Blue by You Read Online Free Page B

children? His daughter, Ruby Gale, was the first black woman to earn a doctorate degree from Harvard.”
    She’d heard that. So maybe Wilkie hadn’t been a complete jerk. “That doesn’t make his cheating on his wife okay.”
    Kasper flashed a grin, then took a drink. “You obviously have never seen a portrait of his wife, Aunt Fredericka.”
    She swatted a bug from her face. “Does it matter?”
    “Hell yes! She looked like Brezhnev, but with bushier eyebrows and less hair.”
    A picture of the dour communist leader with the huge black brows popped into her head. She purposely grimaced. “I did wonder where you got that unibrow.”
    “I don’t have a unibrow.”
    “Bushy, like a caterpillar is crawling across your forehead.” Now it was her turn to flash a genuine smile as he scowled. “Like a buck moth caterpillar, and you know what to do about a buck moth. Kill it before it migrates to the rest of your face.” Blue might not know what to do with the strange feeling bouncing around in her stomach, but she did know a thing or two about a timely exit. “See ya around, Kasper Pennington.” She turned on her heels and headed toward the front of the house. She didn’t look back to see if he watched her. She didn’t have to. She felt his gaze between her shoulders.
    As the sun set over the Crescent City, a quick rainstorm blew through and cleared away the humidity. It lasted about ten minutes and left behind clean streets and crisp air. The tables were removed, and The Hell Raisers Jazz Band set up their sound system and broke out their brass instruments. They played Coltrane and Davis as well as blowing it up with BB King and Etta James and Stevie Ray Vaughn.
    Blue stood on the edge of the crowd as the last strains of “Don’t Cry Baby” echoed off the houses and the streets. She rubbed her bare arm against the evening’s chill and caught a glimpse of Carolee and Wally brushing against each other as they danced in the middle of the crowd. Before one song ended, another began, with the band launching into Steve Ray Vaughn’s sultry and sexy “Dirty Pool.”
    Blue closed her eyes and felt the music slide across her skin. She hadn’t seen Kasper since the rainstorm and figured that, like some of the other wimps, he’d gone home, leaving only the diehards. The badasses. The rebels.
    A warm hand pressed the middle of her back, and she felt a whisper of breath in her hair next to her ear. “Come with me,” he said, and for some reason she went, compelled by his voice and big hand, into the street, to be consumed by the dance crowd.
    She looked up into Kasper’s dark face and the flash of his white smile. “I thought you left,” he said. He’d put on a gray sweatshirt with a dark emblem on the front. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
    He took one of her hands in his while his warm palm found the small of her back. He brought her close enough that her bare belly brushed the front of his shirt. A little tug knotted her stomach and sent those confusing little tingles through her body again. She leaned into the hard warmth of his chest as shivers of sensation, from the chilly air, his hot chest, and the anticipation of more surged through her.
    “Are you cold?”
    Not really. Not standing so close to him, but how else to explain her shivers. “Yes.”
    He stopped and whipped his sweatshirt over his head. She looked up at him as he shoved it over hers, and the smell of cedar and fresh skin surrounded her face. The heat from his body was tapped inside, and she shivered once again as she threaded her arms though the sleeves. “You’re a little on the skinny side. I need to take you home and have my grandmother cook for you. She’d fill you up with gumbo, fried oysters, and okra with grits on the side. Peach cobbler for dessert.”
    They both knew he would never take her home, and his grandmother would never cook for her. “I’m not skinny,” she argued. She’d been born and raised to watch her weight and