Read Seeing Stars: A Loveswept Classic Romance for Free Online

paper she’d spread. “You can set the table when it’s time to eat.”
    “Fair enough.” He went to the stove and tested the heat of the burner by waving his hand over it. “Coffee’s done.”
    “Here, I’ll pour us some.” She crossed to the hard-pine hutch where she kept the blue-marble enamelware that Mama had set up housekeeping with and got two cups.
    “
I’ll
pour,” he insisted.
    And to Dovie’s everlasting amazement, Nick did exactly that—filling the cups he’d taken from her without spilling a drop.
    “I listen for the liquid to reach the right level and then I stop,” he explained, correctly surmising that she was dying of curiosity. Turning, he held out her cup. “Cream or sugar?”
    “Will wonders never cease?” Her fingers brushed his when she took the cup, and she stood like a statue feeling the touch of a magic wand, suddenly imbued with life-giving current.
    “I hope not.” Something good was happening to him,
had
been happening to him all morning. He was laughing again. Arguing again. Caring again. It was like opening an old wound that hadn’thealed properly and pouring antiseptic on it. Agonizing as hell. But worth it, if one could look beyond the pain.
    Nick smiled, flowing with the feelings, and unerringly clinked his cup gently against hers in a toast. “To wonders. May they never cease.”
    “I’ll drink to that,” Dovie said, and did.
    Outside her clapboard house, a banshee wind howled and the snow tittered its secrets against the windows. Inside, steaming black coffee and a budding attraction warmed two strangers through and through.
    “Would you mind fetching me an onion from the pantry?” Dovie peeled and diced a couple of cold cooked potatoes she’d found in the crisper. “It’s the first door to your left,” she added automatically. “The onions are hanging in a braid on a hook to your right.”
    Nick brought back the whole shooting match, because he had no idea in hell how to remove one onion. “Did I smell pumpkin and dried apples in there?”
    “Sure did.” She cut an onion off the bottom of the braid, peeled and minced it, and dropped the pieces into the frying pan to brown in a teaspoon of bacon drippings. “Thanks to my garden, my hogs, and the occasional trout, I rarely have to shop for groceries. In fact my only cash income is from this farm; the hogs provide most of my money.”
    “You raise hogs?” If she had suggested they goskinny-dipping right after breakfast, he couldn’t have been more amazed.
    “Prize blue guineas,” she boasted.
    “Isn’t that dangerous?”
    “No. Why?”
    “Because hogs bite.”
    “Only under duress.” Lifting the onions from the frying pan with a slotted spoon, she mixed them with the corned beef and potatoes in a blue wooden bowl. “Anyway, I’ve got the most laid-back hogs this side of the Mason-Dixon line.”
    “You’re so little, though,” he argued. “What would you do if one of them attacked you?”
    “Wave a white flag?”
    “Be serious, will you?” His stentorian tone told her he was taking this very seriously.
    “Look,” she said, then sighed. “I know you’re concerned about me. And I appreciate it—I really do. But with Christmas right around the corner and my sister-in-law ready to deliver at the drop of a hat, being attacked by a hog is the least of my worries.”
    Dovie shaped the corned-beef mixture into patties and arranged them in the oil sizzling in the skillet. “Besides, blue guineas aren’t that big and I’m not all that little, although it’s certainly nice of you to say so.”
    What in the sam scratch got into Nick he couldn’t say, but the next thing he knew, he’d taken two steps backward and cocked his head tothe side as though he were sizing her up. “How tall are you, anyway?”
    “Five foot none,” she answered saucily.
    A crooked grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Cute.”
    “Don’t ever call a short person
cute.
”
    “Why not?”
    “Because she