Read Online The Bride Wore Blue by Cindy Gerard - Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t even mentioning the bare expanse of muscled chest and, um, other things that threatened to peek out.
    “Sorry I couldn’t come up with something better. But until your clothes are dry, it’s the best I could do.”
    Holding his cocoa in one hand and the robe closed with the other, he walked in front of her, then settled into the opposite end of the sofa.
    “Could be worse,” he said, stalling a shiver and snagging the extra blanket she’d laid out for him. With a mischievous glint in his eye, he raised his arm and sniffed the fabric of the robe that held the scent of the lotion she wore. “I can’t remember when I’ve ever smelled this good.”
    They shared another sneak-up-on-you smile and she wondered when they had started coming so freely. Just like she wondered how a man in a woman’s pink robe could look so undeniably sexy.
    His hair was still damp from his shower. His only attempt at taming its wild disarray had been a quick finger combing that had somehow managed to arrange it with an artfulness that no stylist’s brush could ever have achieved.
    Everywhere the robe didn’t cover—and that encompassed a lot of territory—the firelight gilded the summer bronze tint of his skin, set flickering highlights to the softcurling hair on his chest, defined the strong angles of his face with shadows and substance. His eyes were so blue, so intense, as they met hers above the rim of his mug.
    She looked quickly away, embarrassed that he’d caught her staring, and cataloging, and wondering what it would be like to be made love to by Blue Hazzard.
    That thought stopped her cold. Unsettling as it was, even more upsetting was the very real possibility that he could tell exactly what was running through her mind.
    She’d been told for years that one of her most valuable assets was her ability to relay a gamut of emotions with nothing more than a look. She’d made her fortune on her face and the openness of the feelings she could express there. And she’d be a fool if she thought Blue hadn’t known what she’d been thinking as she’d watched him.
    She waited for him to call her on it, to push the advantage of a storm-drenched night, a warm fire and the vulnerability of a lonely woman. When he didn’t, she couldn’t help but meet his eyes again and question why.
    He answered her silent query with a soft, easy smile and a deep sigh before he angled his gaze thoughtfully toward the fire.
    “I owe you an apology, Stretch,” he said into a silence broken only by the rush of the wind, the persistent peppering of rain on the windowpanes and the crackle of the cedar fire. “I put you at risk tonight.”
    She tucked her feet up under her bottom and arranged the blanket more snugly around her. “I was never at risk. And you didn’t ask me to come after you. I made that decision myself.”
    “Yeah,” he said, after a thoughtful silence, his deep voice pensive. “You did, didn’t you. I guess the question is, why?”
    She could feel his warm gaze touch her face, puzzled, pleased, liking the conclusions he’d drawn before ever hearing her reply.
    “Well it wasn’t like I could sleep or anything,” she said, shooting for a disgruntled demeanor. “Not with your dog shivering under the covers of my bed and you bobbing around like a cork in my bay.”
    One corner of his mouth tipped up in a crooked smile. “Hersh does like his creature comforts.”
    “And you like to prove you’re still the same reckless show-off you were fifteen years ago.”
    She tried to sound disgusted but it didn’t come out that way. It came out sounding wistful instead, crowded with old memories that, if she let herself, she could find both comfortable and amusing.
    “Yeah, well, I was in love. A man will do almost anything when he’s in love.”
    “You weren’t a man. And you weren’t in love,” she corrected him, and gave in to the recurring urge to smile as she tugged the towel from her hair. “You were an obnoxious pain