Read Online Handful of Heaven by Jillian Hart - Free Book Online Page A

uh, as a friendly face, you mean?” She seemed confused. Her eyebrows slanted and she took a step back. Her hands flew out and she grabbed the coffeepot as if to shield her heart with it.
    Not what I should have asked, he realized too late. He was forty-two years old. What was he doing? He was too old to start again. Too set in his ways to think about dating. Too wounded to ever trust another woman intimately.
    He could take the chicken’s way out and agree, to say, sure, that’s what he wanted, a friendly face at the meeting. He could save himself a lot of embarrassment and risk to his heart if he just corrected his impulsive question with a simple nod.
    But it wasn’t the truth. Not at all. “No,” he said in a choked voice, while the little voice in his head kept telling him to get up and run and never come back. “I meant would you go with me. As, a, well, as a d-date.”
    Too late to take the words back, he watched the confusion slide from her lovely face. Horror widened her eyes. Big mistake, Thornton, he thought, surprised that the main thing he felt was remorse instead of relief. It made no sense, but it told him something. He admired Paige McKaslin. He liked a lot of things about her. It hurt to admit, but the truth was the truth.
    She’s going to say no. Evan saw the answer on her face. And how she bit her bottom lip as she figured out how to turn him down.
    Maybe he would save her the trouble. “Hey, it’s okay. I don’t know why I just blurted that out. I haven’t been on a date in over twenty years.”
    “Me, either.” The tension lines around her mouth eased. “That’s hysterical. Twenty years. That’s a long time to be out of it. I just don’t date, Evan, I’m sorry.”
    “I understand.” He didn’t meet her gaze but turned toward the window where a vigorous snowfall bordered on whiteout conditions. “We’re going to need a snowplow to get home before long if this keeps up. I’d better go while the getting’s good.”
    Somehow her feet weren’t taking her up the aisle, like they were supposed to. Maybe it was shock rooting her to the same spot on the floor. Evan Thornton had asked her out? That didn’t seem right. No one had asked her out in all the years since her husband had left. She always figured the reason was simple: Jimmy had always told her she was a simple small-town girl, nothing special, but a hardworking salt-of-the-earth type.
    Not exactly the kind of woman men lined up to date and fall in love with, no.
    As she caught her reflection in the window glass, she saw a woman whose face was too long, her nose a little too big, with a few too many character lines to be thought of as pretty.
    Evan seemed embarrassed as he kept his attention riveted on the storm. The floor let go of her feet, and woodenly she stumbled down the aisle and away to the safety of the kitchen.
    Brandilyn swung through the door with a full basin of dirties. She strained as if she were carrying a thousand pounds. With a groan, she unloaded the tub onto the sink counter. “So, Paige, is Mr. Thornton, like, totally cool, well, for an old guy?”
    Paige leaned to the side to bring Evan in focus through the order-up window. Yeah, totally cool, to use the teenager’s phrase.
    But not “cool” the way Brandilyn probably meant it. Cool, in Paige’s opinion, because he was the kind of man who stayed. He’d been the one to pick up the pieces when his marriage failed. He raised his boys, made them a good home. He’d provided for them and gave them a good head start in the world.
    He was a nice man, handsome, strong, capable and with those wide shoulders of his, he could make a woman, even one as jaded as she, wish…just a little in absolutely impossible dreams.
    And how foolish was that? “After you run a load of dishes, could you start prepping salads? If this weather keeps up, we’re going to be dead tonight, so if you want to go early, it would be okay.”
    “Like, who wants to work?” The girl