The Trouble with Andrew by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online Page B

exasperated.
    Macho man, Katie thought again.
    â€œI’m not quite sure it’s the right thing to do,” Katie murmured. “Your family—”
    â€œI’m not married, and I don’t have children, and anyone I know and care about is an intelligent individual who can see that your home is not habitable and may never be. If you’re uncomfortable about the arrangement, I have an office I can move into.”
    â€œNo!” Katie protested, horrified. “I would never think of putting you out of your home—”
    â€œYou might,” he murmured wearily, leaning back.
    â€œWhat?”
    He inhaled and exhaled. “Mrs. Wells, you’re very welcome to stay here. I’ll leave if you like, I’ll stay if you like. You can take the guest room, and Jordan can have the room to the left of it—there’s an entertainment center in there with a stereo system, television, even games. Assuming we get electricity again some time in the near future. Both rooms have private baths. I’m sure you’ll be as comfortable as possible out of your own domicile. I can almost guarantee you that I won’t be around very much, not with the cleanup that’s going to have to go on now.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œWill you please quite worrying?”
    Katie hesitated. The offer was a darned good one. Her choices were limited. She could go to a shelter and sit there endlessly, chewing her lip, biting her nails, wanting to be doing something.
    In a few days, of course, she could go to her father’s. She loved her father.
    And she could listen endlessly to him telling her that she was young, that she needed to get herself a life that didn’t include other people’s joys and devastations in black and white and color film.
    She could stay in the Holloways’ weight room.
    Or join Ted at Sophie and Len’s. Poor Ted. He’d wind up on a couch, of course, to give her and Jordan a room.
    Here, she was right across from her own home. She could be here when the insurance adjusters and the repair people came. She could watch what happened.
    She could dig through the rubble.
    The rubble…
    She needed to start digging right now.
    â€œMr. Cunningham—”
    â€œIf you are going to stay, please call me Drew. Mr. Cunningham gets irritating after a while.”
    â€œWell, then, excuse me!” she said, with just a note of sarcasm to her voice. “I wouldn’t want to be irritating. Which is the precise reason—”
    â€œYou want to take a little boy to a shelter to sweat to death in the days ahead?”
    â€œI do have places to go—”
    â€œNot many people will be going anywhere today, Mrs. Wells. They’re begging people to stay off the streets. I’m willing to bet that it’s impossible to get through half of them. In fact, I’m willing to bet it’s impossible just to drive around the cul-de-sac right now.”
    â€œIf I’m going to stay here,” Katie said, “my name is Katie, or Katherine. Mrs. Wells gets irritating after a while.”
    He grinned, the anger suddenly gone. And when he smiled like that, he was very attractive. It was a sensual smile.
    No wife. He had said so. But there had to be a woman somewhere in his life. Maybe lots of women.
    Maybe he had so many of them he hadn’t even noticed she was among the ranks.
    Maybe she should quit speculating about the man.
    Maybe she should keep doing so—she was contemplating staying in his house with her only child.
    Ah, well. Surely, natural disasters made for strange bedfellows.
    Not bedfellows. House fellows.
    Oh, hell…
    It seemed amazing that she knew some people fairly well and could still keep such a distance from them. And now here was this man she barely knew, and she was already thinking about such personal things as the look of his hands, the feel of his thigh against hers. She was tempted to stroke the contours of his