More Than Neighbors Read Online Free Page B

scattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks. A pretty mouth—not too thin, not too plump. She was a couple inches shorter than her son, five foot six or so, at a guess, and willowy. Long legs and long fingers, too. Gabe wasn’t sure why he’d noticed that, but he had, when she laid her hand briefly on her son’s shoulder in a sort of gentle caution. Seeing her do that had sent an odd little shiver through him, as though—
    He frowned, discovering that his own hands had gone still, and he was staring into space, his attention no longer split. Ciara Malloy had filled his head, and he didn’t like it.
    —as though she’d been touching him . The sensation had been eerily real. Her hand could have been resting on him. He’d liked her touch.
    Too long without a woman, he thought irritably, while knowing he wasn’t going to do anything about it. He missed sex—damn, but he missed it. The idea of bar pickups and one-night stands held no appeal, though, and his couple attempts since Ginny’s death at having an ongoing lover hadn’t ended so well. Maybe in the big city there were women who only wanted a casual lover, but here in Goodwater, anyone he hooked up with started envisioning diamond rings and moving in. Since he couldn’t imagine wanting that again, well, he’d decided he could survive living celibate, as long as he avoided temptation.
    Which meant it would be safest all around if he had as little to do with these new neighbors as possible.
    Comfortable with his conclusion, Gabe reached for the saw. No reason the pretty mom and boy would be interested in him . They’d make friends soon enough, and he’d be nothing but the reclusive man next door, whose horses they happened to see out their kitchen window.
    There might be a whisper of sadness when he thought of himself that way, knowing he’d end up like Ephraim Walker, a man who, toward the end, had had to depend on the distant kindness of people who didn’t even much like him. And Ephraim, at least he’d had a son.
    But Gabe knew himself well enough to be sure he didn’t want to risk again the kind of devastation he’d barely survived once. He let the brief sadness go and concentrated on something that did give him pleasure—the texture and smell of fine woods, the miracles his hard work and skill wrought from plain-looking beginnings.
    He was like the most ordinary of boards, he decided, solid, reliable, but nothing astonishing likely to spring out at the touch of stain or linseed oil, and that was fine by him.
    * * *
    C IARA REACHED THE end of a seam and grabbed her small scissors to snip the threads. Without the whir of the machine going, the silence of the house struck her.
    If Mark had finished the reading she’d assigned him, he was capable of concentrating by the hour on drawing or looking up something that interested him on the internet. Still...it was awfully quiet.
    “Mark?”
    No answer, which meant he wasn’t in his room. She left the pillow cover she was working on sitting in a small heap on her worktable and went to check Mark’s bedroom anyway. Empty. So neat, it belonged in a model home, but that was just Mark. One argument she’d never have to have with him was over cleaning his room.
    She headed downstairs, calling his name but receiving no response. The social-studies book lay closed on the kitchen table, neatly aligned with the square corners of the table. The worksheet beside it appeared to be filled out. She flipped it over to be sure he really had finished. Yep. Ciara felt a twinge of worry that it had been way too easy for him. And boring. If she found some reading on local Indian tribes, or early white settlement in Eastern Washington, maybe that would be more gripping than standard stuff about the executive branch of the federal government. But he did have to learn the basic stuff, she reminded herself, and she had to be sure he’d pass end-of-the-grade-level tests, which meant sticking to the standard curriculum,