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  She blinked in obvious surprise and there was a long, awkward silence.

  “You have a sign in your window? A room for rent?” he prompted.

  She used her arms to move herself backward and then gestured for him to step into the foyer. “Adam Benson,” she mused, her eyes narrowed as her gaze held his. “I heard you were a drunk.”

  Adam took a step back, stunned by her unexpected words. “I was,” he admitted with painful honesty. “But I’m not drinking anymore. And the rumors I heard about you were that you’re a sour, rude and cranky woman. The verdict is still out on that.”

  Her eyes narrowed even more. “You have a big ranch on the edge of town. Why would you need to rent a room?”

  “My brother, his new wife and son have all moved into the ranch house and I’m looking for a change of address.” His decision to leave the house where he’d grown up was far more complicated than that, but he figured Melanie didn’t need to know the details. “So, can I see the room?”

  “It’s actually more than just a room. Follow me.” She moved out of the foyer and into a large, airy living room with a staircase that led up to the second floor. She stopped at the foot of the staircase, the dainty frown still etched in her forehead.

  For somebody who had had a sign hanging in the window for months, she seemed reluctant to allow him to see the space she was renting. Was her reluctance based on the fact that he was a male? Or was it specifically aimed at him personally? Certainly the reputation of all the Benson brothers had taken a beating in the past year, but over the past couple of months things had calmed down.

  “Look, Ms. Brooks, I just need a place to hang my hat. I’m not looking for any trouble. I’ll pay the rent on time and be a respectful tenant. Speaking of rent, what are you looking to get each month?”

  She told him a figure that seemed a little high and he wondered if she’d done it on purpose to chase him away or if she’d intended to ask for that kind of money from anyone who showed an interest.

  “Sounds good,” he replied.

  “I’m actually renting the entire second floor. I’m certainly not using any of the rooms upstairs.” A touch of bitterness laced her voice. “Go on up and have a look around.”

  Adam nodded, and as he climbed the stairs, he wondered what had put her in the wheelchair. He reminded himself that it—that she—was none of his business. He was simply looking for peace and quiet, for a haven where he could gather himself together and figure out what exactly he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

  The upstairs was comprised of three bedrooms and a bathroom. One of the rooms was set up like a sitting room, with a sofa, a television and an overstuffed chair with a reading lamp behind it. Adam could easily visualize himself in that big chair in the evenings, leisurely reading the newspaper or a novel.

  The view from the window was of Main Street, and he stood for a moment and looked outside, trying to get a feel for the space.

  The bedrooms were decorated in earth tones, making them feel neither masculine nor feminine but simply functional. The larger of the two bedrooms was located next to the sitting room and also had a view of Main Street out the window. Everything was neat and tidy and it all felt oddly right to him.

  He wasn’t sure what Melanie might have heard about him or his brothers, and she appeared to be the cranky sort, but surely they wouldn’t have much interaction if he moved in here.

  It was just a room, not a relationship, he reminded himself as he walked back down the stairs. Melanie had remained where he’d left her, at the foot of the stairs and she watched him solemnly as he hit the lower landing.

  “We’d share kitchen space,” she said. “You’d get the upper cabinets and I use the lower ones. You buy your own food and cook it and clean up the mess afterward.” She said the words resolutely, as if she’d come to some sort of decision about him while he’d been upstairs. “It would be a month-to-month lease. I can get rid of you or you can move out with thirty days’ notice. If you drink, you’re out. If you’re a messy pig, you’re out, and if you think I’m rude or whatever, then you deal with it or move out.”

  He watched her closely, seeking any sign of a sense of humor lurking in her amazing blue eyes, but there didn’t appear to be any. It was almost as if she were daring him to move in, confident that within thirty days he’d either want to move or she’d have a good reason to kick him out.

  “I’ll take it,” he replied. “I’m assuming you want first and last months’ rent along with a deposit of an additional month?”

  She nodded. “When would you want to move in?”

  “Tomorrow morning around nine?”

  She released a deep sigh, although Adam couldn’t tell if the sigh was of relief or apprehension. “That would be fine,” she replied as she headed back toward the front door.

  He followed behind her, noting how her hair shone in the sunlight that danced in through the windows. As they reached the front door, he turned and faced her once again.

  Once again he was struck by her beauty. Her features were classic, high cheekbones emphasizing the slenderness of her face and her straight, perfect nose. She had a generous mouth, which might have been incredibly sexy if the corners weren’t turned downward. Those lips would be inviting if she’d just smile a little bit.

  For just a moment as he gazed at her, he saw a hint of vulnerability in the depths of her eyes, and a surge of unexpected protectiveness welled up inside him. How did she manage to live here by herself?

  He mentally shook himself. She obviously didn’t need a rescuer and that wasn’t his role here. Besides, he had a feeling that if he expressed any desire to help her, she’d kick him to the curb before he’d managed to hang a shirt in one of the closets upstairs.

  “Then I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” she said as they reached the front door. “In the meantime I’ll write up an agreement for you to sign when you come back tomorrow.”

  “That sounds good,” he replied agreeably. He started to step out on the porch but paused and turned back to her as she said his name.

  “This is all new territory for me, sharing my space. I’m sure we’re going to have some kinks to work out, and I forgot to tell you I don’t allow music. If you must listen to a radio or whatever, then either get earphones or make sure it’s low enough that I can’t hear it down here.”

  He placed his hat back on his head and offered her a smile. “I guess we’ll figure it out as we go.”

  It wasn’t until he was back in his truck that he wondered if he’d made a mistake. Although she’d agreed to him renting the space, it was obvious she wasn’t thrilled about it. And what was the deal about music? Odd. Very odd.

  But the ranch house where he’d been alone for so long now once again held the sounds of a happy family. Nick, Courtney and little Garrett filled the spaces that had been empty for so long, their love lighting areas that had been full of darkness.

  The truth of the matter was for the past two years Adam’s heart had been filled with the darkness of loss and betrayal and shame, and he wasn’t at all sure he was ready to leave that darkness behind.

  His brother and his family would be better off if Adam wasn’t there. They needed time to build their family without him being a third wheel.

  This was the right move to make, he told himself. He clicked the two chips together in his pocket and then started the truck and pulled away from the house and headed down the street toward the Cowboy Café.

  All he knew was that he needed a space of his own to figure out who he was aside from a man still grieving for the sister who had been killed in a car accident two years before, a man still fighting the desire to lose himself in the bottom of a bottle of booze.

  Finally he had to come to terms with the guilt and a faint simmer of apprehension that threatened to grab him by the throat when he thoug
ht of Sam, the older brother he loved, who was currently in jail, facing charges of attempted murder.

  Now Adam was moving into a house with a woman who obviously had issues of her own. Once again he wondered what had happened to her that had placed her in a wheelchair and why nobody in town seemed to know much about Melanie Brooks despite the fact that her mother had been a resident of the small town all her life.

  He frowned and reminded himself that no matter how pretty he thought she was, Melanie Brooks was a mystery he definitely didn’t need to explore.

  * * *

  It was almost nine that evening when Melanie wheeled herself into the room that had once been a formal dining area and had been turned into a downstairs bedroom after her mother had taken ill.

  At the time of the renovation Melanie had had no idea that she was overseeing the construction of a room that would eventually become part of her own prison.

  With the grace of a lame elephant she managed to pull herself up and out of the wheelchair and careen onto the bed. She straightened to a sitting position, undressed and then pulled her nightgown over her head and released a deep sigh of exhaustion.

  She ignored the chronic tingling pain that radiated down her right leg as she reached for the lamp at the side of the bed and turned it off.

  Adam Benson. She’d been surprised when he’d shown up on her doorstep, inquiring about the room, but she’d been positively stunned by an immediate, visceral attraction to the long-legged cowboy.

  Tilly Graves, her mother’s best friend, who now came in to clean and help out three times a week, had gossiped a lot about the Benson brothers over the last couple of months, but she’d never mentioned that Adam Benson had shiny black hair with just enough curl to make a woman’s fingers itch with the need to ruffle through it. Tilly had never said that Adam had blue-gray eyes with long dark lashes that a woman might covet.

  Finally, Tilly had never mentioned that Adam Benson had broad shoulders, slim hips and long legs that would easily turn a woman’s head in his direction.

  She stared up at the dark bedroom ceiling and felt the frown that tugged her lips downward. She’d hoped to rent the rooms to a woman. That had been her goal when she’d initially hung the sign, but it had been months since then and Adam had been the first and only person to inquire about the room. Besides, the truth of the matter was that Melanie desperately needed the rent money.

  It had never been her plan to be stuck here in the town she’d escaped on her high school graduation day, bringing in only a disability check that barely met minimal living expenses.

  This wasn’t supposed to have happened to her. She’d had a life plan since she’d been seven years old and no place in that plan had there been a wheelchair.

  She closed her eyes as tears burned and the familiar taste of bitterness surged up the back of her throat. Rude? Sour and cranky? Is that really what people were whispering about her in town?

  She told herself she didn’t care what other people thought about her, that she had every reason to be all those things and more, but the truth of the matter was his words had stung her.

  She certainly hadn’t had much interaction with anyone since her mother’s death. Once a week her groceries were delivered by a teenager who worked at the Shop and Go, and a month ago she’d had to contact Abe Dell, the local plumber, to take care of a leak beneath the kitchen sink. Had she been cranky with those people? Probably, she thought with a touch of shame. She felt as if she’d been stuck in a place of anger for a while, but surely she had good reason.

  For all intents and purposes her life had ended seven months ago at the bottom of the stairs that led down to the basement. It had been exactly a week after she’d buried her mother.

  Still grieving, she had been in the process of packing up some of her mother’s things to donate to a local charity. She had started down the stairs to retrieve a couple of empty boxes when her foot missed a rung and plunged her into a free fall.

  Melanie’s right leg had been bothering her for weeks before the fall, but as a professional dancer she’d been accustomed to aches and pains for so long that she’d ignored the warning signs of unusual numbness and burning.

  The fall hadn’t been what had put her in the wheelchair. The stumble on the stairs had simply been a symptom of a more serious underlying condition.

  She now shifted positions in the bed and consciously willed away thoughts of that day and the moment when she’d realized any dreams, any hopes she’d once had for her future had been destroyed.

  She squeezed her eyes more tightly closed and sought the sweet oblivion of sleep. It didn’t take long. She dreamed she was dancing, executing perfect pirouettes and leaps that suspended her in midair as music swelled in her chest, filled her soul.

  Ballet, jazz and tap, she did it all and she did it well. She’d been born to dance and in her dreams she was all that she was meant to be.

  The stark light of morning sunshine streaming through the nearby window pulled her from her night of happy dreams and into the glare of her harsh reality. The right foot that she’d once concentrated so hard to point had betrayed her, now dangling in a permanent point, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t flex it to a flat, walking position.

  Peripheral neuropathy and drop foot were the official diagnoses that had put her in a wheelchair and taken away her career as a professional dancer.

  For three months she’d had every neurological test there was in an attempt to find the problem and fix it, but nobody had been able to pinpoint the source of the condition, and it had been written up as lumbosacral plexopathy—nerves that didn’t work right, for some unknown reason.

  With the sun getting brighter and the clock reading almost eight, Melanie made the clumsy move from the bed to the wheelchair and wheeled herself into the adjoining bathroom.

  Thankfully the bathroom shower was equipped with all the special equipment it required for her to be independent. And she had to be independent. Other than Tilly there was nobody in her life and she knew the odds of having anyone else in her life on a permanent basis were minimal. She was damaged goods and would only be a burden on anyone.

  It was twenty to nine when she finally left the bathroom, freshly showered and dressed in a pair of soft fleece navy blue jogging pants and a white and navy T-shirt.

  She headed for the kitchen, her heart beating just a little bit faster than usual, knowing that today was the day she would start to share her house with Adam Benson.

  While her emotions screamed that it was a big mistake, her logical side reminded her that renting the upstairs to him was a necessary evil. Her mother had loved this house and now it was all that Melanie had, her only security in the world. Although it had been paid off several years ago by her mother, the yearly real estate taxes would soon be due and she didn’t want to give the obnoxious Craig Jenkins any opportunity to sneak in and grab the house out from under her because she couldn’t afford to pay them.

  She was sorry she’d ever contacted the real estate developer, but at the time she had called him, her intention had been to sell the house and get back to her dancing life in New York City as quickly as possible.

  Now she had no life to return to and this house in the small Oklahoma town where she’d grown up had become her source of safety, her only real security.

  It took her only minutes to fix a pot of coffee, and by the time she’d poured her first cup of the morning, a knock sounded at the door.

  Nervous tension jumped in her veins as she glanced at the clock and realized it was precisely nine and her new roommate of sorts had arrived.

  When she opened the door to let him in, she was once again struck by his hot handsomeness. Clad in blue jeans that hugged the length of his long legs, and in a gray T-shirt that made his eyes appear more gray than blue, he looked as if he could be a model for the quintessentia
l cowboy.

  “Good morning,” he said as he swept his black hat off his head.

  “Morning,” she replied. “You’re right on time.”

  He smiled at her and she felt the warmth of it deep in the pit of her stomach. “I’ve always thought that punctuality was a virtue.” He gestured toward the curb, where a black pickup was parked. “I’ve got things to move in. Should I do it now, or do you want me to sign the agreement and give you a check first?”

  He carried with him an energy that seemed to pulse in the air around him, an energy that seductively drew her to him. “We can take care of the business end of things after you’ve moved everything inside,” she replied. She wheeled herself backward. “I’ll be in the kitchen when you’re finished.”

  She didn’t wait for his response. Quickly pivoting her chair around, she escaped into the kitchen and moved to the table that held her cup of coffee.

  Maybe it was because she’d isolated herself for the past six months that Adam touched a chord inside her. He appeared so big, so capable, with strong shoulders that could hold the weight of the world.

  Since her mother’s funeral seven months ago the only people she’d seen on a regular basis were Tilly and Craig Jenkins and various doctors and nurses in Oklahoma City. Craig reminded her of a snake, with his hooded dark eyes and slender frame. Surely it wasn’t any wonder that she’d react to the first attractive man who entered her small, narrow sphere.

  She cast her gaze outside the window, where a light breeze stirred the trees, tugging some of the dying leaves to the ground. She’d always loved autumn, when the summer heat released its grip on the Big Apple. With her dance shoes in a canvas bag slung over her shoulder, she’d race from audition to audition with the welcome cool fall air on her face.

  Now the dying leaves outside mirrored what she felt inside her soul and she had a feeling she would always hate this time of year...the time of her virtual demise.