To Wed and Protect

However, one of those beautiful green eyes appeared slightly swollen, and a hint of a bruise peeked beneath makeup at the corner.

“Yes, and you must be Luke Delaney.”

He backed up as she stepped out and across the hole. “I’m assuming this is what you called me about?” he asked, gesturing to the porch.

She nodded. “I knew it was rather unstable but didn’t realize just how dangerous it was until my son’s foot went through it yesterday.”

That sexy voice of hers shot a new wave of pleasure through him. Looking at her certainly wasn’t difficult, either. Mrs. Abigail Graham, he reminded himself. A married woman sporting the hint of a black eye—and certainly none of his business.

“Was he hurt?” Luke asked, eyeing the hole.

“Thankfully no. His tennis shoe got scuffed and it scared him, but he wasn’t hurt.” She smiled, and Luke felt the jolt of that gorgeous smile deep in the pit of him, like that lick of heat he got when he took a swallow of good Scotch.

“Why don’t you come on inside and we can discuss the repair work,” she suggested. She stepped over the hole to the front door.

He followed her into the house and tried not to notice how sexy her shapely bottom looked in her tight jeans. The living room, although starkly furnished, was spotlessly clean and decorated in desert shades.

From someplace else in the house he could hear the sound of a television playing what sounded like cartoons.

She gestured him to the sofa, and he sat. “The man at the lumberyard said you were the best carpenter in town,” she explained. “He was the one who gave me your name and number.”

She perched on the edge of a chair facing the sofa. “So, what will it take to repair the porch?”

“I can’t repair it. It needs to come down altogether and a new one built.”

A frown creased her forehead, and she caught her lower lip between her teeth. She had luscious full lips, and Luke wondered idly if they would be as soft and inviting as they looked.

“How much is all this going to cost?” she finally asked with a sigh.

Luke stood and pulled a measuring tape from his pocket. “Why don’t we go out and get some measurements, then I can give you an estimate.” He had a feeling he wasn’t going to make much profit on this job.

It was obvious that money was an issue. Anyone who chose to live in this ramshackle place had to have made the decision because they couldn’t afford anything better.

“Okay, I’ll be right back.” She got up, hurried down the hallway and disappeared into the first doorway on the right.

Luke once again looked around the room. On second glance, he saw the work that needed to be done. Windowsills needed to be refinished or painted. The hardwood floor was scuffed and worn. But those things were cosmetic. The rotten porch was something different. She was lucky nobody had been seriously hurt on it.

She returned from the bedroom and they gingerly stepped out on the rotten porch. “This is a bad accident waiting to happen,” he said as they stepped off the porch. “If you have me build you a new one, would you want it to be the same size?”

He watched as she gazed at the porch thoughtfully. Lordy, but she was pretty. Her clear, creamy skin looked soft and touchable, and her dark hair was a perfect foil for her startling green eyes.

“It’s a pretty good size, isn’t it?” she said thoughtfully.

“Sure,” he agreed. “It’s big enough to hold a couple of chairs and a potted plant or two.”

“Then let’s keep the new one the same size.”

He nodded. “Let’s get the measurements.”

As she took the end of the tape measure from him, he smelled her fragrance, a soft whisper of something sweetly feminine and clean. It was probably a good thing the woman was married. Otherwise she would be a huge temptation, and Luke was trying not to walk the path of temptation.

“How long have you been here?” he asked as he gestured for her to go to the opposite side of the porch.

“We arrived on Tuesday and have spent the last couple of days having trash hauled off. Apparently my uncle was a bit of a pack rat.”

Luke made a mental note of the measurement, then motioned her to the side of the porch. “Arthur was your uncle? Nobody around here knew he had any relatives.”

“Actually, he was a great-uncle, but I never met him in person.”

“That’s all I need,” he said and hit the button on the tape measure to retract the tape. “He was a bit of a character, your great-uncle Arthur.”

Her cheeks flushed prettily as she met him at the base of the steps leading to the porch. “Poor Uncle Arthur. My father used to say he was a bolt whose nut was screwed on crooked.”

Luke laughed at the apt description of the old man. “He was certainly colorful,” he agreed. “He sometimes showed up in town with aluminum foil antennas wrapped around his head, said he was picking up signals from space.”

She winced, then gave another one of her pretty smiles. “Well, I hate to disappoint the town gossips, but I don’t intend to take up where Uncle Arthur left off,” she replied.

Luke grinned. “Don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of other odd people here in Inferno to keep the gossips busy.” He hated to think how often in the past he had kept the gossip mill busy.

“Where are you from?” he asked curiously.

“Uh…back east.”

He grinned. “Back east as in New York or back east as in East India?”

“Uh…Chicago. We’re from Chicago.”

Luke didn’t know exactly how he knew, but he was fairly certain she was lying. Her gaze didn’t quite meet his, and there was a hint of unnatural color to her cheeks that let him know she wasn’t being truthful. Again he reminded himself that the lovely lady was none of his business.

At that moment the front door opened. Two children stood in the doorway. The little boy looked to be about five or six, and the girl standing next to him appeared to be slightly younger. Both were dark-haired and dark-eyed, and each of them eyed Luke warily.

“Don’t come out here,” Abigail cautioned. “We’ve been using the back door since yesterday,” she explained to Luke.

“Who is he?” the little boy asked from the doorway, his voice slightly belligerent.

“Jason, this is Luke Delaney. He’s going to build us a front porch that we won’t fall through. And Luke, that’s Jason and Jessica.”

“Hi, kids.” Luke smiled at the two rug rats, but neither of them returned his smile. Their dark eyes continued to gaze at him with suspicion.

Luke turned to Abigail. “I’ll get some estimates together and call you with them later this evening.”

“That will be fine,” she replied and again offered him that beautiful smile that ignited a small flame in the pit of Luke’s stomach.

Yes, it was definitely a good thing Abigail Graham was a married woman with two children, he thought as he nodded goodbye and headed for his pickup truck. Although he found himself incredibly physically attracted to her, the fact that she was married with children assured him he wouldn’t follow through on that attraction.

The last thing Luke was looking for was any kind of a permanent relationship. Even if Abigail were single and available, she had that look in her eyes that told him she probably wasn’t a short-term-relationship kind of woman.

He dismissed thoughts of the lovely Abigail and her children from his mind as he pointed his pickup toward the family dude ranch.