Yours, Mine...or Ours?. Karen Templeton

      

       “Rudy?”

      He blinked, then looked down into Violet’s flushed face, framed by a zillion coppery coils that slid across her shoulders. In the sunshine, she was…incredible. He had to literally order his hand not to lift to her face.

      “I’ve been calling and calling you,” she said, a small voice in a big pink coat. She looked over her shoulder at a mud-and-salt-splattered sedan that had seen its share of New England winters. Her son’s grinning face popped up in one of the back windows. She waved, then turned back. “You get your girl all settled in?”

      “She’s twelve. Settling’s not exactly her strong suit.”

      “She’ll make friends,” Violet said. “She’ll be fine. Anyway, I was going to call you, but since you’re here, the answer’s yes. Cooking, fixing the place up…whatever you need, I’m your girl.”

      Maybe you shouldn’t put it like that, Rudy thought, eyeing a stray curl that was toying provocatively with her mouth.

       KAREN TEMPLETON ,

      a bestselling author and RITA^® Award nominee, is the mother of five sons and living proof that romance and dirty nappies are not mutually exclusive terms. An Easterner transplanted to Albuquerque, New Mexico, she spends far too much time trying to coax her garden to yield roses and produce something resembling a lawn, all the while fantasising about a weekend alone with her husband. Or at least an uninterrupted conversation.

      She loves to hear from readers, who may reach her online at www.karentempleton.com.

      Yours, Mine…or Ours?

      Karen Templeton

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To Shannon Stacey,

      whose answers to all my dumb New England

      questions made me more grateful than ever

      for New Mexico winters.

      And to Gail C and Charles G,

      the best editorial team evah,

      for keeping me sane.

      I love you guys.

      Chapter One

      Rudy Vaccaro took one look at her and fell in love.

      Hopelessly, impossibly, insanely in love.

      Even though she wasn’t perfect. Hell, she wasn’t even all that good-looking, not in the shape she was in. And high maintenance? Hoo-boy. Yeah, he’d gotten himself in deep with this one.

      But then, maybe that’s what he loved about her, Rudy thought, standing there grinning like a loon, that she needed him. Needed him bad—

      “Ohmigod, Dad—I cannot believe you ruined my life for this!” said his twelve-year-old daughter, Stacey.

      That was followed by his younger brother Kevin’s, “Exactly how closely did you look at the place before you bought it?”

      Refusing to let either his daughter’s horror or his brother’s skepticism deflate him, Rudy lifted his grin to the (peeling) ceiling in the inn’s front room/lobby/whatever and let out a whoop of sheer, unadulterated joy.

      For twelve years he’d anticipated this moment, squirreling away as much of his cop’s salary as he could, even before he fully understood what he was squirreling it away for. Twelve years of nudging a vague dissatisfaction into a dream, then a goal, and now—thanks to a confluence of events he could have never foreseen—reality.

      A hundred-fifty-year-old, six-bedroom reality with curling wallpaper, carpeting in assorted shades of barf and cobwebs thick enough to snag Cessnas.

      Rudy’s breath frosted the unheated air as he clapped his hands together, eager to get on with the new year, his new life, both barely two days old.

      Mine. All mine, he thought as he tromped across the threadbare carpeting, his size thirteen workboots making the joists squawk underneath. After six months’ vacancy, the ancient studs were rheumatic with New England winter damp. Silence met his tap on the thermostat by the dining room archway. Huh. Probably no oil in the furnace.

      If he was lucky.

      But oh, he was. The luckiest bastard on the face of the earth. Finally, a home, a life of his own—

      “Like, eww,” his smart, scowling daughter said to a sagging, suspiciously stained wing chair that might have been yellow in another life. Or pale green. Horrified, gorgeous brown eyes lifted to his. Okay, so this part of things needed work. Already pissed at him for jerking her away from all her friends, not to mention an extended family with ties to half of Massachusetts, clearly the idea of spending her formative years in the Lemony Snicket house wasn’t exactly racking up points. “People actually sat in that?”

      “Thousands, from the looks of it,” Kevin said.

      Stacey backed away, shuddering.

      Rudy yanked off his knitted cap, ruffling his short, prickly hair. “There’s a reason I got it so cheap,” he said, proudly. Almost smug. He turned to his spiky-haired brother, six years his junior, not quite as tall, a good fifty pounds lighter. Not counting the five layers of denim, flannel, cotton jersey. Kev was still trying to get a handle on what—and who—he wanted to be when he grew up. However, with all the restoration skills he’d picked up over the past few years, he’d decided for the next cuppla months he could figure that out here as well as anywhere. “You got any idea what prices are like up here, normally?”

      Arms crossed, Kev frowned at a dark streak meandering from ceiling to floor, through endless, drab green marshes populated with faded ducks. “That looks like a leak. If you’re lucky, maybe only from a bad radiator or something—”

      “I gotta go to the bathroom,” Stacey said, hands stuffed in the pockets of her puffy vest, her long, dark hair alive with static. Coffee bean eyes still flashed you-will-so-pay-for-this messages. Rudy’s smile never wavered. You’ll come around. You’ll see how right this is. For both of us.

      “There’s six,” he said. “Four upstairs, two down here. Take your pick.”

      Her mouth dropped. She was tall for twelve, although still stick straight, thank God. Another year, maybe, before he’d have to unpack the stick. “Six?”

      “Yep.” Rudy grinned at Kevin, willing him to stop frowning. See? his grin said. Not as dumb as I look. He’d save a bundle, not having to add bathrooms. Although what condition the plumbing was in…

      He’d think about that tomorrow. Now he pointed down the hall. “Closest one’s down there.” As Stacey tramped off, Rudy met Kevin’s still-not-gone frown. “The Realtor sent me a floor plan,” he said, shrugging.

      “A floor plan.”

      “Yep.”

      “So what you’re sayin’ is, you invested your life’s savings sight unseen.”

      For the first time since they’d walked into the house, Rudy’s grin wavered. But only for a second. He even clapped his brother’s shoulder. “At least give me some credit. The agent also sent me dozens of photos from her camera phone.”

      “Oh, well, then.”

      “Look, I had to move fast. The price had just dropped—a lot—and there were two other interested parties. I made an offer and the seller pounced. It did pass the basic inspection, Kev, so you can stop looking at me like that. The roof’s not gonna cave in—probably—and no termites. It’s more run-down and neglected than anything. And anyway, with your lousy track record in the responsibility department, you’ve got one hell of a nerve looking at me like that.”

      The creep actually laughed. “That’s just it—this is