Blue by You Read Online Free

dark gaze from beneath two even darker slashes of brows. He was tall, and his black hair was short in a military buzz cut. He looked slightly familiar, but she didn’t know where she would have met him.
    She’d gone to an all-girls school, and she doubted he’d ever sat in the pews of St. Phillips. Just a guess, but his gaze was too direct for him to be a regular churchgoer. Too male. Too worldly. Too knowing to belong to any boy she’d ever met before. Maybe because he was a man, not a boy, and he looked at her like a man looked at a woman, not a girl.
    She turned toward Carolee, and said, “Don’t look now, but there is a man standing behind the crawdad pot. Big. Dark hair. Do you know him?”
    Of course, her friend immediately looked across the yard like Blue had told her not to do. “The hot guy in the white T-shirt?”
    “Geez, I said don’t look.”
    “How can I see who you’re talking about if I don’t look?”
    She had a point, but still . . . “Yeah.”
    Carolee smiled and returned her attention to Blue. “That must be Wally’s friend, Kasper something.”
    Blue’s lips parted. She’d only heard the name once. Kasper Pennington. The name fit the dark, broody French-Acadian, and she was a little shocked to see him in person.
    The Toussaints and Penningtons had always hated each other. Blue wasn’t sure of the exact year when the feud had started, she figured some time around the turn of the century. The nineteenth century, but she did know the fiery war had had something to do with a strip of disputed land between the two properties. There had also been whispers of a Pennington, a compromising situation, and a marriage refusal. It seemed so silly now, but at the time it had been deadly business. “Stay away for those morally corrupt, sugar-mouthed, Pennington boys,” her mother and grandmother had warned her. She looked back across the yard at a living, breathing symbol of her family’s two-century-old feud. He lifted one cocky brow, and she turned back to her friend. “How do you know him?”
    Carolee shrugged. “I don’t. I just know he’s friends with my neighbor, Wally Doclar.” She pointed her cup at the man stirring the pot next to Kasper. “Wally’s in the Marines, and he and Kasper are on leave from Camp Lejeune. That’s all I know, really. I only know that because I heard my dad say something to my mom about how he was going to outcook Wally and his friend Kasper this year.” She grabbed Blue’s free hand. “Come on.”
    “Where are we going?” Blue asked as beer sloshed over the top of her red Solo cup.
    “You have to meet Wally. He’s hysterical.”
    “No. No, I don’t want to meet anyone.” Blue shook her head as Carolee pulled her across the grass. Too late; she stood in front of Carolee’s neighbor and Kasper Pennington.
    “Wally this is my friend, Blue Butler.”
    “It’s a pleasure.” Wally was on the short side. Not much taller than Blue. He had red hair, and his cheeks were flushed from the boiling water. He was kind of cute, she supposed. But nothing like the big man standing next to him. “Are you from around here?”
    Before Blue could answer, a deeper, smooth voice answered for her. “She’s a Toussaint from St. James Parish.”
    Blue turned and met his gaze so direct, she felt pinned by it. Pinned like a bug in a science project, and she looked away from his inspection. “That’s right.”
    “Ah,” Wally said knowingly, and wrapped his arm around Carolee. “Did you go to that snotty girl’s school with fancy pants, here?”
    “I’m not a fancy pants,” Carolee answered through a laugh and wrapped her arms around Wally’s waist. “My parents aren’t rich.”
    Soft jazz and voices from the street carried to the backyard, while Carolee and Wally argued about money and fancy-pants schools and Carolee’s dog, Pepper. Blue smiled at them and brushed a long, dark curl behind her ear. Carolee had always been more comfortable around