first it was amusing, watching the guests’ varied reactions to the filthy animal, but it was another thing entirely to discover the poor thing was limping, favoring its left back foot. Julia wondered uneasily if a car might have hit him.
With a spontaneous spurt of sympathy, she decided she should take care of the dog herself, especially since no one else appeared to be moving.
She turned to let Bryan know she was leaving, but his attention was elsewhere. He burst into laughter.
“Well, I’ll be doggoned,” he said, shaking his head. “Literally. What a crazy mutt.”
She whirled around. To her surprise, the Jack Russell somehow launched himself into the middle of the swimming pool.
“What a joke,” Bryan said from behind her.
A joke?
Maybe, under normal circumstances. But within seconds, it was clear the dog could not swim, perhaps because of his broken leg.
He flipped over once in the middle of the pool, not making as much of a splash as Julia would have expected. And then, in a single, heart-wrenching moment, the dog’s head popped under the waves and disappeared. He sank as if he were a rock.
Panic freezing her to the spot, she croaked Bryan’s name.
But it wasn’t Bryan who came running to the poor little dog’s rescue.
It was big, burly Zeke Taylor.
In a second, he was in the pool, pulling the dog to the surface and into his arms. He hadn’t waited even to remove his steel-toed boots. He’d simply reacted.
And saved the irascible puppy, who was wagging his tail in Zeke’s arms despite being wet and wounded.
Bryan was still laughing at the sight, which raised Julia’s hackles. She guessed it was funny, from one perspective, but she could have no reaction except one—blatant and sheerly feminine admiration for Zeke Taylor.
A true hero at work.
Chapter Two
Glancing at the sky, Zeke stopped pounding nails into a two-by-four wood frame and slipped his hammer into his belt. He swiped in a deep breath of sawdust-filled air, pulled a crumpled red bandanna from the back pocket of his faded blue jeans and mopped the sweat off his forehead and the back of his neck.
It was a brisk morning, typical of Colorado in the early fall, but the cool breeze didn’t do much for Zeke. He was pushing himself harder than usual, and every muscle in his body was groaning in protest.
He’d been working extra time at HeartBeat lately, and consequently was behind on this project. He was quietly determined to catch up, maybe get ahead, to make up for the time he spent in volunteer work.
There was so much need in the world, and so little hours in the day. He was compelled to do as much as he could for the pregnant women who came to HeartBeat for care and assistance. He only hoped it was enough.
It could never be enough.
Zeke blew out a frustrated breath and picked up his hammer, hoping to find solace in pounding nails. The familiar sound and feel of working with wood had often given him an odd sort of comfort in the past.
Lately, though, it seemed he was more inclined to concentrate on something far more pleasant than building with his hands. The silver-toned laugh of a certain blond-haired, green-eyed angel.
Julia Evans.
No matter how hard he tried, she was never far from his mind. He mulled over her every word, reconsidered every look and smile.
It wasn’t just that he was attracted to her beauty, though he certainly was. But Julia was different from the other women he knew. She seemed to know just what to do to make a hurting soul smile. She stood up to fight when everyone else was sitting down. She had strength of heart that surprised him, yet a quiet sense of vulnerability that made him long to protect her.
Which was ridiculous. He hardly knew her.
No. that wasn’t right. He knew her.
She didn’t know him.
He pounded five nails out quickly, slamming them neatly into a perfect row. The pressure of finishing the project on time only helped his strength, without marring his accuracy.
Even without this unusual, intense emotional current rushing through him, Zeke could pound nails with his hammer faster than a man with a nail gun.
More accurately, too, he thought, though he’d never tested his theory.
A grin tugged at his lips as, once again, Julia’s face drifted into his thoughts. He ought to ask her out and get it over with, he thought. Once she’d turned him down, maybe he could get on with life.
And she would turn him down. Ironically, that was one of the many things he admired most about her—her devotion to the center at whatever cost to her personal life. She must have men clamoring to take her out, yet she worked days and many evenings, not to mention weekends, helping shelter women personally, in addition to being in charge of the center’s advertising.
But even if her evenings were free, Zeke doubted Julia would take an interest in him. He was Beast to her Beauty.
Still, stranger things had happened.
At least he got to see her almost every evening at the center. Not that Julia was the reason he volunteered there, he thought, a surge of electricity running through him. He put his time in to serve God and the people of the HeartBeat Center, helping people like his sister, who’d found themselves at a rough crossing.
He prayed that was the truth.
But now he wondered if his motivation for helping out at the clinic had become because Julia Evans was there.
Was it true?
She’d only just spoken to him for the first time yesterday at the pool party, and even then it was because of her friend Lakeisha. And yet he had to admit that the desire to see her again tonight ranked right up there with the desire to do good works.
His thoughts tearing him up, he worked frantically, until suddenly he heard her voice.
“Zeke? Zeke Taylor?”
Now he was hallucinating. Next he’d be put in a straitjacket. He whistled a birdsong and imagined stars floating over his head.
“Hello! May I come down there?”
Zeke turned around to see none other than the true-to-the-flesh Julia Evans slip-sliding her way down a steep, gravel-covered driveway and onto the job site. Her arms flapped wildly as she struggled to maintain her precarious balance.
She wasn’t dressed for visiting a construction job site. For one thing, she was wearing a dress. A pretty, soft, flowery-looking thing that Zeke thought might disintegrate underneath the touch of his rough fingertips. It was a dress that could easily be torn to shreds in a work area full of protruding nails and rough lumber.
And
