His First and Last (Ardent Springs #1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the designs we presented to the council as well as the owners.”
    “Of course he did.”
    “This isn’t about you and Spencer, Lorelei, and I don’t appreciatethis attitude. If anything, this is further proof that you need to learn that not everything is about you.”
    Rosie was really going for the tough love this morning. She’d told Spencer she had no plans to coddle Lorelei, but he hadn’t realized that meant staging a full-frontal attack on her first morning home.
    “Look,” Spencer said, taking the chair across from Lorelei. “Check out the theater for yourself. If it seems like something you want to help with, then you’re in. If you want nothing to do with it, then you’re off the hook.”
    Rosie opened her mouth to argue, but Spencer motioned for her to hold silent. He knew what he was doing. The moment Lorelei laid eyes on the inside of that theater, memories would flood in from every corner. She’d not only join the fight, she’d demand a leading role.
    Lorelei gnawed on her bottom lip, eyes cast down to the floor. Spencer could almost see the wheels turning. He waited her out, giving her the time she needed to weigh her options.
    Rosie waited, too, but less patiently. She shifted from one foot to the other, slammed her hands onto her hips, then threw them in the air and charged back to her baking.
    “I get to decide,” Lorelei said so softly Spencer wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or to herself. Then she met his eyes. “How bad is it?”
    He pinched his lips and nodded. “Bad.”
    She sighed. “I need to take a shower first. I assume you’re done washing your truck.” The smile was subtle, but it sent his heart galloping around his chest. That explained the shirt comment when he’d walked in. She’d been watching him.
    “I am and you do,” he said, sharing a grin of his own. “You stink.”
    Lorelei threw a pillow at his head, which he ducked as he strolled into the kitchen. Snagging a muffin before Rosie could stop him, he said, “I’ll meet you outside in thirty minutes. Wear something you won’t mind getting dirty.”
    Then he walked out the door, letting the screen slam behind him.

    Lorelei checked her hair in the mirror for the third time, while reminding herself for the fifth time that she was not trying to impress her old boyfriend. Nor did she care what anyone in this flea-bitten town thought of her. The locals weren’t likely to have forgotten her little go-to-hell episode. Memories ran deep here.
    Though her fellow citizens liked to call themselves good Christians, forgiveness was often in short supply. She’d learned that as a child when no one ever forgave her mother for getting pregnant off a one-night stand with a stranger.
    As the child of that shameful behavior, Lorelei hadn’t been treated with any more generosity.
    So what? So she’d get some dirty looks and see folks whispering as she walked by. Lorelei had often enough been the topic of beauty parlor gossip in her youth. If anything, she was better prepared to handle it now.
    Thirty-five minutes after Spencer had made his cowboy swagger exit, Lorelei stepped onto the front porch wearing cutoff denim shorts, a gray knit shirt thrown over a red tank, and a pair of white Keds.
    “You’re late,” Spencer said as he leaned against his truck, cowboy hat pulled low, ankles crossed. If he’d once again been shirtless, he would have fit right into one of those Studs and Spurs calendars. Tipping up his hat, he asked, “Are those your getting-dirty clothes?”
    Lorelei looked down. This was as casual as she could muster. What did it matter? It wasn’t as if she were going off to dig ditches or something.
    “What you see is what you get,” she said, stomping around to the passenger side so she wouldn’t have to see him looking so sexy. “And thirty minutes isn’t nearly enough time to take a shower and get ready for anything, even something that involves getting dirty.”
    She heard the sigh followed by,