Armed and Devastating by Julie Miller

Author:Julie Miller [Miller, Julie]
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2010-03-30T04:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Eight

"The scenes with all the snow should cool you off just fine."

Brooke set the note on the granite counter and smiled. Normally, she would have loved to check out a classic movie like Dr. Zhivago with her aunts. But tonight she was a woman on a mission. It was about to get noisy and dusty in here, and it would probably send Louise into some kind of conniption to see any of the carefully reconstructed church being torn apart again. Tonight, she was glad to have the house to herself.

Well, mostly to herself.

"The note from Aunt Peggy says they decided to drive over to Glenwood to see Dr. Zhivago at the Retro. After working outside for most of the day, they thought an air-conditioned theater was the best way to beat the summer heat." She spread her arms in a wide gesture and apologized for the house's muggy atmosphere. "As you can tell, we don't have the central air running yet."

"Not a problem."

Not for her, at any rate. Atticus Kincaid was dangerous sophistication in his suit and tie. But tonight he'd shed the jacket and rolled up his sleeves to set up two ladders and scaffolding in front of the locked double doors leading to her unfinished sunporch. The air of danger still clung to him as she watched him work. She supposed the holster he wore and his get-the-job-done focus added that. But there was something more earthy, more intimate about exposing the tanned column of his throat and the dusting of dark hair along his forearms as his muscles flexed with the task and glistened in response to the heat of the summer night.

The heavy toolbox she'd carried out to the kitchen from her bedroom rattled like Jacob Marley's chains when she picked it up and hauled it over to the sunporch doors. "I'll go ahead and open some windows. If there's any breeze at all, we'll get a decent crosscurrent."

"Here." He hopped down from the three-foot platform he'd built and took the toolbox from her grip. What she'd toted with two hands, he picked up in a smooth one-handed swing and set it on the scaffolding. "We'll need a hammer and chisel to break up that mortar, and then a pry bar to move those rocks."

Perhaps succumbing a bit to the heat herself, Brooke unhooked the top two buttons of her blouse as she watched him sort through the tools and pull on a pair of canvas work gloves. His back and shoulders flexed with each precise movement and she wondered how shameless it would seem if she kept right on unhooking buttons.

The windows. Open the windows and cool off before you embarrass yourself. Not that she was any kind of expert in the art of catching a man's eye, but she had a feeling that drooling would not be the most attractive thing she could do. "I'll just get the windows," she said out loud, needing the extra impetus to move away from him.

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