The Widow and the Wildcatter: A Loveswept Classic Romance Read Online Free PDF Page A

rejoined them, the ear-to-ear grin on Grandpa’s face right now more than rewarded her efforts to bring them together.
    Chance looked up when she came in, then leapt up from the other club chair and reached for the tray. “Here, I’ll take that.”
    Their eyes met during the exchange, and she stood there, flushing beneath his heavy-lidded regard, short of breath and totally flummoxed by her schoolgirl reaction.
    He turned away and set the tray on the marble-topped table that separated the chairs, then turned back and gave her a glass.
    This time they bumped hands, and she felt a growing warmth spreading up her arm, thawing nerves that had lain as dormant as seeds under the frozen earth.
    “Chance was just saying that he likes to restore antique cars.” Grandpa took a sip of his tea, seemingly oblivious to the high-octane tension building between the widow and the wildcatter. “I toldhim how I’d kept my tin lizzie, thinking Larry might want to tinker with it, but that he wasn’t much of a car buff.”
    The use of her late husband’s name knocked Joni for a loop. Knowing that if she didn’t sit down she’d probably fall down, she perched on the edge of the settee and said the first thing that came to mind. “That’s a fairly expensive hobby, isn’t it?”
    “Depends on how you define expensive.” Chance reclaimed his chair and crossed an ankle over a knee, his polished Lucchese boots a galling reminder that not everybody in the room had a foreclosure notice hanging over their head.
    “What do you think that old tin lizzie is worth today?” Grandpa asked.
    “A damn sight more than you paid for it,” Chance said, his smile on full beam now.
    Joni looked at Grandpa, aghast. “Surely you’re not considering selling such an important link with your past?”
    He shrugged those coat-hanger shoulders. “What good’s it doing me, sitting in the machine shed and going to rust?”
    Chance let his head loll sideways. “I’d be glad to take a gander at it and give you an estimate.”
    “Is this how you acquire your antique cars, Mr. McCoy?” Joni glared accusingly at him.
    His gaze skimmed over her in swift appraisal, making her feel defensive when she had absolutely nothing to feel defensive about. “When I see something I want, Mrs. Fletcher, I let my checkbook do the talking.”
    “Money doesn’t always say the right thing,” she replied with a touch of asperity.
    “The only thing
my
money ever says is good-bye,” Grandpa grumbled.
    Chance’s face was solemn, his eyes dancing as he raised his glass in a mock toast. “I’ll drink to that.”
    Joni didn’t even crack a smile. “Which brings us back to the original purpose of this meeting.”
    Chance explained the criteria he used for selecting a drilling site. He also discussed the rock and soil samples he planned to send to the state for analysis, but he made no mention of his long-held dream of redeeming his grandfather’s name. That was nobody’s business but his own.
    “Any questions?” he asked a few minutes later.
    Grandpa cleared his throat. “How about some more tea?”
    “I’ll second that,” Chance agreed.
    Joni left the living room with three empty glasses and a headful of fantasies about how she was going to spend all that money when her oil well came in. On returning, though, she realized one of her worst fears.
    “What happened?” Her heart plunged sickeningly to her stomach when she found Chance standing solicitously over a wheezing Grandpa.
    “Coughing spell.”
    “I’ll get his medicine.”
    Guilt stalked her to the downstairs bathroom and back. “I should have known this would be too much excitement for him,” she said to Chanceafter she made sure Grandpa swallowed his pills, and his breathing returned to normal.
    But Chance was having none of that. “A little excitement never hurt anyone.”
    “This spell could have killed him.”
    “Then he would have died a happy man.”
    As much as Joni wanted to argue the