The Castaway Bride Read Online Free Page A

between the boat and the jetty grew to a few feet, then a few yards and then a distance that Howard wouldn’t dare to swim.
    The wedding party shrank smaller and smaller until they seemed like so many black ants—and one pink one—scurrying around on the shore.
    She realized she had been holding her breath and she let it out with a sigh. No way could they catch her now. Her wedding was behind her. She had escaped.
     
    I n the cockpit, Matt’s hands clenched tight around the wheel. Usually he loved the sensation of facing endless blue horizons with the powerful boat at his command. It was the kind of freedom he’d dreamed about for much of his thirty-four years.
    But that was when he had the boat to himself and no one but himself to please. Sharing Wayfarer with a runaway bride wasn’t part of the picture. He must have been insane to invite her on board.
    What was it about this woman he’d known only for a heartbeat that made him behave so irrationally? That made him throw away those rules for his solitary new life he’d forged so painfully out of treachery and hurt? That had lured that pesky white charger out of retirement?
    He’d come up here to these islands off the Queensland north coast to take time out. Executive burnout, he’d joked to his friends in explanation of his shock decision to take a long, open-ended vacation.
    To his board of directors in Sydney, panicked at the thought of his absence for even a few days, he’d given a more mundane excuse.
    But he hadn’t given anyone a hint of the real, gut-wrenching reason for his escape. He could never talk to another person about the horror of discovering his girlfriend Julia and his brother Danny together in bed, and embroiled in a treacherous plot to embezzle him of his fortune. Or the actions he’d been forced to take to thwart them.
    A muscle tensed painfully in his jaw. He didn’t want to think about it. He just wanted long, solitary hours on his boat. Only him, the ocean and his plans for the future. Plans that did not include a woman.
    Especially not this woman, who embodied everything he distrusted.
    His hands clenched even tighter on the wheel as he remembered how he’d felt as he’d pulled the runaway bride to her feet from where she’d fallen on the deck. The feel of her warm, soft body in his arms, the heady scent of roses that had invaded his senses.
    Her creamy breasts had swelled voluptuously over the top of her dress and when he’d leaned over her he’d seen a tantalizing glimpse of one delicate pink nipple. He’d had to fight himself not to stare or, worse, reach out and caress her.
    But that was nothing compared to the battle he’d fought with himself when he’d probed her ankle for injury.
    During his years on construction sites he’d checked hundreds of suspected breaks and sprains. But nothing had prepared him for the feelings that had threatened to overtake him as he held in his hands that slender, fine-boned foot in its soft, silky stocking.
    Suddenly a routine first-aid examination had become something incredibly, surprisingly sexy.
    As he’d stroked her warm flesh, his para-medical training had fled his mind. He could only think about how he’d like to push her skirts up and caress first her shapely calves, then her thighs, as she sighed and moaned her pleasure. His jeans had become uncomfortably tight.
    And then she’d hauled up her skirts and let him feast his hungry eyes on those long, long legs. Her thighs were as creamy and smooth as her breasts. Was the rest of her body the same? Did her—?
    Enough! He swung the wheel down hard—so hard he wrenched his shoulder. He cursed at the sudden pain.
    Some old sailors still thought it was bad luck to have a woman on board their craft. The more beautiful the woman, the worse the luck. The sooner he could get this bride off Wayfarer the better.
    He slowed the engine and went forward to hoist the sails.
     
    C risty tucked away her heel-less shoes behind a coil of rope and