Free Once Around by Barbara Bretton Page A

publishing house. and to gather up as many slush-pile manuscripts as she could carry home. Over lunch with an associate, she pitched the idea of trying her hand at cover copy and got the go-ahead to send in some samples. Buoyed by the hope of additional income, she played with some concepts on the train ride home and was feeling happier than she had in months when she pulled into her driveway. The extra work wouldn't bring in close to as much money as she needed, but it was a start.
    She was surprised to see that Rafe 's truck was still parked at the curb in front of her house when she got home. She glanced at her dashboard clock. It was nearly six.. He'd never stayed this late before. Usually he juggled two or three different jobs on a given day, and one of them always started around dinnertime. She went inside, tossed her packages on the kitchen counter, then opened the back door. The sight in front of her stopped her cold,
    " The deck's gone!" she exclaimed, staring at the pile of splintered redwood.
    Rafe was busy down at the far end of the deck , prying up nails with the business end of a claw hammer. "My other job canceled out on me. I figured I'd get started on this before it got too late in the year."
    " You tore down my. deck!" The yard looked as if a tornado had touched down west of the kitchen window.
    " No choice," he said. "The wood was too far gone. You have termites."
    " Don't say that!" She clapped her hands over her ears. "I really don't want to hear that."
    " I don't want to say it, but the fact is, you'd better have the house checked."
    " I can't afford termites and I can't afford a new deck," she said, feeling her heartbeat accelerate dangerously. "I can't even afford the nails, much less the lumber."
    " You worry too much." He looked up at her. A minor grin tilted the ends of his mouth. "Anybody ever tell you that?"
    Her hands cupped her belly in what had become her default gesture. She wished she had a suit of armor to protect her from grins like that. "I can't sell the house without a deck."
    " You're selling the house?"
    " I'm thinking about it."
    " Too big for you?"
    " That's part of it." Too big. Too expensive. Too filled with broken dreams.
    " When?"
    " I don't know exactly. After the baby arrives, I would think." She arched a brow in his direction. "You've asked me a half dozen questions in thirty seconds. That's more than you've asked me in the last three weeks."
    " When I need information, I ask. When I don't, I shut up."
    " Obviously you're not from New York," she observed.
    His grin grew more pronounced. She took note of the crinkles around his dark b lue eyes and the vertical slash of a dimple in his lean right cheeky "Montana." One word, uttered with a slightly ironic spin.
    " Montana!" She found herself smiling back at him. A cowboy! That explained a lot. "I've never met anyone from Montana before."
    " So will you quit worrying about the deck?" he asked. "It'll be long done before the baby comes."
    She had to force herself back to the issue at hand. The notion of a Montana cowboy in her own backyard was more interesting than a deck. "Unless you have your own lumberyard, I don't see how."
    " I have a stack of pressure-treated lumber in my shed."
    " You have a shed?"
    He nodded.
    "Does that mean you have a house?" She'd imagined him living in a small apartment somewhere. Maybe in Philly or, down near Trenton.
    " A fixer-upper," he said, prying up another one of the two-by-fours.
    " Where?"
    " Up near Stockton."
    " On the river?" The Delaware wound its way between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Stockton was on the New Jersey side. Once upon another lifetime, she and Robert had spent a weekend at a B&B near Stockton. He'd studied for the bar exam while she wandered the town alone.
    " Close enough to flood."
    " What's your house like?"
    " Nothing like yours."
    " I'll bet you can afford your house. That's more than I can say."
    " Did you tell your lawyer you need help?"
    She felt her face redden. "Of