Cowboy Brigade. Elle James

her right.” Her grandfather snorted. “Goin’ around like royalty with money that should have been mine. Probably driving too fast, no respect for the speed limits the rest of us have to follow.”

      “They said someone booby-trapped the road with horseshoe nails.” Wade looked directly at Gramps with piercing blue eyes.

      Her grandfather harrumphed. “Might have thrown a few myself if I’d thought of it first.”

      “Gramps!” Lindsay slammed her fork down and shoved to her feet so fast that she almost toppled her chair. She’d had enough. The stress of sitting at the same table with Wade had finally gotten to her. Her grandfather’s rant on the Lockharts just tipped her over the edge. “Excuse me while I go anywhere I don’t have to listen to this nonsense.”

      Her grandfather clamped a hand on her arm. “Oh, Lindsay, girl, calm yourself down. I’ll quit talkin’ about those yahoos. Sit.”

      Wade sat at the other side of the table, a hint of a smile tweaking the corners of his mouth. He was laughing!

      Heat boiled up her neck into her cheeks. Lindsay shook Gramps’s hand off her arm. “I love you, Gramps, but I can’t sit here another minute.”

      She took her plate and stormed out of the dining room. In the kitchen, she went to work cleaning the pots and pans she’d used preparing the meal. Scrubbing at the baked-on food did little to work off the anger and frustration that had built throughout the day.

      How dare he come back now? And why? Obviously Wade hadn’t come back because of the girls—he hadn’t even recognized them as possibly being his own.

      Her hands paused, buried in soapy water. Both girls had his black hair and blue eyes. After delivering them she’d gazed down at her baby daughters, ecstatic and heartsick at the same time. They’d been the spitting image of their father even then.

      No wonder she’d never gotten over him. She saw him every day in Lacey and Lyric.

      Hands reached around her and dropped plates into the soapy water.

      The hair on the back of Lindsay’s neck stood on end. The scent of soap, leather and denim let her know the man foremost in her thoughts stood close behind her. His breath stirred the hair curling against the side of her neck.

      Her pulse sped, her breathing became labored. If she moved just a little, her back would touch his chest. He could wrap his arms around her and hold her in his warm embrace. The years would fall away, they’d be that happy couple making love into the night.

      And pigs could learn to fly.

      Lindsay dropped the pan she’d been scrubbing, soapsuds splashing over the sides of the sink. She ducked around Wade and reached for the dry towel hanging from the oven handle. “What do you want, Wade?”

      “I came in here to help wash dishes.”

      “I don’t need your help washing dishes.”

      “Then let me dry.” He closed the distance between them, reaching out.

      As if her body had its own ideas, she swayed toward his outstretched hand.

      He snatched the towel from her fingers, twirled it and popped her hip.

      “Ouch!”

      “You know you hate doing dishes.” That sexy smile that had always made her toes curl, tipped his lips upward. Although the trim beard hid a lot of his face, it couldn’t hide the sparkle in his eyes.

      Lindsay steeled herself from reacting to his charm. “Not as much as I hate someone helping me.”

      He didn’t budge. “You used to love it when I helped in the kitchen.”

      Lindsay grabbed a glass from the dish drainer and plunked it into a cabinet just to keep busy, to focus on something other than the man she’d hung all her dreams on only to be disappointed time and again. “We were kids.”

      “Not so much.”

      She spun toward him, her fists clenching to keep from touching him. “Okay, we were young and stupid.”

      “We used to have a lot of fun.” He whipped the towel around her, caught the other end and yanked her against him. “Remember this move?”

      Her breasts pressed into his chest, her heart slamming against her rib cage, threatening to beat right out of her chest. “No,” she said, her mouth inches from his. God, she could still feel the warmth of his lips on hers, kissing her as she lay naked in the starlight with him.

      “Let me remind you.” He leaned closer, his mouth descending to hers.

      A plate clattered in the dining room, the noise snapping Lindsay out of the stupor and back to sanity. She shoved Wade away. “If you want to help do the dishes, you do them. I have other work that can be done.”

      She passed Gramps on her way out of the kitchen. She pointed a finger at him as she hurried away. “We need to talk after I get the girls down for the night. Don’t you go off to bed until we do.”

      “Yes, ma’am,” Gramps replied. “What’s got your knickers in a twist, girl?”

      Lindsay didn’t bother to answer. She needed someone to hug. Two someones who loved her unconditionally. She needed that hug now.

      For the next hour, she coaxed the girls through their baths and into their pajamas. After they cleaned up their toys, all three of them settled in Lyric’s bed to read a story. It was Lyric’s night to choose. She chose Beauty and the Beast.

      Almost too jittery to sit still, Lindsay forced calm into her voice. Before long she was immersed in the story, the girls leaning against her shoulders, eyes wide and wondering. Never mind they’d heard the same story at least fifty times before.

      Lindsay loved her girls and would do anything to make them happy. Would it make them happy to know about their father?

      WADE KNEW exactly what Lindsay had wanted to say to her grandfather and he got way ahead of her by reminiscing with the old guy as they shared the task of cleaning up the kitchen. Apparently Wade looked enough like his father that Henry Kemp automatically trusted him.

      That worked in Wade’s favor, considering he was there to build trust and find evidence. He pushed aside the gnawing guilt at betraying the man who’d opened his home to him when his father had passed away.

      Old Man Kemp had always been gruff, but he’d also been fair in his treatment of his employees. When it came to his granddaughter, he’d declared her hands off to the ranch hands. That included Wade.

      They’d managed to keep their secret flirtation just that…a secret while Wade and Lindsay were in high school.

      Deep down Wade always knew he was the hired help and Lindsay was in a different class altogether. That’s why he’d left to join the Army. He’d hoped to build a career for himself, prove he was worthy and then come back to ask her to marry him.

      The idea had been a boy’s romantic dream. The reality had kicked him in the teeth.

      As Henry stacked the last clean plate in the cupboard, he sighed. “I’m glad you’re here, Wade. The place hasn’t been the same since your father passed.”

      “Nothing stays the same.” Wade dried his hands and laid the towel over the oven handle. “Sometimes things need to change in order to get better.”

      “You got a point there.” Henry stretched and rolled his shoulders. “I ain’t gettin’ much younger, but I got plans to get this place going again. The Lockharts might have got the better of me once, but it won’t happen again.”

      “How so?”

      Henry shook his head. “I ain’t a tellin’. You’ll just have to wait and see, like the rest of them.” He strode toward the hallway. “Could you find my granddaughter and tell her I’m ready to go to bed. If she wants to talk, it better be soon.”