The Bride Wore Blue Read online

  Without taking his eyes from hers, he stripped his T-shirt over his head and tossed it along with his sunglasses and the roll of duct tape onto the dock. “You watched it go, didn’t you?”

  She gave a noncommittal shrug that suggested she had taken perverse pleasure in doing just that.

  “You could have said something,” he muttered, hopping first on one foot, then the other as he shucked his shoes.

  “I believe I just did.”

  Her smug little smile made him want to put her in her place. While he couldn’t say he much cared for the pleasure she was deriving out of this—and all at his expensehe was glad the fear in her eyes had been replaced by a sassy spark of amusement. This was the Maggie he remembered.

  “You’ll pay for this, Stretch,” he promised amiably, then extracted his first payment when he stripped off his jeans and stood before her in nothing but black silk boxers.

  Her face turned the color of a red channel marker.

  “You’ll pay dearly,” he assured her, flashing a warning grin. With a command to Hershey to stay, he dove into the bay.

  Maggie stood and stewed and blasted herself for doing it. Yet she couldn’t look away. With her arms crossed tightly under her breasts, she watched Blue swim out to the plane.

  “He’s managed to take care of himself the last fifteen years when you weren’t around,” she sputtered under her breath. “He doesn’t need you fussing like a mother hen now.”

  With that thought, she forced herself to turn her back on him and the lake, and told herself she didn’t care if he drowned on his merry way. He was going to end up killing himself eventually anyway if he piloted that plane many more times.

  “Plane,” she muttered darkly. “Flying leaky boat is more like it. Disaster with a prop. He and that contraption deserve each other.”

  Hershey’s agitated woofs coming from where he stood vigil on the end of the dock had Maggie spinning on her heel, though, as visions of a Hazzardless bay and a few telltale bubbles outdistanced her resolve to ignore him.

  Blue water and—thankfully—Blue Hazzard filled her field of vision, however, as he reached the plane and hefted his gorgeous self out of the water. Settling his hip onto the float, he whipped his head back, sending water flying in a sparkling crystal arc from that glorious mass of golden hair.

  She felt a relief that was too swift and too sweet. And a flutter of arousal that hit like a thief in the night. He was a beautiful man, gilded in the sunlight from the top of his sun-streaked hair to the tawny glow of his tanned skin. He was male from the breadth of his shoulders to the symmetrical sculpting of his chest to his narrow hips and the fluid lines of his long, muscular legs. And just looking at him excited her.

  Her swift, strong reaction stunned her. After Rolfe, she’d never intended to let a man affect her that way again. After Rolfe, she’d never thought it would be possible. Blue Hazzard had just proven her wrong. He’d not only managed to arouse a physical response, he’d managed to make her concerned about him.

  Just her 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 crack in a riveted seam on the wingtip, he delivered on the first of his promises to the Cessna.

  “See, baby? I promised I’d take care of you,” he murmured as he smoothed the tape into place then snuck another glance toward the cabin.

  “Let’s let her stew, huh, Hersh?” he suggested softly as the lab nosed his head under his hand, begging for attention.

  Squatting down on his haunches, he gave Hershey the ear-scratching he was angling for. “Never did meet a woman who wasn’t just busting with curiosity and let it get the best of her before all was said and done.”

  Whistling softly between his teeth, he rose to his feet and stepped out onto a float. After a little shifting and tugging, he managed to dislodge the tool kit from under the pilot seat. He grinned when he felt the warm burn of her gaze couple with the eighty-degree sun on his bare back as he peeled back the strip of duct tape securing the engine cowling. Folding it back, he settled in to do a little minor repair work and a lot of creative tinkering while he waited her out.

  “Conceited, stalling jerk,” Maggie muttered under her breath as she checked the sun’s descent toward the west where it would soon disappear in the trees behind her cabin
.

  She’d done her twenty-minute workout—old habits were hard to break. She’d showered. She’d made a pitcher of lemonade, then felt too guilty to have a cool glass while he sweltered down there in the hot sun. Finally, she drank a glass for spite just to prove to herself she didn’t care what happened to him.

  She sat by the window with a book but couldn’t remember a thing she’d read because she’d spent most of her time alternately watching Blue and Hershey. The lab’s antics made her smile as he skittered in and out of the woods, sometimes chasing a teasing chipmunk, sometimes wading into the water from the nearby beach to coax a lounging mallard into giving him a run for his money, sometimes lolling in the shade, his only movements the lazy slap of his tail when a fly pestered.

  Blue’s antics, however, made her frown as all the while she watched him, he puttered with his precious plane, never sparing a glance toward the cabin. She wasn’t sure how that made her feel. She only knew his being here unsettled her.

  He’d been down there for over three hours, messing with his tools, taping things together and spreading importantlooking engine parts on her dock. It didn’t look like he was close to packing up and winging his way out of her life any time soon. In fact, she noted, her scowl deepening as she gave up on the book and tossed it on an end table, he’d just laid another piece of greasy metal on the dock.

  She sliced another impatient glance at the clock. It was almost six. While the July sun didn’t completely disappear until nine or after this time of the year, she was getting a little nervous about whether he’d have the Cessna in working order before sunset. If he didn’t, then what would she do with him? While it seemed to be his personal style, she doubted very much that he could fly that plane by night.

  She pinched her mouth tight and bit on the inside of her cheek. Only when she realized what her frustration had driven her to—skulking around in the cabin to avoid him— did she make a decision. She wasn’t going to hide out any longer. Not here. Not because of him. Not in her own home.

  Home. The word stalled, then settled comfortably when she realized she’d applied it to this little cabin in the north woods more than once since she’d been here. New York had been home for the past fourteen years. Yet after a short two-month span of time, this primitive cabin and the vast isolation of the Northland felt more like home than her upscale Soho co-op ever had.

  “At least it had been isolated,” she grumbled as her attention focused again on the man standing with his legs spread wide and his hands full of some mechanical mystery that was dripping oil and making him frown.

  Wearing a frown of her own, she refilled her glass, then grudgingly filled another one. With a sigh that could have been resignation, determination, disgust or all three, she headed out the door.

  J.D. was hot. He was also bored. He’d fixed the engine problem a couple of hours ago and he’d about run out of engine parts to tinker with when he finally heard the soft sound of approaching footsteps falling on the wooden dock.

  “Thank you,” he whispered skyward, then turned toward the sound, knowing he looked like a sap as his smile spread warm and welcoming. He couldn’t help it. Didn’t care. She looked so damn good walking toward him. She’d pulled her dark, shoulder-length hair from her face with a solid-gold hair band. Her cheeks and nose were rosy above her soft summer tan and today’s kiss of the sun. But best of all, she was carrying two glasses full of ice-cold lemonade. That had to be a good sign.

  “Hey,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag and gladly taking the one she extended, in silence, to him. “This is just what the doctor ordered.”

  He hadn’t realized just how hot he was. Or how dry. He felt the sweat trickle down his temple to blend with more on his neck as he tipped his head back and downed the entire contents of the glass in three huge, gulping swallows.

  With a blissful sigh, he licked the last drop of liquid off the lip of the glass then dragged it across his bare chest to smooth the remains of the cooling moisture there. “Man. Did that hit the spot.”

  She looked from the empty glass to him and blinked.

  He laughed. “Big man. Big thirst,” he explained. “Bad manners,” he said apologetically. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made such a pig of myself.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t have left you out in the sun so long without something to drink. I’m the one who’s sorry.”

  He considered her then. Her genuine regret. Her tooacute bearing of blame. And he wondered when this had become such a serious matter.

  “You can make it up to me with another glass. Just like the other one,” he added, giving her a huge grin.

  Without a word, she retrieved his glass—greasy fingerprints and all—and headed back up the slope to the cabin.

  By the time she returned with the refill, he’d managed to wipe the worst of the grime from his hands, tug on his T-shirt and drag a couple of dock chairs onto the grass and out of the sun.

  She didn’t want to get friendly. That was clear. But J.D. figured that shared memories and that combustible kiss they’d experienced earlier had taken them a little past what she wanted to a few unalterable facts. She may not want to get friendly, but she didn’t have a prayer of forestalling it. He was going to make damn sure of that.

  He stood by the chairs, waiting for her to sit. She hesitated, gave him a wary glance, then eased down into the old metal spring chair. Using her lemonade and Hershey as buffers between them, she ignored him as he sat, too, taking in the sight of her and wondering, still, at the reason she was here.

  “Been a long time since I sat under this tree,” he remarked with a wistful, melancholy look around him. “It was a nice surprise finding you here today. Real nice,” he added with a soft, inviting smile.

  “So what brings you back, Stretch?” he asked finally, when her extended silence told him nothing more than that she was reluctant to share even a little bit of herself with him.

  Her quiet gaze skimmed the still waters of the bay, from the rocky shoreline directly ahead of them to the grassy shadows tucked like waving wheat in the breakwater protected by the dock and finally to the little beach nestled twenty yards to the west.

  “I think the real question is what kept me away so long.”

  His gaze followed hers to the beauty, to the peace and the tranquillity that was the lake and the wonder that was this natural northern paradise, and he understood. “Got in your blood, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” she said, her eyes drifting shut as the lake breeze played with her hair, lifting it gently from her brow and feathering it against her cheek. “It did.”

  They shared the silence then. The silence that was punctuated with the playful lap of water to shore, the distant call of the gulls and the hypnotic, muted chatter of a dozen pairs of summering mallards and their broods fishing and sunning themselves on the rocks near the beach.

  He sat back in the old chair, letting his weight bow the springs. Rocking like an ancient to the lulling sounds of summer, he tried to figure out his good fortune and a safe way to get her to open up.

  “So,” he began, feeling his way carefully. “I figured a Caribbean beach or the French Riviera would have been more your speed for an exotic getaway.”

  There. It was out in the open. At the very least it was implied that he’d followed her career, or that he was aware of it. Who wasn’t? Anyone who didn’t live under a rock had to be aware of Maggie. He’d discovered Maggie, the superstar, super-sought-after supermodel by accident about seven years ago. He’d been sitting in a dentist’s office, thumbing through some glitzy women’s magazine out of sheer boredom when a lingerie ad had caught his eye. Caught his eye? Singed his eyeballs was more like it. The model was a knockout. A bona fide, jerk-your-heartaround, make-your-jeans-tight knockout.

  His hands had stilled, then he’d folded the page out flat and stared, and devoured and forgotten all about his impending root canal as he fought to resurrect a memory that wouldn’t quite come into focus.

  He
was under the drill, drifting on laughing gas and dreaming of summer love when it hit him and damn near knocked him out of the dental chair.

  The Maggie in the magazine wasn’t just the single-name phenomenon that little girls wanted to grow up to be like and big girls strived to copy. She was his Maggie. His Maggie Adams, who still had the ability to heat his blood to flash point with a single look from her spicy brown eyes. It was his Maggie who had been staring her stubborn, sultry, untouchable stare from the page of that magazine, wearing nothing but a white silk teddy and thigh-high lace stockings.

  He looked over at her now. Her aristocratic yet sensual features were bare of makeup and pretense, her dark eyes were striking without benefit of shadows and shadings and carefully positioned lights and he thought she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  “You’ve had a helluva ride, haven’t you, Stretch?”

  Still, she remained silent. And he wondered at the cause of it. Since that first time he’d discovered her in that ad, he’d seen her face and body on everything from magazine covers to billboards, to TV advertising, to a segment of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” to promotions for her signature perfume. In the world of glamour and glitz, stars didn’t rise any higher.

  Yet, still she sat. Silent. Somber. Hanging on to her thoughts and her emotions like the glass she clenched tightly in her hands.

  “How’s the plane?” she asked finally, never meeting his eyes. “Are you going to be able to put it back together?”

  And fly out of my life and leave me alone? was the trailing, unvoiced ending to that question that he guessed she was too polite to put into words.

  So she didn’t want to get chummy. So she didn’t want him hanging around long enough to get reacquainted. Tough.

  Most men would have taken the hint and left the lady alone. He wasn’t most men. But then, Maggie Adams wasn’t just any woman. She was the woman of his adolescent dreams. The embodiment of his perfect woman. And even though he hadn’t realized it until he’d had the good luck to find her again today, she was the woman by whom he’d measured all others since and found them lacking.