Free Sunflower Lane by Jill Gregory Page B

and stay out of her life.
    Men were far more trouble than they were worth. Most men, anyway. Charlotte’s Tim was sweet and earnest, and utterly devoted to her. Tess’s husband, John, was solid as a boulder, honest, and so caring about her and the baby. All three of the Tanner brothers were happily married to women they adored and cherished and treated with love and respect.
    But some families aren’t lucky that way, she often reminded herself.
    And the last thing she’d ever want to do was mess up her young nieces and nephew by bringing some unreliable man into their lives.
    They’d already had enough loss and upheaval.
    So had she.
    Stay focused on the kids,
she told herself.
They need you. And they need stability.
But when she happened to see Ivy Tanner eating ice cream in the park with some friends as she was driving home, she pulled over and asked the teenager about babysitting that evening.
    Ivy was available and eager for the job.
    Deal with it,
Annabelle ordered herself.
You’ll have fun with Tess and John, Charlotte and Tim.
    She decided, though, that she’d drive herself so she could leave whenever she wanted to.
    It might be good to get out a little bit for one evening. As long as no one asked her to dance and tried to put his hand on her butt—or wanted to buy her a drink in expectation that she’d hook up with him.
    It wasn’t going to be that kind of a night.
    It was just a simple girls’ night out, really. A girls’ night out, with two guys tagging along. A soon-to-be married man and a soon-to-be father.
    Wow, my social life totally rocks.
She grinned to herself as she headed home to Sunflower Lane.

Chapter Six

    Wes discovered a grimy old tape measure, along with a rusty hammer and hunting knife, in a bucket under the cabin’s kitchen sink, and measured the broken windows first—right after polishing off his coffee, and that incredible muffin Annabelle had tossed at him. After making a note of the windows’ dimensions, he stepped back and took a good hard tour around every inch of the cabin, then walked through it again, taking an exact inventory of all the repairs necessary to get the old place in shape.
    The place was dim, musty, and thick with dust, but he saw nothing that couldn’t be repaired with several weeks of hard work and elbow grease.
    He stuffed the list of supplies he’d need into his jeans pocket, then headed to town and Merck’s Hardware store.
    As he steered his truck along the rough dirt road and past the Harper house, he thought back to that big mouthwatering slice of strawberry pie he’d had right in his hands. The oneAnnabelle Harper had snatched away from him. A reluctant smile tugged at his lips.
    She was very different from what he’d expected—from that gorgeous, feisty high school girl he remembered from all those years ago, a girl with a slutty reputation and a pretty little chin she liked to stick up in the air when she walked down the halls. She was still gorgeous, all right. Man, maybe even more so, he reflected, thinking of that elegant profile, the lush lips that were naturally pink without a trace of any lip goo, and a mass of dazzling blond hair caught up in a tortoiseshell clip this morning, making him want to pull that clip away and watch all that wavy golden hair spill down past her shoulders. But now she was somehow elusive, a little bit aloof, closed off. Her golden brown eyes had studied him warily when he talked about staying in the cabin.
    She really hadn’t wanted to let him—what was that all about?
    Wes considered himself pretty solid at reading people—hell, if he hadn’t learned how to do that, he wouldn’t have lived this long—and he saw a wariness in Annabelle that puzzled him.
    She didn’t want anyone living close by. She wanted her space. Private and secure. Maybe because of her sister’s death, of all the responsibility that had been thrust on her so suddenly. Maybe for other reasons as well.
    She’d looked different than he’d