Her Very Own Family by Trish Milburn Page A

he’d be going back home to his real job soon. He couldn’t stay here as her carpenter forever. Still, she might run into him now and again in Willow Glen. Maybe she could invite him and Nelson over for dinner from time to time. She preferred to have him smile at her on those occasions than turn the other way in disgust.
    “Hey.”
    She yelped and spun around, her leaf rake raised.
    “Whoa,” Brady said and held up his hand. “Do you always threaten guys bearing cold water?”
    Embarrassment flooded her face as she propped the rake against a tree and tried to slow her pounding pulse. “Sorry. You startled me.”
    Brady walked closer and held out a water jug. She realized how parched she was when she heard the ice slosh against the inside of the container.
    “You need to slow down,” he said. “Your face is really red.”
    Yeah, because she’d almost whacked him with a leaf rake. “I’m okay. It’s the fair skin, makes me look like a tomato if I do the least little thing.”
    He stepped closer, forcing her to look up at him.
    “That’s it. You’re not doing ‘the least little thing.’ You’re going nonstop, and if you don’t slow down I’m going to be forced to tie you to a chair.”
    Her mouth dropped open.
    “You heard me right,” he said. “I know you want to get this place open, and I know something else is bothering you. But you’re going to keel over if you don’t stop once in a while and at least drink some water and cool down.”
    As if to prove his point, a wave of dizziness hit her and she reached for a tree trunk to steady herself.
    Brady grabbed her hand and led her to a fallen tree a few feet away. “Sit before you fall down. And drink, slowly.”
    She did as she was told though in truth she wanted to gulp the water down as fast as she could. He was right. She was going to drop if she didn’t slow down. Maybe she could relax a little. Hadn’t it been nearly a week since she’d seen the newspaper article, and no one had shown up to question her yet again about her mother’s finances? She’d been in the clear other than one more call from the reporter that she’d promptly erased without listening to it.
    Brady sat beside her. “You seem to have forgotten your recent trip to the hospital. Why are you pushing yourself so hard?”
    She shrugged, too tired to come up with some sort of excuse and not wanting to outright lie.
    “We’re making good progress. You can afford to dial it back.”
    She nodded and took another slow drink of water. The fear that she might lose everything again ate at her. It drove her to work to the point of exhaustion, hoping she’d be rewarded with being able to keep her new life intact.
    Brady leaned toward her. “It’s going to be okay.” She glanced over and found his face close to hers, so close that the least movement forward on her part would bring them into some interesting territory. She heard him suck in a breath. But when she saw too much understanding in his eyes, she looked away. He knew she was hiding something from him.
    She gripped the water jug more tightly to keep from shaking, from giving in to the insane urge to tell him everything to see how he’d react.
    When he reached over and wrapped her hand in his much larger one, she took her turn at inhaling sharply. She closed her eyes and soaked in the feel of his warm skin against hers, wished she could stop worrying that someday he would walk out of her life as quickly as he’d come into it. Stop being concerned that it would matter.
    “Whatever it is, it’ll be okay.” Brady squeezed her hand then got up and walked back toward the mill.
    Audrey brought her hand, the one he’d held, up to her heart. How could she be falling for a man she barely knew?
    She lowered her hand and looked at her palm, as if his touch had changed her in some profound way, and shook her head. When had common sense and the emotions of the heart ever followed the same path?
     
    B RADY WATCHED Audrey for the