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

point, she couldn’t. The wildcatter’s presence was the shot in the arm that Grandpa had needed for months. As for her own needs …
    Elbowing the thought aside—a move she’d perfected during four years of marriage—she said, “Maybe he should rest a spell before dinner.”
    “All right.” Chance didn’t press his advantage. He just picked Grandpa up with the ease of a man used to physical labor and followed her into the dining room.
    “I moved the sofa sleeper in here so he wouldn’t have to climb the stairs,” she explained as she closed the shutters at the windows and folded back a top sheet that smelled of fresh air and sunshine.
    Chance laid Grandpa on the bed, his gentle hands belying his hardbitten reputation, then took a good look around him. The huge mahogany table stood flush against the far wall to make room for the sofa, while the matching Windsor chairs stood stolidly in the four corners.
    “Don’t tell me you moved all this by yourself?” he asked incredulously.
    “Don’t tell me you still buy that old saw about women being the weaker sex?” she countered querulously.
    “Let me put it this way,” he said, a slow smile kindling in his eyes when she leaned over to place a kiss on Grandpa’s weathered cheek. “I’ve yet to meet a woman who didn’t have it in her power to bring a man to his knees.”
    Joni could feel the heat of his gaze moving leisurely up the backs of her legs and over her jersey-clad derriere. She straightened, spun around, and caught him staring at her.
    “Dinner will be ready in an hour, Mr. McCoy.”
    As she led him from the shuttered dining room into the sun-splashed living room, he noticed she wasn’t wearing a slip. What she didn’t realize, and what he was in no hurry to point out to her, was that when she passed in front of the window her skirt was entirely transparent.
    “I want to talk to you, Mrs. Fletcher.”
    She checked to be sure Grandpa was resting comfortably before closing the doors between the two rooms. “What about?”
    He hitched his chin toward the porch. “Let’s go out there.”
    The instant they stepped outside, that devilish wind whipped Joni’s jersey dress high above her knees. Chance drank in an eyeful of thigh as smooth as Tennessee whiskey. He’d known her legs were good.… He just hadn’t known how good.
    “Don’t you have anything better to do than to stand there gawking at me?” she fumed as she fought her whirling skirts.
    He lazed back against the porch railing as if hehad all the time in the world and crossed his arms over that acre of chest. “Nope.”
    “You said you wanted to talk to me,” she reminded him starchily.
    His eyes glided up her body, revealing none of his thoughts while seeming to take in everything about her. “How long has your grandfather had farmer’s lung disease?”
    Mercifully, the wind died down at that moment. Joni stopped battling her skirt and sought refuge in the old oak porch swing that Grandpa had built with younger, stronger hands. “How did you know?”
    Chance shrugged, those strapping shoulders straining the seams of his silk jacket. “I’ve drilled some water wells for farmers, and about half of them have his same symptoms.”
    She stared off into the distance. But she was looking backward now, not forward. “I remember his spells starting the year that black dust covered our wheat. We had a really good stand that year, but the dust ruined …”
    Her voice snagged on the memory, and she coughed to clear it. “I took care of all the chores around here while Grandpa and Larry worked day and night, trying to save what they could. But with no cab on the combine, they’d come in from the fields just coated with the stuff.”
    “Did Larry die of farmer’s lung disease?”
    “No,” she answered shortly, and that was all she intended to say.
    Chance hesitated, knowing his next question could open a real can of worms. But he neededthe information for the purpose of drawing a