Remember Summer Read Online Free PDF

worn, had no missing teeth, and was clean but for some lint from the rucksack.
    “May I?” he asked, holding up the sketch pad.
    “Of course.”
    “There’s no ‘of course’ about it. But thank you for allowing me to snoop.”
    “Like I said,” she retorted, “we’ll both feel better.”
    She took the comb from his hand and began to unsnarl her shoulder-length hair. She combed carefully, favoring her right arm, which had taken the full force of her fall. She ignored the aching of her upper arm. When necessary, she had ridden over jumps with cracked ribs, a mild concussion, and a stress fracture in her foot. A few bruises were nothing.
    With fast, efficient movements Cord finished searching the knapsack. Then he gave his attention to the sketch pad. He flipped through it quickly, seeing everything with brief, encompassing looks. What he saw impressed him. Blue’s daughter couldn’t draw worth a damn, but she had a fine appreciation of the impact of geography on man and animals.
    Thoughtfully Cord closed the pad and looked at her. Her hair had just enough natural curl to give it thickness, body, and a mind of its own. The curl showed as a stubborn tendency to turn up at the ends no matter how hard she tried to make everything lie straight. The slanting light brought out gold and red highlights, giving her hair a sun-shot appearance that made the underlying brown shimmer with life and warmth.
    Raine wasn’t nearly as fascinated by her hair as Cord was. She simply combed it, wincing occasionally over knots or when her bruised arm protested being used. There was more impatience than pain in her grimaces. The slippery flyaway mass of her hair crackled with the static electricity of dry, windy air.
    “Ruddy hell,” she muttered, making another futile pass with the comb.
    Her irritation peaked when she finally managed to get one hand around all of her hair at once, then couldn’t find the clip to hold everything in place. It must have gone flying when she was knocked to the ground with such stunning force. She glanced around, but couldn’t see the clip anywhere.
    Maybe Cord had it.
    When she turned to him, he was watching her, the rucksack in his lap and the sketch pad forgotten in his hands. He had a bemused, fully male smile on his face. She had never seen a man look at her quite like that. The realization that he enjoyed watching her comb her hair made her skin hot.
    It wasn’t embarrassment. Like his smile, the heat was something new to her.
    “Well?” Raine asked, arching her left eyebrow. “Did you find the secrets of World War Three in my rucksack?”
    “Water bottle, pencils, rawhide thongs, sketch pad, tape recorder, film, an apple, a chocolate bar, an elastic bandage, and a buckle.”
    “A buckle? Show me.”
    Cord reached into the knapsack and brought out a buckle no bigger than his thumbnail. Raine let go of her hair and leaned forward to see better. Wind sent strands of her hair over his fingers. It took an effort of will not to wind the silky stuff around his hand and pull her into his lap, into his arms. He wanted her with a force that shook him.
    Yet nothing of his raw hunger showed. He made certain of it. If she had seen it, she would have scrambled up and run like hell.
    “So that’s where it went,” she muttered. “I was polishing Dev’s tack when Captain Jon called me. I didn’t have time to put the buckle where it belonged and I didn’t want to lose it, so I put it in a safe place.”
    “How long ago was that?” Cord asked. Laughter stirred just beneath the surface of his deep voice.
    “Five weeks,” she admitted. “I’m forever putting things in safe places and then forgetting where I put them. Captain Jon swears I need a keeper.”
    “Don’t you have one?” Though Cord’s voice was casual, his eyes were burning, intent. Blue hadn’t mentioned a lover, but fathers weren’t usually the first to know about such things, even fathers like Chandler-Smith.
    “No. And if I