A Sweetheart For The Single Dad (The Camdens Of Colorado Book 8) Read Online Free Page B

warts and boils she would still have had the same job to do and she’d do it the exact same way.
    “You’re here,” he greeted as he closed and locked his car door.
    “I said I would be.”
    “I thought you’d find an excuse not to be.”
    “Fooled you,” she said victoriously. “Here I am. Ready to walk the streets.”
    Oh, that hadn’t sounded good.
    And he’d caught it because it made him grin before he said, “I’m trying really hard not to make an inappropriate joke right now.”
    “I appreciate that,” she said, curious about exactly what the joke might be. But she was here for business not for pleasure, so she opted to get to it. “Where do we start?” she asked enthusiastically.
    “This way,” he said, pointing with that dimpled chin of his to the street that ran in front of the center and heading there.
    “This is the park we’ll be cleaning up—right next door,” he informed her as they took a left turn onto the sidewalk. “City resources are going into an upscale version near your store on the other side of town and this one has been left to rot.”
    “It definitely needs work,” Lindie commented as she took in the sight of rundown, damaged picnic tables and play equipment, of trees that needed trimming, of the signs of overall neglect.
    Beyond the park they began to go up and down streets lined with small frame houses, heading for front doors to leave the fliers he was carrying.
    While Lindie could see that it had been a nice middle-class area once upon a time, now there were only a few houses that were well-kept. More often than not yards were either overtaken by weeds or totally bare. When it came to the houses themselves, too many had chipped and peeling paint or siding, missing shutters and shingles or other signs of disrepair.
    “It costs money to water lawns. To fertilize grass and flowers and to kill weeds. To paint and fix things when they age or weather takes a toll,” Sawyer said when he noticed her avoiding the brown branches of a dead hedge to one side of a small porch. “And it takes time that a lot of people had when it was a ten-minute drive to and from work, but don’t have now that it’s an hour or more commute every day.”
    Lindie didn’t comment, especially when they passed a house that was obviously vacant and had a foreclosure notice in the front window. But she did feel the weight on her conscience and in response she picked up some toys dropped in the yard of the next house and left them neatly stacked at the door as Sawyer slid the flyer into a grate on a screen torn away from the frame.
    There was an elderly man working on the engine of an equally elderly truck at the next house. Sawyer said hello and approached him with the fliers.
    “Think you could hold this for me for a minute?” the elderly man asked.
    Sawyer passed the fliers to Lindie so he could assist with something in the engine. As she stood there waiting it occurred to her that all of the vehicles parked in driveways and at the curbs were dated. That there wasn’t a new car anywhere to be seen.
    “Okay, I can take it from here,” the old man said a moment later, handing Sawyer a rag to wipe his hands on and glancing at the flier he accepted from Lindie.
    “Glad somebody’s doin’ something with that park,” the man said. “It’s turning into another eyesore around here and we don’t need any more of those.”
    “Maybe you can come down and help out,” Sawyer suggested encouragingly.
    “Maybe,” the man allowed as Sawyer said they’d let him get back to his work.
    He took the fliers from Lindie so they could move on.
    Block after block, they encountered more of the same downtrodden homes and people. Several residents either complained about the decay and neglect or wearily committed to helping and voiced their hope that something would improve the area.
    Lindie took it all in, continuing her own minor aid by picking up a bicycle or a newspaper here and there to bring up to the