The Wedding Gift Read Free Page A

me.”
    â€œI just did.”
    She had to force her gaping mouth closed. Now that she wasn’t simply absorbing the essence of him, she had the presence of mind to take a good look at the man whose name had crept into her thoughts so often these past eighteen months.
    She’d expected his face to be swollen, his jowls sagging, his skin sallow. Instead he was lean and rugged and tan. A muscle moved in his jaw and there was a trace of something not easily identified in his brown eyes. Was it dread? Regret? Or was it a haunting sorrow?
    Cursed with a soft spot for anyone suffering or struggling in any way, she laid a hand on his arm and said, “What you’re feeling is perfectly natural.”
    He drew his arm out of her grasp. “You can’t possibly know what I’m feeling. You have to leave. This is private property and you’re trespassing. Tell my mother—never mind. I’ll tell her myself.” With that, he walked away.
    She watched as he conferred with a burly man who’d just climbed off the earthmover. The other man glanced at her, putting her in mind of a St. Bernard—big, yes, hairy, certainly, loyal, obviously, but not very fierce. Deciding to spare him the discomfort of having to escort her to her car, and spare herself the discomfort, as well, she left of her own accord. She surprised herself when she slammed her foot on the accelerator, but she had to admit the sound of sand spraying behind her spinning tires brought her a certain satisfaction.
    No sense letting Riley Merrick have the last word.
    Â 
    â€œUh-huh,” she said absently into the phone as she reached ahead to wipe fog off her windshield. The hills on either side of the county road were dotted with cherry trees, the branches flexed in anticipation of that elusive signal from Mother Nature to burst into blossom. Madeline understood their wistful impatience.
    â€œWas Riley anything like you expected?” Summer asked.
    Hunkering down in her seat, she wrapped her jacket more tightly around her to ward off the damp chill while she considered the question. There was a rawness about Riley Merrick, a burning sensuality that had caught her completely off guard. Decidingto keep that perception to herself for now, she said, “He’s fit, healthy and stubborn, and he looks like his photo.”
    â€œAre you coming home now?” Summer asked.
    Madeline had been sitting along the side of the road for the past forty minutes, thinking about her options. Glancing at the keys dangling uselessly in the ignition, she said, “That would be problematic.”
    â€œWhy? What aren’t you telling me?”
    â€œWhat you don’t know the boys can’t badger out of you.” She jolted when a knock sounded on the window. Clearing a spot on the foggy glass, she saw a woman in coveralls hunkered down, looking in.
    â€œDid you just gasp?” Summer asked.
    Madeline rubbed the tender spot on her forehead where she’d smacked it on the window and nodded at the woman who’d startled her. To Summer, she said, “How do you suppose a two-ton tow truck sneaked up on me?”
    â€œYou called a tow truck?” Summer asked.
    Gesturing to the driver that she’d be with her in a moment, Madeline said, “My car started wheezing as I left the construction site. I managed to coax it a mile before it lunged to the side of the road and surrendered. It’s what I get for having the last word.”
    â€œI’m not even going to try to make sense of that.”
    She could picture Summer pacing from the frontdesk of the inn to the French doors with the view of the back garden, always on the lookout, for what Madeline didn’t like to imagine. “They told me they were sending out someone named Red. I wasn’t expecting a woman. I have to go.”
    â€œYou’ll call me if you need me?” Summer asked.
    â€œYou know I will.” With that, she dropped her phone