Free Real Men Don't Quit by Coleen Kwan Page B

lunch.”
    After a boring day at the store, Chloe was in a crotchety mood. “Don’t want peanut butter.”
    “Cheese, then?”
    “No.” Chloe stuck out her lower lip.
    “Baked beans? You love baked beans.”
    “No.”
    Tyler’s steps faltered as she saw Luke walking up her driveway. He was carrying a football, and trailing behind him were several children, all of them older than Chloe.
    “Hi.” Luke’s eyes seemed to light up as he neared them. He tossed the ball between his hands. “We had to come over to retrieve a lost ball. These are my nieces and nephew.” He nodded at the kids surrounding him. The oldest was a pretty teenage girl, the youngest maybe eight or nine. “Guys, say hello to Tyler and her daughter, Chloe.”
    Chloe clung shyly to Tyler’s hand as the kids mumbled greetings. The only boy among them resumed munching a grilled corn on the cob.
    “I’m surprised you could find anything in my jungle of a backyard,” Tyler said. In a way she was glad she and Luke were meeting like this. Surrounded by so many youngsters, she was forced to act naturally, as if nothing had happened between them, as if they hadn’t shared the most explosive near kiss of her life.
    “That’s why I brought my helpers,” Luke said.
    “I love the wind chimes on your veranda,” the pretty teenager said. “Luke says you made them.”
    “Yes, I did, and, uh, thanks.” She glanced at Luke, who gave her a lazy grin. He seemed very at ease, she thought. Probably he’d dismissed what happened the other night as soon as he’d gotten back home. She pursed her lips at the idea and glanced down at Chloe’s curls.
    “Mumma.” Chloe tugged at her hand, her gaze pinned on the boy with the corn on the cob. “Can I have corn, too?” she stage-whispered.
    “Sorry, sweetheart, but I don’t have any at the moment.”
    “We’ve got heaps next door,” the boy said to Chloe. “Why don’t you come over?”
    Chloe flushed and pressed her face into Tyler’s skirt. Before Tyler could respond, Luke hunkered down in front of her daughter. “We’ve got watermelon too, Little Miss Moppet. Do you like watermelon?” He waited until she nodded. “Well, then, looks like you’ll have to come next door with me.” He offered his hand to her.
    So Tyler found herself going next door, with Chloe clutching Luke ’s hand instead of hers. She’d never seen her daughter take to a relative stranger so quickly, and she was part-glad, part-miffed. On the one hand it was reassuring to see her daughter relating positively with a newcomer, but on the other hand, why did it have to be Luke? Tyler had enough trouble guarding her responses to the man without her daughter developing an attachment to him as well.
    En masse, Luke’s four older sisters were a tad formidable. When Luke introduced her, one of them gave him a broad wink, while another, a slim, fierce-looking woman, gave her a hard stare.
    “Sit down, sit down,” one of the other, friendlier sisters insisted, waving at the laden table on the deck. “We’re just having a casual lunch, picking at whatever we like.”
    Luke helped Chloe to corn on the cob and sat her down next to him. Tyler, realizing her stomach was rumbling, piled her plate with salad and cold roast beef. His sisters might be intimidating, but they sure could cook.
    The teenager who’d complimented her on her wind chimes drew up a seat next to her. “Is that necklace one of your designs, too?” she asked admiringly, pointing to the silver-and-moonstone chain dangling from Tyler’s neck.
    “Yes. I sell them at Java & Joolz if you’re interested,” Tyler replied.
    “Oh, Java & Joolz!” One of the sisters—Rosie, perhaps—sat up. “A friend was telling me about it. That’s the new gallery and coffee shop, isn’t it?”
    Tyler nodded. “I’m the part owner.”
    Rosie tapped the sister next to her. “We must visit there sometime, maybe next week.”
    For a while they all chatted about the store, and