Luck of the Draw (A Betting on Romance Novel Book 1) (5 page)

“Wanna swim
now
,” Liam said.

Kate stooped down and cupped her son’s cheeks. His father’s dark eyes flashed up at her. Like it or not, Randy Mitchell would always be a part of her life. Maybe they hadn’t worked out, but hadn’t they made a beautiful baby together?

Kate swallowed a sudden lump in her throat and stood up. “Do you want to see inside?”

“Yeah!” Liam ran toward the front door.

Kate hurried to keep up, stepping gingerly over a profusion of purple violas popping up through the flagstones, her suitcase banging against the worn porch steps. She grasped the doorknob. It felt warm in her palm like a friendly handshake. She turned it. Good Lord. It wasn’t even
locked
.

Liam rocketed past. “Are there toys?”

Kate hauled the suitcase over the threshold. “Only the ones we brought. You can explore while I get the other bags. But
no touching
.
”

Liam disappeared down a hall.

Kate looked toward the living area. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. More furniture, maybe? The nearly empty space featured bead-board walls, a fieldstone fireplace, a large braid rug… and a single, hideous, gold-painted rocking chair with tasseled seat cushion. On the other side of the room under a picture window stood a small dining table and mismatched barstools.

Kate stepped toward the view of the lake as it sparkled in the late afternoon sun.

Well, it wasn’t overly large. Or grand. Or awash with seating options. But it looked clean. And unlike her own parents’ home, it was blessedly free of fragile knick-knacks and collectibles a rambunctious toddler tended to endanger simply by breathing.

Reassured Liam wouldn’t immediately find anything to break, Kate swiveled around. She had a few more bags to bring in, groceries to unpack… Checking off her mental to-do list, she stepped over the threshold... and slammed gracelessly into the tall, lanky stranger on the porch.

Tall. Lanky. Yup, that was the sum total of what she discerned before the air whooshed out of her lungs and her face came into abrupt contact with a firm chest. Before she could react, she picked up the warm, faintly sweet scent of man. She inhaled—an involuntary action—and stepped back.

Oh. Lord. She’d almost forgotten how good a man could smell.

“Whoa.” Strong fingertips briefly grasped her arms, steadying her. “Sorry about that,” he said, letting go. “I didn’t expect anyone until later.”

Kate’s gaze skimmed slowly up the damp vee of sweat on the man’s T-shirt. A smile creased his lean, tanned face. She swallowed, her heart doing an odd somersault in her chest. “And you are...?”

“Jim Pearson. Ruth Pearson’s grandson.” He reached out his hand and Kate shook it numbly. It was warm. Firm. “I’m sorry. I’d come back another time, but Grams insisted I do this ASAP.”

“She insisted?”

“I think her exact words were, ‘get your butt over there before she grows desperate.’ My guess is she thought you deserved something more, ah, reliable. So…?”

Kate stared at him, perplexed, but then his words finally sank in. She could feel the heat creeping up her neck. Oh. Dear. Lord. Did Ruth Pearson think she was so desperate for a man she needed one delivered to her doorstep the moment she arrived? Don’t people normally send  cookies or a batch of brownies? Quiche, maybe? But a
man
?

And if this man was sent as a sacrificial offering on the altar of her non-existent love life, what must Nana’s friend have told him? What must he think of her? And how pathetic did that make her appear?

Good grief. Good-looking or not. Gracious or not. She wasn’t some sorry charity case!

He gestured toward the door. “Can I come in?”

“Ah... you know...” Kate blocked the doorway, trying to ignore the lean, well-toned torso in front of her. How could she tell him he was wasting his time with a capital W? “I don’t know what your grandmother told you, but... I’m really not interested.”

“You’re not?” He stared at her, nonplussed.

“It’s nothing personal, but the thing of it is, I usually kind of like to choose my own—”

A furrow appeared in his brow. “You want to choose your own.”

Kate nodded, wondering why this should be so surprising. “Exactly. I know your grandmother meant well, and I’m sure what you have to offer is very...” She swallowed again. “Nice. What I mean is—please, don’t be offended—but I really don’t see any reason for you to come in.”

Despite what she felt was a crystal clear ‘no-thank-you’ he didn’t make a move to leave.

“Um.” He cleared his throat. “Do you want to look at it first? It’s gotten good reviews. If you come over to my house, I’d be happy to show you—”

“
Show me?
”

He shifted his weight to his other boot. Cleared his throat again. “Ah, what are we talking about?”

Kate gulped, her gaze resting uneasily on his shirtfront. “Um... hooking up, er, dating?” she wheezed. “What are
you
talking about?”

He touched her chin, his long fingers urging her to meet his eyes. They were hazel. And incredibly sexy. The corners crinkled with humor.

“Toilets,” he said evenly.

“
Toilets?
”

“Yes.” He dropped his hand. “What made you think I was talking about… that other thing?”

“You’re kind of cute. I thought...”

A grin creased his features as he touched the brim of his faded baseball cap. His eyes went dark. “Thanks.”

She wanted to die, to dissolve into a puddle and seep through the floorboards.

As he watched her, he pulled off his cap and turned it in his hands. His hair was light brown, soft waves streaked with highlights from the sun. He tilted his head toward his pickup. “You still want to look at it, or should I just put it in?”

“Put it in?”
Aargh!
If she could stop ogling his hair, perhaps she could stop parroting him like some brainless twit! What was wrong with her?

“You’ve obviously just arrived, or you would have already seen there’s no
—”

“
Hey!
” Liam cried from inside. “Somebody took the potty!”

“
—toilet,” he finished. “Why don’t I bring it in?”

“Good idea,” she managed to croak around her mortification.

“I’m going to get my tools now,” he said, putting on his cap, “and by that, I mean...
tools.”

She nodded. “Got it.”

He paused, and when he next spoke his voice had a low cadence that had Kate leaning toward him ever so slightly. “Just so we’re even,” he said, “I think you’re kinda cute, too.”

The breath stuck in her throat as she nodded. It had been so long since a man had flirted with her, she wasn’t sure if she’d heard him right.

By the time she regained the ability to speak, he was halfway to his truck, his legs eating up the uneven ground in long, loping strides.

She hurried down the stairs to the car to get her other bags, the breeze doing nothing to cool her hot cheeks.

But she didn’t care.

She’d take Jim Pearson over a quiche any day.

K
ATE FOLDED THE LAST grocery bag and set it on the kitchen counter. Thankfully, Liam had played contentedly with the toys from the bin she’d hauled into the corner of the living room while she brought in the rest of their suitcases and unpacked.

The front door slammed.

“Liam? Are you still inside?” Okay, she was a little panicky, but at home, large bodies of water had fences around them.

“It’s just me!” Jim Pearson answered.

Kate stepped out of the little kitchen where, yes, she’d been hiding. “Oh. Thanks.”

Jim nodded and headed down the hallway again, a white toilet tank in his arms.

Kate sucked up her courage and followed. She waited until he’d set the tank on the bath mat then cleared her throat and reached out her hand.

“I’m Kate, by the way. Kate Mitchell. June Hastings’ granddaughter? She’s a friend of your grandmother.”

“Ah, right, one of ‘the ladies.’” They shook hands awkwardly over the toilet tank. “When does she get here?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Your grandmother.”

“Oh, Nana won’t be back for a few days. She went to Portland for a quilt festival.”

He nodded and turned to screw some things to the bottom of the tank.

Kate cleared her throat. “Um. About earlier...”

He glanced up.

She swallowed. “What I said… about being
cute
…” She mouthed the last word. “I didn’t mean it. I mean, not that you
aren’t
… but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. The truth is, I’m not in a place right now for, um, dating... and I just wanted to be clear I wasn’t hitting on you. Or anything.”  She felt her face flame to her hairline and briefly considered high-tailing it back to Connecticut.

He set the tank on the back of the toilet. “That’s good.”

“Yes,” she agreed, taken aback.

“Nothing personal, but I’m not into married women.” He looked pointedly at her left hand.

“Oh, I’m not married. That is… not anymore.” Kate twirled with the gold band on her finger. She’d worn it ever since the night Randy had died.

“Divorced?”

She dropped her hand. “That was the plan.”

“Ah. Separated.” His lips twisted humorlessly, and he shook his head. “
Definitely
not interested.”

He bent over and fiddled with something inside the toilet.

Kate frowned. She didn’t know why she didn’t correct him and tell him she was a widow. Maybe it was because she didn’t want his pity. Maybe it was because dating right now would be like inviting a guy to hop onto the sinking Titanic for a pleasure cruise. Or, maybe, it was because he was already rejecting her as if she’d offered herself on a silver platter. Which, for the record, she most certainly had not.

“Great,” she said, forcing a smile
—not that he was looking or anything. “We’re on the same page, then.”  She picked up a little seashell from a shelf by the sink and set it down again. Damn, it was hard to make a grand exit when the offending party wasn’t even looking at you. “Well, I guess I’ll go, um, take care of some things.”

“Sure,” he grunted, folding himself into the space between the wall and the toilet.

Kate retreated to the barren living room. Liam ran over her toes with his toy car. “I’m going to start putting some things away upstairs,” she announced. “You stay here, all right?”

“’k
ay.”

But when Kate returned a few minutes later, Liam was gone.

“Liam? Liam!” Kate skidded to a halt outside the bathroom. “I thought I told you Mr. Pearson was working. Come on. Let’s get your sunscreen on. I’m done unpacking.”

Ruth’s grandson searched in his toolbox and pulled something out. “It’s Jim,” he corrected. “And he’s not bothering me. We were just getting acquainted. Weren’t we,
Bud?” Jim reached behind the tank to attach a thin hose.

Liam nodded earnestly.

“Well, I’ll get him out of your hair so you can finish.”

She made a grab for Liam, but he scooted over to the far side of Jim’s legs, which were, at the moment, splayed across the bathroom floor. She tried not to stare as she pondered how to extricate her uncooperative son.

“I’m nearly finished. Don’t worry about the sunscreen, by the way.” Jim stood and fiddled with the floatie thing in the tank before setting the cover on. “This time of day, you need bug repellent more than sunscreen.”

Kate turned toward the tiny window at the far end of the room. Crap. Now that he mentioned it, the sun wasn’t as brilliant as it had been when they’d first arrived. “I’m sorry, Liam. I guess it took me longer to get organized than I thought it would. Maybe we can swim tomorrow.”

“But you promised!”

“Why don’t we have a special dinner instead? We can have pizza!” She turned to Jim. “I’m assuming there’s a place nearby?”

“Right in town.” He began collecting his tools. “All set.”

“Great.”

They stared at one another a moment before she briskly patted Liam on the shoulder. “Well, Pumpkin, we should go get that pizza, don’t you think?”

“Can he eat with us?” Liam asked.

Jim tossed a wrench into his toolbox and avoided Kate’s eyes. “Thanks for the invite, Buddy, but it’s been a long day. Maybe another time.”

“You’re more than welcome to join us,” Kate lied, stuffing a wad of unruly hair behind her ear. It slid out again, undeterred.  “But we’d understand if you’re too busy.”

“I’m not busy,” he assured Liam before looking up at Kate. “But I’ll bet your mom is tired after her long drive.”

“Not tired at all.” Kate assured them. She eyed Jim again. “But maybe Mr. Pearson isn’t hungry.”