Substitute Daddy. Kate Welsh

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      Brett stopped pounding the second her shadow fell over him. He looked up and this time he didn’t smile. He didn’t grin. He just wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and nodded a greeting.

      “Is that for me?” he asked.

      “I was working and I hadn’t realized it was so hot out here. Where did you learn to fix a porch?”

      Brett walked to a pile of tools and pulled a book from under them. He handed her the thick how-to volume. “There’s very little we can’t learn from books.”

      Melissa glanced down at the hardback and thought of all the life lessons she and Leigh had learned from their parents and later Aunt Dora and Uncle Ed. Thinking of their conversation about life and happiness she thought Brett had a lot to learn and she didn’t see him learning those lessons from books. But it wasn’t her place to tell him so.

      Casting about for something to fill the silence, she glanced toward a silver Range Rover he’d parked in the drive. “You traded in your sports car?”

      He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind—a mixture of horror and disbelief. “Give up my Beemer? No way. I only rented that for the weekend because I needed to haul the wood.”

      Melissa couldn’t help it. She laughed. Uncle Ed’s pickup was still rusting away in the barn over yonder and Izaak still used his father’s old wagon to haul wood. Only a Costain and people of their ilk would rent a Range Rover to haul lumber.

      “You going to let me in on the joke?” he asked.

      Melissa shook her head. It wasn’t her job to teach him about the real world even if the hair that fell across his forehead lent him an air of innocence rivaling even the most naive babe in the woods. “I doubt you’d understand,” she told him.

      “Try me,” he dared her, his beard-shadowed chin raised in a challenge. At least this way he didn’t looked like a guileless ten-year-old.

      What is wrong with your thinking, woman? This is a mover and shaker. A powerful international attorney. He works for heads of multinational, billion-dollar companies. He does not have a slingshot in his back pocket or posies hidden behind his back!

      Melissa forced her thoughts to the subject at hand. “How many Beemers and Range Rovers have you seen on these back roads? And how many plain old pickup trucks have you seen?” she challenged.

      “Rovers are sturdy,” he argued.

      The man was completely dense! “At fifty or sixty thousand dollars a pop, they’d better be.”

      He squinted in the glare of the late-afternoon sunlight and looked up at her, scrubbing back his dripping hair. She could almost see him struggling to understand her point. “Come on. Are you trying to say if I show up with a high-end car when the baby is old enough to understand the difference between a BMW and Chevy it could do some sort of damage to his psyche?”

      She sighed. “No, I’m trying to say you don’t have a clue how the other ninety percent live. And it’s that attitude that could cause a problem for me later. Do you think Gary would ever have spent his hard-earned money on that kind of luxury?”

      Brett glanced at the Rover then back at her and smiled. “Next time I’ll rent a Chevy but I’m not selling my Beemer.”

      Melissa nodded, staggered by the smile and a sudden realization. When Brett didn’t try to be charming his charm was all the more dangerous. She’d never expected that. The man was positively lethal. All little-boy inquisitive one minute and sexy as all get-out the next.

      How was she supposed to talk to him and guard her heart? There had to be some safe subject for them! She looked down at the work he’d done. “It looks nice. Thank you. I admit every once in a while the boards would moan and I’d begin to wonder if they were going to hold my weight. You got a lot done. I’d like to pay for the wood.”

      Brett shook his head and his hair fell across his forehead again. “Consider it a baby gift. I’ve actually enjoyed the physical work. I don’t get a lot of time in the fresh air.”

      After all his work, Melissa knew she couldn’t send him off without at least feeding him. Aunt Dora would haunt her sleep more than Brett already did if she even tried it. In the interest of a good night’s rest, she asked, “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

      “That’d be great.” He smiled and for the second time in less than a minute there was no hidden agenda lurking in his eyes. And for the second time in as many minutes Melissa had to hold on to her heart and soul for dear life.

      Before today he’d always been angling for something. A concession. Sex. Something. But when he smiled for real, it lit his pale-gray eyes and told of a greater depth to him than she’d thought possible. Maybe he was more like Gary than she’d thought.

      “You’re welcome to use the shower,” she told him, trying not to attach too much meaning to what she thought she saw. His fixing her porch might still have a hidden agenda. Mightn’t it?

      “A shower sounds terrific just about now,” Brett said. “I have a change of clothes in the Rover. I didn’t stop at the motel this morning. I drove straight to the lumberyard when I got down here. I wanted to get an early start since there was so much to do. Sorry I woke you.”

      Melissa banged around the kitchen minutes later, thinking he hadn’t looked the least bit sorry when he’d been ogling her at practically dawn. She threw a slap-dash dinner together and half an hour later Brett joined her in the kitchen. As she finished putting the meal on the table, Melissa ordered her pounding heart to behave. It didn’t listen.

      “This looks wonderful,” he said, sitting where she indicated.

      So do you, Melissa thought before taking one last glance at the table. There was leftover roast beef, oven-browned potatoes, a colorful bowl of mixed vegetables and Margaret Abramson’s home-baked bread and fresh-churned butter. Most of it was courtesy of his little shopping excursion, but still, she somehow doubted he ever ate this way at the gourmet restaurants he probably frequented.

      Deciding she didn’t care if he felt the dinner lacked sophistication, she sat across from him and tried not to stare. He was so handsome and self-assured. And he was once again the picture of his aristocratic upbringing in designer clothes and Italian shoes.

      So why couldn’t her more-than-adequate brain manage to make her unruly heart behave? “I never thanked you for the food you left,” she said, knowing nothing separated them so much as the disparity of the classes they belonged to.

      “No thanks necessary,” he said.

      His refusal of her gratitude made him seem superior and arrogant. She hated that he thought he was better than her. If only she hadn’t offered him a simple dinner in her simple kitchen.

      “Brett, I’m really not as bad off financially as you seem to think. I’d been putting money aside for some time to convert the barn and I have a lot of inventory lined up for the shop already. In fact, it’s all around us. I had to put my plans for the shop on hold when Uncle Ed started failing. When he died and Leigh and Gary came down for the funeral, they asked me about the baby. The timing couldn’t have been better since I’d pretty much suspended my business so I could take care of Uncle Ed in those final months.”

      “That’s СКАЧАТЬ