Jingle of Coins by C D Ledbetter Read Free Book Online Page B

call it a night. Tomorrow would be a busy day. In addition to getting her furniture delivered, she needed to call the local college and hire one or two students to unload the trailer.
    She crossed her fingers and slipped her key into the ignition. Yes! The needle moved into the safe zone! Feeling rejuvenated, she cautiously turned the air conditioner onto low and pulled onto the highway.
    It didn’t take long to check into her room at the Golden Sphynx, and after an hour’s rest, Emily decided to drive to her apartment and check on the water and electricity. As she turned into the complex, she noticed an open trailer filled with furniture parked across the handicapped parking spaces. Two muscled men struggled to lift an oversize couch over the side rail.
    She pulled the Jeep to the back row and parked sideways. One of the men set down his end of the sofa and exhaled a long breath as she walked toward him.
    “Hello,” he said, eyeing her trailer. “Looks like we both have the same idea. You must be the other new tenant. My name’s Glen. Sorry to hold you up,” he apologized. “We should be done in about an hour.”
    Emily stared, mesmerized by the greenest pair of eyes she’d ever seen. Realizing that he was watching her with a curious expression, she grasped his outstretched hand. She could feel the flush creeping up her neck and prayed that he would think it was caused by the sun.
    Answer him, dummy. She made an attempt at polite conversation. “Emily Sane.” It came out a miserable mumble. She stood there, embarrassed, unable to think of anything witty to say.
    “Glad to meet you.”
    Another rush of heat that had nothing to do with the searing temperature made her knees feel weak. “Uh, same here,” Emily said. She stared open-mouthed as intelligent speech abandoned her once again. Although he was at least ten years older, something about the man reached out and snapped her feminine instinct to attention. Wavy brown hair, interlaced with touches of grey, glistened in the afternoon sunlight. Long, dark eyelashes any woman would kill for framed twinkling green eyes, and dimples flashed in and out of his cheek when he smiled. A sleeveless tee shirt framed muscular arms, while tight jeans accented rock-hard thighs.
    Emily quickly dropped her gaze to his running shoes before she got caught staring again. Whatever “it” was, this man had “it” in spades. And—she wanted it. Bad. Every nerve ending in her body felt ignited by a blowtorch, and she wished desperately that her frazzled brain would come up with something witty to say. She squinted and raised a hand to block the sun from her eyes, wishing that she’d kept her sunglasses on so she could hide behind the oversized lenses. Schooling her face into what she hoped was a bland expression, she lifted her glance to meet his.
    He pulled his hand from hers and pointed to her trailer. “If you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, you can pull over here when we’re through. That will make it easier to unload your stuff.”
    Emily struggled to pull herself together. She must be more tired than she thought. She shook her head. “I wasn’t planning to unload tonight.” At last, coherent sentences! She hadn’t lost all her marbles, just temporarily misplaced a few!
    “You sure?”
    She held up a hand. “Yeah. I’m just checking on my apartment.”
    He glanced at her, then swung his glance toward her trailer. “Do you need some help unloading?”
    “No, thanks. See you around.” She waved and hurried toward the narrow walkway. Her hands trembled as she shoved the key into her door and stepped inside.
    “See you around? My God, with such witty repartee, the man must think I’m a moron,” she chided herself. “The first really good looking man I meet since my divorce offers to help offload my stuff, and what tantalizing tidbits of conversation did I come up with? Duh—no wonder I don’t have a boyfriend. He probably thinks I’m an empty-headed