One Hot Summer Read Online Free Page B

was shove the watermelon back in her hands. “Here. You stall them. They wouldn’t arrest a pretty thing like you.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about? Arrest?”
    But Chet was already gone, along with the rest of the party attendees, leaving Remedy standing alone in the middle of the bank holding a damn watermelon, her face probably as red as one.
    She knew she’d been the butt of a practical joke when out of the trees emerged yet another Texas good ol’ boy, this one broader, taller, and a bit older than the rest. Beneath a dark cowboy hat he sported dark sunglasses and a smirk on his lips from which a toothpick balanced.
    As he swaggered out from the shadow of the trees, she took note of a black gun strapped to his belt and a barbed-wire tattoo encircling his upper arm just below where the sleeve of his red cotton T-shirt stretched around his muscles. Yeah, this was no police officer. If this was a Bubba-style summer party, as Dusty called it, then this, right here, was the Alpha Bubba.
    His gaze zeroed in on Remedy in an instant. The toothpick shifted to the corner of his mouth. His smirk twitched as though he was deliberating about smiling but decided against it.
    â€œNice melon.”
    Snickers and laughs coming from the bushes prompted her to look down at the watermelon in her arms, but her focus landed on the cleavage revealed by her tank top, which had apparently been tugged down by the watermelon.
    Wait—did Alpha Bubba say melon or melons ?
    Remedy opened and closed her mouth a couple times before finding her voice. “Chet and Dusty…” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder.
    â€œThey put you up to this?”
    â€œI helped them carry a watermelon.” Damn, that came out sounding stupid, but Alpha Bubba had her all kinds of flustered.
    It was impossible to see what his eyes were up to behind those dark glasses, but otherwise his expression remained that of bored amusement. “Got a name?” he drawled.
    Though her heart was racing and she’d made herself out to be an idiot, she decided to own her dorkiness outright, because who the hell was this jerk to stand there and make her feel unwelcome and off-balance?
    â€œAre you talking about the melon or me? Because I was thinking of calling this beauty Thelma.” She shifted the melon higher on her hip and, though Alpha Bubba was as intimidating as any A-list movie director, she strode forward, plucked the hat from his head, and dropped it onto the watermelon. “That’s better.” She mimicked his drawl. “Thelma was getting a little tuckered out in this sun.”
    His light brown hair was sweaty and unruly … and way too dangerously sexy for a man who was taking advantage of Texas’s open-carry gun law. His tongue poked against his cheek as his smirk turned into a grin. “You must think we’re pretty quaint around here, don’t you, California?”
    â€œHow did you know that’s where I’m from?”
    He lifted his hat from the watermelon and dropped it back on his head, then pulled it low over his forehead. “’Cause that’s where the crazies are, and a city girl like you would have to be crazy to let these fools talk you into partying with them.”
    â€œHey now, Micah,” Chet said, crashing through the bushes. “Nothing says we’ve got to share our beer with you if you’re gonna be a dick.”
    Micah. It fit, even though he made a better Alpha Bubba—and she’d be better off referring to him as such, lest those smirking blue eyes and killer body made her liberal, feminist heart forget her suits, not boots pledge.
    Chet dropped his hand onto Remedy’s shoulder as the rest of the guys stomped back onto the riverbank. “I was just having a little fun with my new friend. You might call it an initiation into life in Dulcet.”
    â€œI can see that,” Micah said dryly.
    Behind Chet, Dusty cackled, his