Built to Last (Harlequin Heartwarming) Read Free

turned to hug Emma. “How are you, kiddo?” he asked in a low, gruff voice in which Jo recognized gentleness.
    “Uncle Ryan!” Emma’s pixie face brightened. “Cool! Are you lonely?”
    “Nah. I just like all of you.” He touched Ginny’s shoulder. “Hi, Hummingbird.”
    Hummingbird? The tiny bird’s quivering energy seemed the furthest thing from Ginny’s repressed, frightened self.
    But the name provoked a small smile, quickly hidden but startling.
    The man—Kathleen’s brother—smiled in return, seemingly content, and said, “Do I get a cup of coffee?”
    “There’s spaghetti left,” Emma told him eagerly. “I can warm some up for you if you want.”
    “Thanks, but I’ve eaten.”
    “We,” his sister said sternly, “were just going to have an official round-table meeting to discuss rules.”
    “I can make up rules,” he said obligingly.
    “ You don’t live here. Contrary to appearances.”
    “I’ll referee.”
    With a tartness Jo appreciated, Kathleen said, “Unlike men when they get together to play, women rarely need a mediator.”
    Jo could see the resemblance between sister and brother, both what she thought of as beautiful people. Kathleen, though, had the carriage and confidence of someone who had grown up with money—the easy poise, the natural ability to command, the chic French braid—while her brother had shaggy hair and wore faded jeans, work boots and a sweat-stained white T-shirt under a torn chambray shirt, hanging open. His hands were brown, calloused and bleeding on one knuckle. He looked like a working man. Intrigued, Jo continued to watch their byplay as Kathleen told him with mock firmness that he could stay and eavesdrop, but not contribute—unless he wanted his name on their chore list.
    Ryan chose to pull up a chair just outside the circle when the women sat back down at the table. He hovered behind Ginny and Emma, elbows resting on the backs of their chairs, his quiet murmurs eliciting gigglesthat Emma let peal and Ginny buried behind a hand.
    Kathleen had grabbed a pen and spiral notebook, now open in front of her. “Well, let me say first that I’m really glad you’re both here.” She smiled warmly first at Helen and then Jo. “I think this is going to be fun.”
    Jo had thought so, too, until she’d nearly chickened out before knocking on the front door. Despite her apprehension, she let herself believe that it really would be. Both girls still knew how to laugh. Whatever troubled them, they weren’t beyond hope. Sure, she hadn’t wanted to live with kids, but they weren’t hers. She’d probably see them only at meals—and apparently Emma wouldn’t be sitting down with them for hers, if she ate any at all.
    “Now,” Kathleen continued, “I genuinely don’t want to be in charge. I hope we can agree on how we want to run the house, the levels of cleanliness and noise and privacy we all find acceptable. It’s one reason I chose both of you, women close to my own age. I thought we’d be likelier to enjoy the same music, have the same…well, standards, I guess.” She looked around. “I’ll start. I figured we should divvy up chores.”
    They decided each would cook dinner two nights a week, with Sunday either a joint effort or an everyone-on-their-own day. Other meals, they’d take care of individually. The two who hadn’t cooked would clean the kitchen together after dinner.
    “Unless Ryan invites himself,” his sister said dryly, “in which case he can clean up. By himself.”
    “Hey!” he protested. “I’ve been known to bring pizza. Or Chinese takeout.”
    “You should see his refrigerator at home,” Kathleen told the others. “Soda, cheese, mustard… Classic male on his own.”
    The question, Jo decided, was why such a gorgeous man was on his own at all. He had to be in his early thirties. Guys with smiles and charm like his had been snapped up long before his age. So…what was the catch?
    Oblivious, thank goodness, to Jo’s