The Bride Wore Blue (2 page)

She slipped off her dark glasses to get a better read on the situation. If possible, his grin expanded the moment she did.

Balancing his weight on one long, muscular leg, he crossed his arms over his chest and let go of a satisfied sigh.

“Well, hell,” he said, drawing the words out in a voice that was honey thick, bourbon mellow and as warm as the afternoon sun. “It
is
you. Son of a gun,” he murmured, as if he couldn’t believe his good fortune. “How are ya, Stretch? It’s been a while.”

Stretch?
With a sideways tilt of her head, she stared deeper as memories, muddied by time, shifted and skidded and finally blended into something she could latch on to.

She was used to being recognized, but not by that name. Only one person she knew had ever called her Stretch and she hadn’t actually considered him a
person
back then. The only resemblance that pencil-thin boy bore to the man grinning as if he’d won the lottery was his height and his eyes. And the size of his feet. Long and sturdy, his tan feet, void of socks, filled what she’d guess were size-thirteen
high-tops that were more worn than his jeans. Judging from the look of them, they were held together by a wish and a prayer and several inches of the same silver tape that appeared to be holding his plane together.

It couldn’t be, she told herself, giving him another long, considering look. Fifteen years ago she’d considered him more of a subspecies, a card-carrying cretin and a royal pain in the tush. He’d teased and tormented and propositioned her until she’d wanted to tie an anchor around his scrawny neck and toss him into the bay.

She frowned, dug deeper and tried again to find a scrap of something familiar. The raging hormone who had shadowed her steps like a lust-struck puppy had been all sharp, skinny angles, smart irreverent mouth and schoolboy swagger. Reminding her back then of the great Blue Heron who had given the bay its name, she’d tagged him “Blue” to get back at him for the label he’d pinned on her and her own long-legged form.

“Blue?” An odd mixture of disbelief and reluctant pleasure cluttered her thoughts as she searched his smiling face again. “Blue Hazzard? Is it really you?”

Her slow, astonished realization seemed to tickle him. “As if the world could handle another.”

“My Lord.” She couldn’t stop the smile this time. Shaking her head, she extended her hand. “After all these years. I don’t believe it.”

His grin just got wider. And more focused. And if possible, more attractive.

“Fifteen years,” he murmured, shaking his head before adding with obvious approval, “You haven’t changed, Stretch.” He gave her another one of those maddeningly male once-overs as he folded her hand in his firm, possessive grip. “Not by so much as an eyelash.”

She was used to being sized up, cataloged and pricetagged. She was used to the unforgiving eye of the camera. It came with the territory. It was part of the cost of success.
But Blue’s bold, steady appraisal made her uncomfortably aware of all the bare skin exposed by her skimpy suit. To combat the feeling, she drew her hand way from his and slipped her sunglasses back in place.

“Well,
you
have,” she managed with no staged amazement as she tried to deal with the heat his grip had generated and the alarming and totally uncalled for thunder of her heart.

She tucked her hands around her waist, distancing herself and downplaying her reaction to him. His gaze remained fixed on her face, confident, penetrating.

“Some
things haven’t changed, though.” She nodded toward the plane, taking a much-needed break from the eye contact. He’d always told her he was going to fly some day. Of course, he’d always told he was going to do a lot of things—like break down her resistance and get her into the back seat of his daddy’s car. “It would appear you’re still sticking your neck out and courting disaster.”

He followed her gaze to the Cessna. His face lit up with pride and affection. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”

“A beauty?” She couldn’t stop a skeptical chuckle. “You always were optimistic to a fault. Not to burst your bubble, but there are some children only a father could love. In case you really hadn’t noticed, that plane is a wreck.”

That was stating the obvious. The plane needed more than a coat of paint to make it respectable again. And from the sound of the engine when he’d set it down, an oilcan and a screwdriver wouldn’t amount to much more than a bandage surgery.

He managed a playfully affronted scowl. “You can’t be serious? Surely you can see past the surface to the buried treasure beneath.” He shot another adoring look toward the Cessna. “She’s vintage.”

“And dangerous. Next you’ll tell me it runs better than it sounds.”

“Don’t let her sputtering fool you. She’s just a little cranky today.” Those Nordic blue eyes took another long, leisurely side trip up and down the length of her bare legs.
Like you,
his look implied. “Nothing a little special attention can’t fix.”

Also implied was the suggestion that he could take care of Maggie’s crankiness, too—with a little special attention.

“Believe me,” he added, all charm and choirboy innocence when she bristled, “she’s in much better shape than she looks.
You,
on the other hand…” He stopped, devouring her with his eyes again with a thoroughness that made her feel like she’d just been swallowed whole. “You look about as good as good can get.”

And he looked incredible, she admitted reluctantly, still astonished as she pitted memory against the improbable reality of the present. Who’d have ever thought that the gangly combination of knees, elbows and Adam’s apple that was Blue Hazzard would have turned into this modelperfect specimen.

With or without the smile, despite the arrogance, he was ruggedly handsome, strikingly blond. The dark tint of his skin—a rich, sun-baked bronze, unmistakably natural and a welcome change from the salon-bed tans she was used to seeing—told of his love of the outdoors. The length of his hair—unacceptable by boardroom standards yet styled beautifully by wind and weather into an artful and totally disarming disarray—told of his uncommon and unconscious disregard for the picture he made standing there.

In a world—in
her
world, anyway—of fabricated beauty and augmented perfection, he was a rarity. The real thing, not the eight-by-ten glossy image produced and perfected by the masters of glitz for the high-ticket, high-profile business she was used to. And because he was so real, it was impossible not to appreciate the obvious: this man was all length, all strength, and all male.

They’d love him in New York. They’d eat him alive. Or at least they’d try. Just like they’d tried with her, she thought grimly. Sometimes she wondered if they hadn’t succeeded.

“What?” he asked, reacting to her distant, thoughtful look.

Realizing he’d caught her staring, she shot him a tight smile, then shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just remembering, I guess. I still can’t believe it’s you. You…you were such a…”

“Jerk?” he supplied with a helpful look, then followed up with a chuckle. The sound was as warm as the sun and as engaging as his smile, which was automatic and devastating. “Some say I still am.”

“And are they right?”

She wasn’t sure why she was letting him lead her into this wordplay. It was both unwarranted and untimely. She didn’t want to renew old acquaintances. She didn’t want to open the door and invite him in to even this little piece of her life. She didn’t even like him. At least she didn’t like the Blue Hazzard she remembered.

“Are they right?” He echoed her question as he took a slow, purposeful step toward her. “I guess you’re going to have to tell me.” Cupping her shoulder in his huge, warm hands, he drew her unerringly toward him. “Because I’m about to put it to the test.

“I’ve waited fifteen years for this, Stretch.” His face relayed a devastating combination of reflection, seduction and unshakable intent. “Fifteen years is a long time to make good on a promise.”

Sensing what he was about to do, she felt helpless to back away from him—for reasons too numerous to catalog and impossible to understand. “Promise?” she whispered, riveted by the heat in his eyes and the sensual blend of strength and gentleness of his hold.

“I promised myself that if I ever saw you again, I’d do what I ached to do back then but didn’t have the guts to pull off.”

Before she could decide if she should be frightened, angry or excited, or all three, he lowered his mouth to hers.

H
e didn’t give her the time to search for the strength of mind and body to stop this. He didn’t give her the option. As he dipped his head and his mouth sought hers, the thought did register that she shouldn’t be letting it happen. The warning bells rang and her fight-or-flight instincts surged to the surface only to sink in the depths and beyond the moment Blue Hazzard’s mouth touched hers.

Reverence.
Maggie felt reverence and tenderness and the pleasure of a promise held too long in trust.

If she gave a struggle, it was token. If she voiced a protest, it was unconvincing, as any notion of denying him lost power and proportion under his gently persuasive touch.

Blue Hazzard was kissing her.
And she was letting him. Letting him coax her surrender with the heat of his lips against hers, with the caress of his hands on her shoulders. Hands that were huge and strong yet achingly gentle as they glided surely down her back then drew her close against his
body. A body that was as solid as the rock gouging out the shoreline, as warm as the sun enfolding them both.

Ebb and flow, soft and slow, the water lapped against the dock beneath them as he savored her there in the sunlight, there in the wilderness where she’d come to escape pressure and indecision and the disabling suffocation of involvement, which, for her, equated to control.

Yet here, wrapped in this man’s arms, she felt free, adrift in poignant memories of simpler times. Embraced by the promise that with him it might be different. And she rediscovered the fever of arousal at its finest. Steady and mellow. Sheltered and safe, yet wildly sensual and shockingly erotic.

And over.

In a daze, she opened her eyes.

Lazy with contentment, heavy with desire, he searched her face before bringing his hand to her sunglasses and slipping them back to the top of her head.

“Ah, Stretch,” he whispered, brushing his thumb in a slow, tender caress along the rise of her flushed cheek. “I was a fool to have waited so long.”

Then he took her mouth again. With a hunger that spoke of his desire. With an aggression that relayed his strength— and showed her lack of it.

Panic belatedly kicked in, hitting an all-time high on her warning meter. Her heart slammed against her chest as her instincts, wrenched to life by a swift and graphic memory of the pain and the power of another man’s touch, threw her into action.

The hands she’d brought to his shoulders in a caress knotted into white-knuckled fists. The pleasure she’d felt only moments ago in his arms transformed to a staggering, blinding need to escape. She pushed wildly against him, shifting and twisting, fighting for her breath and her freedom.

“Hey…hey…easy.” He let her go so abruptly that she stumbled back and would have landed on her rump if he hadn’t reached out, caught her arm and steadied her.

“Easy, okay?” His voice, like his expression, was puzzled but soothing. Concern darkened his eyes even as he backed a step away, his hands open and held wide from his body, clearly showing her he was giving her room.

Wild-eyed, she stared at him, sucking air, digging deep for composure.

“You all right?” he asked, wary and pensive.

She pinched her eyes shut and gave a sharp nod. Forcing calm, she grounded herself with deep breaths, willing the panic to subside, feeling her heartbeat reluctantly even out.

When she thought she could handle it, she met his eyes. He was watching her with a measuring, uncertain silence that invited her to explain what had just happened.

It was an invitation she couldn’t accept. Not now. Not from him. Maybe not from any man ever again.

Drawing on the strength that had gotten her to this point, she overpowered the last of her panic with anger. “They’re right,” she announced tightly.

He tilted his head, cocked a questioning brow.

“You’re still a jerk, Hazzard. You never did understand ‘no’ unless I hit you over the head with it.”

J.D. scowled. He understood no, all right. And no was not the answer she’d given him when he’d kissed her. Not the first time, at any rate. The first time, she’d said yes over and over again as their mouths met and mated and she’d invited him to take what he hadn’t dared to dream she would offer. She’d answered with a yes as true as time and as sure as tomorrow.

“My mistake,” he conceded anyway, giving her the room she seemed to need, catering to the panic he’d seen flashing in her eyes.

And it had been panic. Though diminished, or at least glossed over with irritation, it was still there, puzzling and heartbreaking and deflating the hell out of his ego.

He never lost sight of the fact that he was a big man. Because of it, he’d never given a woman reason to be afraid of him due to his size and strength. Instinctively, he knew that wasn’t what was making her so skittish now. It was something else, something that had nothing to do with him.

“I always did make my share of mistakes around you.” He forced a smile when what he wanted to do was pin down the real cause of her fear.

Hershey trotted out of the woods and onto the dock before he had the chance to ask her about it. J.D. watched in silence as Maggie took the opportunity to close off any possibility of a twenty-questions session. She went down on one knee and gave the lab the attention his slowly wagging tail and soulful brown eyes begged for.

Rubbing his jaw thoughtfully, J.D. simply observed as Maggie lavished soft words and generous affection on the adoring dog. The picture she made was one of complete control. And yet her hands were shaking. He worked his lower lip between a finger and thumb and made a decision to back off. For the time being, anyway. The lady clearly needed some time to pull herself together.

He didn’t know what it was that had put the fear in her eyes but he was solid in the belief that it wasn’t him. In the moment when their mouths and bodies had come together, fear had been the last thing on her mind. She’d reacted to him. Sure and swift and with a stunning combination of desire and need—a need so strong he’d felt an outrageous need of his own to protect her.

Protect, possess. Provide for.

Whoa. Back up the boat, Hazzard.
Hormones, memories and long-ago summertime lust did not equate to the “P” words, which in turn equated to commitment—not
after a fifteen-year absence. Hell, they’d both been kids then.

He let his gaze drift along her sun-bright hair and tanned skin and drew a deep, controlling breath. They definitely weren’t kids anymore. While physically the changes in her appearance had been subtle—a lush and benevolent maturing of a youthful face and body—in other ways he could see much more pronounced differences. As he watched in intrigued silence as she buried her face in the lab’s silky coat, he was suddenly very sorry he hadn’t been around when those events had been molding her into the woman she was today. The Maggie he’d known had been tough and tart. She’d had a mouth made for kissing and put-downs and a mind set on independence.

In this life or the next, he’d never figured she would have turned into a woman who would let a little good-natured flirting upset her. If pressed, she might try to deny it with indifference, but he knew otherwise. She
had
been upset.

Okay. So he’d gone a little further than flirting. But she’d gone a lot further than being upset. She’d been scared to death. Yet, it had only been a kiss.

Wrong, Hazzard,
he conceded. If it had only been a kiss, his heart wouldn’t have skipped like the Cessna’s engine on a nosedive. It wouldn’t be going all mushy right now as he watched her try to get hold of herself.

Aw, Stretch. What the hell happened to you?

And what the hell had happened to him to make it so important that he find out?

Had to be the legs, Hazzard, he told himself on a lengthy, self-deprecating sigh. He’d always been a sucker for her legs. And her smile. And her tough-guy temperament that had had him stepping and fetching and panting like a marathon runner at the finish line.

Only he’d never crossed that line with her. Not back then. He’d never even come close.

He made an immediate and reckless decision then. Now that she was back on the scene—whatever the reason—there were a lot of lines he planned on crossing. Starting with why and how she had ended up back at the lake in the first place…and ending with what had put that hunted, haunted look in her eyes.

Before he could form his first question, though, her head came up. Her gaze skittered, as it had since he’d first stepped out of the plane, past his to the bay behind him.

“It might have been a good idea to tie up to the dock,” she announced with an offhanded innocence that immediately set his senses on alert.

He frowned, glanced back over his shoulder, did a double take and swore roundly.

When he turned his glare back on her, she had the nerve to let a little grin tip up one corner of that delicious mouth.

While he’d stood there mooning over Maggie Adams like a love-struck teenager, the Cessna had very quietly floated a couple hundred yards out into the bay.

Without taking his eyes from hers, he stripped his T-shirt over his head and tossed it along with his sunglasses and the roll of duct tape onto the dock. “You watched it go, didn’t you?”

She gave a noncommittal shrug that suggested she had taken perverse pleasure in doing just that.

“You could have said something,” he muttered, hopping first on one foot, then the other as he shucked his shoes.

“I believe I just did.”

Her smug little smile made him want to put her in her place. While he couldn’t say he much cared for the pleasure she was deriving out of this—and all at his expensehe was glad the fear in her eyes had been replaced by a sassy spark of amusement.
This
was the Maggie he remembered.

“You’ll pay for this, Stretch,” he promised amiably, then extracted his first payment when he stripped off his jeans and stood before her in nothing but black silk boxers.

Her face turned the color of a red channel marker.

“You’ll pay dearly,” he assured her, flashing a warning grin. With a command to Hershey to stay, he dove into the bay.

Maggie stood and stewed and blasted herself for doing it. Yet she couldn’t look away. With her arms crossed tightly under her breasts, she watched Blue swim out to the plane.

“He’s managed to take care of himself the last fifteen years when you weren’t around,” she sputtered under her breath. “He doesn’t need you fussing like a mother hen now.”

With that thought, she forced herself to turn her back on him and the lake, and told herself she didn’t care if he drowned on his merry way. He was going to end up killing himself eventually anyway if he piloted that plane many more times.

“Plane,” she muttered darkly. “Flying leaky boat is more like it. Disaster with a prop. He and that contraption deserve each other.”

Hershey’s agitated woofs coming from where he stood vigil on the end of the dock had Maggie spinning on her heel, though, as visions of a Hazzardless bay and a few telltale bubbles outdistanced her resolve to ignore him.

Blue water and—thankfully—Blue Hazzard filled her field of vision, however, as he reached the plane and hefted his gorgeous self out of the water. Settling his hip onto the float, he whipped his head back, sending water flying in a sparkling crystal arc from that glorious mass of golden hair.

She felt a relief that was too swift and too sweet. And a flutter of arousal that hit like a thief in the night. He was a beautiful man, gilded in the sunlight from the top of his sun-streaked hair to the tawny glow of his tanned skin. He
was male from the breadth of his shoulders to the symmetrical sculpting of his chest to his narrow hips and the fluid lines of his long, muscular legs. And just looking at him excited her.

Her swift, strong reaction stunned her. After Rolfe, she’d never intended to let a man affect her that way again. After Rolfe, she’d never thought it would be possible. Blue Hazzard had just proven her wrong. He’d not only managed to arouse a physical response, he’d managed to make her concerned about him.

Just her luck, he picked the exact moment her shoulders had straightened with both relief and awareness to catch her eye. He gave her a macho grin and a thumbs-up signal, then maneuvered smoothly to stand in all his wet, near-naked glory on the battered silver float.

“Jerk,” she mumbled, irritated that she’d not only given in to her response to him but that she’d let him see it and recognize it for what it was.

The big question was why. Why did she react to him physically and why did she care about what happened to him? She didn’t want to think about the physical part. The concern, however, she could reason out rationally. She’d watched the plane float away. She should have said something. Some perverse desire to tilt his world a little off kilter—just like he’d tilted hers—had prompted her to keep silent. Consequently, if something had happened to him— cramps were not out of the realm of possibility—it would have been her fault.

“Wrong,” she stated firmly as she turned her back on him again and marched up the rock and grass path to the cabin. “Don’t fall into that trap again. That’s the kind of twisted rationale you came here to get away from. It would not have been your fault. It would have been his fault for not tying the plane to the dock in the first place.”

Slipping into the cabin through the back screen door, she walked directly to the bedroom. She peeled off her suit,
snagged panties and a bra, then stepped into khaki walking shorts and a red tank top. Then she proceeded to ignore the fact that there was a dog on her dock, a plane in her bay and a near-naked man responsible on both counts.

It wasn’t that she was deluding herself into thinking she’d gotten rid of him. Not yet. It was just that when she confronted him again, it was going to be with the benefit of at least one of them fully clothed.

Maybe then she wouldn’t experience this undercurrent of awareness muddling up her system. And maybe then her face wouldn’t heat up at just the thought of Blue Hazzard stripping to his skivvies and displaying his long, muscular legs, slim hips and broad, tanned chest for her benefit