Bringing Home a Bachelor Read Free

missing.
    Pete lurked outside the ladies’ room for a couple of minutes, with no luck. Then he tried dialing her room in the hotel, but nobody answered. Finally he dug another couple of ibuprofen out of his pocket, swallowed them dry, and ducked out the back doors.
    It was like stepping into a postcard of sunset, sand and ocean waves. The Hotel Playa Bella was located, true to its name, on the beach—on a tiny private key in downtown Miami. That meant the beach, too, was private and open only to guests of Playa Bella. Since Pete worked there in account management, and was specifically in charge of new business development, he’d been able to cut Mark and Kendra quite a deal.
    Pete put a hand up to his bleary eyes—God, what had possessed the groomsmen to do all those shots last night?—and looked out towards the water. Sure enough, he spotted a turquoise-draped figure with a brunette updo, walking in the sand with her shoes in her left hand.
    “Mel?” Pete called, but he knew it was futile. No way could she hear him over the wind. He looked down at his shiny formal shoes, then back at the sand, and groaned. He sat down on a deck chair and untied his laces, slipped off the shoes and peeled off his socks. He rolled up his pants to his knees and headed after her.
    The ocean breeze had picked up, and the force of it plastered his shirt to his chest as he approached her. It also did things to Melinda’s dress that he couldn’t help appreciating. The flimsy fabric clung to her curves like plastic wrap, and he got a very intimate look at her generously proportioned, sexy derriere.
    It was wrong of him to look. Mel was Mark’s kid sister, the pudgy little girl that they’d buried to the neck in the sand, petrified with ghost stories and trapped in the old tree house when they’d stolen the ladder…
    But look Pete did. And the closer he got, the more he liked what he saw. He hadn’t noticed her body at all during the rehearsal dinner—she’d worn something shapeless and forgettable—but the turquoise bridesmaid dress was also fitted at the waist, and more than a little snug in the bust area.
    She seemed to sense his gaze on her, because as he approached she turned toward him, and he was faced with a heavenly eyeful of deep, shadowy cleavage. Her breasts strained against the fabric that confined them, and he himself strained mightily not to look at them.
    He failed.
    Her face became pink as she said, “Hi, Pete. What are you doing out here?”
    Heat rose in his own face. “Looking for you.”
    “Why?” she asked.
    He shrugged. “I was going to ask you to dance.”
    “Me?” Mel swung a champagne bottle out of the folds of her skirt and lifted it towards her lush, pink mouth as Pete raised his eyebrows. She drank, her lips kissing the bottle. He watched the liquid pour into her mouth from inside the dark green glass, the sight erotic as hell. His own mouth went dry.
    Little sister. Mark. Again, he had to remind himself.
    “What’s the matter, Pete?” she asked, throatily. “You’ve never seen a girl drink from the bottle before?”
    “Uh,” he said stupidly, around a tongue that felt thick and woolly. “Would you like a glass?”
    “No, thanks.” She smiled at him. “It would spoil my whole Barefoot Bohemian Bridesmaid thing.”
    “Oh. I get it,” said Pete, who didn’t.
    Yeah…that was another oddity. Melinda Edgeworth wasn’t at all bohemian. Not the sort of girl you’d find wandering a beach barefoot, slugging back booze from a bottle. And yet here she was. Looking like a whole lot of big, blue-eyed trouble, with her updo acting like voodoo on him.
    For somehow, over the years, Mel’s freckles had faded and her huge blue eyes—he remembered, with shame, how they’d called her Bug-Eyes—now fit her lovely face.
    “Want some?” Mel asked, extending the bottle to him.
    Pete took it, touched his lips to where hers had just been, and drank. The wine was cold, dry and effervescent. He felt his