The Wedding Gift

Riley felt the impact, heard the rush of air leaving his lungs. He fell twenty feet in an instant and snapped to the end of the cable attached to his safety vest with a force that knocked the remaining wind out of him.

“Pete, Sean!” the foreman yelled. “Get that rafter nailed down. Hold on, boss!”

Cinched tight in his harness twenty feet off the ground, Riley wasn’t going anywhere. He was aware of more discussion overhead, but the next voice he concentrated on came from halfway down the wall.

“Riley. Over here.”

Kipp was perched at the edge of the scaffolding. His left arm was wrapped around a two-by-eight runner as he tossed Riley a rope and drew him to solid footing. Once safely on the scaffolding, Riley unhooked his harness and released it. He had little choice but to withstand the quick once-over Kipp gave him with a gaze that saw everything. The fact that he didn’t shrug it off and go back to work wasn’t lost on anybody, least of all on Riley himself. Shakier than he cared to admit, he carefully climbed the rest of the way to the ground.

And came face-to-face with a woman he didn’t know.

Or was he seeing things? After all, pretty young women didn’t appear out of nowhere at rough-in sites. This one seemed to be floating toward him. Her hair was long and light blond. Her lips were moving but it was difficult to understand what she was saying.

“Are you all right? Are you feeling faint? Can you hear me? How many fingers am I holding up?”

Riley stared dazedly at her. She was of average height and wore a light jacket that was belted at her waist and open at her throat where a silver charm hung from a delicate chain. Her breathing was shallow and her eyes flashed with the same beams of light that surrounded the rest of her.

Beams of light? What the hell was wrong with him?

He scrubbed a hand over his face to clear his vision. Thankfully when he looked again, the strange light was gone. The woman hadn’t disappeared, though.

“You’re sweating,” she said. “You could be going into shock. You should be sitting down. Lying down would be better. How are your ribs? Are they tender? Do you have pain anywhere? There’s no telling what you might have bruised or injured or God forbid, jarred loose.”

She opened an oversized purse and fished around inside. The next thing he knew, she was trying to press the end of a stethoscope to his chest.

He backed out of her reach.

“I’m a nurse,” she said gently. “Don’t worry, I’ve done this a thousand times.”

He closed his hand around the end of the stethoscope and held it away from his body. She tried again to push it toward his chest but he held fast. Before either of them was ready to admit they’d reached an impasse, the wind intervened, dragging her hair out of the fastener at her nape, an effective diversion for both of them. Free, the blond tresses whipped and swirled around her head.

She finally released her end of the stethoscope and reached up, winsomely tying her hair into a knot that begged to be undone again. She should have looked as out of place as an orchid in a patch of quack grass, and yet her presence seemed expected, binding somehow.

Awareness surged through him so strongly he was tempted to forget he was standing in the middle of a construction site in plain view of a dozen curious men with a pretty young woman intent upon touching him. He wanted her to touch him almost as much as he wanted to pull her to him and cover her mouth with his.

“I’d feel a lot better if you would sit down,” she said. “Could I at least take your pulse?”

The question finally brought him to his senses. She was a nurse. Here to take his pulse.

The thundering in his ears moved ominously into his voice as he said, “My mother sent you, didn’t she?”

Chapter Two

Riley Merrick was standing three feet away.

Madeline was certain her feet were planted firmly on the ground, and yet she felt as if she were drawing closer to him. Heat emanated from him, making her yearn to burrow into his warmth, her ear pressed to his chest. The rumble of the bulldozer’s engine and the sharp pounding of heavy hammers receded until the only sound she heard was the chiming of something sweet and delicate sprinkling into the empty spaces inside her.

“Well? Did my mother hire you or didn’t she?” She blinked. And sound returned in a raucous, roaring cacophony of pitch and volume. “Your mother?” she finally asked.

He scowled. “Knowing my mother, she probably told you to lie about your association with her.”

“I’m a terrible liar,” she said dazedly.

He finally released the stethoscope. “Keep that away from me. Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m Madeline Sullivan. As I told you before, I’m a nurse, but—”

“So my mother sent you to play nursemaid. That’s so typical. No doubt she expects you to check my pulse and report back to her.”

Since she still didn’t know what his mother had to do with her, she said, “I think we should keep your mother out of this.”

“At least we agree on one thing.”

“Do we also agree that walking on narrow beams fifty feet off the ground is a risk you have no business taking?” Why was she so breathless?

Angry, he was having trouble breathing, too. His next attempt made his nostrils flare as he said, “I was wearing my safety harness.”

Eyeing the harness dangling from the end of a yellow rope, his hard hat upside down on the plywood floor directly beneath it, she shook her head. He could have broken his neck. He could have died, and it all would have been for nothing.

“It can take a long time for ribs to heal completely after a surgery like yours,” she said gently. “Especially with the medications you’re on. You are taking your medicine, aren’t you?”

His eyes narrowed and his voice lowered as he said, “You’re fired, Madeline.”

Her head jerked up. “You can’t fire me.”

“I just did.”

She had to force her gaping mouth closed. Now that she wasn’t simply absorbing the essence of him, she had the presence of mind to take a good look at the man whose name had crept into her thoughts so often these past eighteen months.

She’d expected his face to be swollen, his jowls sagging, his skin sallow. Instead he was lean and rugged and tan. A muscle moved in his jaw and there was a trace of something not easily identified in his brown eyes. Was it dread? Regret? Or was it a haunting sorrow?

Cursed with a soft spot for anyone suffering or struggling in any way, she laid a hand on his arm and said, “What you’re feeling is perfectly natural.”

He drew his arm out of her grasp. “You can’t possibly know what I’m feeling. You have to leave. This is private property and you’re trespassing. Tell my mother—never mind. I’ll tell her myself.” With that, he walked away.

She watched as he conferred with a burly man who’d just climbed off the earthmover. The other man glanced at her, putting her in mind of a St. Bernard—big, yes, hairy, certainly, loyal, obviously, but not very fierce. Deciding to spare him the discomfort of having to escort her to her car, and spare herself the discomfort, as well, she left of her own accord. She surprised herself when she slammed her foot on the accelerator, but she had to admit the sound of sand spraying behind her spinning tires brought her a certain satisfaction.

No sense letting Riley Merrick have the last word.

“Uh-huh,” she said absently into the phone as she reached ahead to wipe fog off her windshield. The hills on either side of the county road were dotted with cherry trees, the branches flexed in anticipation of that elusive signal from Mother Nature to burst into blossom. Madeline understood their wistful impatience.

“Was Riley anything like you expected?” Summer asked.

Hunkering down in her seat, she wrapped her jacket more tightly around her to ward off the damp chill while she considered the question. There was a rawness about Riley Merrick, a burning sensuality that had caught her completely off guard. Deciding to keep that perception to herself for now, she said, “He’s fit, healthy and stubborn, and he looks like his photo.”

“Are you coming home now?” Summer asked.

Madeline had been sitting along the side of the road for the past forty minutes, thinking about her options. Glancing at the keys dangling uselessly in the ignition, she said, “That would be problematic.”