A Crazy Kind of Love

by Maureen Child

“You stole my land, you’re building a house here that isn’t mine, and to top it all off, you’re doing it wrong.”

  “Your opinion.”

  “Heck, you’re lucky I’ve only been coming around once a week!”

  “Yeah, lottery lucky.”

  “Hey, if my sisters and I hadn’t been off dealing with Grace Van Horn’s place all summer, I’d have been here on site every damn day whether you liked it or not.”

  He stared at her, stupefied. “Where do you get off thinking you can just slam into someone’s life and take over?”

  “I’m not trying to take over your life.”

  “Just my house?”

  “I’m trying to save your house. Big difference.”

  “Who asked you?”

  “You didn’t have to ask me, because I’m a fabulous human being.”

  He choked out a laugh.

  “This whole fight started over that stupid balcony, so I can’t even understand why you’re so pissed,” Mike said, trying for a calm she wasn’t really feeling. “Because you don’t know anything about balcony railings.” She lifted one hand and pointed at him. “Oh, and off the subject for a second—just so you know—don’t grab me again unless I want you to grab me. Which, by the way, isn’t going to happen.”

  Muttering darkly, he dropped his chin to his chest and sucked in a breath rattled with frustration. Then he blew the breath out again. Lifting his head, he glared at her. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to grab you.”

  “ ’S’okay,” Mike said, “I don’t break that easy.”

  But he wasn’t listening. Shaking his head, he grumbled, “Look what you’re doing to me. I never lose my temper. Never. Ask anyone. I’m a scientist, for God’s sake.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Mike wondered aloud.

  “I’m a calm, rational man.” His gaze slid back to her and narrowed again. “But for some reason, every time I get around you, I want to—”

  “Punch something?”

  He glared at her. “No.”

  She tipped her head to one side and stared at him. “Too bad. Sometimes it helps. Trust me.”

  “Why would I trust you?” he demanded. “You’re taking over my house.”

  “Look, I know you didn’t want the iron railing, but you’ll like it. The Donovans are practically artists with wrought iron.” Absently, she patted his arm again. “You’ll thank me later.”

  He looked at her, wild-eyed—then glanced around the empty yard helplessly, as if searching for someone to help him deal with her. When he didn’t find a soul, he looked back at her. “You keep saying that.”

  “And will keep right on until this house is finished.”

  “There’s just no chance of getting you to go away, is there?”

  She folded her arms over her chest, cocked her head to one side, and said, “Nope.”

  “I could call the cops. Have you removed.” His face lit up at the thought. “Get a restraining order.”

  Mike smiled slowly. “The cops. Hmm. You mean the sheriff of Chandler?”

  “Yeah.” He folded his arms across his own chest and stared right back at her.

  “You mean Sheriff Tony Candellano? The man who dated my sister Jo back when they were in high school? The man who went fishing with my father last weekend? That sheriff?”

  As slow, horrible realization crossed Lucas’s face, Mike started walking toward the side of the house, to check on the back deck. “Just let me know when you want to call him.” She glanced over her shoulder at the man standing silent behind her. “I’ve got his number on speed dial.”

  “What’s this about us doing a job for Cash Hunter?”

  Samantha “Sam” Marconi looked up from the baseboard, paintbrush in hand. She scowled at her older sister and said, “I’m almost finished in here. Can this wait?”

  “Uh, no.” Josefina, “Jo,” stomped across the gleaming wood floor until she was alongside her sister, then went down on one knee to look her square in the eye. “Grace just told me that you agreed to do a rehab of some old barn for Cash.”

  Sam blew a stray lock of red-brown hair out of her eyes, rubbed the back of her hand under her nose, then said, “Yeah, I did. It’s a good job.”

  “For him?”

  Sam had known this would be coming. She’d just hoped to put off the confrontation for a couple of days. Figured Grace would talk, though. The older woman never met a pause in conversation that she didn’t rush to fill.

  Jo’s pale blue eyes were sparking with indignation and her dark brown ponytail swung at the back of her head like a pendulum during an earthquake.

  “Look,” Sam said, turning her attention back to the detail work she’d almost completed. “We both know, now that the summer’s over and our work here at Grace’s place is, thank God, almost done, we need to line up new jobs.”

  “But work for him?”

  “We work for who pays us, remember?” She shot Jo a glance, but kept her paintbrush, loaded with soft-yellow semigloss, moving gently along the baseboard. “That’s the whole point of running a business? Getting customers?”

  Disgusted, Jo bounced up and started pacing, her heavy work boots pounding out a frantic rhythm. The big room had great acoustics, so in moments, the echo alone made it seem as if an army were marching through the place.

  “It’s just—” Jo stopped abruptly, stared out a window, and said, “He’s dangerous. And a pain in the ass.”

  “He’s only dangerous if you sleep with him,” Sam pointed out with a grin.

  Cash Hunter, mystery man. A carpenter, he’d been living in a house at the far edge of Grace Van Horn’s property since he blew into town and pretty much kept to himself. Except, of course, for the women who were drawn to him like metal shavings to a magnet.

  In the eight months Cash had been in Chandler, the man had built a reputation that was bordering on the scope of legendary. Every woman he’d taken to bed had awakened the following morning announcing that she’d seen the light or whatever and promptly gone off to do good works. One was now working for the Literacy Foundation, one was currently in Chechnya, working on foreign adoptions, and one had gone home to build houses for Habitat for Humanity.

  Jo’d been keeping a wary eye on the guy for months—ever since their last secretary had been bitten by the Cash bug and gone off to save the world.

  Although, Sam thought now, as she looked up at her sister again, maybe it wasn’t so much wariness as interest that had Jo’s radar bristling.

  “You’re not thinking about sleeping with him, are you?” she asked point-blank.

  “Are you serious?” Jo gave her a look that said she suspected Sam was feverish. “The man’s a walking cautionary tale. He’s dangerous. He’s sneaky. He’s—”

  “Apparently very good,” Sam finished for her, then smiled wistfully. “Not that I need to find out about that personally, you understand. Not with Jeff and I so—”

  “Yes, I know you’re happily married,” Jo said quickly, hoping to stave off another blissful round of listening to Sam sigh over the resurrection of her marriage. “And I’m glad for you, Sam. Honest. Glad the Weasel Dog made good and came through. Glad you found Emma and glad you’ve got the life you always wanted. It’s just that—”

  “Will you and Mike please stop calling my husband ‘Weasel Dog’?” Sam interrupted.

  “Old habits die hard?”

  “Like the habit of taking jobs offered to us?”

  “We don’t have to take every job.”

  “This is a good-paying contract and the Marconis are not going to turn it down just because you’re scared of Cash.”

  “Scared?” Jo snorted. “The day I’m scared of a guy is the day you can pile the dirt on top of me, because I’ll be dead.”

  “Fine. Then there’s no problem.”

  “I don’t like it,” Jo muttered.

  “You don’t have to like it,” Sam said, willing to give a little on this. “But you do have to suck it up and do the
job.”

  Afternoon sunlight washed through the shining glass windowpanes and lay across Jo in a golden broadsword. Her eyes narrowed, jaw tight, she snapped, “What do Mike and Papa have to say about this?”

  Finished with the baseboard, Sam picked up the small white bucket of paint and stood up. Stretching the kinks out of her back and legs, she shook her head. “Papa likes having jobs lined up. As for Mike . . .” She started across the room, knowing Jo would follow. “Haven’t seen her to tell her. She left early again today.”

  “Did she go back over to the Gallagher place?”

  “Think so.”

  “It’s a wonder that poor guy hasn’t shot her yet.”

  “Yeah, well, little miracles.” Sam stopped at the doorway, turned around to look back at the now completed room. The new floor glistened under multiple layers of wax, new brass sconces adorned the freshly painted walls, and the pale green marble surrounding the fireplace was gorgeous. She smiled and sighed in satisfaction. “Damn. We do good work, don’t we?”

  Jo nodded and shoved both hands into her pockets. Now that the Van Horn job was nearly wrapped up, she was ready for a new challenge. She just didn’t like the idea of having to work so closely with a man she didn’t trust. A man who thought so much of himself that he walked into a room just waiting for women to fall at his feet. A man who was too gorgeous for his own good.

  A man who made Jo way more nervous than she’d ever admit . . . even under threat of torture.

  “Yes, we do great work,” she finally muttered. “Too damn good for Cash Hunter.”

  “Has anyone ever told you you’re like a broken record?”

  “Broken CD,” Jo corrected as they headed out into the yard. “And yes.”

  2

  “You’ve got mail.”

  Lucas scowled at his computer. “Do they have to make that voice so damn cheerful?”

  He yanked his desk chair back, sat down then scooted it forward again, the hard rubber wheels of the chair squeaking against the bare wood floors. Clicking the mouse button, he opened his e-mail account, still unfathomably annoyed.

  It had been three days since Mike Marconi last “dropped by” and he felt like a man who knew there was a sniper out there somewhere, drawing a bead on him. He couldn’t relax even when she was gone, because he never knew when the damn woman was going to pop up again.

  But even worse than the sense of expectant dread was the knowledge that a part of him was actually looking forward to seeing her again. And how that had happened, Lucas had no idea.

  For two months, Mike Marconi had been the bane of his existence. Ever since the afternoon he’d stumbled across her as she was talking to herself. If he’d known ahead of time that buying this land and building a house here would gain him an intrusive, opinionated, maddening, gorgeous female plumber . . . hell. He’d have done it anyway.

  Afternoon sunlight streamed in through the brand-new windows in his second-story office. Outside that window lay the lake, with stands of trees thick enough to convince a man he was all alone on the planet. Unless of course, Lucas thought grimly, that man was listening to the staccato beat of hammers and the incessant whine of saws.

  But to give the construction crews their due, they’d done amazing work in a short amount of time. Just two months ago, he’d had empty acreage, a set of blueprints, and enough money to pay for extra workmen so they could finish the job quickly. Now, he was only a few doors, a balcony, a bathtub, and some finishing touches away from having a completed house.

  “If Mike Marconi stays the hell away.” As soon as the words were muttered, though, he shook his head and pushed all thoughts of the irritating female out of his mind. Damn it, even when she wasn’t there, she was.

  Memories of her face, her voice, her eyes, danced through his brain with appalling regularity. Didn’t seem to matter how many times he told himself he wasn’t interested—she hovered at the edges of his mind. Just enough to irritate him.

  And intrigue him, damn it.

  His AOL account opened up and Lucas scrolled quickly down the list of letters in his in-box. Taking a sabbatical from the lab apparently didn’t mean keeping out of contact. He’d been officially, if temporarily, unemployed for nearly three months and every day he had several letters stacked up demanding his attention. Today was no different. There were five letters marked “priority,” a reminder about a fund-raiser, and . . .

  “Shit.”

  Lucas leaned back in his desk chair and stared at the subject line of one particular letter.

  DON’T DELETE THIS ONE

  He had to get off AOL. Then the bastard wouldn’t know if Lucas was reading his damn e-mails or not. Since last month, there’d been at least one letter a week from his twin brother. Letters Lucas didn’t read. Letters he deleted without even thinking about it. There was nothing Justin could say that Lucas was interested in hearing.

  God knew an apology would be too damn little and about four years too late. Besides, he didn’t want an apology anyway. Wouldn’t change anything. Wouldn’t take them all back in time to set things right. Wouldn’t mean anything but that Justin wanted forgiveness so he wouldn’t be miserable.

  “Too bad,” Lucas muttered thickly. “I like your being miserable.” A quick whip crack of temper spiked through him, then drained away again almost instantly. He wouldn’t go back down that road. Not again. Justin wanted forgiveness? Then he should go see a priest. As for his e-mails . . . “Don’t delete? Why the hell not?”

  Deliberately, he sat forward again, moved the cursor to the box alongside the letter he had no intention of reading and clicked the mouse button. Then he deleted it before he could talk himself out of it. Pushing back from the desk, he left the other letters unanswered and stalked out of the office, as if distancing himself not only from the computer, but from the tenuous connection between him and his brother.

  But it wasn’t that easy. Images of Justin crowded his mind, forcing him to remember that it hadn’t always been like this between them. Growing up, the two of them had been as close as anyone would expect a set of twins to be—despite their differences. Justin had always been the athletic one. The golden child whose room was stacked with trophies from Little League and Pop Warner football. Lucas’s room, on the other hand, was filled with chemistry sets and books. It hadn’t mattered then. They were still “the Gallagher twins”—the two of them against the world.

  But all that ended a long time ago.

  “What’s so damn important that now, all of a sudden, Justin’s trying to reach out and piss me off?”

  Naturally, the only way he’d get that question answered was to read the damn e-mail—which he wasn’t about to do. Lucas scraped his hair back from his face and headed out into the hall. The dark red tiles felt cool beneath his bare feet as he stalked along the hall and down the flight of stairs.

  In fact, the whole house felt cool, despite the September heat outside. And he probably owed Mike Marconi for that, too, he thought in disgust. She was the one who’d insisted he insulate the thick stucco walls with straw. She’d cited a dozen different sources on environmental house construction, but she’d captured him with her last argument. That the early Spanish settlers in California had built their adobe homes with a layer of straw between the walls—keeping their houses cool in summer and warm in winter.

  He ran the flat of his hand over the lightly textured, cream-colored wall on his right. The woman was a pain in the ass, but she knew her stuff. As he hit the bottom of the stairs, he paused to stare at the completed great room in front of him.

  Wide and open, the area fed into the dining room and the kitchen beyond. But here, the walls soared and rough-hewn oak beams, which Mike had insisted on “distressing” with a propane torch, crisscrossed the ceiling. The effect gave the house the feel of its having stood here for centuries.

  “Something else she was right about.” Scowling, he wondered if the woman was ever wrong.

  The window casements were arched a
nd the glass panes leaded into diamond shapes that drew interesting patterns on the shining tile floor. A kiva-shaped fireplace stood in the corner, with built-in bookcases on either side.

  Twin forest-green sofas sat facing each other in the middle of the room. Squatting between the sofas was the table Lucas had found in a furniture shop outside Chandler. A one-of-a-kind piece, it had been fashioned out of an old apothecary bench. Cut down and polished, it shone with a dark rich finish in the afternoon sunlight.

  Heavy rugs dotted the cool tiles and tables and lamps were scattered throughout the room, giving the place warmth while still maintaining its open feel.

  Amazing how much work could get accomplished if you were willing to pay extra to keep the construction firms working around the clock. Not for the first time in his life, Lucas was grateful to his father. If not for him, Lucas would have been forced to live on the salary he made as a research scientist—which would never have afforded him this home.

  The Gallagher money had been made years ago. When his dad invented a simple little device that was used in heart operations around the world. The patent and ensuing royalties brought in more money than anyone could spend in three lifetimes.

  Though God knows, Justin had tried.

  Nope, he told himself. His brother would not ruin this moment for him. Pushing thoughts of the bastard aside, he determinedly relaxed and went back to enjoying his new house.

  He already felt at home here. With the woods surrounding him, the lake behind him, and the ocean just a mile or so away, he had the best of all possible worlds. Isolation that he’d need to work on the book that was due to his publisher in less than six months—and a small town close by for when he needed to see people. Hear voices other than his own—or Mike Marconi’s.

  And when the book was finished, and his year’s sabbatical over, he’d go back to the lab and continue the research that he hoped would one day change the world.

  He grinned at the thought. “No ego problems here,” he murmured.

  Still smiling, he opened the double front doors, stepped onto the wide front porch, and stopped dead. “How does she do it?” he wondered aloud. “How does she know to show up just when I’m relaxing my guard?”