Paradise County Read Online Free PDF Page B

shortly after the funeral.
    Alex had a feeling that if her emotions weren’t so numb, she might be having serial hysterics herself.
    There was a black four-board fence surrounding the field in which the barn stood, and a red metal farm gate separated the driveway from the barnyard. Reaching it, Alex dropped her gaze from the blue beacon to fumble with the latch. The metal was painfully cold to her fingers; she couldn’t seem to get them to work properly no matter how hard she tried.
    Hearing footsteps approaching on the other side of the gate, Alexglanced up to see the man she presumed was Joe Welch striding toward her down the graveled walkway that led up to the barn. His brown work boots seemed to have no trouble finding traction on the gravel.
    “Mr. Welch?” she inquired when he was close enough. Her voice was low and husky, with the curiously flat intonation she seemed to have developed since the funeral. It sounded exactly the way she felt: lifeless.
    “That’s right.” His voice was deep and just touched with a slurring Southern drawl that under other circumstances she might have found intriguing. As he reached the gate their eyes met, and she saw that his were blue, a light, bright shade of near aqua set off by a fringe of black lashes. They were unsmiling, and, she thought with a gathering frown, unwelcoming as well.
    “I’m Alexandra Haywood.”
    “I know who you are.” His voice was as unwelcoming as his eyes.
    He had unlocked the gate without effort and now pushed it open, inviting her wordlessly inside. Walking around the gate into the barnyard, her ankles wobbling a little as her high-heeled boots crunched through the thick gravel, she held out her hand to him with the automatic good manners bred into her by years at the most exclusive boarding schools. His mouth tightened as he glanced down at her extended hand, and she got the impression that the gesture did not please him. But he took her hand and shook it. His hand was big, enveloping her own much smaller one, and his skin was faintly rough and very warm. Alex shivered involuntarily as he released her cold fingers. Warmth was something she could not seem to get enough of these days. Sometimes she didn’t think she would ever be truly warm again.
    “Have we met?” she asked, wondering again if he could possibly have an inkling of why she was there. He seemed almost hostile toward her—or perhaps, she thought, he was that way toward everyone.
    “At your father’s funeral.” He closed the gate and latched it again.
    “Oh.” There seemed to be nothing to say to that. If he had been there, she didn’t remember him, which surprised her, because he was the kind of man she would have thought one automatically remembered. But then, she didn’t remember much about that day. She folded her arms overher chest and tucked her hands beneath her elbows to ward off the biting chill as she looked up at him. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember. Everything from that day is such a blur… . But thank you for coming. Philadelphia’s a long way from Simpsonville.”
    He nodded in acknowledgment. “I’m sorry about your father, Miss Haywood.”
    Alex had heard those words so often over the last five weeks that she felt as though they were permanently engraved on her heart.
    “Thank you.”
    He stood just inside the gate looking at her. As the land sloped upward, she was at a slightly higher elevation than he was, but still he dwarfed her. The sheer size of him, and the fact that he remained unsmiling, could have been intimidating if she’d been the type to be easily cowed.
    “I presume you’re here to see me?” She wasn’t imagining his unfriendliness. It was there in his voice.
    “Yes.”
    “Come on up to the barn then. I’m in the middle of something.”
    He started walking up the slope, his boots crunching over the gravel. She fell into step beside him, her gait just a bit unsteady as her heels sank into the inches-deep rock. Seeing her