Lucifer's Lover Read Online Free PDF

who can’t write straight unless she has lines drawn for her.”
    Lindsay smiled. “Neither can you,” she pointed out.
    “Which is why the universe invented straight rules.” He reached for the metal rule hanging from a tack on the leg of the bench. He measured carefully. “You’re home early,” he observed, without sparing his attention from the edge of the wood.
    “Mmm,” Lindsay agreed noncommittally. “Do you want help with something?”
    He did glance at her, then. But he returned to his work. “You might sand the curves on those pieces on the back bench. The sander can’t reach the inner curves.”
    “Okay.” She put her yogurt container aside and picked up a piece of sandpaper and the first of the pieces on the bench. She recognized the shape. “You’re doing another rocking horse?”
    “I thought it was time. Most of the people we work for these days seem to have small children.”
    “I like the rocking horse,” she said.
    She had seen at least a dozen of the colorful wooden horses built in this basement over the years. Her father, ever since she could remember, built furniture to help furnish the homes that the Habitat for Humanity group built or refurbished for needy people.
    Often, she helped. The process of building furniture was soothing and restoring and she could easily disengage from the world here in this well-maintained basement, listening to her father’s quiet instructions.
    She began sanding down the tight curves around the horse’s mane and tail.
    “What troubles you, little one?” her father asked after a few minutes’ silence.
    For the next few hours, Lindsay gradually told her father the story of her day. She’d often done this—come to say hello and lingered to work and offload her problems. They emerged bit by bit. Offhand comments, followed by long silences, then her father would ask another simple question that would prompt her to speak of another facet of whatever problem she was dealing with.
    It was ironic that among the lumber, paint and nails, in a room reeking with chemicals and glues and while they had their backs to each other, each of them absorbed in the task at hand, both of them could talk of what was in their hearts.
    Put them in a comfortable room, facing each other and they were almost totally unable to communicate. Lindsay was aware of this oddity they shared but had learned to work with it.
    Around midnight, her father straightened and stretched, his hands on the back of his hips. Lindsay paused, becoming aware of the lateness of the hour. It occurred to her that neither of them had spoken for quite some time.
    He glanced at her, his eyes shadowed by the fierce jut of his shaggy eyebrows. “This president you want to woo.”
    “The president of the medical association?”
    He nodded.
    Woo . Well, yes, that was what she needed to do if she was going to snatch this account out from under Luke’s nose.
    “You might join the country club.”
    “He’s a member?”
    “He likes to ski, I believe.”
    Skiing. Her heart sank. “I don’t know anything about skiing.”
    Her father shrugged. “How badly do you want the account?”
    Well, there was always that.
    “This Luke,” Edward added. “He is a bad man?”
    “Bad? I don’t know. I don’t respect him.”
    Edward picked up the broom and began sweeping curls of wood shavings toward the center of the room. “But you don’t like that he doesn’t respect you.”
    Lindsay picked up the brush and pan and began shoveling up sawdust and dumping it in the big garbage can in the corner. It took her a moment to answer.
    “I don’t like his disapproval,” she admitted. “I don’t know why.”
    “You value his good opinion, is all. Which doesn’t match with not respecting him.”
    She nodded. Her father’s logic was irrefutable. He had been an astronomer and physicist before his retirement and his mind was still sharp. She always thought hard before dismissing anything he said that didn’t fit well