few wailing notes of the calliope to belt out.

      “Come on, sweetheart, I know you’re tired and old, but you must have one more go-round in you, merry or not.”

      “Excuse me?”

      Jerking his attention from the control panel, which had required a good quart of WD-40 before even allowing itself to be opened, Max swung his head around and stared over his shoulder. A woman had come up behind him in the tiny, weed-encrusted, abandoned amusement park, which had once been the cubic zirconia jewel in Trouble’s dubious crown.

      And speaking of jewels…good Christ, was the woman standing in front of him one. A blonde. She was a blonde. His absolute weakness.

      She was also tall, curvy and had the kind of lips that’d make a man howl to the night in pure, primal hunger.

      No. No howling. No wolfing at all, remember?

      Swallowing his libido, he offered her a smile. “Sorry. I guess you caught me talking to myself.” He stood and brushed his hands off on his jeans, leaving a smear of grease on one thigh. Stepping closer, he forced himself to keep this encounter friendly, neighborly.

      When what he wanted was sexy and suggestive.

      She smiled back, also noncommittal. Cordial but not flirtatious. Unfortunately. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your work.” Pushing her sunglasses up onto the top of her head, she revealed a pair of bright sky-blue eyes.

      Damn. A blue-eyed blonde with a pretty smile and a pair of succulent lips. A smooth-skinned face with soft cheeks and the tiniest jut in her jaw that said she was stubborn. A bright, smiling angel appearing in this private corner of perdition just like the sun coming out on a cloudy, overcast day….

      He felt like groaning out loud. Who, he wondered, had he wronged in another life to have such temptation presented to him when he couldn’t—simply could not—give in to it?

      She looked him over, head to toe, with that calm, innocent glance women always hid their interest behind. A tiny hint of color appeared in her creamy cheeks and she licked at her lips—those lips—to moisten them.

      Just throw a lightning bolt at me and be done with it.

      “Talking to yourself—that can be a dangerous thing,” she said, her voice throatier than he’d have expected from such a soft-looking female.

      “So can cutting a hand on some of this sharp, rusty metal.” Max grinned. “I feel like I ought to sweet-talk her to make sure she doesn’t scratch me.” Hmm…had that sounded suggestive? He hadn’t meant it to.

      Like hell. Knock it off, Taylor.

      Her full lips twitching, she gazed at his hands. “Are you hurt?”

      “Not yet. But I have the feeling I will be by the time I coax this old sweetheart into action.”

      The blonde glanced toward the carousel, one fine brow lifting as she studied the decrepit wreck. The only intact portion was the mini-carousel perched on the top, its mirror-tiled roof still sending out flashes of light when the sun hit it the right way. As for the rest…the once brightly colored circus animals were now mostly a uniform gray, with spots of red or green occasionally showing through. The zebra was missing its front legs, and two jagged shards were all that remained of the lion’s mane. Behind each animal, old-fashioned mirrors—dingy and cracked—provided a distorted, fun-house reflection of the washed-out menagerie, duplicating and emphasizing the sadness of each pitiful creature

      He had no doubt what the stranger was looking at—but did she see? He couldn’t help wondering if the blonde saw the same aching, sad beauty that had captivated him the first time he’d spotted this place, set back off the road in a tangled, forgotten clearing.

      “I can’t believe this thing hasn’t been torn down.” She kept her words in close, as if talking to herself.

      “Me, either,” he admitted. “From the service records on it, I’d say it’s been closed since seventy-eight.” Which meant it was probably almost as old as this woman. Just the right age.

      For ignoring. He forced himself to focus on the book. And remember he was here as the boy next door. Not the wolf beneath the porch.

      “I caught the sparkle of it out of the corner of my eye and couldn’t resist exploring. I bet a lot of kids around here have had the same impulse.”

      “I would have when I was a kid.”

      As she met his gaze, her blue eyes sparkled. Her chuckle was as throaty as her voice as she admitted, “Me, too.”

      Their smiles and immediate mental connection to mischievous childhoods provided an instant rapport, one that took Max by surprise.

      The blonde carefully stepped over the toolbox, which lay open on the ground, a smattering of hand tools jumbled inside.

      Not Max’s—it was from his grandfather’s house. Max’s toolbox was immaculate. Some things a man just couldn’t mess around with. Like his tools.

      And this woman.

      “I guess the clang of metal I heard from the road was you doing some, uh, coaxing with your hammer?”

      “Is that all you heard?”

      “That and some music.”

      “Whew. Glad you didn’t hear me yelling, so you won’t be reaching for the soap to wash my mouth out.”

      Her gaze shifted to his mouth. Which made his blood grow one degree hotter and his jeans grow one size tighter.

      “Don’t tell me you were cursing at your sweetheart.”

      “Guilty. Patience isn’t my strongest attribute.”

      He’d like to tell her what his strongest attribute was, but that seemed like a dangerous idea. Besides, if she liked danger, she’d know exactly what he was talking about and would continue the subtle innuendo of their conversation.

      She stepped closer to the carousel, focusing only on it, obviously not a danger-seeker. That was probably just as well.

      “It is a ruin,” she murmured, running a hand over the flank of a shabby horse whose braided tail was now merely a stump. “But somehow, it’s…it’s almost pretty in spite of that.”

      She did see. And just like that, Max realized he liked her. Didn’t know her name or a thing about her, but the woman had vision. He liked a person with vision.

      Especially when she also had incredibly long legs nicely hugged by sinfully tight jeans, and a mouthwatering hint of cleavage peeking from the scooped neck of her sleeveless top.

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