What a Bride Wants Read Free Page A

trout.”

    Sawyer pushed through the swing ing doors that fed from the storeroom out to the run of Grey’s long bar. One of the beer taps had been spluttering like a fuel-starved engine and he’d had to go and tap a new keg. The saloon had been quiet enough when he’d left, but it was buzzing now and for no discernable reason that he could fathom.
    “ What’s up?” he asked Mardie as she swung by with a round of empties for him.
    “ Remember that personal ad in this morning’s paper? The one for the docile house husband?”
    “ Hard to forget.”
    “ Ella Grace didn’t put that ad in the paper after all. Her daddy put it in on her behalf.”
    Sawyer didn ’t know much about father-daughter relationships, but he sure as hell recognized public embarrassment when he saw it. “Father of the year.”
    “ Ella’s just written her own ad and stuck it up on the board next to the other one. She’s after a lover. One who can annoy the living bejeezus out of her father.”
    Sawyer smiled. He liked the defiance inherent in Ella’s actions. It tugged at heartstrings buried deep in his past. He knew how it felt to pull up short of parental expectations. Sawyer glanced over the customers again. “Which one’s Ella?”
    “ Booth eight. The smaller brunette.”
    Sawyer looked over toward the booth. Aha. That brunette. He’d seen her come in, along with her friend. She wasn’t all that big and she wasn’t all that curvy now that she’d shed her winter coat, but there was something about her that drew the eye and held it. Her confidence, maybe. Or perhaps it was just the liveliness in her eyes. He always had been a sucker for bright eyed women, no matter the actual eye color.
    Hers, he noted, were the vivid blue of cornflowers on a sunny summer’s day.
    “ You should go read Ella’s other ad.” Mardie fished in her apron pocket and came up with a phone that she held up at eye level and pointed his way. “Let me take a photo of you first, ‘cause you might want to answer it. C’mon Sawyer, use those dimples, look naughty–not that naughty, and… wow. You’re really photogenic, aren’t you?” Mardie’s smile came at him sunny side up and full of mischief. “Hold the fort for me, lover boy. I’m just going to run this through the printer.”
    “ Yeah, no, Mardie, I don’t much like having my photo up on any walls. Got a thing about avoiding the limelight. And the wrath of Reese .” And the press.
    Then again, maybe it wouldn ’t hurt.
    Sawyer thought back to the ridiculous personal in the paper that morning and couldn ’t help but laugh.

    “ There. Behind the bar. Look,” said Jo, and Ella looked and then forgot what she was talking about in favor of looking some more, because he was hot, smoking hot, and he was heading out from behind the bar and striding toward the bulletin board with a sheet of white paper in hand.
    His shoulders were broad and his face was a collection of strong planes and angles, no softness anywhere, and then he stopped at the board and read the ad and his eyes crinkled as he smiled, and there – right then and there – Ella felt the world around her slip a little sideways.
    “ Any spark yet?” Jo wanted to know. “Because that is Sawyer.”
    “ Could be the two daiquiris,” Ella muttered as she dragged her gaze away from him and reached for the water jug on the table. “Phew. Is it hot in here? It’s hot in here.”
    “ I knew you wouldn’t be immune.”
    “ Let’s not be hasty.” Ella took a quick sip of water but she couldn’t quite keep her gaze away from the masterpiece that was Sawyer. “Good grief, look at those shoulders. They’re almost as wide as your average door. Must make life difficult – always having to sidle in sideways.”
    “ I thought you said you wanted to be a believer.”
    “ I do. I do want to be a believer. How do I make him speak?”
    “ I hear the usual approach is to say hello.” Ella and Jo watched in silence as Sawyer pinned a