What a Man's Gotta Do by Karen Templeton Read Free Book Online Page B

need to dig out my car.”
    â€œOh, of course.” She shivered. “Yeah, there’s one in the shed.”
    He turned, glanced at the wooden shed huddled against the back fence, then angled his head back to her. “It locked?”
    She shook her head. He nodded, then trooped away.
    A half hour later, she was standing in her living room after her shower, staring at the TV and contemplating the possibility of being sucked into the perpetual springtime of Teletubbieland—but only if one could exterminate the Teletubbies first—when she heard the rhythmic scraping of metal against cement outside and realized she’d been had.
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    Eddie hadn’t exactly planned on shoveling the entire walk when he’d gotten up this morning. After all, he was just the tenant. Wasn’t his responsibility. But then he got to thinking about it, and it just seemed like the right thing to do. And since not too many opportunities to do the right thing crossed Eddie’s path, he figured he might as well take advantage of it. You know, just in case St. Peter asked him for a list or something down the road.
    Didn’t hurt that the exertion had the added benefit of taking the edge off his run-amok libido.
    It didn’t make a lick of sense. There she’d stood, no makeup, her hair every-which-way, wearing some kind of sack with a bigger sack thrown over it, and his blood had gone from frozen to boiling in about ten seconds. And she was just as close to forty as he was, to boot. In fact, in the stark light, he’d even seen a few strands of gray in her dark hair. Yet she opened her mouth, and that morning-gravelly voice of hers spilled out of the window at him, and all he could think was, whuh. He’d been trying to put a finger on just what it was about her that turned him inside out for the past half hour—okay, for the past week—but he was no closer now than when he’d started.
    The sidewalk was looking pretty good, though.
    Eddie straightened, letting his back muscles ease up some, then wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve before it froze to his forehead. Underneath the denim jacket, he had on three layers of clothes, and now he was overheated.His breath misted in front of his face as he squinted in the snowfall’s glare, taking in Mala’s neat little neighborhood, a conglomeration of one-and two-story houses, some frame, some brick, most with porches. Yards were small to average, tidy, liberally dotted with snow-flocked evergreens. Fireplace smoke ghosted from a few chimneys, teasing the almost bare limbs of all the oaks and ashes and maples, slashes of dark gray against the now crystal-blue sky. A few blocks off, a small lake, embedded in a pretty little park, twinkled in the sunlight.
    It was a nice town, he supposed. If you liked that sort of thing.
    From the back, he heard the kids yelling and laughing; Mala must’ve just let them out. Eddie went back to work, listening to them whooping it up over his shoveling, trying to ignore the ache of pure, unadulterated envy threatening to crush his heart. Still, it was a good thing Mala was doing, giving them the freedom to be happy in spite of what their daddy had done.
    She was a good woman, he thought, almost like it was a revelation. And his thinking that had nothing to do with his breath-stealing sexual attraction to her. It had everything, however, to do with why he needed to stop thinking about sex every time he thought about Mala Koleski.
    The front door opened. He bent farther over the shovel, but not before he noticed she was wearing baggy blue sweats over a gray turtleneck. She clunked down the steps in those clogs of hers, something clutched in her hand.
    â€œHere. You might as well use these.”
    Eddie looked over, noticed her hair was still damp, like she hadn’t taken the time to dry it properly. Then he saw the gloves in her hands. Turned away. “Those your husband’s?” Down