Gingham Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

melting snow. The rustle of denim and wool. His masculine presence radiating through the bitter air.
    The shock of his touch jolted through her. She stumbled backward, but he held her hands, warming them with his. The act was so unexpected and intimate, shock muted her. Her mouth opened, but not a single sound emerged. He was as if a part of the darkness but his touch was warm as life and somehow not threatening—when it should be.
    We’re alone, she realized, her pulse quickening. Alone in the dark, in the storm and with a strange man. She felt every inch of the yawning emptiness around her, but not fear. Her hands began to warm, tucked safely within his. She wanted to pull away and put proper distance between them, but her feet forgot how to move. She forgot how to breathe.
    “There. You are more than a wee bit chilly. You need better mittens.” He broke the hold first, his voice smooth and friendly, as if unaffected by their closeness. “Now that my eyes are used to the dark, I can almost see what I’m doing.”
    Her hearing registered the scrape of the metal match tin against the wooden shelf on the post, the strike of the match and Flannigan’s heavy step as he nosed in behind her. Light flared to life, a sudden shock in the blackness, and the caress of it illuminated a rock-solid jawline and distinctive planes of a man’s chiseled, rugged face.
    A young man’s face. Five o’clock shadow hugged his jaw and a faint smile softened the hard line of his sculpted mouth. He had to be twenty at the oldest. As he touched the flame to the lantern wick, the light brightened and highlighted the dependable line of his shoulders and the power of his muscled arms. A man used to hard work. Not one of Da’s friends, then, or at least not one she had seen before.
    “How do you know my father?” Her voice scraped along the inside of her throat, sounding as raw as it felt.
    “I don’t.” He shrugged his magnificent shoulders simply, an honest gesture. He shook out the match and stowed it carefully in the bottom drawer of the lantern’s base. “I never met him until this day, although I grew up hearing tales about him and my father. And I know who you are, Fiona O’Rourke.”
    A terrible roaring filled her ears, louder than the blizzard’s wail, louder than any sound she had ever known. The force of it trembled through her, and she felt as if a lasso were tightening around her neck. Her dreams cracked apart like breaking ice. “Y-you know me?”
    “Aye.” Gently came that single word.
    “But how? Unless you are—” Her tongue froze, her mind rolled around uselessly because she knew exactly who he was. For she had grown up hearing those same tales of her da and another man, the man whose son now towered before her. “No, it can’t be.”
    “Ian McPherson. Your betrothed.” Since the lantern was lit, he seized a cane that she now noticed leaning against the post. He leaned on it, walking with a limp to snare Flannigan’s lead rope. “Come, big fellow. I’ll get you rubbed down. That’s a fine coat of lather you have there.”
    Ian McPherson. Here? The ground beneath her boots swayed, and she gripped a nearby stall door. For as long as she could remember, Ma and Da would talk of better times when they were young and of their friends the McPhersons. Sometimes they would mention the old promise between older friends that their children would one day marry. But that was merely an expectation, a once-made wish and nothing more. Whatever her parents might think, she was certainly not betrothed and certainly not to a stranger.
    The barn door crashed open, startling the horses. Flannigan, now cross tied in the aisle, threw his head and tried to bolt, but the lines held him fast. Riley, who was not tied, rocked back onto his hindquarters, wheeled in the breezeway and took off in a blind run.
    Da grabbed the reins, yanking down hard enough to stop the gelding in his tracks. The horse’s cry of pain sliced through her