Free Secrets and Seductions by Jane Beckenham Page B

brushing her hair from her eyes. “You think I’m totally incompetent.”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “No?” But the fight had gone out of her, and exhaustion took over. Her shoulders sagged. This was far too hard, yet she had to keep going. She had no choice. The alternative was to lose everything. Her voice was a whisper when she spoke. “You sure as heck thought it, though, Mac. As far as you’re concerned, I’m a useless mother, playing at farming and not able to…survive.” One look at him and she knew what she’d said was true. But worse, saying the words aloud broke her heart. Everything seemed to be going wrong, one disaster following another, and Mac’s hesitation sparked her frustration. “I was right. You’ve already convicted me.” Distancing herself from him, she pushed open the front door and stepped over the threshold. “I don’t have time to talk about this. I have to make some calls.”
    But his questioning didn’t let up. “What happened to the pickers?”
    “Howard has bigger fish to pick,” she said.
    “I can work in the grove,” he offered.
    “You can’t pick a whole olive grove, Mac. Neither of us can. That’s why I booked Howard’s crew.”
    “So book another.”
    “I intend to, but…”
    “But what?”
    “It’s late. As you said, crews are booked months in advance, if not the year before.” Turning from him, she made her way back inside and rummaged in her desk for her list of picking crews. She had to find someone. Had to. She couldn’t fail. If she had to pick the whole damn grove herself, she’d do it, even though she’d just voiced the impossibility of it to Mac.
    But three hours and many phone calls later, she’d come up empty. Dropping the phone to the desk, she stretched out, rolling her shoulders to ease the tension in her neck. Her eyes shuttered, and she dropped her head to rest in her folded arms.
    Just a moment. A few minutes’ rest, then she’d start all over again. There had to be someone who could help.
     
     
    Mac stood rock still, staring down at a sleeping Leah. Beside the now silent phone was a list of names and phone numbers he presumed to be crews who worked the circuit.
    He retrieved the list and skimmed down it. Each one had a cross beside it.
    Each one had turned her down.
    Even from his bedroom where he’d worked on his laptop finishing up several projects for his new hotel chain, he could hear the plaintive desperation in her voice at each rejection.
    He went to drop the list back on the desk and froze. One part of him wanted to be close to her, though God knew why, while the other part of him said—no, screamed—walk away right now. Go far away and don’t come back.
    Instead, he sank onto the sofa across from Leah. It wasn’t so far away that he couldn’t hear her soft, fluttery breaths, or notice the blue-gray shadows beneath her eyes or the worry lines etched across her forehead.
    He admitted Leah had surprised him. Curtis had painted her as a woman who couldn’t be bothered, but Mac had seen her work tirelessly in the grove. He’d wanted to believe his brother, but seeing reallywas believing, and by witnessing her worries, he had in fact made them his.
    Her hair had come loose from the ponytail she always wore, and he found himself battling the urge to walk over and brush it from her face. A sigh ripped through him, the need to tangle his fingers in the silken strands hitting like a thunderbolt.
    Shit! He clenched his jaw, aware of the throb in his nether regions. But why her? Anyone other than Leah would be far more suitable. She was his brother’s widow, for God’s sake.
    Still, he watched her. In sleep, she held him captive.
    Only in sleep?
    Yeah, right .
    He wanted Leah. Full stop.
    “Dumb. Really dumb, Grainger.” What was he thinking?
    He wanted Leah in his bed, to caress her and kiss her. To reenact what he’d felt beneath his fingertips and beneath his lips when they’d been in the grove.
    You’re in way too