Husband By Inheritance

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“I hope that doesn’t hurt too much.” She thought she sounded very stiff, a woman transparently anxious to let a man know she could not be swayed by him, no matter how devastatingly attractive he was.

“To an old warrior?” he growled, then sighed. “Yeah, you bet it hurts.”

“Mommy kiss better,” Belle suggested wisely.

“Okay by me. What’s Mommy have to say?” He said it casually, a man who knew the lines, but there was no emotion attached to the words, not even friendly teasing.

She kept her own features carefully bland. “Mommy’s kisses are reserved for Belle. Only.”

“That makes me feel real sorry for Belle’s daddy,” he said.

“A man less in need of your pity, you will never meet,” she shot back, and then was sorry for all that she had revealed about herself with that one line. “Belle and I are on our own.”

Still something about being in the same room with this scantily clothed man, and that word kiss hanging in the air between them, made the most bizarre thought crowd into her head.

I’m looking for a husband.

Her sister, Brittany, had said she was going to place an ad in the newspaper with similar wording after the three sisters had heard about the conditions placed on their gifts. And then Brittany had laughed with devil-may-care ease when Jordan Hamilton had treated her to a look of formidable disapproval.

But Abby wasn’t Brittany. Not even if they did look identical.

“I think we’ve intruded quite enough,” she said, the stiffness still in her voice. “We can be on our way now.” Before I make a complete fool of myself, not for the first time.

Really, she had thrown herself at Ty, Belle’s father, bowled over by his good looks and his easy charm, thinking they meant something. No man had ever made such a fuss over her before.

Besides, Ty’s attentions had meant something. He wanted something. And as soon as he’d gotten it, the chase was over. Still, pregnant and afraid of being alone, she had stayed with him longer than any woman with an ounce of self-respect should have. He claimed, right up until the end, to love her madly, but still no offer of marriage had been forthcoming.

“I’ll have a look at your car,” Shane said.

Anybody, she reminded herself, could be charming. Anybody could seem like someone he was not.

“No,” she said, watching as he stood there, carefully monitoring Belle’s reaction to his latest offering. “That’s unnecessary.”

Brit would not approve. After all, hadn’t she sent Abby that ridiculous book, How to Find the Perfect Mate? Abby had vowed not to read it, but found herself reading it anyway, with a kind of horrified fascination.

Had Brit sent one to Corrine as well? Corrine seemed a little clumsy in the man department, just like Abby.

Or maybe clumsy wasn’t the right word. Corrine was more—aloof wasn’t quite the right word. Reserved?

More like scared, Abby thought, wondering if only a sister would see behind the barriers in Corrine’s eyes. Even a sister who had never known her. Well, who could blame her if she was scared? They were being asked, the three of them, to leave everything they had ever known and start over. With only each other.

It still shocked Abby that somebody who looked exactly like her could act like Brit.

Outgoing, bubbly, confident. Brit moved and talked and acted as if she believed she was incredibly beautiful.

And how could Abby look at her sister and see how beautiful she really was, and then look in the mirror and not see it at all in herself? Maybe, she should try her hair like Brit’s—grow it out, let those curls go wild. A little more makeup, a little more style—but for what?

To attract that perfect man? she asked herself scornfully.

Abby bet Brit had sent Corrine a copy of that dreadful book, too. The book which had a whole chapter devoted to man-trapping grooming and dressing techniques.

And said absolutely nothing about what to do with wild, sticking-straight-up hair, and a morning-after look that was notably missing the night before. What use was a book that didn’t deal with emergency situations?

Unless she just hadn’t gotten to that chapter yet.

Abby, she reminded herself, you hate that book and everything it stands for.

Her mission was not to attract this man in front of her, even if he was just about as close to a perfect male specimen as she could probably hope to find in this lifetime, but to get away from him, leave him to his own life, and to find her own.

She could afford a mechanic, she reminded herself. Her meager savings were soon to be supplemented, because she had been given a house like this one, divided into two suites.

And her upstairs suite was inhabited by a reliable tenant. He’d been on the premises for nearly a year, and showed no signs of leaving, according to information she had from the management company.

With the income from him, and if she could pick up a bit of sewing, she and Belle would be just fine. Rich, by her standards.

Rich enough to have someone else come look at her car.

“I’ll just call a service station,” she said. “We’ve put you out enough.”

“That now,” Belle crowed, having rejected what was in the bowl in front of her.

“To be honest,” he said, in a stage whisper “I think I’d rather look after the car than her.”

“You don’t have to do either. I’ll take her out for breakfast. We don’t need to trouble you any—”

“Nooo,” Belle wailed. “Me like here.”

“I guess, you would, you little minx. Don’t you dare push that away! You love Sugar Pups!”

“Don’t,” Belle said mutinously.

And while Abby tried to do the impossible, reason with someone who had not yet fully developed reasoning skills, Shane picked her keys up from where she had left them on the table the night before and went out the door, whistling, one of those aggravating men who took control of everything.

Her feminist heart was appalled of course.

But her human one admitted wanting nothing more than to be looked after every now and then.

He felt, as he went down the walk, as though he had been hit over the head with a sack of bricks.

First, twenty pounds of tiny female wrapping him around her little pink finger with complete ease, and then her mother coming in to finish the job.

How on earth could a woman look that good first thing in the morning?

Her hair going every which way, her blouse with the buttons done up crooked, her jeans all rumpled and so ridiculously large they were ready to fall off.

And she looked like a damned beauty queen.

Like with a flick of her finger, she could have had him pouring cereal for her, too.

He recognized this feeling as one he did not like and would not tolerate.

Shane McCall would not be vulnerable. Isn’t that why he was here? In a little town where he didn’t know a soul, and planned to keep it that way?

Correction: didn’t know any girl souls.

He’d known Morgan for years, from when they had worked together on a temporary assignment on a drug smuggling case in Portland. Morgan had moved back here, to his hometown of Miracle Harbor, to get married and have babies. Morgan had invited him to come for dinner one night. Meet his wife, his kids.

The wife he might have been able to handle, but kids?

He couldn’t be around kids.

He didn’t want to feel things. Guys talked about basketball scores and work. Kids related on a different level entirely. And women, well, he wasn’t even going to go there.

An old pal on the Drug Unit, Drew Duarte worried about him, had pulled him back from a life of complete loneliness and despair by begging him to help out with training. So he did specialized training sessions a few times a year, which is why he ran and lifted weights. He wasn’t letting any young buck ten years his junior run him into the ground. Now, Drew had him taking it a step further. He was working on a chapter on drug detection procedures for a Federal enforcement agency training manual.