Read Online Beckett's Convenient Bride by Dixie Browning - Free Book Online Page A

if he’d ever been seasick a single time, he would have been a bank fisherman for the rest of his days. Lucky for him, he had an industrial grade stomach lining.
    It occurred to him that this would be the perfect time to leave the cashier’s check and the stock, and disappear. A receipt would have been nice, but a cashed check would be all the proof he needed if repayment ever became an issue.
    So why not just do it and leave, Beckett?
    The answer was a little too elusive for his foggy brain to wrestle with at the moment. For starters, the lady intrigued him, and he wasn’t easily intrigued. She was a looker, if you liked wild hair, colorful, freewheeling clothes and earrings that looked more like fishing lures than jewelry.
    Picturing Margaret’s discreet silver studs and his mother’s screw-back pearls that she called earbobs, heshook his head. He knew very well his own family was no gauge of today’s fashions. The Beckett women were typical of their social class maybe fifty years earlier. Housedresses and straw hats for working in the flower garden, flowered dresses and flowered hats for afternoon affairs; dark crepe with pearls for more formal affairs. His mama still wore white gloves and a hat to church, although some of the younger ladies of the congregation wore slacks and none of them wore hats.
    He tried and failed to imagine his mother’s reaction to Katherine Dixon. Fortunately, the two women would never have occasion to meet.
    Reheating the coffee that was left in the pot, he turned over in his mind what he remembered of their initial contact. The woman had been ranting some wild gibberish after she’d tried and nearly succeeded in running over him. Something about not seeing something or other. And cemeteries? Gunshots?
    Whatever it was, it obviously held meaning for her. She’d sounded frightened and angry, and so far as he could recall, he’d done nothing to frighten or anger her. Okay, so he’d approached her car—he hadn’t come closer than ten feet. Not close enough to cause her to feel threatened.
    All evidence pointed to the lady’s being a certified flake. Granted, her looks and the gracefully awkward way she moved, like a foal just getting the feel of his legs, were enough to capture the attention of any man with a viable hormone in his body, but once she opened her mouth, all bets were off.
    Yeah, so why didn’t he stop thinking about her and get on with what he’d come here for?
    He rinsed his bowl and cup, poured the rest of the soup back in the container and put it in the refrigerator, thenran water in the pot. Dish-soaking was one of the first laborsaving devices he’d acquired after leaving the police academy, buying a house and setting up housekeeping. No self-respecting cop still lived with his parents, and he didn’t like renting. Needed his own space, no matter how humble.
    He was headed out to the car to bring in the briefcase containing the check and stock certificates when he caught sight of a figure jogging up the path, silhouetted against the pink security lights.
    Too late, he thought, not even wondering why he wasn’t more disappointed.
    â€œOh, good, you’re awake! I was afraid you’d be gone—by the time—I got off from work,” she panted. “I need to know—how can you tell if a car’s been rigged to blow up? I mean, where do you look and what does a car bomb look like? Is it that plastic goop or does it have wires? I’ve read about it—well, you know—on shoes and things—but I don’t know what it looks like.”
    Wacko. Batty as a cave.
    She came to a halt a few feet away. He could smell the not-unpleasant essence of fried onions and something fruity and sweet. “Uh…you are a policeman, aren’t you?” she asked hesitantly.
    She was wearing red sneakers, a pair of plain white jeans, a T-shirt advertising Jeff’s Crab House and a pair