Delilah's Weakness Read Online Free PDF Page A

to that coyote trouble I had last year. So I’m on thin ice anyway, and I get very defensive when anyone tells me I shouldn’t be doing this."
    "Yeah, I know." Roy drained his mug and stood up. "Lambing time coming up, too, right? Getting any help this year?"
    Delilah smiled tiredly. "Now, you know I can’t afford a hired man."
    "Amos Chappel tells me he offered you one of his men and you turned him down."
    "And that surprises you? Good old Amos." Delilah gave a short spurt of laughter. "You and I both know what Amos Chappel wants. And you wonder why I get touchy on the subject of men. He wants this place for the water in that creek, Roy, and you know it."
    "Sounds like a John Wayne movie," Roy said, laughing. "Why is it so hard to think he could be interested in
you?"
    "You sound like one of Maura Jane’s books. Amos never cared for anything but a dollar in his life."
    "Then, wouldn’t he be better off to let you struggle? Fall flat on your—"
    "He’s sure that’ll happen sooner or later anyway, and he’s just dumb enough to figure I’ll be so beholden to him I’ll fall right into his arms."
    "Delilah," Roy said, clamping his hat onto his head, "how did someone so young and so pretty get to be so cynical?"
    "Try being young, pretty, and female sometime, Roy. That and a dime will buy you a lot of grief, and not even enough to telephone for help. All people do is use that as a reason to keep me from doing the things I want to do. Go home, Roy. I’m tired and I want to go to bed—on the couch," she added pointedly at his guffaw, and threatened to throw her cup at him.

Chapter 3
    L uke MacGregor, founder and president of Thermodyne, Inc., was still asleep in Delilah’s bed when she went out to do her chores at the crack of a cold, slushy dawn. In fact, it looked to Delilah as if he’d barely moved since she’d tucked the quilts under his chin the night before.
    After graining the ewes in the holding pen, lugging three heaping loads of hay in the wheelbarrow to the pasture, carrying hay and water to the rams’ pen, and feeding, watering, and milking the two goats, Delilah went back to the house for breakfast and decided to look in on her patient again. She was beginning to worry about him. She didn’t know what constituted normal postplane–crash behavior, but she had never seen anyone literally sleep like a rock.
    Well, he’s moved, at least, she thought when she entered the bedroom. He’d rolled onto his side, toward the wall, where an anemic March sunrise was crystallizing the moisture–fogged window. Delilah approached the bed timidly.
    "Mr. MacGregor?"
    There was no answer. She gazed perplexedly at the quilted mound, the feathers of chestnut hair, and gnawed at her lower lip.
Is he all right?
    He wasn’t even snoring. For the first time she began to question the wisdom of her decision to keep him here rather than drive him to a hospital.
    She hated to disturb him, but she needed reassurance. Bending over, she cautiously touched his shoulder and repeated softly, "Mr. MacGregor, wake up."
    There was a prolonged exhalation—not quite a yawn, not quite a groan—and an arm emerged from the blankets to hook carelessly over her neck.
    Caught off–balance and completely by surprise, Delilah gave a small squawk and collapsed onto the bed. Luke rolled toward her as his other arm came out of the covers, and he wrapped both arms securely around her. With a contented and completely unintelligible murmur he cuddled her close to his body, one hand cradling her head and tucking it firmly into the warm curve of his neck and shoulder.
    Delilah held herself very still, half–suffocated with incipient panic. She told herself there was no reason to panic, that it was, in fact, an extremely humorous situation. Someday, probably, she would tell the story and chuckle heartily. At the moment, though, she was in no position to appreciate fully the comic aspects of her predicament. She was much too busy trying to remain calm