Courting the Enemy Read Online Free PDF Page B

help she required. “There’s no need for you to trouble yourself.”
    He grinned. “It’s no trouble. In fact, I have some spare time. I thought I’d help out with a few things around here,” he said mildly. “I noticed your barn could use a little work.”
    In her opinion, he noticed too blasted much. It wasannoying. “My barn is my problem. I don’t want you anywhere near it.”
    “The work needs doing, right?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “And I have the time.”
    “I don’t want you here.”
    “Never throw a friendly offer back in a man’s face. He might think you don’t appreciate a neighborly gesture.”
    Karen knew there was nothing friendly about Grady’s intentions. He was up to something. She could see it in his eyes. And it wasn’t as if he lived right down the road. He lived in the next county, too far away for there to be anything the least bit neighborly about this gesture.
    Before she could respond to his taunt, he’d turned his back on her and headed for the barn, where paint she hadn’t bought and tools she’d never seen before waited. He stripped off his jacket as if the temperature were seventy, instead of thirty-seven, and went to work, leaving her to struggle with her indignation and her desire to touch those broad shoulders he’d put on display in her side yard. His flannel shirt was stretched taut over well-developed muscles, not hanging as Caleb’s was on her.
    “I can’t afford to pay for all of this,” she hollered after him.
    He heaved what sounded like a resigned sigh and faced her. “Did I ask for money?”
    “No, but I feel obligated to pay for any fixing up that goes on around here.”
    “Then you’ll pay me something when you have it,” he said as if it was of no concern to him when—or even if—she did. “This barn can’t take anotherwinter in the state it’s in. It’ll cost you a lot more to replace it if it falls apart than it will if I take care of a few simple repairs now.”
    His gaze locked with hers. “You know I’m right, Karen.”
    Hearing him say her name startled her. The day before and in their one prior meeting, he’d been careful to be formally polite, referring to her as “Mrs. Hanson” when he used any name at all. Today, using her first name, he made it sound as if he’d forgotten all about her relationship with Caleb, as if they were about to become friends. She shuddered at the prospect. She didn’t need a friend who made her feel all quivery inside, a man who’d already stated quite clearly that he wanted things from her that she didn’t intend to give. Sure, it was land he was after, not her body, but her erratically beating pulse didn’t seem to know the difference.
    “What I know is that you are presuming to intrude in my life, to take over and do things I haven’t asked you to do. Why? So I’ll be in your debt?”
    “It’s a gesture, nothing more,” he insisted. “I just want you to see that I’m not the bad guy your husband made me out to be.”
    “If you’re such a nice guy, then why won’t you listen when I tell you that I don’t want you here?”
    “Because you don’t really mean it. That’s just your pride talking.”
    She scowled, because he was at least partially right. Her pride—along with some very sensible suspicions about Grady’s motives—was forcing her to look a much-needed gift horse in the mouth.
    “Oh, forget it,” she mumbled. She clearly wasn’t going to get rid of him, so she might as well let himdo whatever he intended to do and get it over with. She’d just ignore him, pretend he wasn’t there. She certainly had plenty of her own chores to do.
    She stalked past him into the barn, fed and watered the horses, mucked out stalls, then saddled up Ginger, the horse she’d owned since she was a teenager.
    “We’re getting out of here, girl.”
    “Running away?” Grady inquired from just behind her, amusement threading through his voice.
    “No, I’m going out to see if Dooley and Hank