She was looking at him as if he’d granted her fondest wish, rather than one of his daughter’s. “You’re doing a good thing, Beck,” she assured softly. “Everything is going to be fine.”
He wasn’t nearly so convinced. “I hope you’re right.”
Her eyes were soft. “Nobody can replace Harmony,” she said quietly. “Not for you. And not for Shelby. But I really believe this will be good for her.” Then she reached out and closed her hands over his folded arms.
He felt the warmth of her touch all the way to the base of his spine.
He started to shift away, but she suddenly moistened her lips, looking away from him as she lowered her hands and moved away to reach for her crutches.
Good for his daughter maybe. But hell on him.
And—catching the sudden flush of color over her high cheekbones—he figured she’d be right there with him.
Chapter Six
“So, how are the newborn ballerina and her handsome daddy doing?”
Lucy tucked her cell phone between her shoulder and ear and kept clapping softly, slowly, keeping time for Shelby and her friend Annie, who were solemnly, diligently standing at the freestanding ballet barre positioned in the middle of the barn, practicing tendus. “I don’t know about the daddy, but she’s multiplying,” she told Sarah.
“I warned you,” her cousin said knowingly. “Word gets out that you’re giving a ballet lesson or two in your barn, and the girls will come. You ought to just retire and open up shop in town.”
Lucy stopped clapping for a moment, and held the phone away. “Excellent, girls. Keep going.”
Both heads—Shelby’s dark and Annie’s as pale as straw—turned her way with beaming smiles.
“I’ll be right back,” she told them. “Keep practicing. That’s what nine-tenths of ballet is. Practice.”
She kept an eye on the two little girls as she tucked the phone back to her ear and stepped closer to the barn door that was opened wide to both the warm morning air and the sounds of Beck working next to the house.
“Honestly, Sarah, they’re so darn cute I can hardly stand it,” she admitted. As of today, they’d had eight sessions and Annie had joined them after the first five.
Even though Lucy’s entire point had been to spend time specifically with Shelby, she hadn’t been able to say no when the girl had shyly asked if her friend could join them. And Lucy wasn’t sure who was enjoying themselves more. The girls. Or her.
She looked in the direction of the house, although she couldn’t see Beck. Because he’d nearly finished the exterior of the addition a few days ago, he was working on the inside.
And even though he’d agreed about the lessons, he hadn’t lightened up in any other way in the week and a half since.
If anything, the man had only seemed to become even more withdrawn and quiet.
“You’ve got miniature Lucy Buchanans in the making,” Sarah was teasing, drawing her attention back from the enigma that was Beck Ventura. “Maybe you’ve got a whole new career budding. Think of the mark you could possibly make on the future dancing world.”
“At least it’d be a mark instead of a smudge, which is pretty much all I’ve left up to this point,” she countered ruefully. The pounding of Beck’s hammer stopped, leaving nothing but silence and the soft swish of two little girls’ feet sliding rhythmically against a dance floor.
It was a familiar sound to Lucy. And a soothing one even though her pupils were just starting out and trying to master the art of a proper point in their soft little ballet slippers.
“So did you call just to see if Megan can have dance lessons, too, or what?”
Sarah laughed. “If she wants lessons, she hasn’t said so. No, Leandra and I were talking earlier and figured it was about time we had an afternoon out at the hole.”
The “hole,” as Sarah called it was the swimming hole, a small, spring-fed lake located on the Double-C. “Sounds great to me,” Lucy immediately agreed. “It’s been hot as blazes.”
“Exactly. Tomorrow’s Saturday so everyone should be free. Make sure you let your brother know. Leandra told me even Tabby would try to make it just to catch up with Caleb. She said it had been ages since she’d hung out with him.”
Tabby and Caleb had been thick as thieves in high school. “It’s been ages since anyone’s hung out with my brother,” Lucy returned. “The guy’s hardly ever here. But I’ll tell him if I see him.”
“We’re gonna do steaks and corn on the cob on the grill and because we’re recruiting people without their permission, we nominated you for desserts. We put J.D. on appetizers. She doesn’t know that yet, either.”
“Fortunately, I’d rather make a dessert than buy bags of chips, which is what she’ll probably do,” Lucy said, amused. “So what time are you guys heading over there?”
“Maybe noon or so. A little earlier if we can’t keep the kids contained. You know the drill. We’ll swim and eat and swim some more and hopefully the kids’ll be ready to collapse early and give us folks an easy evening.”
Lucy did know the drill because there had been plenty of similar occasions while they’d been growing up. But since most of her summers as an adult had been spent touring, her visits home when it was warm enough to actually swim had been few and far between. “It sounds great,” she told Sarah again. “See you then.”
She tucked her phone in the back pocket of her cutoffs and rejoined her young dancers-in-training. Soon after, Annie Pope’s father came to pick up the girls and drive them into town for day camp.
Long after Shelby had squeezed the heck out of her waist with the hug she’d given Lucy before leaving, she stayed in the barn, silently doing barre work herself.
But even as she put her muscles religiously through an endless repetition of slow, measured pliés and relevés, of tendus and ronds de jambe and développés, her mind was elsewhere.
Namely, in the addition where Beck was working. Her parents had told her that Beck would probably not be finished with the addition until after they returned from their trip in August. But from Lucy’s perspective, it looked as if he would be done well before that.
The man had been working like he was possessed and she had a fairly strong suspicion that one of the reasons was because the quicker he finished, the sooner he could stop running into her.
She breathed out, forcing herself not to let her aching leg drop as she lowered her ankle from the barre. It was harder than it should have been.
Ordinarily, that particular fact would have made her practice the exercises again. And again. But she’d just gotten out of the brace a few days earlier, and she had no desire to end up needing it yet again. So she stopped before her heart was really ready to stop and returned to the house.
Beck had built the wide, brick-lined steps that led up to the new rear entrance of the house at the beginning of the week and even though she’d intentionally avoided getting in his way since he’d agreed to her plan for Shelby, she used them now to enter through the opened doorway.
It was only neighborly to invite the man and his family out for a summer day, wasn’t it?
Except the words dried on her lips when she found him working in the new laundry room.
Shirtless.
Reaching above his head to fasten a large cabinet into place, throwing every muscle in his long torso into sharp relief and making the tool belt—and the waist of his faded jeans—droop lower around his hips.
His drill, or whatever it was, whined loudly in the air. He clearly didn’t know that Lucy was standing there.
And thank goodness for it because her jaw was dangerously close to dropping.
She wondered, fancifully, if a person’s eyeballs could get hot just from looking at something so…exquisitely perfect.
Then the whining stopped. “If you’re gonna insist on standing there,” his voice came hollowly from inside the cabinet, “at least help me hold this thing up.”
She nearly jumped out of her skin. “I didn’t t
hink you knew I was here.”
He pulled his head out and gave her a baleful look that didn’t entirely disguise the flicker of his gaze down to her bare legs and back again. “I knew.” His voice was impossibly dry. “So?”
She quickly moved beside him and raised her hands. “Where do I—”
He grabbed one and pressed it against the base of the cabinet. “I’ve got a ledger board underneath to hold the weight, but another pair of hands is good.” He leaned upward again, reaching high into the cabinet, and the air filled with noise from the power tool again.
If she turned her head three inches, her nose would touch his chest.
She clamped her tongue between her teeth and closed her eyes. Only that really was no help because her mind immediately conjured wholly inappropriate visions of her touching that wide, wide chest.
Her eyes popped open again.
Probably, Beck had the right idea.
Stay as far away from one another as humanly possible.
Forget neighborly invitations. Just do what they needed to do.
In his case, finish her parents’ addition. And in hers, spend time with Shelby.
Not Shelby’s ridiculously sexy and emotionally unavailable father.
She’d already tried to have a relationship with a man whose heart wasn’t on the same page as hers. Did she really want to repeat the exercise?
She realized her gaze was slowly—heaven help her, lasciviously—traveling the path made by the sprinkling of soft dark hair on his chest as it narrowed from his pecs to a thin line over his ridged abdomen. All the men she knew in New York would have gotten rid of that hair.
She pressed her lips together and swallowed hard. Fortunately, a moment later, the shrill noise ceased and he moved away, taking the heat with him that had seemed to waft off him and wrap enticingly around her senses.
“You can let go now,” he finally said. “Cabinet’s secure.”
She flushed and lowered her hands. “You’re really making a lot of progress in here.”
He leaned over to pick up the bottle of water sitting on the floor next to the cabinets yet to be installed and his jeans tightened over his rear. “Should be done in here with the cabs today—” he straightened and turned toward her again “—and then I can move the appliances and gut the old laundry room.” He lifted the bottle to his lips and drank thirstily.
She realized she wasn’t really listening because she was too busy looking, and quickly averted her eyes. “That’s nice,” she said quickly and started edging for the doorway. “Do you, um, need more water or anything?”
His gaze was steady on her face and it was a full ten seconds before he shook his head.
It felt like a lifetime.
“Okay.” She stepped out of the laundry room and into the spacious open area that would soon be the new family room, and drew in a silent breath. She was a coward, that’s what she was.
It was a simple enough invitation to join a group of people that she, personally, really enjoyed even if they were her family members. Shelby would have fun because there’d be lots of other kids. And Beck could even bring his father along, if he wanted. The more the merrier after all. It wasn’t as if she’d planned to invite him to a private celebration for two.
He was probably going to say no, anyway.
But he’d said yes about Shelby before she’d really expected him to, hadn’t he?
The debate inside her head annoyed her to no end and she whirled around to stick her head back in the laundry room, only to pull up short.
He was standing in the doorway watching her. “Something wrong?”
“No.” She smiled brightly. Too brightly, she was afraid, but there was nothing she could do about it now. “A bunch of us are getting together tomorrow for a swim and a cookout. I…I wondered if you and your family would like to join us.” She moistened her lips, not at all accustomed to the nervousness she felt. “We’ll be over at the Double-C. My grandparents live there and it doesn’t take long to get there heading through Weaver and—”
“I have heard of it.” His voice was bland, but she still felt herself flush a little again. Of course he had. Anyone who lived in the state knew about the Double-C.
“Right.” She realized she was picking at the fraying hem of her shorts when his gaze dropped to her legs again. She quickly pushed her fingers into the pockets instead. “I can guarantee cool water to swim in, cold beer and soda to drink and the best steak—Double-C brand, naturally—that you can sink your teeth into. Shelby told me she knows how to swim and—”
“Okay.”
Her mouth stayed open even though the words dried up.
“Unless you want to keep on with the pitch,” he finally said, sounding vaguely amused. “Do what you’ve got to do, ’cause I know that’s your style anyway. But I do want to get those cabinets done. And, yes, Shelby does swim. Like a fish.”
“Right. Okay, then. Um, tomorrow around noon. Do you, um, want me to pick you up on the way?”
“No.”
Just that. To the point.
She really didn’t know what to think about the man. “Okay, then. When you get to the C, just keep heading east a few miles out from the big house. The hole’s surrounded by a huge stand of trees and lilac bushes almost out of nowhere, so it’s not hard to miss. The ground’s soft enough to sit on, but feel free to bring chairs if you want. And towels for swimming. Other than that, all you need to bring is yourselves.”
He nodded, then swung the giant nail gun he was holding at his side onto his shoulder and turned back into the laundry room.
Feeling shaky inside, she quickly went inside the house. She’d intended to go upstairs and grab a shower. A cold one was what she obviously needed.
Only staying in the house with Beck working on the other side of a few walls made the place feel too claustro phobic. So she grabbed her purse and a set of keys. “Running to town,” she yelled as she headed toward the front of the house and the door there. Just in case he was listening.
But as she flew down the road in one of her dad’s pickup trucks toward Weaver, she knew that what she really was doing, was running from.
Namely the fact that her interest in Beckett Ventura had rapidly—futilely—swelled beyond even the farthest boundaries of what could be considered neighborliness.
“Where’s Caleb?” Sarah asked when Lucy got out of the truck she’d parked alongside the half-dozen others already clustered near the swimming hole the next afternoon.
None of the trucks were Beck’s, she noticed as she reached back inside to grab the containers sitting on her seat. “I left a message on his cell phone. He, in turn, left a scrawled note on the refrigerator door which I saw this morning, that he’d make it if he could.” She turned and handed off some of her load to Sarah. “It’s the only evidence that he was home at all since yesterday and he was gone again this morning. I have no idea what’s keeping him so occupied.”
They reached the clearing through the trees where Leandra and J.D. were already setting out food on a folding table. Sarah’s two older children, Megan and Eli, were clambering over the boulders along the edge of the water, while her husband, Max, was already in the water with four-year-old Ben on his shoulders. Lucy also spotted J.D.’s twin stepsons, Zach and Connor, looking like wet seals bobbing up and down beneath the water’s surface. Their father, Jake, was watching from the bank, holding his and J.D.’s baby, Tucker, and smiling. His aunt Susan was stretched out on a folding lounge next to him, reading a book.
“Where’s Evan?” Lucy didn’t immediately spot Leandra’s husband.
“He got called out on a colicky horse,” Leandra said. “He’ll try to make it later.”
“Any news on Angel yet?”
J.D. shook her head. “I talked to my very impatient sister this morning. She’s not real happy that yesterday came and went with no baby. She had her doctor’s appointment last week and everything’s looking good, though, and they’ve already told her they won�
��t let her go too long before inducing labor.”
“You going to go over and help for a few days?”
“No, she’s not,” Jake said loudly from bankside.
J.D. just grinned and waved her husband off. “He’s afraid I’m going to leave him alone with Tuck and the boys,” she whispered. “He hates changing diapers. I caught him actually trying to bribe Connor into doing it the other day.”
“Sounds like a typical man to me,” Tara said, walking up with a stack of paper plates and cups under one arm and her one-year-old, Aidan, under the other. “Axel always manages to somehow disappear whenever there’s a diaper change coming.”
Lucy grabbed the plates and cups and leaned over to nuzzle her nose against the toddler’s. He grinned, showing off his little white teeth and slapped her face. “Can I take him?”
“Please.” Tara smiled wryly and Lucy plucked the boy out of her cousin-in-law’s arms, swinging him around before hugging him close.
The boy chortled and jabbered away, kicking his legs.
Lucy grinned back. “I have no idea what you’re saying, but it’s fascinating.”
“He talks nonstop,” Axel drawled, coming up behind them with an enormous ice chest in his arms that he set next to the table. “Don’t you, bud?” He stuck his face in front of his son’s, who squealed and kicked even harder.
“Daddy, daddy, daaaaaaaaaddy!”
“Now that’s pretty understandable,” Lucy admitted, handing him over to his dad before he completely jumped out of her arms.
Axel swung Aidan onto his shoulder and the boy’s fingers grabbed hold of great hunks of his dad’s blond hair. “Looks like most of the gang’s all here.” He sketched a wave toward Jake and Max. “Ryan and Mall were just driving up. I think I saw Courtney sitting in the back with Chloe even.”
“And Casey and Erik went on a beer run,” Leandra added, naming two more of their cousins. “They should be back anytime now.”
Lucy rubbed her palms down the back of her cutoff jeans. “I, uh, I invited a few more,” she admitted and felt several sets of eyes swivel her way.
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