Bluestone Song by MJ Fredrick Page A

what
would have happened if she hadn’t been paying attention and they’d
followed her home, where her sister and nephew were. He curved his
arm around her shoulder and drew him against her, and she didn’t
protest. Her heart rate slowed as the adrenaline ebbed, as the
scent of him washed over her, and the hours and the nerves of the
day caught up to her. She drifted in his arms, relaxing against his
chest until she felt him chuckle.
    “Sweetheart, where are your shoes?”
     
    Beth blinked against the early morning
sunlight and wondered who had opened her window. And her pillow
wasn’t usually so firm. Or moving.
    Oh, crap.
    The sunlight was streaming through the big
windows overlooking the lake. And her pillow was stroking her hair.
She snapped her head up to look into the amused brown eyes of
Maddox Bradley.
    “Been a long time since we did that,” he
drawled, his head propped on the arm of the couch, his fingers
trailing through the length of her hair.
    “We didn’t do anything,” she pointed out,
certain she was right, sliding down his body to escape. Only she
forgot the combination of soft, warm bodies, the movement and a
man’s natural morning greeting. He sucked in a breath and she was
way too aware of his arousal beneath the fly of his jeans. She
hesitated for a moment, then rolled off the couch. “I need to get
home. Linda will be wondering where I am. I can’t believe I left
them all night.”
    He sat up more slowly as she looked around
for her shoes, then remembered she hadn’t been wearing any. She
pushed her tangled hair back from her face and looked at him. Bad
idea. Even rumpled from sleep, he was a damned sexy man. When had
his shoulders gotten so broad? His wife-beater had ridden up and
revealed a flat belly with dark hair arrowing toward the waistband
of his jeans and—
    She jerked her gaze away and scanned the room
for her purse. Had she brought it in?
    Instead of thinking how smoking hot Maddox
looked, she needed to be thinking about what she would tell her
sister after being out all night.
    “Let me make you some breakfast,” he
said.
    She shook her head. There was her purse, on
the entryway table. “I need to get home. Linda will be up and
worried.”
    “You’re not going to tell her you were here,
are you?”
    “She wouldn’t believe nothing happened.”
    “So what?”
    She spun on him. “So what? How can I tell her
she can’t stay out all night when I do it?”
    “Just tell her the truth. Lying isn’t going
to do any good, anyway. What happens when she finds out the
truth?”
    “And who’s going to tell her? You?”
    “Small town. Lots of eyes.”
    He was right. Someone would see her leaving
here, or arriving home, and would draw the wrong conclusion. Not
only would it undermine her authority with Linda, but it would hurt
Dale. She tried to recall just how frightened she’d been last
night, to come here. Or had she been wanting an excuse?
    He rose, too close, and she scrambled away,
toward her purse.
    “Beth,” he said, with a touch of
exasperation.
    “Thanks for letting me stay,” she managed,
digging out her car keys and reaching for the door handle.
“I’ll—see you.” And she made her escape.
    Her stomach was in knots the entire drive
home. With her luck, Trinity would be there, too. But no, the space
in front of the house was empty, and the porch light was still on.
Excuses clogged her throat as she walked up the steps and slipped
the keys in the door.
    Linda’s door was still closed, and though she
heard Jonas fussing in his room, she slipped into her own bedroom
and closed the door.
     
    Beth did her best to blink the tears from her
eyes as she maneuvered over the sour smelling carpet of the
Lakeside Casino. Her heels pinched after years of waiting tables in
athletic shoes. Her butt throbbed from the three good pinches she’d
received, all when her arms were full and she couldn’t fight back,
or do more than pivot and glare, which only made the