The Bride Wore Blue Read Online Free PDF

frown.
    Wearing a frown of her own, she refilled her glass, then grudgingly filled another one. With a sigh that could have been resignation, determination, disgust or all three, she headed out the door.
    J.D. was hot. He was also bored. He’d fixed the engine problem a couple of hours ago and he’d about run out of engine parts to tinker with when he finally heard the soft sound of approaching footsteps falling on the wooden dock.
    “Thank you,” he whispered skyward, then turned toward the sound, knowing he looked like a sap as his smile spread warm and welcoming. He couldn’t help it. Didn’t care. She looked so damn good walking toward him. She’d pulled her dark, shoulder-length hair from her face with a solid-gold hair band. Her cheeks and nose were rosy above her soft summer tan and today’s kiss of the sun. But best of all, she was carrying two glasses full of ice-cold lemonade. That had to be a good sign.
    “Hey,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag and gladly taking the one she extended, in silence, to him. “This is just what the doctor ordered.”
    He hadn’t realized just how hot he was. Or how dry. He felt the sweat trickle down his temple to blend with more on his neck as he tipped his head back and downed the entire contents of the glass in three huge, gulping swallows.
    With a blissful sigh, he licked the last drop of liquid off the lip of the glass then dragged it across his bare chest to smooth the remains of the cooling moisture there. “Man. Did that hit the spot.”
    She looked from the empty glass to him and blinked.
    He laughed. “Big man. Big thirst,” he explained. “Bad manners,” he said apologetically. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made such a pig of myself.”
    “I guess I shouldn’t have left you out in the sun so long without something to drink. I’m the one who’s sorry.”
    He considered her then. Her genuine regret. Her tooacute bearing of blame. And he wondered when this had become such a serious matter.
    “You can make it up to me with another glass. Just like the other one,” he added, giving her a huge grin.
    Without a word, she retrieved his glass—greasy fingerprints and all—and headed back up the slope to the cabin.
    By the time she returned with the refill, he’d managed to wipe the worst of the grime from his hands, tug on his T-shirt and drag a couple of dock chairs onto the grass and out of the sun.
    She didn’t want to get friendly. That was clear. But J.D. figured that shared memories and that combustible kiss they’d experienced earlier had taken them a little past what she wanted to a few unalterable facts. She may not want to get friendly, but she didn’t have a prayer of forestalling it. He was going to make damn sure of that.
    He stood by the chairs, waiting for her to sit. She hesitated, gave him a wary glance, then eased down into the old metal spring chair. Using her lemonade and Hershey as buffers between them, she ignored him as he sat, too, takingin the sight of her and wondering, still, at the reason she was here.
    “Been a long time since I sat under this tree,” he remarked with a wistful, melancholy look around him. “It was a nice surprise finding you here today. Real nice,” he added with a soft, inviting smile.
    “So what brings you back, Stretch?” he asked finally, when her extended silence told him nothing more than that she was reluctant to share even a little bit of herself with him.
    Her quiet gaze skimmed the still waters of the bay, from the rocky shoreline directly ahead of them to the grassy shadows tucked like waving wheat in the breakwater protected by the dock and finally to the little beach nestled twenty yards to the west.
    “I think the real question is what kept me away so long.”
    His gaze followed hers to the beauty, to the peace and the tranquillity that was the lake and the wonder that was this natural northern paradise, and he understood. “Got in your blood, didn’t it?”
    “Yeah,” she said,