Midsummer Sweetheart Read Online Free Page A

in absolute control of himself, it made him incredibly uncomfortable.
    To make matters worse, her smile caught him totally off guard, making him almost dizzy as her face was transformed by two crater-sized dimples that caved in both cheeks, giving her previously dignified demeanor an unexpectedly impish, playful quality, a glimpse of how she would look when she was teasing. And he liked it. A lot. A lot more than he should.
    For whatever reason—likely owing to the well-established fact that most men are latent Neanderthals—as he held her hand, bewildered by her eyes and undone by her smile, he had a quick mental fantasy of her leaping into his arms. She was so small, he could easily hold her, and she would wrap her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, and he would press his lips to hers, claiming her, so that no man would ever try to hurt her or take her away from him or—
    Whoa, Erik! He glanced over at her again, almost worried that she could hear the thoughts ricocheting around in his brain, but she stared out the windshield impassively. The brief image was so real and so developed, he could almost feel the imprint of her legs around his waist, and his cheeks flushed.
    You only have one job to do, Erik. Drive her to Skidoo Bay. Don’t get distracted by a pair of dimples, goddamnit.
    She told him to turn left and his body warmed up further from the lilting tone of her voice, soft and gentle, almost musical. He pulled into the driveway she pointed to and cut the engine of his car.
    “This is it,” she said with a small, polite smile, and it bugged him that it was nothing like the unguarded one she’d given him at Ingrid’s. He wanted to see that one again. “Do you want to come up for a few minutes?”
    He looked at the two-car garage in front of him that had a staircase along the right side, presumably leading to her apartment. “Sure.”
    She preceded him up the stairs and when her sweatshirt rode up a little he got another peek at her perfect, adorable backside in tight yoga pants, briefly wondering again if Wade Doyle was the stupidest man who’d ever lived.
    ***
    Katrin winced at the cardboard and silver duct tape that Kristian had used to cover the gaping hole in the door window. It brought back such strong memories of Friday night, Katrin’s stomach flipped over and she paused at the door, placing her hand over her belly and trying to take a deep breath as the keys rattled in her trembling hand.
    She didn’t expect to feel Erik’s warm hand on her shoulder, but it comforted and grounded her for a second before her stomach flipped over again for an entirely different reason.
    “You okay?” he asked, reaching around her for the hand that held her keys and gently pulling them away.
    His chest felt solid as it brushed against her back and for an instant she forgot about Friday night and Wade and Skidoo Bay and closed her eyes, inhaling the clean-laundry smell of Erik Lindstrom around her.
    “Uh-huh,” she murmured.
    His voice was low behind her. “You haven’t been back here since Friday?”
    “No.”
    “It can be pretty traumatic to return to the scene of—”
    “Wade didn’t actually attack me,” she blurted out. She didn’t want Erik to think of her only as a victim.
    “Just because he didn’t touch you, doesn’t mean he didn’t attack you. You must have been terrified.”
    Katrin swallowed painfully, remembering the crunching of broken glass under Wade’s boots, the metal of the knife in her hands glinting as it shook in her trembling fingers.
    “He’d never done anything like that before.”
    “He’s escalating.”
    Erik’s fingers flexed on her shoulder once, then twice, and Katrin’s face flushed with heat, grateful for the distraction from her frightening memories. He leaned forward to fit the key into the lock and pushed the door open, leaning away from her so she could enter first.
    She took a deep breath and stepped inside.
    Either Ingrid or Kristian had