The Bride Wore Blue Read Online Free PDF Page B

her eyes drifting shut as the lake breeze played with her hair, lifting it gently from her brow and feathering it against her cheek. “It did.”
    They shared the silence then. The silence that was punctuated with the playful lap of water to shore, the distant call of the gulls and the hypnotic, muted chatter of a dozen pairs of summering mallards and their broods fishing and sunning themselves on the rocks near the beach.
    He sat back in the old chair, letting his weight bow the springs. Rocking like an ancient to the lulling sounds of summer, he tried to figure out his good fortune and a safe way to get her to open up.
    “So,” he began, feeling his way carefully. “I figured a Caribbean beach or the French Riviera would have been more your speed for an exotic getaway.”
    There. It was out in the open. At the very least it was implied that he’d followed her career, or that he was aware of it. Who wasn’t? Anyone who didn’t live under a rock had to be aware of Maggie. He’d discovered Maggie, the superstar, super-sought-after supermodel by accident about seven years ago. He’d been sitting in a dentist’s office, thumbing through some glitzy women’s magazine out of sheer boredom when a lingerie ad had caught his eye. Caught his eye? Singed his eyeballs was more like it. The model was a knockout. A bona fide, jerk-your-heartaround, make-your-jeans-tight knockout.
    His hands had stilled, then he’d folded the page out flat and stared, and devoured and forgotten all about his impending root canal as he fought to resurrect a memory that wouldn’t quite come into focus.
    He was under the drill, drifting on laughing gas and dreaming of summer love when it hit him and damn near knocked him out of the dental chair.
    The Maggie in the magazine wasn’t just the single-name phenomenon that little girls wanted to grow up to be like and big girls strived to copy. She was his Maggie. His Maggie Adams, who still had the ability to heat his blood to flash point with a single look from her spicy brown eyes. It was his Maggie who had been staring her stubborn, sultry, untouchable stare from the page of that magazine, wearing nothing but a white silk teddy and thigh-high lace stockings.
    He looked over at her now. Her aristocratic yet sensual features were bare of makeup and pretense, her dark eyes were striking without benefit of shadows and shadings and carefully positioned lights and he thought she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
    “You’ve had a helluva ride, haven’t you, Stretch?”
    Still, she remained silent. And he wondered at the cause of it. Since that first time he’d discovered her in that ad, he’d seen her face and body on everything from magazinecovers to billboards, to TV advertising, to a segment of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” to promotions for her signature perfume. In the world of glamour and glitz, stars didn’t rise any higher.
    Yet, still she sat. Silent. Somber. Hanging on to her thoughts and her emotions like the glass she clenched tightly in her hands.
    “How’s the plane?” she asked finally, never meeting his eyes. “Are you going to be able to put it back together?”
    And fly out of my life and leave me alone? was the trailing, unvoiced ending to that question that he guessed she was too polite to put into words.
    So she didn’t want to get chummy. So she didn’t want him hanging around long enough to get reacquainted. Tough.
    Most men would have taken the hint and left the lady alone. He wasn’t most men. But then, Maggie Adams wasn’t just any woman. She was the woman of his adolescent dreams. The embodiment of his perfect woman. And even though he hadn’t realized it until he’d had the good luck to find her again today, she was the woman by whom he’d measured all others since and found them lacking.
    Was he going to fly out of her life and leave her alone? Hell no. But since it seemed so important to her, he’d oblige her by making her think