Read Michael's father for Free Online

once. The first was that he hadn't heard Colleen laugh nearly often enough these past months. The second was that Megan Roarke seemed to grow more attractive every time he saw her.
    She'd been stirring something on the stove but, as if feeling his gaze, she turned toward him. Their eyes clashed across the big kitchen. She was flushed from the heat of whatever she was cooking—and whatever it was smelled damned good, he noticed absently. The French braid that held her hair was a Uttle less neat than it had been when she arrived. Soft tendrils of moonlight-colored hair had slipped loose to curl against her forehead and neck. There was a smudge of flour on her cheek, a smattering of tomato sauce on the plain white apron she'd wrapped around her slender waist, not a trace of lipstick on her soft mouth.
    And it took every ounce of self-control he possessed to keep from walking across the kitchen to drag her into his arms and kiss her senseless.
    **Kel." Colleen's voice held more Ufe than he'd heard in weeks. "Megan made spaghetti for dinner and homemade French bread."
    "You made bread?" So that was part of what he'd been smelling, he thought, his eyes finding the towel-wrapped loaves on the counter.
    "You can't have spaghetti without garlic toast," she said. Her voice was a little breathless, and he won-

    dered if it was because she'd been working or because her pulse was as erratic as his.
    "There's plenty of bread in the freezer," he said. He'd been holding his hat, and now he set it on one of the hooks next to the door. He reached up to run his fingers through his hair, ruffling it into thick dark waves.
    "It's not the same as fresh."
    He studied her for a moment and then his mouth curved in a slow smile. "Rolling out the big guns early?"
    Megan widened her eyes innocently, but he saw the laughter in them and knew she understood his question. She was out to persuade him to keep her on after the trial week was up and she wasn't above using homemade bread as a bribe.
    "Don't you like fresh bread?"
    "Yeah, I like it." Worse, he was starting to think he might like her, too.
    Kel became aware of his little sister's curious gaze darting back and forth between the two of them and he quickly subdued the lingering trace of a smile as he went to the sink to wash his hands. He sometimes forgot that Colleen was not a little girl anymore. She was definitely old enough to pick up on any hint of something personal going on between her brother and the new housekeeper.
    Megan turned to the stove and gave the spaghetti sauce a quick stir, aware that her fingers were not quite steady. Kel Bryan was one potent hunk of male pulchritude. In fact she'd never met a more pulchritudi-nous man in her Ufe. But just because he set butterflies

    aflutter in her stomach, that didn't mean she had to lose control of the situation. If only she knew what the situation was.
    The fourth person at dinner turned out to be a friend of the family named Gun Lars^i. According to KeFs introduction. Gun was working on the Lazy B for the summer. Megan couldn't remember ever being in the same room with so much pure masculine beauty—or so much sheer size, she added, looking from one man to the other. Was it something in the Wyoming water that caused men to grow to the size of redwoods? Or had she just stumbled into the land of the giants?
    Gun matched Kel inch for inch in height. She wouldn't have thought it possible but his shoulders were even broader and his hands looked big enough to crush granite boulders like cream puffs. But the resemblance between the two men ended with their size. Gun's hair was the color of just ripened wheat and his eyes were a clear, laughing blue.
    *'You're much prettier than Grade," Gun said by way of greeting.
    "Thank you." Megan's hand disappeared in his, her eyes widening as she took in the classic perfection of his features. The man could have posed for a statue of Adonis, she thought, momentarily struck dumb. But she felt none of the