My Dearest Cal Read Free Page B

the rest of her vacation, the better she’d like it. If she hurried,she could still be back under that palm tree with a piña colada by midafternoon. With any luck, there was still time for an adventure or two before she went back to her humdrum life in Atlanta.
    Marilou parked her car in the vast shade of a sprawling live oak. As she walked toward the house, she noted the fresh coat of paint, the geranium-red trim and the sweeping veranda with a couple of well-used rockers facing west. There was something comfortable and cared-for about the house that reassured her about Cal Rivers, until she spotted the row of empty beer bottles lined up along the railing. She hadn’t considered the possibility that the man might be an old drunk, an itinerant drifting from town to town only one step ahead of the law. Maybe that was why he’d vanished from Palm Lane and taken such care to cover his tracks. Her hand poised to knock, she hesitated for an instant, her gaze fastened on those bottles.
    “Lady, this here’s private property,” growled a voice as rusty as an unoiled gate hinge. Marilou whirled around and found an old man dressed in dusty jeans and a well-worn, Western-style shirt. He regarded her suspiciously. “Whatever you’re selling we don’t want any.”
    “I’m not selling anything. I’m looking for a Mr. Cal Rivers and his little boy.” She smiled. He kept right on glaring.
    “Ain’t no little boys around here.”
    “What about Mr. Rivers? Is that you?”
    “Nope.”
    “Is he here?”
    His gaze narrowed. “What do you want with him?”
    She could be every bit as discreet as Joshua Ames. She said primly, “My business with Mr. Rivers is personal.”
    The man’s scowl deepened, carving ruts in his weathered complexion. Finally he muttered something about knowing it was too good to be true, shoved a battered cap back on his head and stomped off, stirring up a trail of dust. She had no idea if he was going to get Cal Rivers or simply abandoning her here. Just as she was about to go off after him, she heard his voice again.
    “I’m telling you I don’t know what she wants, boss. She wouldn’t tell me a danged thing. Said it was
personal
.” He mimicked her tone in a way that said he knew all too well that the word meant trouble.
    “Okay, Chaney, I’ll take care of it,” a responding voice soothed. This voice, Marilou noted with a prompt and unexpected quickening of her pulse, was low and lazy and midnight seductive. This voice promised adventure and danger in spades. She instinctively grabbed the porch rail and held on.
    The man who rounded the corner of the house suited that voice. He was tall and lean, the kind of man who wore jeans and faded plaid shirts and made them look more fashionable than Armani suits. His boots, however, appeared to be every bit as new as the paint on the house. The incongruity intrigued her. She studied him more closely, trying her best not tostare with her mouth agape. The man was gorgeous, especially to someone to whom the dark, brooding type appealed.
    There was a faint hint of Indian ancestry in his coal-black hair and angled features, but it had been tempered along the way. His eyes were a startling, clear blue, and right now they were as cool and distant as a mountain lake hidden amidst pine shadows. He would make a fascinating subject, she thought at once, longing for her camera.
    “I understand you’re looking for me,” he said, stopping several yards shy of the porch steps. His expression was wary, his stance forbidding. A less determined woman than Marilou would have taken the hint and scooted right back down the steps and out of his life. Marilou squared her shoulders and smiled, relieved when his features softened ever so slightly. However slight, it was an improvement over the old man’s wary antagonism.
    “If you’re Mr. Cal Rivers, I am,” she said.
    He nodded, but said nothing to invite further conversation. Southern hospitality, she thought, must stop