The Bride Wore Blue Read Online Free Page B

luck, he picked the exact moment her shoulders had straightened with both relief and awareness to catch her eye. He gave her a macho grin and a thumbs-up signal, then maneuvered smoothly to stand in all his wet, near-naked glory on the battered silver float.
    “Jerk,” she mumbled, irritated that she’d not only given in to her response to him but that she’d let him see it and recognize it for what it was.
    The big question was why. Why did she react to him physically and why did she care about what happened to him? She didn’t want to think about the physical part. The concern, however, she could reason out rationally. She’d watched the plane float away. She should have said something. Some perverse desire to tilt his world a little off kilter—just like he’d tilted hers—had prompted her to keep silent. Consequently, if something had happened to him— cramps were not out of the realm of possibility—it would have been her fault.
    “Wrong,” she stated firmly as she turned her back on him again and marched up the rock and grass path to the cabin. “Don’t fall into that trap again. That’s the kind of twisted rationale you came here to get away from. It would not have been your fault. It would have been his fault for not tying the plane to the dock in the first place.”
    Slipping into the cabin through the back screen door, she walked directly to the bedroom. She peeled off her suit,snagged panties and a bra, then stepped into khaki walking shorts and a red tank top. Then she proceeded to ignore the fact that there was a dog on her dock, a plane in her bay and a near-naked man responsible on both counts.
    It wasn’t that she was deluding herself into thinking she’d gotten rid of him. Not yet. It was just that when she confronted him again, it was going to be with the benefit of at least one of them fully clothed.
    Maybe then she wouldn’t experience this undercurrent of awareness muddling up her system. And maybe then her face wouldn’t heat up at just the thought of Blue Hazzard stripping to his skivvies and displaying his long, muscular legs, slim hips and broad, tanned chest for her benefit
    “Conceited jerk,” she grumbled, adding to his list of transgressions as she stalked to the picture window and pretended she wasn’t interested in what he was up to.
    The swim to the plane had been a no-sweat proposition. J.D. kept in shape, as much for himself as out of necessity. Coaxing the cantankerous engine to a disgruntled, wheezing start, however, was another story.
    He wheedled, he pleaded. He prayed and promised. He even whimpered a little, and finally she gave in and humored him. Babying her along, whispering sweet nothings, hoping that if she decided to cut out on him before he made it back to the dock that the momentum would take her the rest of the way, he taxied slowly back toward an anxious Hershey—and an absent Maggie.
    “Run, little rabbit,” he whispered toward the cabin, where he figured she’d burrowed in to wait him out. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”
    Luck was with him. The engine didn’t die until he bumped into the pilings. Jumping quickly onto the worn pine planks, he made the front of the float fast, then, skirting a tail-thumping Hershey, strode to the back of the plane and tied it securely, as well.
    That done, and with a covert glance toward the cabin, he grabbed his jeans and tugged them on. She thought he couldn’t see her up there, but he could. Through the birch and pine that crowded twenty yards of sloping shoreline, he caught a glimpse of her silhouette as she paced by the picture window craning her neck to get a better look.
    Good, he thought with a satisfied grin. She didn’t want to be, but she was interested. He planned on letting her get an eyeful while her curiosity built.
    He grabbed the roll of duct tape he’d tossed on the dock before his unscheduled dip in the sixty-eight degree water and tore off a strip. Positioning it securely over a