Free No Place Like Home by Leigh Michaels Page A

word on the doormat does not apply to you,” she said icily. “You are not welcome. You are a traitor, and I want nothing further to do with you.”

    She would have closed the door, but there was a large foot in a very nice black wingtip shoe blocking the way. Damn, she thought. I don’t know exactly what he wants, but if I let him in, I’ll probably never get rid of him.

    Brendan said, mildly, “A traitor? I merely recognized the realities of the situation, and dealt with them appropriately.”

    “ Just what is that supposed to mean?”

    “ Graham is never going to buy that house, Kaye. You know it, even if you won’t admit it, and I know it. If we had both stayed adamant about it, we wouldn’t have changed his mind, but we would have convinced him that we’d both gone completely berserk. He would have told you to have nothing more to do with me.”

    “ At the moment,” Kaye said bitterly, “I can’t think that it would be any great loss.”

    Brendan ignored the interruption. “—and you would have had to go back to looking at houses with Andy Winchester.”

    “ You really know how to hurt a girl’s feelings, McKenna.”

    “ It’s true, whether you like it or not. May I come in?”

    “ No. You’re just coming back because you need the commission to pay for that new car!”

    “ What difference does it make to you how I spend my money?” he asked quietly.

    “ Because it isn’t your money yet!”

    “ I’m not embezzling it, Kaye.” He shook his head sadly. “You shouldn’t be so angry at me. In fact, you should be grateful that I kept my head.”

    “ I thought you were trying to sell houses, not talk people out of buying them!”

    “ I had no reason to suspect Graham might veto it. After all, you did tell me he said you could choose your own house.”

    “ He did.”

    “ Well, obviously, he didn’t mean it. It didn’t take long to see the way things really work with Graham Forrest.”

    She resented the fact that he’d dared to say that, but she had to admit he was partly right. Graham had told her she could choose her house freely, and she could— as long as it met every one of his requirements.

    “ Instead of adding to the calamity,” Brendan said reasonably, “I pulled your chestnuts out of the fire, convinced Graham that I do know what I’m talking about and that I can restrain you from falling blindly in love with any more inappropriate houses.”

    “ I did not fall blindly in—” she began resentfully.

    “ Yes, you did. You didn’t even notice that the microwave oven they’d built into that brick wall in the kitchen was too high for you to reach.”

    She thought about it, and concluded with regret that he was right. “You could have told me that yesterday,” she said, “before I made a fool of myself.”

    “ Would you have cared yesterday?” It was quiet.

    Yesterday, the magical spell of that wild valley had been still tugging at her. She shook her head.

    “ Kaye,” he said, very seriously, “I don’t gain if the buyers aren’t pleased. If they don’t like what I’ve done for them after they move in, they don’t send their friends to me. I don’t think you would have been happy in that house. You would have cursed me every time you tried to walk around that kitchen.”

    “ If you’re so sure it’s the wrong house for me,” she said sadly, “then why did you even show it to me?” She was leaning against the door jamb, her face turned up to his.

    There was a long pause. His eyes had turned an even darker blue, she noticed idly, and his hair was ruffled from the winter’s wind. “Because I didn’t know it wasn’t right till I saw you there,” he said, very quietly. “And I had no idea you’d fall so deeply in love with it.”

    “ That’s the house I want,” she said stubbornly. Then she added, more quietly, “You think I’m being unreasonable, don’t you?”

    “ Not unreasonable, exactly, but short-sighted. Graham will