around after you asking more questions you don’t want to answer.”
She had a point about that. It wasn’t likely she’d respond to his dismissal and just go away. Reluctantly, Slade relinquished the broom and watched as she went to work with a vengeance on the wide-plank oak floors in the living room. She attacked the job with the same cheerfulness and efficiency with which she ran Laurie’s professional life.
When she glanced up and caught Slade staring at her, she grinned. “Get to work. I said I’d help, not do the whole job.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said at once, and turned on the vacuum. As he ran it over the carpet in the bedrooms, he could hear her singing with wildly off-key enthusiasm. He wondered if Laurie had ever heard one of her country music hits murdered quite the way Val was doing it.
With her help, he had the house tidied up in no time. Fresh air was drifting through the rooms and filling them with the sweet scent of recently cut grass and a hint of Janet’s roses from the gardens at the main house.
An odd sensation came over him as he stood in the living room and gazed about, listening to Val stirring around in the kitchen. The place felt like home, like some place a man could put down roots. For a man who’d spent most of his adult life on the road, it was a terrifying sensation.
* * *
Slade Sutton was the most exasperating, frustrating man on the face of the earth. Val watched him take off without so much as a thank-you. He looked as if he were being chased by demons as he fled the house. The limp from his accident was more exaggerated as he tried to move quickly. She knew his expression, if she’d been able to see his face, would be filled with annoyance over his ungainly gait and, most of all, over her.
Of course, he had that look a lot when he was trying to get away from her, she admitted with a sigh. It had been months since she’d first met him, and she could honestly say that she didn’t know him one bit better now than she had when she’d paid her first visit to White Pines.
No, that wasn’t quite true. Today she’d learned he had a daughter. Amazing. How could anyone keep a secret like that, especially around the Adamses, who made her look like an amateur when it came to nosing into other people’s lives? Laurie had tried to keep Harlan Patrick’s baby a secret from him and that had lasted less than six months. Of course, the tabloids had had a hand in leaking that news and sending Harlan Patrick chasing after Laurie.
A lot of women would have given up if they’d had the same reception from Slade that Val had had. Why go through the torment of rejection after rejection? Why poke and prod and get nothing but a shrug or a grunted acknowledgment for her persistence? She’d asked herself that a hundred times while she’d been in Nashville this last time. She’d hoped that a little distance from the ranch would give her some perspective, maybe dull the attraction she felt for him. After all, Slade Sutton wasn’t the last man on earth.
But he was the only one in years who’d intrigued her, the only one who hadn’t been using her to get closer to Laurie. In fact, he was the only man she knew who barely spared a glance for the gorgeous superstar. Val had caught him looking at her, though, sneaking glances when he thought she wasn’t aware of him. Maybe that hint of interest, reluctant as it was, was what kept her going.
Or maybe it had something to do with how incredibly male he was. Handsome as sin, a little rough around the edges, he had eyes a woman could drown in. She’d discovered that when he finally took off his sunglasses long enough to allow anyone to catch a glimpse of them. A dimple flirted at the corner of his mouth on the rare occasions when he smiled. His jaw looked as if it had been carved from granite. In fact, he was all hard angles and solid muscle, the kind of man whose strength wasn’t obtained in a gym, but just from living.
Bottom line? He made her mouth water. She sometimes thought that if he didn’t kiss her soon, she was going to have to take matters into her own