The Maverick's Midnight Proposal. Brenda Harlen

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СКАЧАТЬ at him. “Only when the occasion warrants.”

      She left him with his coffee while she slipped into the kitchen to get his food, pausing first to pull out her lip gloss and quickly swipe the wand over her lips.

      “He’s back,” she told Tracie, tucking the tube into her pocket again.

      “Who’s back?” the cook asked.

      “Luke Stockton.”

      “That’s old news,” Tracie said, continuing to chop cabbage for the coleslaw she was making. “Half the town saw him in here this morning.”

      “I don’t mean he’s back in town,” Eva told her, piling thinly sliced beef onto bread to make his sandwich. “I mean he’s back here. Sitting at the counter.”

      “Is that why you’re loading up that plate?”

      “He said he’s hungry.”

      The cook chuckled. “And the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” she agreed.

      Eva felt her cheeks flush. “I’m not interested in his heart.”

      “Just his body?” Tracie teased. “Can’t blame you for that—the man is spectacularly well built.”

      Eva’s cheeks burned hotter. He certainly was that, but that wasn’t why she wanted to feed him. Or not entirely.

      “He looks a little...lost,” she said, adding fries to the plate.

      “He hasn’t been home to Rust Creek Falls in twelve years,” the cook reminded her. “He’s probably feeling a little lost.”

      Twelve years.

      Eva couldn’t imagine being apart from her family and friends for more than a decade. Even the few months that had passed between visits when she was in college had seemed like an eternity. “I wonder why he stayed away for so long.”

      “There was a lot of speculation about that,” Tracie mused. “But if you want the truth, you’d better ask the man himself.”

      “I just might do that,” she decided.

      “Wait,” the cook said when she started out of the kitchen.

      Eva held back a smile as the other woman added a couple of sprigs of parsley to the plate.

      “Presentation matters,” Tracie reminded her. “You know it, or you wouldn’t have retouched the gloss on your lips.”

      Unable to deny that she had done just that, Eva silently took the plate and returned to the counter.

      “Thanks,” Luke said when she set the meal in front of him.

      “Enjoy,” she said, and busied herself tidying up the arrangement of mugs as he picked up his fork.

      She was glad that he was early for lunch, so that he was the only customer in the doughnut shop and she was able to focus exclusively on him. Although she suspected that even if she’d had a line all the way to the door, she would have found her attention solely on the handsome stranger.

      “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked when he’d polished off the sandwich.

      He looked up, obviously surprised by the question, but immediately shook his head.

      She gave him another minute before she asked, “Where did you go when you left here this morning?”

      He dipped a fry into the ketchup he’d squirted on his plate. “To see my sister.”

      “I can only imagine how excited Bella must have been when you showed up.”

      Thick brows drew together over his dark blue eyes. “How’d you know Bella is my sister?” he asked warily.

      “I heard Ben Dalton call you Luke,” she confided.

      “It’s quite a jump from my first name to my family connections,” he pointed out.

      She shrugged. “When someone returns to town after a dozen years, people are bound to talk.”

      “No doubt,” he admitted, his tone grim.

      “All good stuff,” she told him.

      He lifted his mug, swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “It seems that you have me at a disadvantage.”

      “How so?”

      “You obviously know my name—and apparently a lot more—but I don’t know yours.”

      She touched a hand to the bib of her apron. “Oh. I forgot my name tag today,” she realized. “Eva Rose Armstrong.”

      He set down his mug and proffered his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Eva Rose Armstrong.”

      She felt a tingle through her veins as her palm slid against his. His hand was wide and strong, with calluses that attested to a familiarity with manual labor. It was a man’s hand, and every womanly part of her responded to the contact.

      “Eva,” she said. “My friends call me Eva.”

      “Are we going to be friends, Eva?” he asked, releasing her hand.

      “I think so,” she said, not daring to admit that she already hoped friends was only the beginning of what they would be to one another.

      “I could probably use a friend,” he admitted, dredging another fry through ketchup. “I don’t think I have any left in this town.”

      “You haven’t stayed in touch with anyone here?”

      He shook his head and shoved the fry into his mouth.

      “I have to admit that piques my curiosity,” she told him.

      “You know what they say about curiosity.”

      She ignored the warning. “Twelve years is a long time to stay away from your family.”

      “I was working.”

      The abrupt response and clipped tone cautioned her to back off, but she pressed on anyway. “You didn’t get any time off?”

      “Ranching is a full-time job.”

      She nodded an acknowledgment of the fact. Though her parents both worked in education, no one who lived in Rust Creek Falls was oblivious to the arduous demands of working the land. “No time to make a phone call?”

      “How do you know I didn’t?” he challenged.

      “Did you?”

      He pushed his now-empty plate aside. “No.”

      “Well, you’re here now,” she said. “That’s a start.”

      “Maybe,” СКАЧАТЬ