The Bridal Path: Danielle Read Online Free PDF Page A

spot in the sun and began racing through the showers of water, barking his fool head off. The noise was deafening…and wonderful.
    When Dani came back to check on them an hour later with milk and fresh-baked cinnamon rolls, she found all of them soaking wet from head to toe. Her father looked more bedraggled than she could ever recall seeing him. He usually prided himself on his dapper appearance. As for the porch, the supposed object of all their energy, it looked only marginally better.
    “It’s going to take some paint,” Timmy told her excitedly. “Uncle Trent says we can pick any color we want.”
    “
Uncle Trent
said that, did he?” She regarded her father sweetly. “Did he stop to consider what kind of taste you two boys might have?”
    Her father winced at that. “We won’t do anything too outlandish, will we, boys? Maybe a nice bright yellow.”
    “Yeah,” Kevin said. “Yellow’s a really happy color.”
    Her father squeezed Kevin’s shoulder. “Then yellow it is.” He beamed at Dani. “Haven’t had this much fun in a long time. Come on, boys. Let’s get on over to the hardware store.”
    “Before we have cinnamon rolls?” Timmy asked plaintively, eyeing the tray that was still in Dani’s hand.
    “Well, of course not,” her father told him. “I can’t imagine what I was thinking of. Grab a few and we’ll eat ‘em as we walk over there. That’ll keep our energy up for sure.”
    Dani watched the three of them head off down the street. The six-foot-two rancher and his two pint-size companions made quite a picture. They hadn’t gone far when Dani realized something about herself she’d never known before. She was capable of deep, gut-wrenching jealousy. She wanted those boys to be chattering excitedly to her, not her father.
    She reminded herself sternly that it was just one day. And there was a good reason for putting them into her father’s capable hands. It was to keep him, not the boys, out of mischief.
    She stood back and stared at the porch and tried to envision it being bright yellow. It would be…colorful, she concluded.
    And happy, just as Kevin said. She was smiling by the time she went back inside.
    * * *
    “It’s awfully quiet in here,” Slade observed suspiciously when he returned promptly at five that evening. He looked as if he’d expected to find the house burned down or, at the very least, in ruins. “Where are the boys? Did you tie them up and gag them?”
    “They’re taking a nap,” Dani told him. “They were completely tuckered out from painting the porch. Or maybe it was from the fumes of all the turpentine it took to get the yellow paint off them afterward.”
    Slade’s blue eyes widened. “You actually let them paint the porch?”
    “Daddy supervised–in a manner of speaking, anyway. He has some surprisingly lax ideas about supervision. He sure wasn’t that way when we were growing up. He told me he was encouraging their creativity.”
    “Oh, God,” Slade moaned. “What did they paint?”
    “Aside from the porch?”
    “Exactly.”
    “I believe the petunias are now yellow. And you might want to check Pirate for any lingering traces of the flower they tried to paint on his back. I curbed their little imaginations before they could touch up my hubcaps.”
    “Dear heaven. No wonder you convinced them to take naps. I’m surprised you didn’t knock them out.”
    “I didn’t convince them, exactly,” she admitted. “They sat down to look at a video and the next thing I knew, they were out on the sofa. Should I wake them?”
    “Heavens, no,” Slade said.
    He said it with such heartfelt fervor that Dani chuckled. “They don’t give you much of a break, do they?”
    “They’re just young and energetic, I know,” Slade said. “But sometimes I swear they were put on this earth just to exhaust me.”
    “Well, take a break now. I baked cookies earlier. Have some.” She put the plate on the kitchen table. “Milk or iced tea?”
    “Iced tea