To Wed and Protect

He paused inside the door, his long-lashed eyes scanning the room. When his gaze landed on her, a slow smile curved his lips. As he sauntered toward her, she was aware of every other woman in the room watching his progress.

He stopped at her table and smiled. “I see you got here okay.” He flickered his gaze to the empty space beside her. “Mind if I join you?”

She wanted to tell him no but found herself scooting as close to the wall as possible to allow him plenty of room to sit next to her.

“Stephanie.” He raised a hand to the waitress.

“Bring me the usual.” The waitress nodded, and Luke slid into the booth next to Abby. “Where are the munchkins?” he asked.

She pointed to the jukebox near the door where the two were feeding in coins and punching buttons. “On the cross-country drive they discovered the joys of the jukebox,” she said.

“Do they know what they’re playing? I mean, can they read the titles?”

“Jason can read a little, enough to recognize all the Alan Jackson songs.”

He laughed. “At least the kid has good taste in music.”

“You like country music?” she asked, trying to ignore the clean male scent of him that seemed to wrap around her so effectively. His body warmth seeped to her even though their bodies weren’t touching.

He turned sideways so he could look at her, his thigh suddenly pressing against hers. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no other kind of music. What about you? What’s your listening pleasure?”

She tried to focus on what he was saying and not on the sensory overload of his nearness. Despite the material of his jeans and hers, she could feel the heat of his thigh intimately against her own. “I used to enjoy old rock and roll, but when we were driving across country, there were times when we could only pick up country stations, so I have to admit, I’ve grown pretty fond of it.”

“You should come down to the Honky Tonk one night.”

“The Honky Tonk?” She was intensely aware of speculative glances being shot their direction from the other diners, particularly the female diners.

“It’s a little tavern on the north side of town. I pick a little guitar and sing there most nights.”

“Really? So you’re a singing carpenter cowboy rancher.”

“Yeah, although I’m hoping eventually I can drop carpenter cowboy rancher from my rеsumе.”

She looked at him in surprise. “So, you want to be a performer?” He was certainly handsome enough. She wondered if he had any talent, other than the one of seduction that Stephanie had mentioned earlier.

“In seven months’ time I’m Nashville bound,” he said, his eyes sparkling with good humor. “And in the meantime, I’ve got a front porch to build.”

She returned his smile with one of her own. “Why seven months? I mean, if Nashville and fame are your dream, then why wait to chase after it?”

Abby knew all about the danger of waiting to reach for dreams. She knew that far too often if you waited too long, fate destroyed any chance of gaining the dreams you might entertain. No, fate hadn’t destroyed her dreams, Justin Cahill had seen to that.

She shoved this thought aside and listened as Luke explained to her about his father’s will. “Anyway, the short of it is that if I don’t want my brothers and sister to lose their inheritance, then I have to hang around here for the next seven months and put in twenty-five hours a week at the family ranch.”

He grinned, that slow, lazy smile that ignited heat in the pit of her stomach. “But, with a new pretty lady in town, hanging around here isn’t going to be so bad, after all.”

“I already warned her about you, Luke Delaney.” Stephanie placed a dinner platter before him and eyed him in mock sternness. “I told her to watch out for you, that you’re a charming devil without a heart.”

Luke laughed and turned to Abby. “Don’t pay any attention to her. She knows the only reason I don’t have a heart is because she stole it from me long ago.” He turned to look at the waitress. “You know you’re the only woman for me, Stephanie.”

She slapped him on the shoulder with her order pad. “And you are utterly shameless. You drink too much, you don’t take care of yourself and you never take anything seriously.” With these words and a wry shake of her head, she turned and left their table.

“She always gives me a hard time,” he explained, his features still lit with humor.

“She did warn me about you before you got here,” Abby replied. “She said you were a charmer.” Abby bit her bottom lip, unwilling to tell him what Stephanie had said about his powers of seduction.

Luke looked at her once again, and she wondered if he had any idea that his eyes seduced by merely gazing at her. “And that’s a bad thing?”

“Well, no…” She felt breathless beneath the power of his bedroom eyes. “That is, unless the woman you’re charming takes you too seriously.”

He grinned. “I take my charming of women very seriously.”

She broke the eye contact with him and gazed to where the two kids stood at the jukebox, tapping their feet and wiggling their bottoms in the unself-consciousness of children.

He didn’t speak until she looked at him once again, then he smiled that sexy grin that released a million butterflies in the pit of her stomach. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you fair warning before I attempt to charm you, and that way you won’t be caught unprepared.”

Despite the fact that Abby felt as if she had suddenly plunged into deep waters over her head, she laughed. “Okay,” she agreed. “That sounds fair to me.” Once again she broke their eye contact and looked at the kids. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to get home and get those two ready for bed.”

In actuality, it was time for her to get away from Luke Delaney’s smile, his body warmth and the heated light that shone from his eyes. He was making her feel things she hadn’t felt for a very long time.

She sighed in relief as he stood to allow her to slide out of the booth. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” she said.

“Bright and early,” he replied, and in his smooth, deep voice she heard promise that had nothing to do with a new front porch.

She nodded, turned and walked to the cash register, refusing to follow her impulse to turn and look at him one last time.

The man was a definite temptation, but she knew the temptation he offered was not what she needed or wanted in her life at the moment. He could try his talent at seduction with her, but what he would eventually discover was that at this point in her life, she was absolutely, positively unseduceable.

Luke had been in a tailspin ever since learning that Abigail Graham had no husband and no boyfriend. It was as if fate had given him the thumbs-up to follow through on his initial attraction to her.

There was nothing Luke liked more than a challenge and the excitement of a new, fresh relationship. It had been several months since he’d even taken a woman on a date and months before that when he’d last been intimate with a woman.

He knew he had a reputation as a womanizer, and in truth had dated most of the single, eligible women in town. But since his father’s death, Luke had not been living up to his reputation.

As he ate, he thought about the lovely Abby, whose clean, lightly floral perfume still eddied in the air around him. A year was a long time to be alone, and there had been loneliness in her eyes, a loneliness that touched something deep inside him.

He shook his head as if to dislodge this thought. He certainly wasn’t lonely. His life was merely in a holding pattern until the seven months he had to spend at the ranch were over. And there was no reason he shouldn’t spend some of his holding-pattern time with a lovely woman named Abigail Graham.

By the time he’d finished his meal, the dinner rush had come and gone. Stephanie poured herself a cup of coffee and sank down across from him in the booth.

“I shouldn’t even talk to you,” Luke teased with an affectionate grin at Stephanie. “What are you doing maligning my good name behind my back to the new people in town?”

Stephanie snorted. “You don’t need any help maligning your name. I told that pretty lady the truth, that she needs to watch out for you. You’re a heartbreaker, Luke Delaney, and you’ve already broken half the hearts in this town.”

“But I’m good friends with every single woman I’ve ever dated,” he countered.

“And that’s part of your charm, dear Luke. You somehow manage to make every woman happy they got a moment of your time even though they wanted a lifetime.”

Stephanie took a sip of her coffee and shook her head with a smile. “But, mark my words, Luke. Someday you’re going to mess with the wrong woman and you’ll have one of those obsessive stalkers on your hands like in the movies.”