The Best Man's Guarded Heart (17 page)

Finally she placed her arms beneath him with a cheery, ‘Up we come, Charlie.'

The emu gave a kind of strangled
beep
before a stream of something green and vicious-looking shot out of the back of him, splattering all over the front of Mia's shirt. Only then did the bird struggle fully to its feet and race off towards a water trough. Mia stumbled backwards, a comical look of surprise on her face. She turned towards Dylan, utterly crestfallen and...and covered in bird poop.

Dylan clapped a hand over his mouth to hold back a shout of laughter.
Don't laugh
! An awful lot of women he knew would have simply burst into tears. If he laughed and then she cried he'd have to comfort her...and then he'd end up with bird poop all over
him
too.

Mia didn't cry. She pushed her shoulders back and squelched back over to the gate in the fence with as much dignity as she could muster. Still, even
she
had to find it difficult to maintain a sense of dignity when she was covered in bird poop.

She lifted her chin, as if reading that thought in his face. ‘As you can see, Charlie left me a little present for my pains.'

He swallowed, schooling his features. ‘You did a very good deed, Mia.'

‘The thing is, when an emu gets stressed, the stress can result in...' she glanced down at herself, her nose wrinkling ‘...diarrhoea.'

‘God, I'm
so
glad those birds can't fly!'

The heartfelt words shot out of him, and Mia's lips started to twitch as if the funny side of the situation had finally hit her.

Dylan couldn't hold back his laughter any longer. ‘I'm sorry, Mia. You deserve better, but the look on your face when it happened... It was priceless!'

She grinned, tentatively touching the front of her shirt. ‘That rotten bird! Here I am, supposedly trying to impress you and your sister with our marvellous facilities...and now you're going to live in fear of projectile diarrhoea from the native animals!'

The sudden image that came to his mind made him roar until he was doubled over. Mia threw her head back and laughed right alongside him. She laughed with an uninhibited gusto that transformed her completely. He'd glimpsed the mischievous imp earlier, but now she seemed to come alive—as if her mirth had broken some dam wall—as if she were a desert suddenly blooming with wildflowers.

Dylan's heart surged against his ribs and for a moment all he could do was stare. ‘You should do that more often, you know. Laugh. You're beautiful when you laugh.'

She glanced up at him, the laughter dying on her lips. Something in the air shimmered between them, making them both blink. Her gaze lowered momentarily to his lips, before she turned beetroot-red. Swinging away, she stumbled across to the tap that stood by the gate in the fence.

Heat pulsed through him. So...the serious Mia wasn't immune to his charms after all?

The next moment he silently swore.
Damn!
He deserved a giant kick to the seat of his pants. She'd accused him of flirting earlier—but he hadn't meant to give her the wrong impression. He didn't want her thinking anything could happen between them. All flirtation and teasing on his part was entirely without intent.

She knelt at the tap and scrubbed at her shirt with a piece of rag. She must keep a veritable tool shed of handiness in those cargo pants of hers.

He watched in silence as she washed the worst of the mess from her shirt. ‘I have a handkerchief if you need it.'

‘Thank you, but I think this is the best I'm going to manage until I can change my shirt. Shall we continue on to the lily pond?'

‘Yes, please.'

She gestured towards the path. ‘Do you mind if I ring the office to give them an update on Charlie?'

‘Not at all.'

And just like that they withdrew back into reserved professionalism. But something new pounded through Dylan—a curiosity that hadn't been there before. What an intriguing paradox Mia was proving to be...a fascinating enigma.

Which you don't have time for.

With a sigh, he pushed thoughts of Mia from his mind and forced his attention back to the impending wedding. He had to focus on what really mattered. He couldn't let Carla down—not when she needed him.

Copyright © 2016 by Michelle Douglas

ISBN-13: 9781460397299

The Best Man's Guarded Heart

Copyright © 2016 by Katrina Cudmore

All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical,
now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.

www.Harlequin.com