Free Cara Colter by A Bride Worth Waiting For Page A

“Don’t go and spoil it all by looking sad.”
    “I just wished Mark could be here with us.”
    “Maybe he is.”

Chapter Five

    A dam lay back on the blanket. The sun was warm on his face. He felt full and drowsy. The river ran by. Birds sang. The leaves on the trees seemed to be shiny and new, a vibrant shade of green he felt he had never seen before. June seemed to have a scent of its own—fresh and new and full of promise. It occurred to him he had not taken a holiday, felt this relaxed, in years.
    Tory was lying beside him, not quite touching him. It was the inner debate about whether to move that half inch or so closer that kept him from going to sleep. He could inch over ever so casually, and then his shoulder would be touching hers.
    It occurred to him he was putting a lot of mental work into a shoulder touch. And it occurred to him he’d rather touch her shoulder than go a lot faster and further with any other woman. Including Kathleen.
    She was wrecking him. Tory was wrecking his whole life. And she was doing it without making even the tiniest effort.
    He somehow doubted that while she was standing in her shower this morning, she’d been applying that lemon scented shampoo, thinking, “This will drive him wild. He’ll go straight back to Toronto and break up with that someone he’s seeing.”
    He supposed he’d have to kiss her to find out what her breath was like. Oyster kisses. Unappealing with anyone else. With her, the very thought, unbelievably appealing.
    “You’ve changed in some ways,” she said decisively.
    “I dress better?” He edged closer.
    She rolled over and regarded him, his quarter-inch gain lost.
    “You do?” she teased, sitting up on her elbow. “You always wore jeans and T-shirts.”
    “Hey, these jeans cost enough that you were supposed to notice the label.”
    “Okay, okay, I noticed the label.”
    And then she blushed. Ha. So she’d been sneaking peeks at his backside. Just as he’d been sneaking them at hers. Maybe she did have an ulterior motive when she was shampooing her hair!
    “I wasn’t talking about material things,” she told him sternly.
    “Then in what ways have I changed?”
    “The way you dealt with that policeman. Once you would have smarted him off until he was all red in the face and jumping up and down—”
    “And I wouldn’t have given up until I got led away in handcuffs,” he agreed dryly.
    “So, you’ve matured.”
    In the last half hour . “Don’t we all?” he said sagely.
    “Do you remember that time we got pulled over after that school dance? You got so huffy, said it was just because we were young and that they didn’t have any legal right to pull us over.”
    “The seeds for my future planted that very night,” he said. “I still get pulled over when I ride my Harley. And they still don’t have any legal right to do it. I hate that. Law-abiding citizens being harassed because they choose to ride motorcycles.”
    “The speed limit?” she probed.
    “Oh, that,” he groused.
    “You always had such a well-developed sense of justice, of what was fair. I shouldn’t have been so surprised that you became a lawyer.”
    “Were you surprised?”
    “Yes.”
    “What did you expect me to become? A drug dealer?”
    “Adam! What an awful thing to say. I’ve never even known you to have a beer!”
    “A gangster?”
    “Adam!”
    “I guess I just wondered if you expected something disreputable of me.”
    “Not at all.”
    “Then what?” he pushed, wishing it didn’t matter to him what she had expected. But it did.
    “I expected you to have a life of high adventure,” she said huffily. “You were kind of a wild boy. Completely untamed.”
    “Give me a clue. I’m trying to think of respectable jobs for untamed people.”
    “Astronaut.”
    “I don’t like flying!”
    “Cowboy.”
    “I’m not too great with horses, either.”
    Her look silenced him. “Entrepreneur,” she said, “Safari leader. Spy.