Beckett's Convenient Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

dust, shewas evidently eager to catch up with him before he got away.
    He slowed, stopped and pulled on the parking brake. They were near the intersection of Landing and Waterlily Roads, but so far as he could see, theirs were the only two cars on the road. This shouldn’t take long, Carson promised himself.
    Good thing, too, he added. He’d just run flat-out of juice.
    Opening the door, he got out, steadied himself for a moment, and waited until she came to a halt a few feet from his rear bumper. Then, levering himself away from the support of his dark green SUV, he headed her way.
    His legs were shaky. Maybe he should have eaten his lunch, but by the time he’d been served, food hadn’t seemed all that great an idea.
    He was within ten feet of the hand-painted VW when he saw her roll up her window. She locked her door, then leaned over and locked the passenger door.
    Well, hell. What now? Find the nearest hollow tree, leave the goods there, then write and tell her where to find it? If she wrote kids’ books, she might be into kids’ games.
    Tough. She’d picked the wrong player this time.
    He was still trying to figure out an approach when she rolled her window down an inch and shouted for him to move his car, then rolled the window up again.
    Move his car? Had he missed something? It occurred to him that she might not have gotten the message that he was looking for her. In that case, maybe she wasn’t trying to catch up with him, but just wanted to pass. Thought he was a tourist, maybe, watching a flyover of cormorants.
    Okay, so what now? Try to reason with her through alayer of steel and glass? Put yourself in the lady’s place, Beckett. She’s alone, she finds herself being accosted by a strange man. Reason enough to be spooked, right? The world was no longer a safe place, if it ever had been. Who knew that better than a cop?
    The women of his family knew better than to stop if ever a stranger tried to flag them down. They’d been taught to lock all doors and pass the buck by calling the highway patrol. In this case, he was the next best thing, only she had no way of knowing it.
    Feet spread apart to keep him from reeling, Carson held up both hands, palms out, in the universal sign of peace. “Hey, I’m one of the good guys, lady.”
    Cautiously, she inched her window down and peered at him suspiciously. From where he was standing—aside from the eyeball assault of color: orange car, red hair, purple dress or whatever she was wearing—she appeared to be a damned fine-looking woman.
    Irritated as hell, but a looker.
    Make that angry, he corrected a moment later when she lowered the glass another two inches.
    Make that scared. In fact, terrified would not be an overstatement.
    Well, hell. What now? This wasn’t in the script. Under any other circumstances he’d have walked off and let her go unreparated, or whatever the proper term was. His whole body ached like a boil. He was running on fumes. And dammit, he hadn’t come all this way to leave the job unfinished.
    Taking two steps forward, he said, “Look, for both our sakes, let’s get this over fast, all right?”
    Slowly, he reached inside his buckskin jacket, planning to hold out his badge to reassure her.
    â€œNoo-o-o!” she screamed. “Just get out of my way!”
    Wrong move. He held out his hands again as if to prove he was totally harmless. Evidently the message failed to get through. She gunned the engine. The Beetle jerked forward. Carson tried to leap out of the way, but his reconstructed knee wasn’t up to the job. It buckled, and before he could catch himself, he went down, his head in a tangle of weeds bordering a blackwater ditch.
    She backed up and slammed on the brakes. She was out of her car in an instant, wild auburn hair flying around her face, purple shirt flapping around long legs covered in a pair of tie-dyed tights.
    She was wielding a tire-iron in