What a Bride Wants Read Free Page B

bit of paper below her ad. Looked like a photo. And a phone number.
    “ Could be he’s pinning up someone else’s reply,” Ella said. “No need to be all… hopeful.”
    Except that Sawyer turned and looked straight at her and his eyes were green, honest-to-God, no-other-color-involved, deep forest green. He quirked his lips and showed off a dimple in his cheek, and then he turned and sauntered back to the bar, easy as you please.
    “ I think I’m in lust,” Ella wheezed. “After all these years, it’s finally happened. I feel like I’ve just been hit by an eighteen-wheeler. What do I do?”
    “ Are you going to listen to my advice this time?” Jo looked skeptical. Ella nodded frantically.
    “ Breathe.”

Chapter Two

     
    “ You can buy her a glass of water,” Reese told the loser at the bar flatly. “With ice and lime.” Reese Kendrick wasn’t big on words but he was big on maintaining order in the bar. Sawyer liked that about him; liked that Reese’s fearsome reputation was usually enough to shut down trouble before it began.
    Trouble was, those warring ads on the bulletin board had taken on a life of their own. Sawyer might have been the first to pin up his picture but he hadn’t been the last. The ad for the perfect lover now had three more responses beneath his own, and the ad for a docile house-husband had two.
    One of th e house-husband contenders had sent dessert over to Ella’s table instead of a drink. And she’d eaten it. Well, strictly speaking, Ella’s friend had eaten most of it, but Sawyer still figured it for a nice play.
    B ets were going down all across the saloon as to what the delectable Ella Grace was going to do next. Meanwhile, the number of beverages being sent her way was hitting double digits, hence Reese’s decision to cut her off.
    Reese sent the loser away with a glass of sparkling water.
    Reese was currently eyeing him with the flat bleak gaze of a man lining up a sniper shot.
    “ What?” Some kind of defense was clearly needed. “I was helping when I answered that ad. What if she’d had no takers? That would have been really embarrassing.”
    “ You’re such a sweetheart,” said Mardie from the other side of the bar, and then went and spoiled her defense of him with a snicker.
    “ Ouch. Who babysat your daughter the other day when you had to go to Livingstone?” He pointed to his chest. “Me. The sweetheart.”
    “ I already thanked you for that, even though Mrs. Burrows saw you out walking Claire and now thinks I’m a twice fallen woman with a weakness for truck-stop trash.”
    “ Your baby was screaming because she was bored. I defend my right to walk her around the block. We picked up fallen tree branches and Claire tried to eat them. Happiness ensued.”
    “ You let my baby eat trees?”
    “ No, I let her try .”
    “ Trees aside, you do know that the father you’ve pledged to help annoy is Samuel T. Emerson, of Emerson Holdings?” Reese told him dryly. “Ring any bells? Because you’re living in one of his bunkhouses.”
    Sawyer probably should have made that connection himself; what with the Emerson name being plastered all over the transport trucks, not to mention the trucking company signage itself. “Gotta hand it to old Samuel T. He does provide good sleepover accommodation for his drivers. Clean room, good shower pressure. Really good mattress.”
    “ You don’t care who he is, do you?” said Reese.
    Sawyer smiled. So did Reese.
    “All this rebel bonding,” Mardie grumbled. “Sawyer, how did you manage to rent that room at Emerson’s Transport?”
    “ I asked. Man called Ray gave me the option of rooming by the week, cash in hand.”
    “ You’re not even on the books,” Mardie told him bluntly.
    Sawyer slid the last of Mardie’s drinks order onto the tray. “Don’t have to be if I can be out of there in ten minutes.”
    “ Did you come by that drifter mentality the hard way, or were you just born to it?” she sniped, and