Free The Newlyweds by Elizabeth Bevarly Page A

his necktie and unbuttoned the top two buttons on his white dress shirt. Then he made his way to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door.
    She’d gone to the grocery, he saw. Although there had been some meager supplies in there the day before, courtesy of someone at the Bureau who had seen fit to supply the basics before they arrived, now there were other things alongside the requisite milk and orange juice and sodas and sandwich fixings. Now there was the aforementioned beer—Sam’s favorite brand, incidentally—plus a bottle of white wine, assorted fruits and vegetables, yogurt, cheese and—oh, gross—soy milk. Girly-girl food, he couldn’t help thinking. Then he opened the freezer and saw a couple of fat steaks and some decent-sized pork chops, along with some frozendinners—a few low-fat and low-cal, but others advertised as being made expressly for manly men—plus a pint of Häagen-Dazs raspberry sorbet and a gallon of chocolate ice cream.
    He closed the freezer and reopened the fridge, then grabbed one of the beers and headed for the pantry, opening it to see what had changed there. Alongside the cans of soup and boxes of pasta the Bureau had provided, and mingled with the health-conscious snacks she clearly preferred for herself, were potato and tortilla chips, a jar of extra-hot salsa, some cheese puffs, a big can of roasted peanuts and an industrial-sized bag of Oreos.
    Okay, so either Bridget Logan was very familiar with the diet of the typical single male, or else her eating habits were identical to his own. And considering the presence of the yogurt and soy milk and raspberry sorbet in the fridge and freezer, it sure the hell wasn’t the latter. So it must have been the former. She knew how to feed the typical single male. Which meant she was probably more than a little familiar with a typical single male. And since she wasn’t living around her brothers, that meant she was involved with some other man. Well enough to know what he liked to eat.
    So maybe Sam shouldn’t be too concerned about his attraction to Bridget, however superficial and based on physical chemistry it was. Because chances were looking very good that she wasn’t interested in him, or any other man, save the one whose pantry she knew so intimately. Oh, she might be attracted to Sam—and judging by the way he’d caught her looking at him at times, he was reasonably confident she was—but her attraction was obviously as superficial and as based on physical chemistry as his own was, right? So itshouldn’t be that difficult for either of them to keep their hands to themselves, right?
    Damn right.
    â€œThanks for picking up groceries,” he said when he returned to the living room with his open—and already a quarter empty—beer.
    She looked up in surprise, but whether she was surprised because he was thanking her, or because he’d even noticed, he couldn’t tell. Nor could he bring himself to call her on it. Let her think he was one of those Neanderthals who took women for granted and naturally expected them to handle all the domestic chores. It would serve as a reminder to him just how poorly she knew him, how little they had in common—longnecks and flannel shirts and superficial physical chemistry aside—and how important it was to make sure they kept their distance from each other.
    â€œYou’re welcome,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I got a little of everything.”
    â€œYou hit it right on the mark,” he told her.
    â€œSo then, it was okay to get the soy milk,” she said. “I wasn’t sure. A lot of guys turn their noses up at it.”
    He narrowed his eyes at her, and was about to object, but halted when she smiled. Not just because he realized she was joking, but because of the way her face changed with the gesture. He’d thought she was beautiful when he first saw her, but had