The Perfect Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

luck, it wouldn’t come to that.
    “Everything all right in here?”
    The voice came from the main entrance to the room—loud, startling...and familiar.
    Adam Sutton.
    It was all she could donot to tense as adrenaline suddenly ricocheted through her body. A strange reaction. She tried to tell herself it was because he’d startled her, even as part of her deep down recognized it was more than that.
    He was behind her. It wasn’t just that his voice had come from that direction. No, she immediately sensed his location, exactly where he was standing, mere feet away.
    She recognizedthe feeling of that hard, steady gaze boring through her.
    Then he was there, standing just behind them, positioned between her chair and Meredith’s. Keeping her expression carefully clear, she raised her head to look at him.
    And met his eyes.
    As she’d known he would, he was looking directly at her. A jolt went through her that she had to fight her hardest to keep from showing. Itwas exactly the reaction she hadn’t had when she’d first seen Zack Hopkins.
    It was also ridiculous. She didn’t know this man. Everything about him said she shouldn’t trust him, let alone feel...anything else toward him.
    “Of course,” Meredith said, finally answering his question. Her voice was tight—with nervousness? Something else? “Jillian was just showing me pictures of her fiancé.”
    “Really?” Adam said with a slight arch of his brow. “I’d love to see them.”
    Some kind of look Jillian couldn’t read passed between brother and sister before Meredith thrust the photo holder at him.
    Jillian watched as Adam slowly went through the photos, examining each one closely, eyes narrowed to slits. “What does your fiancé do?”
    “He’s an architect.”
    “Ah,” he said ina tone that seemed to say he didn’t believe her. “How did the two of you meet?”
    “At a party,” she said automatically. It was the truth. “I’m afraid I don’t have a more romantic story of our first meeting than that.”
    “All that matters is that you did meet,” Meredith assured her.
    When Adam reached the last photograph, he finally raised those dark eyes to her, an indecipherable lookin them.
    “You make a very attractive couple,” he said blandly, reaching out to hand the photos back to her. “Congratulations.”
    “Thank you.”
    He continued to stare at her for a long moment before finally nodding, giving the table a cursory glance, a tight, unconvincing smile on his lips. “I’ll let you ladies get back to business. Sorry to interrupt.”
    “Not a problem,” Meredithsaid breezily, though again Jillian caught the look she shot him.
    Curious, Jillian thought. There was so much going on beneath the surface she didn’t know about around here. She had to wonder how much of it was relevant to her purposes. She was going to have to figure it out—and soon.
    “Now then,” Meredith said. “Why don’t we talk about flowers?”
    Jillian couldn’t imagine anythingshe wanted to do less at the moment. Pasting on a smile, she made herself nod.
    Keeping her attention on Meredith, Jillian turned away from Adam.
    It didn’t matter. She could still feel him there.
    She sensed him begin to depart, relief piercing the tension gripping her insides.
    Listening with half an ear to Meredith, she waited for the feeling to dissipate completely.
    Itdidn’t. Instead, fresh awareness prickled the back of her neck. And she knew.
    He was watching her.
    The tension holding her clenched tighter. A strange mix of emotions churned in her belly, twisting and changing into each other, making it hard to recognize them all. Wariness. Nervousness.
    Excitement.
    The last one made no sense, but she had no doubt it was the one that had herheart beating the hardest.
    Even after he’d finally left, it took a while for the feeling to fade completely.
    He was suspicious of her. She was convinced of that now. It was the only thing that made sense, the only possible reason for