Bed of Roses Read Online Free PDF

when he and Del and Carter had been at Yale together. But you had to like the guy.
    Plus, he put a real light in Mac’s eyes. That counted big.
    With the radio blasting, he turned over in his head various ideas for adding on the space so Carter had a home office to do . . . whatever English professors did in home offices.
    As he drove, the rain that had come and gone throughout the day came back in the form of a thin snow. April in New England, he thought.
    His headlights washed over the car sitting on the shoulder of the road, and the woman standing in front of the lifted hood, her hands fisted on her hips.
    He pulled over, got out, then, sliding his hands into his pockets, sauntered over to Emma. “Long time no see.”
    “Damn it. It just died. Stopped.” She waved her arms in frustration so he took a cautious step back to avoid getting clocked with the flashlight she gripped in one hand. “And it’s snowing. Do you see this?”
    “So it is. Did you check your gas gauge?”
    “I didn’t run out of gas. I’m not a moron. It’s the battery, or the carburetor. Or one of those hose things. Or belt things.”
    “Well, that narrows it down.”
    She huffed out a breath. “Damn it, Jack, I’m a florist, not a mechanic.”
    That got a laugh out of him. “Good one. Did you call for road service?”
    “I’m going to, but I thought I should at least look in there in case it was something simple and obvious. Why don’t they make what’s in there simple and obvious for people who drive cars?”
    “Why do flowers have strange Latin names nobody can pronounce? These are questions. Let me take a look.” He held out a hand for the flashlight. “Jesus, Emma, you’re freezing.”
    “I’d have worn something warmer if I’d known I’d end up standing on the side of the road in the middle of the stupid night in a snowstorm.”
    “It’s barely snowing.” He stripped off his jacket, passed it to her.
    “Thanks.”
    She bundled into it while he bent under the hood. “When’s the last time you had this serviced?”
    “I don’t know. Some time.”
    He glanced back at her, a dry look out of smoky gray eyes. “Some time looks to have been the other side of never. Your battery cables are corroded.”
    “What does that mean?” She stepped up, stuck her head under the hood along with him. “Can you fix it?”
    “I can . . .”
    He turned his head toward her, and she turned hers toward him. All he could see were those brown velvet eyes, and for a moment, he simply lost the power of speech.
    “What?” she said, and her breath whispered warm over his lips.
    “What?” What the hell was he doing? He leaned back, out of the danger zone. “What . . . What I can do is give you a jump that should get you home.”
    “Oh. Okay. Good. That’s good.”
    “Then you’ve got to get this thing in for service.”
    “Absolutely. First thing. Promise.”
    Her voice jumped a bit and reminded him it was cold. “Go ahead and get in the car, and I’ll hook it up. Don’t start it, don’t touch anything in there, until I tell you.”
    He pulled his car around so it was nose-to-nose with hers. As he got his jumper cables, she got out of the car again. “I want to see what you do,” she explained. “In case I ever have to do it.”
    “Okay. Jumper cables, batteries. You have your positive and your negative. You don’t want to get them mixed up because if you hook them up wrong you’ll—”
    He clamped one onto the battery, then made a strangling noise and began to shake. Instead of squealing, she laughed and smacked his arm. “Idiot. I have brothers. I know your games.”
    “Your brothers should’ve shown you how to jump-start a car.”
    “I think they sort of did, but I ignored them. I have a set of those in the trunk, along with other emergency stuff. But I never had to use any of it. Under yours is shinier than mine,” she added as she frowned at his engine.
    “I suspect the pit of hell is shinier than