The Bride Wore Blue Read Online Free Page A

reason—there were a lot of lines he planned on crossing. Starting with why and how she had ended up back at the lake in the first place…and ending with what had put that hunted, haunted look in her eyes.
    Before he could form his first question, though, her head came up. Her gaze skittered, as it had since he’d first stepped out of the plane, past his to the bay behind him.
    “It might have been a good idea to tie up to the dock,” she announced with an offhanded innocence that immediately set his senses on alert.
    He frowned, glanced back over his shoulder, did a double take and swore roundly.
    When he turned his glare back on her, she had the nerve to let a little grin tip up one corner of that delicious mouth.
    While he’d stood there mooning over Maggie Adams like a love-struck teenager, the Cessna had very quietly floated a couple hundred yards out into the bay.
    Without taking his eyes from hers, he stripped his T-shirt over his head and tossed it along with his sunglasses and the roll of duct tape onto the dock. “You watched it go, didn’t you?”
    She gave a noncommittal shrug that suggested she had taken perverse pleasure in doing just that.
    “You could have said something,” he muttered, hopping first on one foot, then the other as he shucked his shoes.
    “I believe I just did.”
    Her smug little smile made him want to put her in her place. While he couldn’t say he much cared for the pleasure she was deriving out of this—and all at his expensehe was glad the fear in her eyes had been replaced by a sassy spark of amusement. This was the Maggie he remembered.
    “You’ll pay for this, Stretch,” he promised amiably, then extracted his first payment when he stripped off his jeans and stood before her in nothing but black silk boxers.
    Her face turned the color of a red channel marker.
    “You’ll pay dearly,” he assured her, flashing a warning grin. With a command to Hershey to stay, he dove into the bay.
    Maggie stood and stewed and blasted herself for doing it. Yet she couldn’t look away. With her arms crossed tightly under her breasts, she watched Blue swim out to the plane.
    “He’s managed to take care of himself the last fifteen years when you weren’t around,” she sputtered under her breath. “He doesn’t need you fussing like a mother hen now.”
    With that thought, she forced herself to turn her back on him and the lake, and told herself she didn’t care if he drowned on his merry way. He was going to end up killing himself eventually anyway if he piloted that plane many more times.
    “Plane,” she muttered darkly. “Flying leaky boat is more like it. Disaster with a prop. He and that contraption deserve each other.”
    Hershey’s agitated woofs coming from where he stood vigil on the end of the dock had Maggie spinning on her heel, though, as visions of a Hazzardless bay and a few telltale bubbles outdistanced her resolve to ignore him.
    Blue water and—thankfully—Blue Hazzard filled her field of vision, however, as he reached the plane and hefted his gorgeous self out of the water. Settling his hip onto the float, he whipped his head back, sending water flying in a sparkling crystal arc from that glorious mass of golden hair.
    She felt a relief that was too swift and too sweet. And a flutter of arousal that hit like a thief in the night. He was a beautiful man, gilded in the sunlight from the top of his sun-streaked hair to the tawny glow of his tanned skin. Hewas male from the breadth of his shoulders to the symmetrical sculpting of his chest to his narrow hips and the fluid lines of his long, muscular legs. And just looking at him excited her.
    Her swift, strong reaction stunned her. After Rolfe, she’d never intended to let a man affect her that way again. After Rolfe, she’d never thought it would be possible. Blue Hazzard had just proven her wrong. He’d not only managed to arouse a physical response, he’d managed to make her concerned about him.
    Just her