Where Azaleas Bloom Read Online Free PDF

construction crews. I could use the help with
paperwork.”
    She studied him skeptically. “Don’t you already have
someone?”
    “Nah. In the winter I can usually keep up with the billing and
payroll myself, but with spring coming on and more jobs, it’s harder for me to
manage all that and the paperwork, too.”
    “I doubt I’d be much better at that than I was at wallpapering
the kitchen,” she told him candidly.
    “It’s an easy system,” he assured her. “I can teach you in an
hour.”
    “You have an office?”
    “No, that’s the beauty of it. You can work at home. I’ll just
bring my laptop and a printer to your place and leave ’em. How about we give it
a trial run, see how it goes? If you’re comfortable with it, we’ll take it from
there.”
    Lynn felt a faint frisson of hope. “And you swear you’re not
making up work just to give me a job?”
    “Cross my heart,” he said with a grin, sketching an exaggerated
cross on his chest. “You can start tomorrow. I’ll bring the laptop by in the
morning and show you the basics. There are half a dozen bills that need to go
out, and maybe you’ll be up to speed to do payroll by the end of the week.”
    “If all this is as simple as you make it sound, how many hours
are you thinking?”
    “Just part-time, maybe twenty. You’d be able to keep the job at
Raylene’s, too. Would that be enough to help?”
    “It would be a godsend,” she told him, especially the part
about working at home. “But only if you’re sure. You didn’t look all that
certain when you first mentioned it. Were you already having second thoughts
before the words were even out of your mouth?”
    “Not at all,” he said, sounding more convincing. “I’m sure
about this, Lynn.”
    “And you’ll fire me if I’m lousy?”
    “I don’t think you’re going to be lousy, but if you are,
something tells me I won’t have to do a thing. You’ll quit, either out of
frustration or mind-numbing boredom.”
    She looked into his eyes, a gray-blue shade she’d never noticed
before and filled with kindness. “I seem to spend a lot of time thanking you
lately, but I have to say it again.”
    “Don’t,” he said. “You’ll be solving a problem for me.”
    She smiled. “I guess we’ll see about that, won’t we?”
    “I’ll be over first thing in the morning, then, as soon as the
kids have left for school. Is that okay?”
    She nodded. “That’ll be perfect. I don’t have to be at
Raylene’s shop until ten. I’ll be home just after two and can jump right back
into whatever you need me to do.”
    “Then that’s what we’ll do,” he said. “And I’ll stop by before
I head home at the end of the day, in case you have any questions. Or you can
just run next door if something crops up that you don’t understand.”
    “This really is a blessing, Mitch. Thank you.”
    “No more thanks, understood? This is a business arrangement,
okay? I need help. You’re looking for a job. It works out well for both of
us.”
    She shook her head. “Sorry. I can’t promise you I won’t keep
thanking you. I have the funniest feeling you’re my guardian angel.”
    The remark seemed to fluster him. “Sweetheart, I can assure you
I’m no angel. You can ask anyone in town about that.”
    Lynn shook her head, not buying it. “I think you’re wrong about
that, Mitch. I’ve never heard a single bad word ever said about you.”
    “Then you never spoke to Nettie Rogers, who swears I trampled
her azaleas when I was rebuilding her screened-in porch. And then there’s Sissy
Adams, who accused me of changing the sunny shade of yellow paint she chose to
mustard just to annoy her, never mind that the woman is flat-out color blind. I
could have painted her walls bright orange and I swear she wouldn’t have been
able to tell that from neon pink.”
    Lynn laughed. “You’re exaggerating, but those aren’t exactly
the sort of sins I was thinking about.”
    He grinned at her, a surprising