Free Seniorella by Robin L. Rotham Page B

forehead onto his collarbone and began to sob.
    “Hey, hey,” he crooned, stroking her hair as his grip on her tightened. “What’s going on, sweetheart? You’re not supposed to cry on your birthday.”
    She gasped and pushed up, blinking down at him again. “It’s still my birthday?”
    “All day.” He wiped under her eye with a tender thumb.
    Grace looked at her hands, which rested on shoulders broad and hard from years of construction work. Her age spots and bulging veins were gone, and presumably so were her wrinkles and gray hair. “I’m thirty today.”
    Her heart thumped when he gave her a sexy grin. “Boy are you ever. You just about wore this old man out this morning.” Then he sobered, searching her eyes. “You wanna tell me what this is all about?”
    She glanced at her watch. 12:05. “ Love them ‘til the stroke of midnight.” She had less than twelve hours.
    “Is Alec still—” Alive too probably wasn’t the thing to say. “Still coming over?” she amended quickly, wiping her eyes as she scrambled to her feet with amazing ease.
    “Don’t wait until tonight—call and tell him to come over right now.”
    Halfway to standing, Jared zeroed in on her face, a puzzled frown pulling down his brow. “How did you…” Straightening, he brushed the powdery snow from his jeans.
    Her mouth went dry at the pronounced bulge behind his fly. “There’s no way he told you.”
    “No.”
    “Then…” He looked as if he might demand more answers, but then his expression hardened into one that stole her breath and sent her stomach plummeting. His stare penetrated to her bones. “You know what we’ll want from you, Princess Grace.”
    “Yes Sir,” she whispered, suddenly shaking all over.
    10

    Seniorella
    “Well, it’s your birthday, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.” He leaned over and snagged one of the grocery sacks without taking his eyes off her. “Go upstairs and get into the shower while I pick this stuff up. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
    “Yes Sir.” His gaze burned into her back as she slipped and slithered her way down the slick walk. She hobbled at first, concerned about falling and breaking a hip, but gained confidence when she realized how strong and sure her legs felt and how quickly she reacted when her feet hit a particularly hazardous patch. Suddenly the old saying
    “ You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone” held vast new meaning.
    “Oh my God, youth is so wasted on the young,” she muttered. At the last section of pavement below the front steps, a memory tickled. Spreading her arms, she shoved off with her toe and glided over the slab on one foot. When her slim black boot hit the riser, she bounded up the steps, taking them two at a time, and landed on the porch with a breathless laugh. Her knees had cartilage again! They didn’t hurt at all!
    “I saw that.” The amused reproof in Jared’s voice made her cast a flirtatious smile over her shoulder before she slipped through the front door.
    When she unbuttoned her coat and hung it on one of the pegs in the entry hall, the feeling of coming home nearly overwhelmed her. Her boots landed in the pile of dirty work boots and worn sneakers and she trailed her hand along the smooth, knotty pine paneling as she walked into the living room. It all looked exactly as she’d last seen it, cluttered and comfortable and altogether masculine.
    Pain tightened her throat. Would Jared and Alec still be alive if she hadn’t reacted so childishly that night, if she’d stayed and talked through her fears instead of taking off in a panic?
    Turning, Grace gave herself a mental shake. This wasn’t the time for futile regrets.
    She’d been granted a magical gift, a second chance to experience the kind of passion most women only dreamed of, and she wasn’t going to waste it lamenting things she 11

    Robin L. Rotham
    couldn’t change. Taking a deep breath, she gripped the banister and started