The Playboy Read Online Free PDF Page A

won’t be marrying you anytime soon.” She turned to Rick and Kendall. “We’re living in sin,” she said, lowering her voice, not that there was anyone else around to hear.
    “Damn woman won’t marry me for the most assinine reason.”
    “Eldin has a bad back and I refuse to marry a man who can’t carry me over the threshold. Did I tell you we’re living in sin?” She dropped her voice again.
    As Kendall laughed, her breasts brushed against Rick’s chest and his body completely overheated. “Can we come in before I drop her?” he asked.
    “Excuse my manners.” Pearl pushed Eldin back and they cleared a path. “You go on now, Rick, carry your bride over the threshold.”
    He’d never live this down. Rick paced the inside of the stifling hot guest house behind Crystal Sutton’s main house. Eldin had brought them over so they could “get settled,” while Pearl had insisted she needed to go to town for some groceries.
    “Groceries, my ass,” Rick muttered. She wanted to tell the world that she’d seen Rick Chandler carry his bride over the threshold. Never mind that there’d never been a ceremony or that the bride and supposed groom had just met. Pearl hadn’t been listening.
    The tightness in Rick’s shoulders increased. All he could do was hope that when his mother heard the gossip, she’d put an end to the foolishness. Raina would know that Rick hadn’t married or eloped again. She knew better than to buy into unfounded stories. But the news would spread, everyone in town speculating about Rick Chandler and the lady in the wedding dress he’d carried over the threshold.
    He groaned and for the first time considered moving to a huge city where he could be anonymous in a large crowd. He shook his head, knowing it would never happen. Despite the memories here, he loved his family, friends, and the small-town feel of Yorkshire Falls too much to leave. But a man could dream, couldn’t he?
    He glanced at the closed bathroom door where Kendall had gone to change. His
bride.
He rolled his eyes at the absurdity and swiped a hand over his damp forehead. Damn but it was like a sauna in here. He’d have to make sure Kendall got over to the General Store and picked up an A.C. unit.
    Where was she, anyway? She said she’d needed to change out of the gown but that had been over ten minutes ago. He strode to the bathroom door and rapped twice. “You okay in there?”
    “Sort of,” came the muffled reply.
    He jiggled the handle and found the door locked. He knocked once more. “Open up for me or I’m kicking the door down.” He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. His back and shoulder muscles remained sore from the dive onto the driveway.
    The door creaked open wide. He stepped inside in time to see her lower herself back onto the closed toilet seat and hang her head low between her knees. “I am sooo dizzy.”
    He glanced at her, concerned. “It’s no wonder with that damn dress cutting off your circulation. I thought you were going to get out of it.”
    “I tried, but it’s hot in here and I couldn’t unbutton the dress on my own, so I sat down for a minute. Then I got to thinking about my aunt and all the years she spent here. I stood up, got dizzy again . . .” She managed a shrug.
    She liked to ramble, something he’d learned from talking to her by the side of the road. Her thoughts jumped from topic to topic, but one thing stuck with him. Her pain. Rick had lost his father when he was fifteen. He’d been young, but not young enough so he didn’t remember the man. He’d been a hands-on father, attended all his boys’ baseball games and back-to-school nights.
    “I lost my father a while back. I can understand what you’re going through now,” he said, compelled to open up to this woman for reasons he didn’t understand. Reasons that made him wary. But he didn’t censor himself. “It was twenty years ago. I was fifteen,” he said, remembering. “But sometimes the pain is as fresh as