SEAL's Bride: A Secret Baby Romance Read Online Free PDF Page A

isn’t high school. I don’t want to fight with you, man.”
    “All right, go ahead over to see Remy,” Colt said, a smirk on his lips.
    “Wait a second,” Walker said, holding up a hand.
    Sawyer and Colt both turned to him expectantly. Walker looked between them, then blew out a breath. “We need to talk living arrangements. The renovations on the main house were never finished, so we’re living in the bunkhouse.”
    Sawyer arched a brow. “Isn’t it falling apart?”
    “Naw, Marilee had the idea that she was going to renovate it into four studio apartments, rent it out to visitors with a lot of cash,” Colt said. Reaching in his pocket, he fished out his keys. “I got a full set of keys inside for you, but here’s a key to studio three. Should have everything you need, since it’s practically set up as a hotel.”
    “Thanks,” Sawyer said, accepting the key his brother offered.
    “Don’t thank me until you’ve seen the list of repairs and maintenance duties ahead of us,” Colt said.
    “It’s a mile long,” Walker said, squinting off into the distance. “One day of hard work, might just send you running back to D.C.”
    “Yeah, yeah. You’re as much an outsider as me now,” Sawyer told Walker.
    “I look so good in a Stetson, though,” Walker said.
    Sawyer grinned. “You haven’t worn a cowboy hat in five years, I bet.”
    Walker only shrugged, giving Colt a chance to jump in.
    “You sure you don’t just want to go to town with us tonight?” he asked. “Even better, we could just sit here and drink beer in silence, like the cowboys we were supposed to be.”
    “The Colonel would be so proud,” Sawyer joked. “How about this. I’m gonna go over to River farm for a minute, just to say hello. Then I’ll come back and crack open the bottle of Old Grand-Dad bourbon I brought from New Orleans.”
    “Suit yourself,” Walker said. “I’m gonna go shower up.”
    “All right, catch you later,” Sawyer said.
    He turned and headed to his car, wondering at their strange attitude. Climbing behind the wheel, he spent the short drive over to River farm wondering just what his brothers were trying to hide from him.
    If she wasn’t married, what was the problem with him dropping in on Remy River? The floodgates of speculation opened, and he started imagining different scenarios: she was disfigured in a car wreck, or maybe she’d joined a church so strict that she couldn’t talk to strange men.
    None of that seemed like a secret his brothers would need to keep, though. As he sped past the sugarcane fields and closed in on the River family farmhouse, he couldn’t help his growing curiosity.
    He frowned as his Range Rover bounced over the hard-rutted gravel road. It was way overdue for some new gravel and sand being laid down. The road needed some serious upkeep.
    It was the end of a busy season for River farm; after planting, but before the first controlled burn, so maybe they just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
    As he drove past their barn, he noticed that the roof was sagging, and the doors were chained shut. Strange that it should be in disuse, as the farm used to have a number of dairy cows and a few horses.
    When he pulled up at the bottom of the hill where the house stood, he was surprised to see that the house wasn’t in any better shape. Parking and walking up the short, steep path to the house gave him a minute to examine the place.
    The house was two stories, done in the style of a traditional log cabin, but it looked different than he remembered. Mostly it was that two of the front windows were broken, boarded over with plywood.
    There was plywood laid over spots on the roof, too. No doubt a flimsy patch for places where the tarred shingles had come loose, letting water leak into the house.
    Gone was the neatly manicured front yard. Now the flower beds were empty, the grass growing long in uneven patches. At the far side of the yard, a plastic toy fire truck lay in the grass,