Free Heartfire by Karen Rose Smith Page B

background.  It was lively, but not overwhelming.  Tessa had tackled this project as she tackled everything else—with zest and purpose.
    Ryan's voice came sailing up the stairs.  "Hey, Dad.  Are you done yet?"
    Max laughed and skirted the furniture in the middle of the room as best he could to get to the doorway.  "It will be lunch time at least."
    Ryan yelled back.  "I'll come watch you after SpongeBob is over."
    Max shook his head and stood beside Tessa at the wall they'd tried to paper.  "I don't let him watch TV that often. He's going to take advantage of this."
    Tessa used her fingernail to start unpeeling the second piece of wallpaper from the wall.  "Have you thought any more about getting him a dog?"
    Max took an appraising look at Tessa, as he was doing more and more lately.  Her jeans fit her waist, hips and thighs as if they'd been custom fit for her curves.  Her yellow T-shirt molded to her breasts all too well.  His palms itched and he quickly turned his attention to what she'd asked.  "You think it would be a good idea?"
    Tessa tore down the last sheet of paper.  "Yes.  I don't know if he's ready for the responsibility, either, but he'll certainly learn it.  It's whether or not you want the bother of training and everything that goes with it."
    He grimaced.  "The messes?"
    She crumpled the paper and threw it on top of the bed.  "Barking or whining in the middle of the night."
    Max grinned this time.  "How do you know so much about it?"
    "I read a lot."
    Max took the string from the package in his hand and gave Tessa a piece of blue chalk.
    She rubbed the chalk along the string as he stretched it.  "If you get a dog, he'll be a house dog, won't he?  I mean, you wouldn't pen him outside?"
    Max gazed into her wide green eyes and instinctively knew she'd felt as if she'd been outside looking in most of her life.  "Absolutely not.  He wouldn't be a pet if we penned him outside."
    She didn't drop her gaze but looked as if she had something else on her mind.  He waited.
    "You know, you could think about getting a dog at the shelter.  Unless you really believe Ryan needs a pup."
    Max supposed Tessa wanted all orphans to have homes, even canine ones.  "That's something to think about."
    He was discovering so many facets to Tessa he never knew existed.  Their summer in the Poconos had been filled with activities, talk about the future, work.  She'd told him from the first day she'd met him that she intended to see the world.  So they'd played tennis, gone horseback riding, and he’d kissed her until she would push away and put her guard up.  Maybe their time together now was different because they'd both matured.
    Tessa tied a weight to the end of the string so it hung like a pendulum.  Max pressed the weight against the wall, took the string in the middle, and pulled it back like the string in a bow.  When he released it, it pinged against the wall, making a straight blue line.
    Tessa was right next to him, wallpaper in hand.  He could smell her shampoo.  He could almost remember the softness of her tumbled curls.  Desire mounted, and he took the roll of wallpaper from her.  "I'll unroll.  You cut."
    Max's gruffness surprised Tessa.  A few minutes ago, he'd been smiling at her.  Ryan's room was certainly larger than a tent, but she felt the same way she had in the canvas confines.  Aware.  Much too aware of Max as a man and herself as a woman.  His grey T-shirt and black jeans showed off his physique as a suit never could.  There was male power there, in the muscles, in the strength evident as he'd shifted furniture to the center of the room.
    Max rolled the prepasted paper backwards, with the pattern on the inside, and dipped it into the pan of water.  He waited a few moments, then took it to the middle of the wall where the chalk marked a true vertical line.  Letting the paper unroll from the ceiling, he pressed the upper section with his hand, heading toward the