Free The Fall of Shane MacKade by Nora Roberts Page B

going to be busy. My equipment came in.” She twirled her fork and neatly nipped pasta from the tines. “But later on, when I set up at your place, I’m sure I can find the time now and then to help you out. In fact, I’m looking forward to observing you in your natural milieu.”
    â€œIs that right?” He shifted, turning to face her. The hand he rested on the back of her chair brushed her shoulder on the way. And her quick, involuntary jolt did a great deal to smooth out his ego, which was still raw from their earlier encounter.
    Deliberately he leaned closer, just a little closer. “Ifthat’s what you want, Rebecca, why don’t you come on home with me tonight? We’ll—”
    â€œShane, stop flirting with Rebecca.” Regan shook her head as she looked down the table. “You’re embarrassing her.”
    â€œI wasn’t flirting. We were having a conversation.” His lips curved, his dimple winked. “Weren’t we, Rebecca?”
    â€œOf sorts.”
    â€œShane can’t keep his eyes, or his hands, off the ladies.” Too logy and sluggish to do justice to the meal, Savannah pushed back her half-finished plate. “The smart ones don’t take him seriously.”
    â€œGood thing Rebecca’s one of the smart ones,” Devin put in. “I tell you, it’s a sad thing to watch the way some women come sniffing around him.”
    â€œYeah, I get real depressed about it.” Shane grinned wickedly. “I can hardly hold my head up. Just last week, Louisa Tully brought me out a peach pie. It was demoralizing.”
    Rafe snorted. “The trouble is, too many of them haven’t figured out the way to your heart isn’t through your stomach. It’s through your— Ow!” He winced, laughing, when Regan kicked him hard under the table. “ Mind. I was going to say mind. ”
    â€œI’m sure you were,” Regan said primly.
    â€œShane’s always kissing somebody.” Bryan shoveled in the last bite of his third helping, and used his napkin rather than the back of his hand to wipe his mouth only because he caught his mother’s eye.
    Enjoying herself now, Rebecca leaned forward to smile at the boy. “Is he really?”
    â€œOh, yeah. At the farm, at the ballpark, right in town, too. Some of them giggle.” He rolled his eyes. “Con and I think it’s disgusting.”
    Shane had always thought that fire was best met withfire, and he turned to his nephew. “I hear Jenny Metz is stuck on you.”
    Bryan flushed from his sauce-smeared chin to the roots of his hair. “She is not.” But the humiliation of that, and the primal fear of girls, was enough to shut his mouth firmly.
    Jared sent his stepson a sympathetic look and steered the conversation onto safer ground.
    From her vantage point, Rebecca saw Shane lean over, murmur something to the hunched-shouldered Bryan that made the boy grin.
    The sound of fretful crying sounded through one of the baby monitors almost as soon as the meal was over. After a heated debate, Rebecca started on the dishes. Babies needed to be tended to, as she’d pointed out. Children put to bed. She was better suited to washing dishes than to fulfilling either of those responsibilities. And—and that clinched it—was she a friend or a guest?
    While she worked, she could hear voices from the living room and more sounds through the other monitor that stood in the kitchen. Some soft, some deep. Soothing, she mused. A kind of routine that dug roots, honed traditions. She could hear Rafe talking to Nate as he readied him for bed, Regan murmuring to the baby as she nursed him.
    Someone—she thought it was Devin’s voice—was calmly directing children to pick up the scattered toys. Jared poked his head in once, apologizing for skipping out on kitchen duty, explaining that Savannah was exhausted.
    She waved him away.
    She was sure