Precious Blessings (Love Inspired) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the guest room on the nights he worked in order to keep an eye on Hayden. He scribbled Mrs. Garcia on line ten, right below the reminder to call the lady from the Christian bookstore.
    Miss Katherine McKaslin. He didn’t know what to think of her. He owed her. He didn’t like her, but he’d behaved badly last night. Yep, that’s the way it went. He always wound up coming across like a jerk whenever he was around a single woman. Which worked out just fine, he guessed, since he’d never been more than undecided when it came to the idea of marrying again.
    This little shoplifting incident might have a serious silver lining—and that was the youth pastor he’d just spoken to. A friend of Miss McKaslin’s.
    Why couldn’t he get her out of his mind? She was tall, slim, proper and lovely, definitely lovely. He didn’t want to like her. Besides, remembering how angry he’d been over her accusing Hayden—and then her being right about Hayden—was something he was never going to get past.
    Not that he wanted to get past it.
    Still, it wasn’t like he could forget the sympathetic look she’d given Hayden. Sympathetic, when Katherine had the right to be angry, or worse.
    You owe her, man. And you know it.
    His little girl could have found herself in juvenile detention if Katherine McKaslin had been unforgiving. But instead, the uptight, high-and-mighty shop lady had been nothing of the sort. Her kindness had handed him the best break he’d had in a while. The pastor he’dspoken to on the phone sounded like just the sort of help his little girl needed.
    And that brand of decency was hard come by in this world.
    By the time the first airy flakes of snow began to fall, he knew what he had to do.
    Â 
    In the quiet of the bookstore, Katherine leaned against the doorjamb to her brother’s office and tried to make sense of the male brain. “The dangerous winter storm warning isn’t just speculation. It’s fact. Have you looked out the window?”
    â€œIt’s a few flakes. Big deal.”
    â€œIt’s a perfect time to close the store, before the blizzard hits. Right?”
    â€œWhat do we do about the customers who stop by later, depending on us to be open for them? I can’t be here. I’ve got a meeting at the church.” Decked out in his best suit, white shirt and tie, Spence gave his computer keyboard a few more taps. The printer in the corner started spitting and clattering. “We can’t disappoint our customers. It’s not good for business.”
    â€œFine, I’ll send everyone home and I’ll stay.”
    â€œAlone? Like you did last night? You know I don’t approve of that. It’s not a safe world.”
    â€œTrue, but I’m a capable adult who can take care of herself.” Really, she knew her brother cared, but there was only one harder-headed man on this earth, and that was their father, of course. Both of them could test a girl’s patience without the slightest effort. “Go to your meeting.”
    â€œI can’t go if you’re going to be here alone.”
    â€œThen we close now.” Katherine watched her big brother wrestle with that. “I’m going to go out onto the floor. Do you need anything before I go?”
    â€œNo. This spreadsheet you did for me is great.” Spence straightened his paisley tie as he rose from his leather chair. “I think they’ll be pleased.”
    â€œGood.” She figured that was as close to an okay on closing the store early as she would get. “Drive carefully out there.”
    She left her brother stewing over his financial worries and the lost revenue of closing early—as if anyone would be out shopping with the current weather warnings. Poor Spence. He took his responsibilities so seriously. Too seriously.
    â€œHey, kiddo.” She cornered the fiction aisle, where her younger sister was shelving books.