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his truck.
    Mirabel might be a prude. She might be pretending to be prudish to discourage his advances. She might have an aunt or grandmother nearby who would give her grief about a male guest. She might have a boyfriend who would suspect her of cheating.
    The last explanation seemed most likely, but he thought he would have heard of a boyfriend by now. If it came down to it, he would just have to ask her. He couldn’t have sex with someone else’s woman.
    He was getting way ahead of himself here. Still, he went to the drugstore for condoms, just in case.
    After a leisurely dinner, Gerry left his friend and walked to Grandpa Arthur’s house, arriving circumspectly by the alley as Mirabel had asked. She had drawn all the curtains and left on a few low lights. He made a tour of the house to see what needed to be done. Her bedroom and Arthur’s, both at the back of the house, were intact. The roomabove the living room could use some work. As for the bedroom above the dining room where his mother and aunts had slept . . .
    He opened the door and flicked on the light.
    The ceiling was gone, and through a hole in the roof above, the waxing moon shone indifferently down. Debris covered the three twin beds. There was a hole in the badly buckled, partly rotted floor. This was way worse than he’d imagined.
    What the hell had Grandpa Arthur been thinking to let this happen to his beautiful old house?
    Vengeance, Gerry thought with a sigh. He didn’t know what had caused the breach between Arthur and his two remaining daughters, but it had been fierce and enduring. There’d been no one else to give the house to, since Gerry didn’t want it, so he’d decided to leave them a ruin that they would have to spend a fortune on to fix—either that or sell it for a pittance.
    Shaking his head, Gerry shut the bedroom door and brought some boxes from Arthur’s closet down to the kitchen. He brewed a pot of coffee, made a few calls, and set to work going through them. Two hours and four boxes later, the front door banged open.
    “Gerry? Are you all right?”
    The panic in Mirabel’s voice brought him leaping to his feet, even as she slammed the door and dashed down the hall to the kitchen.
    They collided in the doorway. “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
    She slumped against him, shaking all over. He couldn’t have stopped himself if he’d wanted to. He gathered her into his arms.
    * * *
    Oh
. Mirabel leaned into him and closed her eyes. “I forgot to lock the door of the ruined bedroom. Arthur almost fell through the floor. I saw the light on up there, and—”
    “It’s all right, darlin’.” He held her close and pressed a kiss on her hair. “I took one look and shut the door again. I must have forgotten to turn off the light.”
    “Thank God.” She swallowed the threat of tears. She meant to push away, but her arms went around him instead.
    He wasn’t hurt or dead, and he smelled marvelous. His hands rested warm and hard on her back. She shuddered against him.
    He pulled her closer, his hands shifting slightly. Tentatively—because he was that kind of guy—but it wouldn’t last long. He would lose control. They all did.
    She shouldn’t let this happen.
    But she didn’t want to let go, not yet, so she laid her cheek against his chest and said, “Arthur was— Before he met me, he was planning to leave the house to April and June.”
    His lips rested lightly on her hair. “What was left of it.”
    “It’s awful. Every time I think of it, it makes me sad.”
    “Don’t think about it, then,” Gerry said. Typical guy; no doubt he wanted to think of something else entirely.
    So did Mirabel, but . . . “People are supposed to
love
their families,” she said. “Arthur was such a darling. He loved you, and he loved your mother. He had lots of friends, and his employees at the club adored him.”
    “Mmm,” Gerry said, one hand splayed across her back, the other hot on her waist. Oh,
God
, it felt good. She