Free I Still Do by Christie Ridgway

If he discovered that his brothers had been over doing her home repairs, he might think she was trying very hard to insert herself into his family. To bind herself tighter to him. Yes, they hadn’t rushed into dissolving the marriage as quickly as they’d rushed into the wedding itself, but she knew Wild Will wasn’t looking for anything the least bit permanent.
    â€œI wouldn’t want Will to find out about any of this,” she said. “Even that you offered to do something so nice for me.”
    Her gaze caught on a truck that was rumbling down her street. A suspiciously familiar-looking truck. With a familiar-looking piece of equipment in the back, a red rag tied to the few rungs that were hanging out the back end of the bed.
    â€œThat’s Will now,” she said, looking over at the two young men.
    His brothers shared a guilty look, then Tom shrugged. “His was the ladder we could get our hands on. I called him on my cell during the drive here.”
    â€œOh, great.” Heat rushed over Emily’s cheeks. How mortifying would it be if Will thought she’d connived to get him close again? She’d been doing a pretty good job putting him out of her mind and now this! “I don’t want him to think it was my idea to drag him over here.”
    â€œWe made sure he understood we had to twist your arm,” Max said. “And we even offered to go and pick up the ladder. It was his idea to come over and help.”
    Emily bit her bottom lip and couldn’t stop herself from finger combing her hair as she watched him pull up to the curb. “Are you sure?”
    â€œSure—though I’ll be honest and say we didn’t exactly try to talk him out of it.”
    Tom shot a quick glance over his shoulder. “And to be really honest, we were glad to have a reason to get him over here. He’s been avoiding the family since June, with only the occasional sighting and we’ve all been racking our brains for excuses to see him.”
    Hmm. So maybe that explained why Betsy needed a ride to the football game the other night. “Why don’t you just call him up and ask him to go out for a beer or get some dinner?”
    â€œTried that,” Max said. “He says no.”
    She wasn’t sure quite how to put it, so she just threw out her question. “Is it so bad that he wants to leave a little distance between himself and all of you?”
    Identical astonished expressions overtook the brothers’ faces. “Distance? Why would he want to do that? We’re family.”
    Emily sighed. Will had felt stifled by all the responsibility he’d shouldered, she understood that, but clearly Max and Tom didn’t.
    â€œSo we’ll be owing you, Emily, for this opportunity to hang with our bro.”
    And how sweet was that? Surrendering to the inevitable, she pushed the front door and held it open for the two guys to walk through. Instead of following them in, she stayed where she was and waited as Will came up her short front walk, toting the ladder under his arm.
    â€œHi,” she said, as their eyes met. Pretending she had a steel rod for a spine and another couple in her knees, she ignored the memory of his calloused hands around her face and the sweet hot touch of his tongue against hers. She cleared her throat and broke their gazes. “Your brothers are already inside.”
    He paused as he passed her. When she took a breath, she smelled his clean manly scent and stared at the steady beat of his pulse at the notch of his strong neck. “Hi, back,” he said. “I hope my brothers haven’t been any trouble for you.”
    â€œOf course not.” She smiled. “They’re very nice.”
    Will was lucky to have them. And as she took another breath of his delicious smell and felt the warmth of his body brush hers as he continued inside, she thought that for a woman who was supposed to be forgetting about him and