Lee Mckenzie - The Man for Maggie

“That’s what I wanted to do last night, but you were too busy,” Nick said.

“Yes, I was.” But Maggie wasn’t busy now. Now they were on exactly the same page, and the book was about to get very interesting.

He must have been able to read that in her eyes, because his next kiss was different. He still leaned up against the wall, with only his mouth on hers, yet she heated up as though his body was pressed against hers.

“So what were you doing last night that was more important than this?"

Maggie opened her eyes and tried to focus. “It’s a secret.”

Nick withdrew a little and gave her one of his intense looks.

She snagged the front of his shirt with both hands and pulled him back in. “It’s a good secret. When the time is right, I’ll tell you all about it.”

He seemed to relax a little. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Then I’ll just have to be patient, won’t I?”

Dear Reader,

People often want to know how I come up with ideas for my stories, and for the first time I don’t have an answer to that question. All I can tell you is that one day I sat at the computer and Nick and Maggie were clamoring for me to tell their story. Looking back, I suspect Maggie was working a little of her magic on me, the same way she does on the people of Collingwood Station…and on that one special man in her life.

Like Maggie, I’m sure we all want the best for the people we love. But how do we achieve the delicate balance between letting them make their own way in life and trying to share the load with them? At what point does helping become meddling? And what if stepping back will make a bad situation worse? Not easy questions to answer, but one thing is certain. When one person leaps without looking and the other has both feet firmly planted on the ground, we can expect a few laughs and the occasional disaster along the way.

I hope you have as much fun reading this book as I had writing it. Please drop by www.leemckenzie.com for a glass of Maggie’s ice-cold lemonade and a warm chocolate chip cookie. Collingwood Station will always have a special place in my heart and I hope you’ll visit again when my second book set in Collingwood Station, With This Ring, comes out in December 2007.

Lee McKenzie

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For my family

Thanks for believing

From the time she was ten years old and read Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, Lee McKenzie knew she wanted to be a writer, just like Anne and Jo. In the intervening years she has written everything from advertising copy to an honors thesis in paleontology, but becoming a four-time Golden Heart finalist and a Harlequin author are among her proudest accomplishments. Lee and her artist/teacher husband live on an island along Canada’s west coast, and she loves to spend time with two of her best friends—her grown-up children.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Nick Durrance looked at the run-down two-and-a-half-story house and double-checked the address he’d scrawled on a scrap of paper. He’d been surprised—okay, astounded—when his answering service told him that Maggie Meadowcroft wanted an estimate on a remodeling job. Collingwood Station was small enough that there could only be one Miss Meadowcroft. She had been his high-school English teacher, although it had never occurred to him at the time that she had a first name. She’d been positively ancient then, and that had been ten years ago.

Hers was the only house on the block that hadn’t been renovated and it definitely needed work. Paint. A new roof. Here’s hoping old Miss Meadowcroft had a nice bank account, because he really needed this job.

He pushed the gate open and lunged for it after it swung askew on one hinge. The house also needed new front steps, although to his surprise they held his weight. All but the second step, which looked too risky to chance.

The doorbell had an Out of Order sign taped over it. He added new wiring to the long list forming in his head and knocked on the wooden frame of the screen door.

“Come in!” The voice that beckoned from the back of the house had a husky, musical quality that was utterly feminine and startlingly young. Nothing at all like the Miss Meadowcroft he remembered.

“Wait’ll you try this,” the voice said. “You’ll love it!”

Definitely not Miss Meadowcroft. He gave in to curiosity, pulled the screen door open and stepped inside. The hallway was filled with antiques, many of them much older than the home’s owner. He’d have expected the place to be a little on the musty side but instead the air was strangely…fruit-flavored?

“Come on in!” she called again.

The scent of strawberries and that fascinating voice enticed him down the hall to the kitchen. The voice that had conjured up a sultry, mysterious woman actually belonged to a slender redhead who sat at the kitchen table, gazing into a mirror propped against a canister. She was scraping some kind of creamy pink stuff out of a blender with a spatula and smearing it all over her face.

She dumped the spatula back in the blender, spread the stuff around with her fingers and spoke without looking up. “I finally got it right. You will not believe how good this feels.”

She popped the tip of one finger between a pair of very luscious-looking lips. “It even tastes—” She glanced up then. “Oh! You’re not Allison.”

He watched her grab for the nearest kitchen implement and smiled when she ended up arming herself with a wooden spoon.

“Who are you?” she asked. “How did you get in here?”

“Nick Durrance. Through the front door. It wasn’t locked and you did say I should come in.”

“I thought you were Allison.”

“I think we’ve already established that I’m not.”

She glared at him and he chided himself for being a smart-ass. Let’s face it. Most women would be surprised to look up and find a six-foot-four construction worker standing in their kitchen.

She pointed her weapon at him. “Allison lives next door. I called her to come over and test my new rejuvenating pore-cleansing facial mask. She’ll be here any minute.”

The corners of his mouth twitched and he had to cover them with his thumb and forefinger to make them behave. He understood she was startled but she looked perfectly ridiculous. A pencil protruded from the untidy bundle of dark red hair piled on top of her head and almond-shaped brown eyes gazed suspiciously from two circles in the pink stuff she’d smeared on her face. What man in his right mind would attack a woman who looked like this?

“Listen. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He took a step forward, and she jumped to her feet and jabbed the wooden spoon in his direction.