Runaway Bridesmaid Read Online Free

smartly, nearly twisting her ankle in the process, and stalked away, huddled tightly against the wind as the clouds swirled overhead like oil spills in water.

Chapter 2
    F ollowing her would be pointless. Besides, he’d only come back to stand as best man to his brother, maybe help out his aunt with some chores around the house, run some errands. Not to let Sarah Whitehouse get to him.
    The thunder became more insistent as he watched her retreat, her arms tucked against her ribs. He hoped she’d get back to the house before all hell broke loose, although that didn’t look likely, judging from the churning gunmetal clouds overhead. But, he reminded himself, she was a big girl. She wasn’t going to melt in a little rainstorm.
    Oh, boy, was she a big girl.
    Even as a youngster, Sarah’s long legs and quick, energetic movements had always reminded him of a beautiful colt, sleek and sassy and filled with the promise of what she would become.
    A promise that had been more than fulfilled.
    Dean blinked in the wind, realizing Sarah had disappeared from sight some time ago. He turned back to the house, got asfar as the porch steps and sank onto the next to bottom one as if deflated.
    He wished—oh, how he wished!—he’d found her short hair repulsive or odd or just plain ugly. Instead, those bourbon-colored eyes looked even more enormous framed by the soft fringes of the simple cut, which also accentuated her proud jawline, her full mouth, that adorable little chin his fingertips could still feel when he’d tilt her face to his for a kiss.
    With a sigh that rivaled the moan of the wind, Dean leaned his head against the banister. This sure wasn’t the little girl who’d been his best friend. Or even the adolescent who’d tripped up his hormones, at fourteen or so. This was a woman, regal and sexy and gorgeous and brilliant and completely unaware that she was any of those things. Except maybe the brilliant part, he amended with a rueful grin.
    And just think. She could have been his.
    Â 
    The tears came almost immediately.
    Sarah assumed Dean had gone back into the house; she didn’t look back and she didn’t care whether he had or not. But if she thought storming off in a snit would bring her peace, her brain needed some major retooling. As if she could walk away from the truth! Not that she hadn’t tried—and thought she’d succeeded, actually—more than once since Dean had left. Hell, a body’ll believe anything, if you tell it the same lie long enough.
    Here she’d thought she’d worked through the pain of his abandonment, his betrayal. That she’d convinced herself that whatever they’d had, no matter how intense, was still nothing more than a teenage romance. Puppy love. The inevitable flaring of a mutual hormonal surge.
    Now the truth nagged at her like an obnoxious telemarketer, insisting part of her would always love Dean Parrish, no matter that she’d denied her feelings for nearly a decade.
    Ever since Jennifer dropped her little bomb this afternoon, Sarah had been trying to hold back the memories, the good ones even more than the bad, intuitively realizing how tenuousher control really was. It’d been like trying to keep out a flood with a piece of plywood, but until a few minutes ago, she’d managed. Now they hammered at her brain, brutally, relentlessly, bringing with them a crying jag that bordered on hysteria.
    She realized she was gasping for air as if she were literally drowning, her hands clamped to her ears—a futile gesture to staunch the barrage, and the pain that came with it. Like a drunk, she weaved toward the kennels, the wind whipping grit in her face, which would turn into hideous clay-colored tracks on her cheeks, as the memories crashed in, wave after wave, surging and flooding and briefly receding only to crest again. For a moment, she thought she might die.
    For a moment, she wanted to.
    What she