The Bride Wore Blue (5 page)

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 soft
curling 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 in the neck locked in hormonal overload. And if I recall, I saved your sorry self once back then, too.”

“Well, at least I let you
think
you did.”

She angled him a suspicious look, stilling the hand she’d been working through her hair to fluff and dry it. “You mean you really didn’t have a cramp that day I dove into the bay after you?”

He grinned sweetly. Angels should look so innocent.

“You toad,” she sputtered, grudgingly accepting that he’d duped her all those years ago.

“Sorry,” he said, without one speck of remorse. “But a guy had to do what a guy had to do. And it was heaven.” He exhaled on a wistful sigh. “There I was—tucked safely in your arms as you swam me back to shore.” He caught the towel she threw at him, chuckled and let his head fall lazily back against the sofa cushion. “And the mouth-tomouth, well, I almost embarrassed myself over that.”

“You really were a jerk, Hazzard,” she said, but with a fondness in her voice that undercut her exasperation.

He let his head loll to the side, toward her. His gaze sought hers, the intensity in his eyes heightened by firelight and lightning flashes. “And you really were a beauty. Still are.” He paused, genuine regret darkening his eyes again. “But even though I’d still try just about anything to get close to you, I’d never intentionally hurt you. I never meant for you to go out in that tonight.”

“I know,” she said, turning way, uncomfortable with his intentions, certain of his sincerity. “I’m fine. Nothing was hurt, okay?”

He grunted. “Nothing but my image. And maybe my pride.”

“Ah, well. Time has managed to dispel the ’real men don’t eat quiche’ stigma. Maybe we’ll break the pink bathrobe barrier soon, too.”

He smiled crookedly and resumed his study of the fire.

“So, did you get warmed up?”

He took a careful sip of his hot cocoa. “Working on it.”

“And the plane? Is it all right?” she asked rather than let the silence infuse them again with intimate thoughts and impossible options.

“She will be. She took a nasty gouge in the right float before I got her beached, but she’ll ride out the storm okay where she is.”

“Far be it from me to question your priorities, but why is that wreck so important to you?”

His eyes filled with affection and pride. “Remember Hank Townsend?”

She furrowed her brow but shook her head when she couldn’t connect with the name.

“Old Hank was just about the best walleye guide between the Cities and Alaska. He was also one of the nicest old guys and one of the biggest characters I’d ever met. The first time I was ever airborne it was with Hank in that plane. It was that flight that turned me on to flying. And that little plane that gave me my first thrill.”

He paused. A shadow of regret darkened his face. “When I heard that Hank had died a few years back, I made a trip up from the Cities to pay my respects to his kids and ended up buying the plane from them. She and I have been together ever since.”

There was a certain sweetness about him as he told her the story. An innocence of spirit and purity of heart that tugged at feelings deep inside. Feelings she’d thought she’d lost and would be better off without, she told herself grimly, just as the lights went out.

“I’ve been waiting for that,” she said, making to rise from the sofa and light the lamps.

A hand on her shoulder stayed her.

“Stay put,” he said softly. “We don’t need the lamps. The fire glow works for me.”

It was working for her, too—too well. The dancing flames lent a subtle intimacy to a moment that eclipsed even the isolation inherent in the romantic scenario of one woman and one man alone in a cabin in the woods.

Even so, she let him coax her to settle back onto the sofa. “You mentioned the Cities. Were you living there then?” she asked, not, she told herself, because she was interested in his life, but to establish a definitive line between intimacy and necessity. It was a necessity to not court intimacy. It was a necessity to keep the conversation generic.

“I still do.” He slouched lower on the sofa and stretched his long bare feet closer toward the warmth of the fire. “My business is there. Air cargo,” he added in anticipation of her next question.

“Air cargo?”

“Yup. And actually, Minneapolis is basically headquarters now. Hazzard Aire is flying out of a dozen different cities at last count.”

She tilted her head. “So he’s a successful businessman.”

He shrugged. “I’ve been lucky.”

Maggie doubted that luck had much to do with it. Not in today’s competitive business world. “You just happened to be up here on vacation?”

He smiled. “I’ve got competent people working for me so I leave the business in their hands and spend my summers up here.”

Successful and smart, she concluded. Here was a man who was not going to let his life be consumed by corporate stress and an insatiable need to control the pulse of every aspect of his business. She should be so together, she thought ruefully, then reacted to the warmth in his eyes.

“So the lake got in your blood, too,” she said with a speculative tilt of her head.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, settling even lower on the couch and, if possible, stretching out a little longer as he propped his mug on his chest. He looked comfy and content and too, too appealing. “This place does that. There are memories here that never quite let go. And some traditions just refuse to die. My dad started bringing me to the lake when I was five years old. I’ve never spent a summer since without making some kind of an appearance. Even if it was only for a long weekend or two in those early days when I was getting the business off the ground—no pun intended.

“You probably won’t believe this,” he added in a voice softened by self-deprecation, “but I never gave up hope that I’d find you up here again.”

He turned his head lazily on the sofa cushion, his gaze seeking hers in the firelight. “I’ve never spent a summer like the one I spent chasing you.”

Maggie thought back to that summer. That wonderful, special time in her life when Max and Esther Snyder had made her feel cared for and cherished and loved. It had been a rarity in her life that had seen her shuffled from one foster home to another, from group home to group home in Chicago’s inner city to a couple of ugly brushes with juvenile detention.

“You know, I’ve looked for you up here every year since then, Stretch.”

His voice broke through her musings. Deep, compelling, so tempting with its knowledge of the feisty, streetwise girl she’d been, so forbidden because of his lack of insight about the apprehensive, distrustful woman she’d become.

“Somehow, I doubt that,” she said, determined to diffuse the recurring threat of intimacy his straightforward admission fostered.

He didn’t dispute her. Not in words. It was his silence, instead, that compelled her to look at him.
If it makes you feel better, doubt away,
his intense blue eyes and indulgent shrug suggested,
but I’m telling it straight.

In her heart, she believed him. Her heart, it seemed, might just be leading her into trouble.

“It wasn’t in the cards for me to come back,” she said, determined to find her way back to safer ground.

“And yet you ended up here now.”

How, Maggie? Why?
Again, he didn’t put voice to his questions. She heard them just the same. And in that moment, when his gaze searched hers with more interest and concern than anyone had lavished on her in more years than she cared to remember, she almost weakened and told him about Rolfe and how he had nearly destroyed her.

Almost. Her dependence might have slowed down her escape, but she hadn’t gotten this far being weak. And she wouldn’t get where she needed to go if she gave in to weakness now. Stubbornly, she sipped her hot chocolate, stared into the fire and hoped he’d consider the subject closed.

“I’d heard that the Snyders passed on.” The gentle hesitance of his tone filled a silence that had expanded, rivaling the darkness for space in the cabin. “I’m sorry. It must have been hard for you to lose your grandparents.”

She nodded and, feeling safer with the warm memories and tender sentiments that thoughts of the Snyders
prompted, let go of a little bit of herself. “Yes, it was hard. As hard as if they’d really been a family.

“They were my foster grandparents,” she clarified, answering the question in his eyes. “And they were two of the most special people I’ve ever known.”

She stared into the fire. The memories brought a sudden mist to her eyes and clutched at the deepest center of her heart as she thought of the Snyders and the gift of love they’d given her.

When the news of their death had reached her two years ago, she’d felt like the only tie she’d had with security, however distant, had been broken. She’d only spent one summer with them. One magical, memorable summer with those two special people who had volunteered for the foster grandparents program and taken her into their home and their hearts.

She’d known her bond with them had been true, but she hadn’t known how true until she’d grieved for them at their funeral, then wondered at their generous bequest.

In the same quiet way they had gone about making her feel she had worth and value, they had arranged for the cabin to be hers when they were gone.

Because you blossomed there,
the simple note they’d left her said.
Because you were loved there.

She’d mourned for the Snyders in secret. Just as she’d kept their bequest a secret along with her plans to escape to the cabin in the woods. Even in death, they had provided her with a safe haven.

No one could find her here. No one knew she was here. No one but Blue Hazzard.

Her gaze snapped back to his as a belated panic suddenly outdistanced her melancholy mood.

“I’d appreciate it,” she began, choosing her words carefully, “if when you leave tomorrow that you don’t tell anyone about me being here. If…if the press got wind of the cabin, I’d never be able to use it as a getaway again.
They’d be hanging in the trees trying to get shots of everything from my dirty dishes to my garbage.”

Loss of privacy wasn’t her only threat from the press. If they found her, Rolfe would, too. He’d come after her before she was strong enough to face him.

The dark look that came over Blue’s face had her mentally kicking herself. Her explanation of why she wanted to avoid the press had been unnecessary. She was trying too hard and he knew it. He’d read more than annoyance in her eyes when she talked about invasion of privacy. He’d picked up on her fear. His frown told her he was wondering what caused it.