Free Cara Colter by A Bride Worth Waiting For Page B

Firefighter.”
    It seemed to him she had given this some thought. It seemed to him she saw him as a rather romantic figure. He felt momentarily pleased, until he remembered he had let her down.
    “I wasn’t that wild,” he said.
    “Adam, you skipped 92 percent of grade twelve.”
    “That wasn’t because I was wild. I was bored.” He’d still passed. It had hardly seemed like high adventure at the time. Shooting pool at Grady’s. Working on his bike. On the odd occasion he got it running, actually took it somewhere. Perhaps that had seemed wild and risqué to a goody-two-shoes like her.
    “You were wild,” she said firmly.
    “In what way?” he challenged.
    “You rode the chute down Glenmore Dam in a tube.”
    “Very stupid. Not necessarily wild.”
    “You jumped your bike off the cliff over by where the radio station used to be.”
    “It wasn’t a cliff, exactly. Besides, I broke my flipping arm and had to get stitches.”
    “You still have the scar.”
    He touched his chin. “Do I?”
    “And you were jumping your bike off that same cliff a week later, with your arm in the cast!”
    “I’d forgotten about that.” But he remembered now. It hadn’t been a cliff. Just a big, built-up ramp of dirt with a pile of sand at the bottom of it on the other side. Sand that appeared softer than it actually was. Still, the hardness of the landing had not prevented him from going at it again, his arm out of the sling but still in the cast.
    It must have been a day much like this one, because he could remember with absolute clarity the feeling of freedom as he approached the edge, that wonderful airborne moment when the bike left the earth and joined the sky. He sighed happily.
    “Just as I suspected,” she said. “It’s a happy memory for you.”
    He couldn’t deny it. But he seemed to remember the light in her eyes spurring him on to ever greater heights of daring. “You liked it, too.”
    “I did not! It scared me to death when you were reckless and foolhardy.”
    But that was not the whole truth, and he knew she knew it by the gentle blush that rose in her cheeks.
    “You were spellbound,” he said. He waited for her denial, but it did not come. Instead, she changed direction.
    “You smoked.”
    “I mistakenly thought it was cool. Not wild. Cool.”
    “First one in the river every year, and last one out. First one arrested—the only one arrested.”
    “That wasn’t really my fault. I didn’t know Murphy had stolen that car.”
    “I wasn’t allowed to walk on the same side of the street as Murphy.”
    “There you have it. The good girl and the bad boy. Natalie Wood and James Dean. It happens all the time.”
    “Are you admitting you were wild?”
    It was more like he was trying to get her to see the missed opportunity. “Maybe I appeared a little wild to a girl like you.”
    She laughed. “Now you sound like a lawyer.”
    “Which I am. Not a wild guy at all anymore. And you seem disappointed.”
    “Not disappointed,” she said quickly. “Adam, I just always thought, of all the people I knew, you would grow up and be something different. That you would be free, somehow. Unfettered by convention. Or expectation.”
    “I guess I always thought that, too,” he admitted. He wondered how much convention had played a role in the decisions she had made, the man she had chosen to marry.
    “Well then, what happened?” She said that with the faintest edge of accusation in her voice, as if he had let her down.
    Her . The one he’d chased respectability for.
    “I matured,” he said. “Grew up. Faced the facts.”
    “What facts?” she demanded.
    That Mr. Respectable got the girl.
    “There’s no money in circumnavigating the globe on a Harley.”
    “It is not all about money.”
    “That’s easy for you to say. You’ve always had it.”
    “Well, you appear to have it now. Does it do the same things to your soul that talking about going around the world on your motorbike used to do?”
    He