The Right Medicine Read Online Free PDF Page A

experience.”
    “Yeah, well, unfortunately, my experience with women hasn’t run much better.”
    A cool morning breeze lifted off the water and fanned Carrie’s long skirt around her legs. “We’re a real pair, aren’t we?” she asked, bending down to smooth out the clingy material that Mike kind of wished she’d left in place. It had been doing a spectacular job at emphasizing the curves of her luscious legs.
    “A couple of losers, you mean?” he asked, wrinkling his brow. “Now, I don’t think I’d go as far to say that.”
    “Losers, absolutely not,” Carrie said, coming over and sitting in a nearby chair. “Just down on our luck a bit at the moment.”
    “I’ll say,” Mike said, pulling up another chair and sitting beside her. “Worked a good long time to buy that ring. That last house, especially, was a bear to sell. But I knew if I didn’t have the commission—”
    “You’re in real estate?” she asked, looking amused.
    “What’s so surprising about that?”
    “Oh nothing, really,” she said, pursing her lips and looking toward the pool. “Just somehow I envisioned you in a line of work a little more—physical.”
    Mike spurted a laugh. “Lifeguard, you mean?” He pondered the notion of giving her mouth-to-mouth as she turned her very kissable lips toward his. Lips that had no business looking so damn inviting on such a downright disastrous morning.
    Carrie shrugged two silky white shoulders that peeked out from beneath her halter-style dress. “Well, sure. That—or a rock climber. Firefighter. Policeman…”
    Carrie bit her tongue, realizing how very much she sounded as if she were exercising her fantasies. And if she put her mind to it, Carrie was quite certain she could come up with one or two of those involving the well-built man beside her—clothed or not.
    It was probably getting close to checkout and time for Carrie to get back to her room. Her first order of business was calling her grandmother to tell her tomorrow afternoon’s bridal shower was off. It would be a sorrowful disappointment to her grandmother and all of her grandmother’s old friends who’d worked so hard in the planning. Not only that, they’d all been expecting to meet the groom! And here Carrie was having to show up empty-handed.
    Carrie cast a sideways glance at the man beside her, a totally absurd notion popping into her brain. No, he wouldn’t. She wouldn’t even dare to ask!
    “You know the worst part about all of this?” Mike asked, still studying the water. But Carrie truly couldn’t imagine anything worse than the look on her grandmother’s face when Carrie confessed she’d let another eligible bachelor slip right through her ineffectual fingers. “It’s my reunion.”
    “Reunion?” Carrie asked.
    Mike grimaced. “High school. And for once, I thought I’d finally have a fighting chance to prove them wrong.”
    Carrie heaved a deep sigh, grateful that her own twentieth was still a good, safe five years away. Other than business success, she’d had nothing to show for herself at her tenth, so hadn’t gone. By her twentieth, she’d been certain she’d have a dashing man—perhaps even a baby or two—on her arm. Now, she wasn’t so certain.
    “Which one is it?” Carrie asked, thinking she knew but feeling it only polite to ask.
    “Twentieth,” Mike reported with a frown. A frown that didn’t much become him, Carrie decided. His was an open, expressive face meant for love and laughter. Carrie blinked hard at the thought, wondering where that love part had come from. “And the sad thing is—after all these years—I’m only going to prove those fellows right.”
    “Which fellows?” Carrie asked.
    “The ones who voted me ‘Most Likely to Remain a Bachelor’.”
    “Hmm.”
    Mike turned to look at her, his eyes catching a glint of sunshine bouncing off the spreading oaks that surrounded the pool area. They were deep-green eyes and swimming like the ocean, a deep, lulling