What a Woman Wants (A Manley Maids Novel) Read Online Free PDF

wouldn’t be the Ritz, but then they hadn’t exactly been living like kings at the other place.
    Except it didn’t look like they’d be living
anywhere
because there
were
no pens.
    Her kids were going to have to go back home. Livvy closed her eyes and tried to come up with someone she could ask to take care of them for her while she was stuck at this place. But the list was the same as the one she’d come up with before arranging to bring them here: no one. Kerry helped some, but he and Sherwood had their own farm to run. Same with Sheila and Marci and Jenny. Richard had scooped up all the college kids for his vacation before she’d had the chance. Life was busy for their co-op community, and caring for her animals would only burden everyone else.
    Watching the driver and his truck head back down the lane, Livvy plunked her butt on the manicured lawn, made springy by what she was sure was a zillion dollars’ worth of chemicals so that the darn thing looked like a golf course, crossed her legs beneath her, and rested her chin in her palm.
    Green for acres. Artistically placed, white-shingled gazebos. An ornamental pond with gurgling waterfall. Pergolas covered in wisteria above wrought iron café sets. Topiaries in the shape of mythical creatures. All this land and not a useful thing to be found. All for show.
    Why was she not surprised?
    Reggie came over and snuffled in her ear, his usual greeting when they were at home on the sofa. She scratched him under his chin. Reggie closed his eyes, hunkered down, and stretched out his neck, grunting with pleasure.
    The sheep started rooting around the grass, followed by the goats and the alpacas. Livvy jumped back to her feet, dislodging Reggie’s chin from her knee. She did not want the animals ingesting whatever poison had been spread on the lawn. She herded them back toward the front of the barn, trying to figure out her next move.
    Maybe they could sleep in the chapel. After all, there was precedent. Two-thousand-plus years of precedent, so it wasn’t as if God had anything against sharing a place to sleep with a bunch of barnyard animals.
    Then a black cloud edged over the top of the barn with a rumble of thunder. They wouldn’t make it to the chapel before the storm hit.
    She had no other choice. Only one place left to go.
    S EAN climbed off the ladder. No way was he taking those drapes down. They looked harder to put back up than an entire pallet of rafters on a hip roof.
    He reached the bottom of the fourteen-foot ladder, then eased it down onto its side, careful to miss the loveseat he’d moved before setting it up. The magnificent dimensions of the room would allow for great entertaining opportunities once the renovations were complete. This space, with its French door access to the slate patio, would make the perfect reception room for an intimate wedding. The landscape designer he’d had look over the place had suggested moving one of the gazebos from the croquet lawn close to the patio so the ceremonies could be accommodated in the event of rain.
    Sean retrieved the rolling cart and angled the ladder onto it. Even with his pickup truck just outside, he didn’t want to heft the awkward thing even a few feet and risk dropping the ladder or damaging any of the millwork. Now that he’d finished up with the ground floor rooms on this side of the house, he’d get this ladder back to his truck, then move upstairs where the ceilings were a little lower. With another whole half of a mansion to clean, he was going to need the entire month to finish this place.
    He maneuvered the cart and ladder to the patio doors, thankful for the rain holding off—and for the twenty-foot- wide terrace. The slate out there needed some touch-up, but he knew just the guy for it. Provided, of course, he ended up with this place.
    Jesus. How the hell was he going to get her out of here? The poor, discarded bastard child with a chip on her shoulder had just walked through the door of the