Summer Breeze Read Online Free

She’d remove the grapes, lay a sheaf of daffodils across the platter, and click! —the reluctant lock snapped open. So she knew when a painting was right for her.
    That same click! startled her when she saw Ben face-to-face. Something inside her opened to him. She thought she gasped; she hoped no one noticed.
    Next to her, Bella stirred. “Natalie, this is my brother Ben. Ben, this is Eleanor Clark’s niece, Natalie …?”
    Natalie supplied her last name. “Reynolds.”
    Bella nodded. “Right. She’s living here this summer.”
    Ben gave Natalie a preoccupied hello.
    Natalie returned a lukewarm “Hi”; she didn’t want to appear eager.
    “Great day,” Aaron said. “Have you been swimming yet?”
    Ben answered, “Not yet. The water’s still cold. But I got the canoe out last weekend.”
    Bella slid her arm through Aaron’s. “Could you help me set out the salads? I think they’re getting ready to eat.” She deftly pulled Aaron away.
    Ben stood near Natalie, saying nothing.
    “So,” Natalie asked, “you live on the lake, too, right?”
    Without looking at her, Ben answered, “Not really. I mean, I grew up here, but, technically, my parents’ house is no longer my home. I’m thirty-two now. I moved out years ago. I live in Amherst.”
    “I see. What do you do?”
    “I teach at U. Mass.–Amherst,” he said as he cast a sideways glance at her and blushed deeply.
    Well, ha! she thought, he was as attracted to her as she was to him. She angled her body toward him, lifting her face toward his. “What do you teach?”
    “Chemical engineering.” He stuck his hands in the pockets of his shorts, as if afraid of what they’d do left out on their own.
    She confessed, “I’m not sure I know what chemical engineering is.”
    “Most people don’t.”
    She persisted. “Give me a try.”
    He hesitated, then shot her another quick glance. He blushed again. “I heard you say you’re an artist.”
    She smiled wryly. “True. But that doesn’t make me an idiot .”
    Ben checked her face, as if to be sure she wasn’t ridiculing him, then told her, “Chemical engineering is more or less the combination of chemistry and physics with biosciences to create and construct new materials or techniques. Like nanotechnology or new fuels.”
    “Oh, well, if you put it that way, then it’s perfectly clear,” Natalie teased.
    Ben had pale blue eyes streaked with white, like shards of icebergs, as if a shield of cold protected the deep and complicateddepths. He had long, thick lashes, too, and shaggy blond hair. But he wasn’t surfer-boy tempting, he was grown-up tempting. He looked reflective, resolute.
    And clueless. He didn’t seem to get the fun in her voice. He seemed, in fact, insulted. She hurried to appease him, because she really didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
    “Maybe I could understand it a bit better if you gave me more details.”
    “I’m working on hierarchical porous materials.”
    “Okay …”
    “We’re looking for a way to convert wood-based biomass into oil.”
    “Fuel.”
    “Right.”
    “Got it. Sounds important.”
    “It could be. I hope it will be.” He continued talking, enthusiastic now, explaining his lab, his grad students, the papers he’d had published in scientific journals she’d never heard of. As he talked, it was as if a light had gone on inside him. Natalie understood; she had her own light.
    “There you are!” Louise Barnaby came onto the deck, carrying a toddler in her arms, followed by the appealing young couple Natalie had seen two houses down from Aunt Eleanor’s. “Natalie, I want you to meet Morgan and Josh O’Keefe. Oh, and I mustn’t forget Petey, their son.”
    Petey clung to Louise with wide eyes.
    “Say ‘Hi,’ Petey,” Morgan urged. The boy blinked. “It will take him a while. With the move, all the new people, so much change … He’s really a pretty gregarious little guy.”
    Louise asked, “Morgan, didn’t you say Felicity Horton