Cloudy With a Chance of Marriage Read Online Free PDF Page A

enjoyed the evening!” she said airily, and gave him a brilliant smile.
    He had that same utterly lost feeling he’d had the first time he’d let a line accidentally slip through a cleat, leaving a sail flapping uselessly in the wind and out of his reach.
    “I’m, ah, glad you enjoyed the punch,” he said. “It’s a special recipe from the islands.”
    “Oh.” That grin again. “It was delicious. But the fumes made my nose prickle, so I poured some into the dead potted palm near the stage after the performance.”
    “You mean when you were dancing and dropping bags of water…?”
    She nodded. “I was simply having fun. I think. I’m not quite sure. I’ve never had punch before. I feel—”
    “Yes?” She had a certain longing look in her eyes that made him want to rip the door open and kiss her.
    “I feel—” She hesitated and bit her lower lip. “I feel like…”
    Dammit all, she felt as if she wanted to kiss him. He could tell.
    She lifted her chin and suddenly looked noble and passionate, like Joan of Arc. “I feel like reading,” she said.
    Reading?
    She nodded avidly. “Oh, yes. I do it every night before I go to bed.”
    Bed . She shouldn’t have said that. He imagined her in a high-necked cotton night rail with a long row of buttons.
    She let out a pleased sigh. “Yes, every night I read.”
    Of course, on the ship, he read every night, too. But he’d much rather read the curves and sighs of a warm, willing woman, any day.
    “I’m reading mythology this week,” she went on. “I adore Hermes.”
    “The messenger god?” Stephen was doing his best to turn away from thoughts of undoing her buttons one by one.
    “Yes.” She grinned. “The book I’m reading now has impressive illustrations of him. In one picture, he’s standing with his fists on his hips and one knee bent, and he’s laughing. It’s as if he’s looking straight at me.”
    Stephen saw her eyes turn dreamy, and it wasn’t about him . It was about that damned Hermes.
    “I suppose you’re not in your cups, then, if you can read about the gods tonight.” He scratched his head, most disappointed.
    “Me?” Her nose wrinkled. “In my cups? Whyever would I be?”
    Stephen felt extremely guilty of a sudden. “No reason.”
    “I’m beginning to think you had a secret plan,” she said stoutly. “I should have stayed more on guard this evening.”
    “I’m a wolf, am I?”
    She closed the door a fraction of an inch. “We both know what you’re after, Captain.”
    He moved forward and said into the crack, “Come back out here, Miss Jones, and tell me what that is.”
    “No,” she replied in confident tones. “You already know.”
    He sighed. “Can’t you be complacent again? As you were just a minute ago when you were yawning?”
    “Complacent?” Her pitch rose a notch.
    “Yes, dammit all. Complacent.” He felt like knocking his head against the shop’s stone wall.
    “I knew it!” she cried. “You were trying to ply me with punch, so I’d stop complaining about the noise from your house. Either that, or so I’d become another one of your fancy women.”
    “Miss Jones.” She’d guessed correctly, of course.
    “Don’t ‘Miss Jones’ me .” She huffed. “You’re a sore loser. You could at least admit I’m right.”
    “Very well.” He blew out a breath of frustration. “You’re a shrewd woman. Impossible to fool.”
    “And you’re an intelligent man to recognize that fact.”
    All evening he’d been thinking about the moment their fingers had met around that glass of punch. She was ripe for a man’s touch, and he was heady with longing to be that man.
    “Now let’s go back to how you looked when we were navigating the corner,” he said in a husky whisper. “Happy. Sporting. Kissable. ”
    There was a beat of silence, but it was cut short by her predictable bluestocking gasp. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” she hissed through the crack. “I told you I’ve no need to be