Promises Read Online Free PDF Page B

Standing with one arm around Jase, her deep red tresses flowing down over her shoulders, the little pixie he used to tease had grown up.   Shockingly, that glimpse of her in the photo had stirred something inside him.   Something he wisely never mentioned to his friend, and did his best to ignore.   But she’d hovered in the back of his mind for years.  
    She certainly had changed since college.   Or were the changes only recent?   Most likely she’d whacked off her deep red hair and bleached it to a bright blonde to throw Steele off the track.   Sadly, he missed that gorgeous mane.   The kind a guy wants to sink his hands into and hold on tight, but she’d done the right thing.   He just needed to know why she went into hiding.
    A grin stole across his sore mouth at the memory of her tagging along behind him and Jase, her cute little pigtails bouncing as she trotted to keep up with them.   Fishing, basketball, football, it didn’t matter what they were doing, she was determined to be right there in the thick of things.
    “Barbie,” he muttered softly.   Jase had tormented her throughout the years with that moniker.   She always insisted on being called Bobbi, and Jase stubbornly, lovingly, the way only a big brother could, invariably called her Barbie.  
    Jason McBride adored his kid sister.   They shared everything.   Their aspirations, their hopes, their dreams, and their troubles.   Only this time Barbie had managed to get mixed up in something far bigger and far more dangerous than he or Jase had ever imagined.  
    To get the evidence the Bureau needed to put Phillip Steele, a drug smuggling murderer behind bars, Jase went deep undercover.   All connection between them had been cut off for his safety and only a select few knew the particulars, but something went wrong.  
    First Jase disappeared, then almost immediately, his sister dropped out of sight.   A fact that still disgusted Travis.   He’d failed to uphold his promise to keep her safe.   He feared the worst for his friend and Barbara, and rightly so.   Two months after Jase vanished, a body was found on a riverbank in Charleston.   Unable to make a visual ID, dental records had to be used.   Jase’s dental records.  
    Travis’ best friend and partner was dead.
    Dissatisfied with the sketchy answers he received from the Bureau about Jase’s murder and their weak attempts to gain information about Barbara’s disappearance, he decided to take an extended leave to do a little investigating on his own.   He followed every trail, checked out every piece of evidence, and came up with nothing.   His last hope, a long shot at best, had brought him to Francis Marion National Forest.  
    He still couldn’t believe he’d actually found her.   Only Steele’s men weren’t far behind.   Above all else, he had to protect her, and he had to tell her about Jase.  
     
    Bobbi hurried back into the bedroom with the towel, her hands trembling with her ridiculous spurt of anger.   Just because he didn’t recognize her, didn’t remember anything that had happened, didn’t have a clue as to how much she worried about him, it wasn’t the end of the world.   It was actually to her advantage to keep her identity a secret for a little while longer until she knew why he came, but her feelings were hurt just the same.
    God, the hours she’d spent dreaming about him, doodling his name on every scrap of paper, hoping and wishing that someday he’d see her as something other than his best friend’s baby sister.   She couldn’t believe she was being so childish, and yet, he wasn’t the gangly handsome young man of her dreams any longer.   Travis had become a broad-shouldered, heart stopping, dangerously gorgeous man.   He didn’t do the tattered photograph she had of him justice.  
    She could still feel the heat of his chest against her palms when she’d put him back in bed and ached to touch him again.   Although he’d changed and no