Cara Colter - Husband By Inheritance

She reached out to pull her daughter to her, reached further, patted the mattress, and as the awful truth sank in, she sat bolt upright in bed. Only a little dent remained where her daughter had slept snugly beside her last night.

“Belle,” she called, leaping from bed, “where are you?” She fumbled for buttons on her homemade blouse that had sprung undone during the night, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. This place wasn’t child-proofed like her modest apartment in Chicago. “Belle?”

She raced into the next room. A chair had been pulled up to the door, the kind that had the twist style of lock on the handle. The door was now open into the hallway that led to the outer door and the kitchen they had been in last night.

Did the door to the outside have the same kind of lock? Abby tried to think from last night. She was sure the lock she had tried to fit her key into was a deadbolt. Even her precocious daughter would have trouble with that.

But, as she scrambled into the hallway, her heart sank. The front storm door wasn’t locked. It wasn’t even closed, a brisk, sea-scented breeze coming in through the screen.

“Belle!”

“In here.”

Only it wasn’t Belle who answered. It was him, his voice loaded with irritation.

She catapulted into the kitchen, and skidded to a halt.

Immune, she reminded herself.

But really that rush of relief that her daughter was here and not happily exploring the streets of Miracle Harbor, getting closer and closer to the ocean, seemed to have lowered her defense system again.

She was suddenly not sure she had registered his full impact last night. Just looking at him made her feel hot and flustered, like a woman who had a sign flashing on her forehead that said: I Need A Husband. Desperately.

He was a man who didn’t seem to like much clothing. This morning he had on navy blue running shorts that showed off tanned, muscular legs, and a flat, hard fanny. A grey sweatshirt with some sort of police emblem on it stretched tight over the broadness of his chest, sleeves cut off at the shoulder so that every inch of his powerful arms were on display.

Could a woman look at that and not wonder what it would be like to be held by him? Only if she wasn’t human!

He had a white towel strung around his neck and his hair was dark with sweat, curling at the tips even though it was so short.

His facial features, she decided, were nauseatingly perfect. High cheekbones, straight, strong nose, faintly jutting chin. He hadn’t shaved yet today, and for some reason that only made him look better, faintly roguish, untamable.

She knew all about this kind of man. They could have anything, and they took it. And when they were done they threw it back.

Only one thing stopped her from hating him completely—the look of muted panic that was in those amazing dark eyes as he surveyed her daughter.

“What does this kid eat? We’re about out of options, here.” He snapped this at her, like a military man on a mission that was about to fail.

Abby dragged her gaze away from him. Belle was settled happily on top of a stack of books on a chair, at a kitchen table covered with cereal boxes and bowls.

“You mean she’s sampling everything?” Abby asked, aghast.

Her daughter took a regal bite of the offering in front of her, which looked like chocolate covered raisins in milk, swallowed, frowned and pointed autocratically at her next choice.

Which he, heartthrob of the universe, rushed to get for her.

“What are you doing?” Abby said, folding her arms across her chest. As if that would protect her. From what?

Her desire to laugh that’s what, she told herself firmly. At the sight of one hundred and ninety pounds of one hundred percent menacing, masculine ex-cop being commanded by a baby.

“I’m feeding the kid.” He glowered at Abby.

“Why?”

“When I came in from my run, she was just coming out the door of your suite. I tried to stuff her back in, but she wasn’t having any of it. She announced she was hungry, and she damn well expected me to do something about it.”

“In those words?” Abby couldn’t resist teasing him.

“She doesn’t need words! All she needs to do is screw up her face and show me her tonsils! When I told her to go back to Mommy, she yelled at me. Loudly.”

“Belle!”

“Not a bad girl,” Belle said, anticipating what was coming. “Belle bad?” she asked Shane and blinked at him with sweet coyness.

“Yes!” he said, but when Belle blinked again, he said, “Maybe not bad. Just stubborn, strong-willed, loud and fussy.”

“She is not fussy,” Abby addressed the only accusation that was not totally accurate. “She’s taking advantage of you.”

“A two-year-old?” He paused in his pouring of yet another sample into a bowl and drew himself to his full height, which was formidable, at least six feet, and gave Abby a disdainful look. “That seems unlikely.”

“Really, you didn’t have to feed her. You could have come and got me up.”

“I thought of that.” He added milk to the bowl, paused thoughtfully, and then added a sprinkle of brown sugar.

“And?” she asked, watching as he pondered for another moment, then dropped another dish of sugar on the cereal.

“You looked done in last night. I thought maybe you needed to sleep. Also, given that I promised you a secure room, I didn’t think you’d appreciate waking up with a strange man hovering over you.”

The very thought made her mouth go dry, actually. Did he have to be so devastatingly attractive?

Suddenly an uncomfortable reminder of what she must look like shot through her. Her hand flew to her hair. She could feel it standing straight up, and not in those cute little spikes she could accomplish with a tub of gel and a lot of patience. She glanced down at the rumpled clothes she had slept in. The buttons were done up crookedly on her blouse.

Naturally, he looked like he was ready for a photo-shoot, even with the shadowed face, and sweat forming dark stains on his sweatshirt.

“One black shin is enough,” he told her, with a side-long look from under sooty, tangled lashes.

Abby looked at the leg she had kicked last night. It was sporting a rather large purple and blue bruise. Somehow, she doubted a kick would have been the first thought that would have come to her mind if Shane McCall had been the first thing she saw this morning.

“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.