The Wedding Gift. Sandra Steffen

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      “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?” she finally asked.

      He scowled. “Knowing my mother, she probably told you to lie about your association with her.”

      “I’m a terrible liar,” she said dazedly.

      He finally released the stethoscope. “Keep that away from me. Who are you, anyway?”

      “I’m Madeline Sullivan. As I told you before, I’m a nurse, but—”

      “So my mother sent you to play nursemaid. That’s so typical. No doubt she expects you to check my pulse and report back to her.”

      Since she still didn’t know what his mother had to do with her, she said, “I think we should keep your mother out of this.”

      “At least we agree on one thing.”

      “Do we also agree that walking on narrow beams fifty feet off the ground is a risk you have no business taking?” Why was she so breathless?

      Angry, he was having trouble breathing, too. His next attempt made his nostrils flare as he said, “I was wearing my safety harness.”

      Eyeing the harness dangling from the end of a yellow rope, his hard hat upside down on the plywood floor directly beneath it, she shook her head. He could have broken his neck. He could have died, and it all would have been for nothing.

      “It can take a long time for ribs to heal completely after a surgery like yours,” she said gently. “Especially with the medications you’re on. You are taking your medicine, aren’t you?”

      His eyes narrowed and his voice lowered as he said, “You’re fired, Madeline.”

      Her head jerked up. “You can’t fire me.”

      “I just did.”

      She had to force her gaping mouth closed. Now that she wasn’t simply absorbing the essence of him, she had the presence of mind to take a good look at the man whose name had crept into her thoughts so often these past eighteen months.

      She’d expected his face to be swollen, his jowls sagging, his skin sallow. Instead he was lean and rugged and tan. A muscle moved in his jaw and there was a trace of something not easily identified in his brown eyes. Was it dread? Regret? Or was it a haunting sorrow?

      Cursed with a soft spot for anyone suffering or struggling in any way, she laid a hand on his arm and said, “What you’re feeling is perfectly natural.”

      He drew his arm out of her grasp. “You can’t possibly know what I’m feeling. You have to leave. This is private property and you’re trespassing. Tell my mother—never mind. I’ll tell her myself.” With that, he walked away.

      She watched as he conferred with a burly man who’d just climbed off the earthmover. The other man glanced at her, putting her in mind of a St. Bernard—big, yes, hairy, certainly, loyal, obviously, but not very fierce. Deciding to spare him the discomfort of having to escort her to her car, and spare herself the discomfort, as well, she left of her own accord. She surprised herself when she slammed her foot on the accelerator, but she had to admit the sound of sand spraying behind her spinning tires brought her a certain satisfaction.

      No sense letting Riley Merrick have the last word.

      “Uh-huh,” she said absently into the phone as she reached ahead to wipe fog off her windshield. The hills on either side of the county road were dotted with cherry trees, the branches flexed in anticipation of that elusive signal from Mother Nature to burst into blossom. Madeline understood their wistful impatience.

      “Was Riley anything like you expected?” Summer asked.

      Hunkering down in her seat, she wrapped her jacket more tightly around her to ward off the damp chill while she considered the question. There was a rawness about Riley Merrick, a burning sensuality that had caught her completely off guard. Deciding to keep that perception to herself for now, she said, “He’s fit, healthy and stubborn, and he looks like his photo.”

      “Are you coming home now?” Summer asked.

      Madeline had been sitting along the side of the road for the past forty minutes, thinking about her options. Glancing at the keys dangling uselessly in the ignition, she said, “That would be problematic.”

      “Why? What aren’t you telling me?”

      “What you don’t know the boys can’t badger out of you.” She jolted when a knock sounded on the window. Clearing a spot on the foggy glass, she saw a woman in coveralls hunkered down, looking in.

      “Did you just gasp?” Summer asked.

      Madeline rubbed the tender spot on her forehead where she’d smacked it on the window and nodded at the woman who’d startled her. To Summer, she said, “How do you suppose a two-ton tow truck sneaked up on me?”

      “You called a tow truck?” Summer asked.

      Gesturing to the driver that she’d be with her in a moment, Madeline said, “My car started wheezing as I left the construction site. I managed to coax it a mile before it lunged to the side of the road and surrendered. It’s what I get for having the last word.”

      “I’m not even going to try to make sense of that.”

      She could picture Summer pacing from the front desk of the inn to the French doors with the view of the back garden, always on the lookout, for what Madeline didn’t like to imagine. “They told me they were sending out someone named Red. I wasn’t expecting a woman. I have to go.”

      “You’ll call me if you need me?” Summer asked.

      “You know I will.” With that, she dropped her phone into her bag, unlocked her door and got out.

      “Are you Madeline Sullivan?” the other woman asked.

      Madeline nodded. “You’re Red?”

      “It’s Ruby, actually. Red is my dad.” She touched a ringlet that had escaped the confinement of her ball cap. СКАЧАТЬ