Christine Flynn - Forbidden Love

“Just about. I just need to wash out the wheelbarrow and clean up the tools.” He popped the top on the can, the sound sharp against the evening stillness. The sun skimmed the treetops, slanting long shadows in what was left of the hour before dark. “The footings didn’t take as long to put in as I thought they would. If I’d brought lumber with me, I could have started framing the ramp tonight.”

From the self-deprecating frown that creased his brow as he raised the can to his mouth, it was apparent that he wished he had realized how quickly the work would go. The hour he could have put into the project now would have put him that much closer to getting the job finished.

Not wanting to hold him up now, she figured it best to do what she needed to do so he could leave. “I just wanted to thank you,” she said, watching him tip back the can and swallow. “For leaving the sawhorses,” she explained. “That was very kind of you. But especially for what you’re doing for Grandma. It can’t be easy working all day then coming out to do this.”

He’d drained half the can before he lowered it. Contemplating its pull ring, he muttered, “It’s not a problem.”

“I appreciate it, anyway.”

“Then, you’re welcome.”

“Did you have dinner before you came here?”

The question was out before she realized she was going to ask it, much less have time to consider where it would lead.

Nick looked caught off guard by it, too.

“Uh…no,” he murmured, glancing at his watch as if he might have been putting off knowing exactly what time it was. “I didn’t want to waste the daylight.”

Amy’s conscience tugged hard.

“I was just getting ready to grill a hamburger,” she said, aware of exactly why he hadn’t wanted to waste it. He wanted to help an old woman go home. The very least she could do was repay his kindness. On behalf of her grandmother, of course. “If you don’t mind staying, I’ll make one for you, too. I can have dinner ready by the time you get your things cleaned up.”

For a moment, Nick said nothing. He just stood with the can of cola dangling at his side while he considered the wariness in Amy’s eyes, along with the delicate curve of her jaw, her throat. She did nothing to call particular attention to herself. Her makeup, if she was even wearing any, was minimal. Her clothes were loose and practical. Yet her tousled hair fairly begged a man to sink his fingers into it, her lush ripe mouth taunted him with its fullness and her willowy little body was as tempting as sin itself.

If you don’t mind staying, she’d said. He would have laughed at the irony of the suggestion had he been in the mood to find anything even slightly amusing about being there to begin with.

In the past couple of hours, he’d done what would have taken some men twice as long to accomplish just so he could get away from her. It seemed as if every time he’d looked up, he’d caught sight of her as she’d worked by the open kitchen window above the sink. And each time he’d seen her, he’d found himself having to try that much harder to shove her out of his thoughts.

The first time he’d noticed her, she had been reaching to take down the little stained glass birds that had hung along the top of the window. Her waist-length top had ridden up, exposing the strip of flesh between the waistband of her ragged cutoffs and the band of her bra. He hadn’t known which he’d found more tantalizing: the glimpse of ice-blue lace or the smooth expanse of her flat stomach.

He still hadn’t decided, even though the images were burned into his brain.

The last time he’d noticed her, she’d been standing on the counter painting something—solvent, probably—on a cabinet. Mostly what he’d seen then was the sweet curve of her backside and the long length of her legs.

Certain he’d have to be unconscious not to be aware of her, and mindful of his less-than-illustrious history with her family, he told himself the wisest thing to do would be to leave. But he was a pragmatic man. And a logical one. His job there would be infinitely easier if he and Amy could somehow call a truce. Since she was offering the opportunity, it seemed only reasonable to meet her halfway.

Aside from that, he was starving.

“Do you still burn them?” he asked, his tone mild.

“Excuse me?”

“Hamburgers. The last time you made them when I was around, they were charred on both sides and gray in the middle. We wound up having cold cuts.”

She blinked at the unexpected hint of teasing in his eyes. But before she could ask what he was talking about, she remembered, too.

The exact sequence of events was fuzzy, but she remembered him being at her parents’ house with Paige for a family barbecue. Amy had been left in charge of the grill, and she’d knocked over a cruet of salad oil that had been set on its sideboard. The resulting ball of flame had turned the meat into little lumps of coal.

“I can’t believe you remembered that.”

“I remember a lot of things about you,” he replied, his glance holding hers. “And yeah,” he murmured, “a hamburger would be great.”

The carved lines of his face were inscrutable in the moments before he swiped up the empty cement bags and carried them to the truck parked in the drive. He sounded as if remembering her was merely a matter of fact, as unremarkable to him as recalling his own name. She just had no idea why he would recall anything about her beyond the fact that she’d simply been around.

Unless, she thought as she headed into the kitchen to search drawers for matches, it was because he’d been aware of how awkward she’d felt around him, or because he’d been present during some of her more embarrassing moments. At least, they’d been embarrassing to a shy girl of seventeen with a desperate need to please her family.

She’d certainly been embarrassed the day she’d incinerated the family meal. Yet Nick hadn’t let on if he had noticed how badly she’d wished she could twitch her nose and disappear. As gallant as the hero in any young girl’s fantasies, he’d come to her aid, quietly removing the smoldering evidence to the trash while everyone else had come down on her for not paying attention to what she’d been doing. Then he’d told her with a wink that he hadn’t been in the mood for hamburgers anyway, that any one of them could have done the same thing, and whisked Paige off with him to the deli around the corner for packages of turkey and ham.

She had felt pitifully grateful to him for his kindness, and had thought him quite wonderful for defusing her little disaster. But she’d already thought him pretty wonderful, anyway. The problem was that she’d grown to feel more than simple gratitude. She had begun to feel things she had no business feeling toward a man who was going to be her brother-in-law. Things that had made her heart hurt when she’d realized he wouldn’t be part of their family. Things that had actually made her feel relieved when he’d gone, because her feelings toward him had started making her feel uncomfortable with her sister. She and Paige had next to nothing in common and Paige had always done everything so much better than Amy felt she ever could, but Amy had never in her life felt envious or jealous of her until she’d fallen so hard for Nick herself.

No one had known she’d had such a crush on him. And a crush was all it could have been at seventeen. No one but her grandmother. When her confused feelings had driven her to confide in the dear woman, Bea had gently assured her that it wasn’t at all unusual for a young girl to become infatuated with an unattainable older man. It was simply part of growing up.

Amy absently adjusted the flame on the grill. The flash of guilt and attraction she’d experienced earlier as she’d watched Nick from the window was back. Only now, the disturbing feelings were a little harder to tamp down, a little harder to deny.