The Home Love Built

By Christine Flynn

ONE WOMAN

Estate sales were routine for paralegal Laura Barrett that is, when the parties involved weren't a harried single dad and his vulnerable tomboy daughter. Suddenly Laura wasn't just the outsider looking in. She'd become a little girl's surrogate mom and the recipient of a handsome man's attention.

ONE MAN

Sheriff Gabe Gallagher could keep order in a community of thousands yet his child was another matter entirely. And so was his heart, where Laura was concerned. He'd been burned once by love, but something about the virginal beauty made him want to be a better man, and a better dad. And to hold fast to the home that once love had built and might fill again.

ONE FAMILY?

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jul 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781460863084

Christine Flynn

Christine Flynn is a regular voice in Harlequin Special Edition and has written nearly forty books for the line.

Book preview

Chapter One

She’d give him five more minutes. If he hadn’t shown up by then, she’d turn around and...give him five more.

The admission was accompanied by a disgusted sigh as Laura Barrett pushed herself from the fender of the twenty-year-old Toyota she’d owned for six years and smoothed the slim skirt of her best suit, a tailored beige classic she’d never have been able to afford had it not been on sale. She was hardly in a position to call the shots where Sheriff Gabe Gallagher was concerned. But she was certainly free to be irritated with him.

She’d arranged last week to have the afternoon off. She’d even worked late the past two evenings to make up the time. But instead of spending the afternoon straightening out the latest glitch in her night-school registration, she was cooling her heels in the middle of an apple orchard after an hour-and-a-half drive from Portland. Russ Winslow, her ex-confirmed-bachelor boss and the sole at-torney in the firm of Russell J. Winslow, Esq., P.C., had asked her, his sole paralegal, to meet with a client.

I forgot you were going to be out, but this guy’s an old friend from college and he needs help. Your schedule is clear this afternoon, Russ had pointed out ever so reasonably. And we can’t afford to have him decide to go somewhere else. Okay?

She and Russ had a great working relationship. He let her leave early on class nights and, until a charming raven-haired slip-and-fall client had taken him out of circulation, Laura had reciprocated by staying on top of his cases when his late evenings ate into his mornings.

She liked Russ.

She just didn’t think much of his friend.

That friend, the sheriff, was to be treated with kid gloves. She’d been asked to meet him at his father’s farm at four o’clock—a time Gallagher had insisted on because it was the only time he could make it—to discuss closing his father’s estate.

It was now after five and he still hadn’t shown up.

Laura tried to console herself with the fact that the registrar’s office at the university was now closed, so she couldn’t do anything to straighten out her schedule today anyway. When that bit of rationalization didn’t work, she figured she might as well take a walk. It was the only way she could think of to burn off the irritation she’d worked up. Aside from that, between work, school and an ultratight budget, it wasn’t often that she got to the country. Taking a walk in such peaceful surroundings was far more productive than stewing over something she could do nothing about.

Pulling the strap of her purse over her shoulder, she drew a breath of air that smelled of warm earth and headed for the walkway curving to the back of the late Joseph Gallagher’s home. The building itself was a serene old two-story farmhouse that sat solid and still in the middle of acres of orchards. It gleamed white in the late-afternoon sun, its paned windows curtained in lace and a railed porch wrapped like an embrace around its sides.

There was a timeless feel to the place, a sense of nostalgia that would have appealed to her even more than it already had, had she been in a better frame of mind. Then there was the feeling of space, wide-open and endless. And the view. In the distance, capped in snow and stark white against the early September sky, Mount Hood rose over the expanse of lawn and the apple and pear orchards that seemed to go on forever.

The setting was magnificent, breathtaking in a picture-postcard sort of way. Angling through the overgrown lawn behind the house, taking in the flower beds blooming despite the weeds’ efforts to choke them out, Laura couldn’t help thinking it a shame no one lived there anymore to tend the place.

Someone was still tending the orchards, though. As she entered one of the wide paths of mowed grass separating row after row of compact trees, it was apparent the fruit on this section of the farm had been picked.

Still trying not to obsess about the glitch, she stepped over what looked like a discarded rake handle and listened to the sound of leaves fluttering in the breeze. She’d noticed workers gathering apples when she’d taken the long, dirt-and-gravel road into the farm, but there was no one in this sun-dappled section of the property to disturb the quiet.

Or so she thought until she noticed a neon-blue bicycle leaning against the base of a tree—and a pair of skinny legs dangling near the trunk.

The knee of one leg sported a scrape. The athletic shoes on the motionless feet hovering five feet off the ground were tied with curly, raspberry-pink laces.

I’m not going, a young voice screamed from inside the leaves. He can’t make me. I’ll run away first. The sound of rustling leaves joined the alarmed chirp of robins scattering into the sky. "I don’t care if he doesn’t want me around. I hate him. I hate him. And I’m not going with you, either."

I’m not going to make you go anywhere.

The girl froze long enough for a new note of defensiveness to enter her voice. Who’re you’!

I could ask the same question. I don’t usually get yelled at by people I don’t know.

Go away.

I’d love to, but I can’t. Laura took another step forward, trying to see through the thick vegetation. It seemed she wasn’t the only one having a bad day. There had been as much pout as petulance in the girl’s sniffled command. I have to wait for someone.

The thought that her sanctuary soon would be further invaded apparently necessitated immediate action. Skinny legs gave way to denim shorts, a pink T-shirt and a high, sunny-blond ponytail as the young girl dropped expertly to the ground, like an apple falling from a tree. The preteen immediately crossed her arms, all but obliterating the Spice Girls logo on her shirt. From fifteen feet away, she looked as defiant as she’d sounded. From half that distance, she looked like four feet of false courage.

The child’s gray eyes were rimmed in red and her freckled nose matched her shoelaces. Tear stains streaked her flushed cheeks.

It was apparent that she’d mistaken Laura for someone who’d been sent to find her. Momentarily at a loss to find herself faced with a stranger, the young girl hugged herself more tightly and eyed the neat coil of Laura’s dark hair, the small gold studs in her ears and her sedate business suit.

I’m Laura. Laura ducked her head, trying to get a better look at the child’s face. Except for the scraped knee, physically the girl seemed unharmed. You’re...?

The child’s response was silence.

This ‘he’ who doesn’t want you around, Laura prefaced, testing a different approach, he’s your...father?

No confirmation was necessary. As if a flag had been dropped, the blond head came up, tear-filled eyes flashing. Ever since Mom divorced us, he hasn’t wanted me around. He dumps me off at my friends or he makes me take stupid dance lessons and gym classes to get me out of the house, and he’s always at work, or at a meeting or ... or with his girlfriend. She dashed away a tear, obviously mortified that it had betrayed her, not caring that her words were tumbling over themselves.

Now he’s just going to get rid of me, she snapped, grabbing her bike’s chrome handlebar and jerking the ten-speed upright. He’s going to ship me off to some old-maid aunt I’ve never met who lives in Montana with a bunch of cats. Her voice, still strident, carried back as she turned away. Not that you care.

Laura’s mouth was open, partly in stunned reaction to the girl’s abject rudeness but mostly because she intended to deny that last accusation.

Ever since Mom divorced us, she’d said.

There was hurt under all that anger. Laura sensed it as surely as if the pain had been her own. It was the same hurt she herself had once felt, the same awful sense of rejection she’d fought from the time she was nine years old and had finally learned to bury. But she didn’t have a chance to say a word. In a blur of pre-adolescent fury, the lanky little girl had mounted her bike. With her long ponytail flying like a banner behind her, she pedaled furiously between the trees, oblivious to the bumps that threated to jar her into one of the sturdy tree trunks she passed every fifteen feet.

The kid was going to break her scrawny little neck.

Laura had already started after her. The very real possibility of broken body parts made her pick up speed. It was the mother’s abandonment Laura had related to, but it was the father the girl had been upset with. Given what the child had said about him wanting so little to do with her, he’d probably be furious if she hurt herself and forced him to spend his precious time in an emergency room.

Her slim skirt hampered her stride. Still, by hitching it up, she made it past a dozen trees in a matter of seconds—only to catch herself when the bike took a sharp right and bumped its way onto a path that led over a hill.

Laura slowed to a stop, her heart hammering, and pushed back a strand of hair that had escaped its tortoiseshell clip. Other than to slow the girl down so she wouldn’t get hurt, there wasn’t a thing she could do even if she did catch her. She could only hope the girl made it safely home—and that she’d find someone, somewhere, who could help her.

Two minutes ago, Laura had merely been irritated. Now, walking back to where she’d dropped her purse, what she felt was totally helpless.

The combination settled over her uneasily as she picked up the brown leather envelope by its strap and brushed off a golden-edged leaf. She didn’t know what the mandatory waiting time was for the friend of a boss, but Gallagher was now officially an hour and a half late and that exceeded even her normally generous allowances. She’d leave her business card on the front door to let him know she’d kept her end of the appointment, but then she was out of there. She wasn’t about to wait around alone in the middle of nowhere for a man who didn’t have the decency to send someone to tell her he couldn’t make it.

Gabe Gallagher was livid. He was also worried. Shelby, his once-sweet, adoring little girl had morphed into a lifeform he no longer recognized.

I’m at my dad’s place. His voice was flat, his tone clipped as he spoke into the patrol car’s radio. Any calls come in, give them to Brady or Tom. I’m off.

Over the faint crackle of static came Tilly Beauchamp’s crisp query. Everything okay, Sheriff?

Everything’s fine, he glibly lied. I just have something to take care of before the council meeting tonight.

You have a good evening, Gabe. Hope we don’t need you before morning.

Roger that, Tilly.

For the ten years he’d been with the Mountain River Sheriff’s Department, first as a deputy then as its head, he and the main dispatcher for Mountain County had ended shift with some variation on that same theme. He found a certain comfort in the ritual, appreciating the familiarity of it even as he slammed the door of his car and frowned at the white Toyota sedan in his dad’s driveway. His work supplied enough in the challenge and surprise department. That was why in his relationships and his personal life, he liked the familiar—which, according to Leanne Carter, his daughter’s school counselor, was probably why he wasn’t adjusting very well to the changes his daughter was going through.

He loved Shelby dearly. He just didn’t like her very much at the moment. Any attempts to communicate with her met with near silence or tears, and some of the stuff she’d pulled lately had been downright embarrassing. He was the sheriff. He was responsible for maintaining law and order in a county of fifteen thousand people. He should be able to control his own offspring.

Not caring to think of everything else he’d lost control of over the past year, he jammed his brown, Mountie-style hat on his head and headed for the back of the house. His housekeeper had called an hour ago to tell him Shelby hadn’t come home after school. She wasn’t with any of her friends, either. Not surprising since her friends’ mothers didn’t want her disruptive influence around their daughters. But before he called his deputies in on the search and effectively announced to the world that he’d lost control of an eleven-year-old—or entertained the possibility that something out of her control had happened—he’d check the orchard.

Since his dad had passed away, Shelby had taken to hanging out in the trees near the house—something she knew she wasn’t supposed to do. Violent crime was low in Mountain River, but harvest time meant more itinerant workers in the area. It had been Ernie Ortega, the trusted crew chief he’d kept on to bring in his dad’s apple harvest, who had seen her there.

Gabe’s long legs ate up the ground, his stride fueled with annoyance that increased by the second. There was a fair amount of uncertainty behind what he felt, too, an almost helpless feeling that came whenever he dealt with Shelby. But anger was easier to deal with.

That fury was carved in his face as he scowled at the once-meticulously pruned rhododendron bush overtaking the side of the house and rounded the corner by the back porch.

Laura had her business card in her hand and was fastening the flap of her purse as she followed the curved walkway around the corner of the house. She was toying with the idea of leaving a note on the back of her card—something about just how long she’d waited—when, moving full steam ahead, she glanced up to find a mountain of very official-looking brown-and-beige uniform bearing down on her.

It was no contest. Caught mid-stride, she had no time to brace herself. She didn’t even have time to gasp before she felt her body jarred from toes to teeth. The air left her lungs at the impact, her head hit what felt like cement and the soles of her pumps slipped from under her as if she were standing on ice. Her hands had barely shot out to grab for support when, like a ball bouncing off a brick wall, she flew backward, only to have that momentum changed with the snap of her head. Hands like vice grips clamped her arms and she was hauled forward again.

What stopped her this time was the wall of a man’s chest—and a pair of arms that locked around her back as the wall turned in a quick double-step that somehow managed to keep them both upright.

Something sharp jabbed above her right breast. Feeling heat sear from her neck to her knees, she became aware of a heart beating strongly beneath her ear. Her head had been pushed to that hard male chest as if to protect her neck. There was something extraordinarily protective about the position. Extraordinarily provocative. The sensation engulfing her was one she’d never experienced in her entire life. Never even come close to feeling. But in the scattered moments before she realized she wasn’t going to fall, it registered somewhere in the fringes of her consciousness that this was how being cared for might feel.

Her own heart was racing when she felt the arm on her back ease its hold and the hand at her head slip to her shoulder. A moment later, she faced a shiny brass star above the pocket of a dark-brown uniform shirt, a neatly knotted tan tie and shoulders wide enough to block daylight.

It occurred to her, vaguely, that when five-and-a-half feet of slender female met six-feet-two of solid granite, it wasn’t the rock that yielded.

Are you all right?

The deep voice rolled through her, a little like low thunder, or the slow burn of old brandy.

I’m...fine. Inhaling a breath that smelled faintly of crisp aftershave and breath mint, she tipped back her head. The hard, angular line of his jaw gave way to a chiseled mouth, a thin noble nose and eyes the gray of old pewter.

The look in those eyes lasered through her, authority, irritation and concern melding into one.

Lifting his hand, he pushed back the loose strand of hair from her face. I knocked the wind out of you. And your neck— he growled, cupping strong fingers at the top of her spine to test the delicate vertabrae —nothing snapped, did it?

Laura shook her head. At least, she thought she did. The feel of his hand skimming her skin was as unnerving as the sensations coursing inward from every other place his body had connected with hers. There was gentleness in that touch, but it was the fierce concern in his beautifully carved features that made regaining her equilibrium a feat of sheer will.

Gabe felt her ease her grip on his sides. The woman had come out of the blue. So had the jolt of heat he’d felt when her soft, slender shape registered a split second before he’d met her lovely brown eyes. His reaction to make sure she wasn’t hurt was instinctive, something too basic to question. He just wasn’t sure where the need to soothe her had come from.

Or the need to touch.

Those had felt instinctive, too. They had also surprised the daylights out of him considering how long it had been since those particular instincts had worked. They were working fine now, though, prompted as much by pure physical need as the fact that he’d plowed into her with all the finesse of a bull.

The thought of how his body was responding to hers made him drop his hands as if she’d just turned to hot coal. Releasing her, he touched the back of his hand to the corner of his mouth. Her head had bumped the underside of his chin. But he was more interested at the moment in finding out who she was than in the tiny cut inside his bottom lip.

Looking shaken, trying to hide it, she took another step back as his glance moved from her flawless skin and silken lashes to the rich, sable-colored hair coiled at her nape. Though she did nothing to detract from her delicate features, she didn’t do much to play them up, either. Her lush, very kissable-looking mouth bore only a tint of pale peach and her curvy little figure was camouflaged by a tailored beige suit that was conservative enough for a courtroom.

That last thought re-engaged his memory. With a mental groan, he remembered the appointment with his attorney’s paralegal.

You’re from Russ Winslow’s office, he muttered, feeling his stomach tighten. She wasn’t at all what he’d expected. Not from Russ’s description of her. But he was even more displeased with the obligation she represented than the physical responses she’d elicited. One could be denied. The other would live with him forever. Miss...Burkett.

Barrett, she corrected, eyeing the corner of his mouth. Scrambling for professionalism, she smoothed the front of her jacket and held out her hand. Laura Barrett. I have the feeling you’re Gabe Gallagher.

You sound as if you hope you’re wrong,

Her response to his attempt at lightness was a tight smile he missed completely. Engulfing her hand long enough for its strength and its softness to register, he glanced over her shoulder, searching the trees.

You sure you’re okay? he asked, now more distracted than concerned.

Positive. Releasing her grip, Laura sank to her heels to pick up the purse he’d knocked from her hand. How about your lip?

It’s nothing. Look, he began, hauling her up by the elbow, I’m sorry I kept you waiting, but something came up that I have to take care of. We’ll have to talk later.

Later?

That’s right He wasn’t doing anything until he found and figuratively throttled his progeny. On top of everything else, Shelby had now caused him to miss an appointment. Have you seen a little girl around here?

Laura Barrett didn’t seem to rattle easily. She already had her composure back—which made it relatively easy for him to see the irritation in her gold-flecked eyes. Though she did a commendable job of curbing it, he’d have to be as dense as cement not to know why it was there. He’d kept her waiting for well over an hour.

At his question, however, that wet-hen look had faltered.

A little blond girl in a pink Spice Girls T-shirt?

I don’t know what was on it. I was just told that it’s pink. Shelby had