The Bride Wore Blue by Cindy Gerard Page A

it. No matter how valiantly she tried to hide it, she didn’t stand a chance of masking her true feelings. Not with that face. That beautiful, tragically sad face that projected every emotion she owned. She’d lose the farm in a poker game. Just like she’d almost lost her resolve last night—to keep whatever it was that was eating at her a secret from him.
    The cabin had provided them with more than protection from the storm. It had cast them together, isolated them from the rest of the world. They’d settled into an easy intimacy that had encouraged confidence and trust—until he’d blown it by giving into his need to kiss her and that hunted look had returned to her eyes before she’d run away. But not before she’d extracted a promise that he keep her presence a secret.
    As if he needed a reason to keep her to himself, he thought, remembering the feel of her cheek against the back of his knuckles when he’d finally worked up the nerve to reach out to her. He’d been about ready to tell her that— hell, he’d been ready to show her—when she’d shot off the sofa like someone had lit a stick of dynamite beneath her.
    He sat up and plowed his fingers through his hair. The niggling concern about what had put that fear in her eyes had eaten at him all night. Her tight-lipped silence about it made him madder than blue blazes. It also drove home the fact that among the feelings she had awakened in him, this sense of responsibility was as strong as the tide and just as mysterious.
    He wasn’t a believer in karma or kismet or any of that transcendental hooey, but he wasn’t prepared to blow off the possibility that their chance meeting after all these years had happened for a reason. He’d followed her career. His air cargo business took him all over the world—frequently to New York. He could have approached her a number of times. Yet he’d held off. He only realized now—now that he was with her again—that what he’d told her earlier was true. He really had been waiting for her to return to the lake where they’d first met.
    And she’d come back. After fifteen years. There had to be some significance to that. And there had to be a reason.
    Whatever it was, he wasn’t fool enough not to take advantage of the opportunity life had handed him on a goldenplatter. She was here. They were together. He intended to keep it that way.
    The problem was that if she kept shutting him out with forced silences and hurried getaways, he’d never find out if this was supposed to lead anywhere.
    “Scooch over, you sofa slug,” he grumbled when Hershey took advantage of his shift of position to stretch out full length across the cushions.
    Hershey just moaned in doggy ecstasy and wriggled onto his back.
    J.D. rolled his eyes and made room. “Your trouble is, you don’t know who the dog is in the duo,” he muttered, giving the lab the belly rubbing he was begging for.
    “And my trouble,” he said, tugging a blanket from under him and wrapping it around his hips as he stood up, “is solving Miss Maggie Adams’ problem, then figuring if I’m going to be a factor in her life.”
    Tucking either end of the blanket securely around his waist, he laid some kindling on the embers and set to work coaxing the fire back to life. Though the day promised sunshine and July heat, the cabin held the lingering chill of last night’s storm at this early hour.
    He glanced at his watch, surprised to see it was already a little after seven. After loading the stove with wood, he rummaged around quietly in her cupboard, searching for something to secure the blanket before he bared it all to God and the rest of the free world.
    “A woman after my own heart,” he murmured with a pleased grin when he found a roll of duct tape tucked in the back of the cupboard. After tearing off a strip and taping the blanket around his hips, he craned his neck around to get a glimpse of the bedroom door. Seeing it open, he skirted the pine dinette set,