Husband for Hire Read Online Free PDF Page B

now she’d have to reach the branch without him. Standing on tiptoe on the metal raffle box, she pegged a corner of the quilt around the branch.
    The second corner was more of a challenge. She reached out, stretching, and too late felt the metal box tip. “Whoa,” she said, grabbing the tree limb as the box tumbled away. Dangling absurdly from the branch, she wished she hadn’t worn her high-heeled sandals today. Dropping even the short distance to the ground would probably sprain her ankle. Just what she needed—a fat doctor’s bill and time away from work.
    Grumbling under her breath, she hoped no one could see her predicament. She had her back to the crowd, so she couldn’t tell. She was about to let go of the branch, bracing herself in case her ankle snapped like kindling, when a pair of hands grasped her from behind and lifted her down.
    “She teases, she tweezes, she swings through trees with the greatest of ease,” said Robert Carter, M.D., affecting a newsreader’s voice.
    “Very funny.” Twyla pulled her dress back into place.
    “Much as I liked the view,” he said, “I wasn’t too sure about watching you fall out of a tree.”
    Twyla leaned her forehead against the rough tree trunk. “This is pretty much the most humiliating thing that’s happened to me since Mrs. Spinelli’s hair turned out lime green.”
    “Yeah?” That easy laugh again. He picked up a clothespin and pegged the quilt in place. “I guess that must’ve been pretty embarrassing.”
    “You have no idea.” She glanced ruefully at the toppled metal box. “Actually, now you probably do.”
    He handed her a sweating plastic cup of iced lemonade from the table. “I thought you might be thirsty, so I went and got this.”
    “Bless you.” She took a gulp and sent him a grateful smile. “This is awfully good of you.”
    “You say that with some surprise.”
    “Do I?”
    “Uh-huh. Does it surprise you when a strange man does something nice?”
    She laughed. “It surprises me when any man does something nice.”
    He took off his sunglasses. “I hope you’re kidding.”
    “Beauty parlor humor,” she confessed with a wry smile, and finished her lemonade.
    Carter studied the quilt for a minute. “So this is what you’re selling?”
    “Raffle tickets. This is what the winner gets.” She fingered the edge of it. “The ladies who make these do wonderful work.” She truly loved quilts. Each one was a small, homey miracle in its own unique way. “I think it’s amazing how old, tattered pieces of hand-me-down fabric can be stitched together into something so beautiful.” She ran her hand over a square. “This could have been some old man’s work shirt. This flowered one looks like a grandmother’s apron, probably full of holes or burn marks from the oven. Each one on its own was a rag, not worth keeping. But when you take a small piece of this one and a small piece of that one, and stitch them together with care, you get the most magnificent pattern and design, something that will keep you warm for a lifetime.”
    “Wow,” he said, reaching into his back pocket and taking out a slim leather wallet, “that’s some sales pitch.”
    She laughed incredulously as he held out a hundred-dollar bill. “I don’t have change for that.”
    “I don’t want change. I want a hundred raffle tickets.”
    She mouthed “a hundred” even as her stomach lurched with gleeful greed. The hospital guild was usually lucky to pull in seventy-five dollars on a quilt raffle. “Whatever you say,” she replied, taking the money. She counted out a hundred tickets from the long, printed roll in the metal box, tearing the strip apart in the middle.
    “You hang on to these, and listen for your number when we do the drawing.”
    He shook his head. “You keep them. I’ll check in later. Today might be my lucky day.”
    “But—”
    “I trust you.”
    “That’s what my best customers say.”
    He put the sunglasses back on. “I’d better