The Wedding Gift. Sandra Steffen

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СКАЧАТЬ the Merrick estate, claiming Riley’s father was Kipp’s old man, too. Since Jay Merrick had been good at two things—making money and siring sons, it was certainly possible. In those days before DNA testing, it had taken private investigators nearly a year to prove it wasn’t true. By then the boys were close and Riley’s mother told Kipp he was welcome to stay. She never let either of them forget her good deed.

      Riley knew his mother was worried about him but he didn’t appreciate her meddling. Kipp tolerated it much better. Of course, he had her up on a pedestal, right where she wanted to be. “Sooner or later you’re going to have to talk to her,” he said.

      Riley mumbled something that meant the subject was closed, but the truth was, he knew what his mother wanted. He’d been dodging her calls all week.

      He and Kipp stood side by side while the crew struggled to heave the next truss into place. At this rate they’d never get them all secured before that storm blew ashore.

      “Where is everyone?” Riley asked.

      “Billie’s sick, Art’s still out with that bum knee of his and the Trevino brothers didn’t show up again,” Kipp said as he lit a cigarette.

      “Feel like making yourself useful?” Riley asked.

      Kipp hadn’t leaned on a razor in a while. The whisker stubble didn’t conceal his eagerness as he ground the cigarette into the sand. “Your mother’s gonna have my boys in a sling. I’m right behind you.”

      They donned safety vests and climbed up. The moment Riley took his place with the crew, an age-old thrill went through him, the kind of thrill that inspired men to shout from distant mountaintops, to dance around ceremonial campfires and to raise a flag on the moon.

      The view was breathtaking in every direction. A car was speeding down one of the narrow lanes wending through the nearby hills. Out on the lake an iron ore tanker plodded due south. A small barge chugged away from it, giving it a wide berth. In the distance the sun turned the clouds into a sieve, sprinkling light like holy water across the surface of Lake Michigan.

      Riley had climbed mountains and skied down them, flown airplanes and parachuted out of them. Speed was good. High altitudes were better. It wasn’t that the world made sense off the ground. Off the ground, it didn’t have to make sense. Up here, it didn’t matter that he’d contracted a rare virus that should have killed him and would have if not for modern medicine. Up here he didn’t feel as if he’d been walking in another man’s shoes for the past eighteen months.

      Every man in the crew watched the crane lift the next truss into the air. Everyone braced as it was lowered toward them. Every one of them saw it lurch on a sudden gust of wind then slam into Riley’s chest.

      Riley felt the impact, heard the rush of air leaving his lungs. He fell twenty feet in an instant and snapped to the end of the cable attached to his safety vest with a force that knocked the remaining wind out of him.

      “Pete, Sean!” the foreman yelled. “Get that rafter nailed down. Hold on, boss!”

      Cinched tight in his harness twenty feet off the ground, Riley wasn’t going anywhere. He was aware of more discussion overhead, but the next voice he concentrated on came from halfway down the wall.

      “Riley. Over here.”

      Kipp was perched at the edge of the scaffolding. His left arm was wrapped around a two-by-eight runner as he tossed Riley a rope and drew him to solid footing. Once safely on the scaffolding, Riley unhooked his harness and released it. He had little choice but to withstand the quick once-over Kipp gave him with a gaze that saw everything. The fact that he didn’t shrug it off and go back to work wasn’t lost on anybody, least of all on Riley himself. Shakier than he cared to admit, he carefully climbed the rest of the way to the ground.

      And came face-to-face with a woman he didn’t know.

      Or was he seeing things? After all, pretty young women didn’t appear out of nowhere at rough-in sites. This one seemed to be floating toward him. Her hair was long and light blond. Her lips were moving but it was difficult to understand what she was saying.

      “Are you all right? Are you feeling faint? Can you hear me? How many fingers am I holding up?”

      Riley stared dazedly at her. She was of average height and wore a light jacket that was belted at her waist and open at her throat where a silver charm hung from a delicate chain. Her breathing was shallow and her eyes flashed with the same beams of light that surrounded the rest of her.

      Beams of light? What the hell was wrong with him?

      He scrubbed a hand over his face to clear his vision. Thankfully when he looked again, the strange light was gone. The woman hadn’t disappeared, though.

      “You’re sweating,” she said. “You could be going into shock. You should be sitting down. Lying down would be better. How are your ribs? Are they tender? Do you have pain anywhere? There’s no telling what you might have bruised or injured or God forbid, jarred loose.”

      She opened an oversized purse and fished around inside. The next thing he knew, she was trying to press the end of a stethoscope to his chest.

      He backed out of her reach.

      “I’m a nurse,” she said gently. “Don’t worry, I’ve done this a thousand times.”

      He closed his hand around the end of the stethoscope and held it away from his body. She tried again to push it toward his chest but he held fast. Before either of them was ready to admit they’d reached an impasse, the wind intervened, dragging her hair out of the fastener at her nape, an effective diversion for both of them. Free, the blond tresses whipped and swirled around her head.

      She finally released her end of the stethoscope and reached up, winsomely tying her hair into a knot that begged to be undone again. She should have looked as out of place as an orchid in a patch of quack grass, and yet her presence seemed expected, binding somehow.

      Awareness surged through him so strongly he was tempted to forget he was standing in the middle of a construction site in plain view of a dozen curious men with a pretty young woman intent upon touching him. He wanted her to touch him almost as much as he wanted to pull her to him and cover her mouth with his.

      “I’d feel a lot better if you would sit down,” she said. “Could I at least take your pulse?”

      The question finally brought him to his senses. She was a nurse. Here to take his pulse.

      The thundering in his ears moved ominously into his voice as he said, “My mother sent you, didn’t she?”

       Chapter Two

      Riley Merrick was standing three feet away.

      Madeline was certain her feet were planted firmly on the ground, and yet she felt as if she were drawing closer to him. Heat emanated from him, making her yearn to burrow into his warmth, her ear pressed to his chest. The rumble of the bulldozer’s engine and the sharp pounding of heavy hammers receded until the only sound she heard was the chiming of something sweet and delicate sprinkling into the empty spaces inside her.

      “Well? Did my mother hire you or didn’t she?” She blinked. And sound returned in a raucous, roaring cacophony of pitch and volume. “Your mother?” СКАЧАТЬ