Read Online Blind-Date Bride by Jillian Hart - Free Book Online Page B

was wet through from being belly down in the snow. So was his wallet. He handed a snow-speckled twenty to the kid. “Go on. I’m right behind you.”
    “Sweet.” Marcus snatched the greenback and jammed it into his pocket. He took off at a good clip.
    “I want the change back!” It didn’t hurt to keep the kid on his toes. Max shook his head, and made sure the economy sedan’s trunk was closed up tight. Might as well rack up the bike while he was standing here. It would give him something to do instead of stand around in the snow, trying to avoid going back in that store.
    Brianna McKaslin. He couldn’t stop thinking about her as he hiked her bike into place and tied it down with the chain and lock. The bike had seen better days about a decade ago. Something told him she wasn’t a woman who’d had a lot of good breaks in her life.
    He didn’t like what he’d felt when he’d seen her in the store, snow twinkling in her hair like a tiara, looking wind-blown and wholesome and vulnerable all at once. He felt the same way now, overwhelmed with a steely need to take care of her. To be the one she turned to. To be the man who would keep her safe and happy.
    You’re not that guy, Max. He would remind himself of it as many times as it took to sink in. He’d learnedthe hard way as much as a man might want to be a different kind of guy, he could only wind up being himself in the end. Thinking of the past made him wince. Just went to show how much a woman’s love—and loss of that love—could affect a man a decade later.
    “Max? I thought I was going to do that.” Brianna’s voice rose above the storm like a gentle melody. She appeared through the curtain of snow with a covered cup in hand. “This will warm you up. You look like you’ve been laying down in the snow.”
    “I hope your sister doesn’t mind that I put the chains on. I spotted the box in the trunk when I got out the jack and the spare. The roads are going to be tough going. The snow plows aren’t out yet.” He took the cup she offered, noticing steam rising up through the drink spout. His hands were too numb to feel any of its heat. “Are you two going to be heading out soon?”
    “Colbie’s closing the store early. She’s the assistant manager, so she can make the call. She’s the only employee here tonight anyway.”
    “She won’t get any customers in this weather.”
    “Exactly, which means I don’t have to sit around waiting for her to close up, thereby tempting to break my book-budget money.”
    This is where the guy says, what are you doing on Friday? Want to go out and grab a bite? Max shifted his weight from one foot to the next. Awkward, that’s what this was, the moment when you realized you couldn’t ask that question. And you suspected she might be waiting for you to.
    Just doing you a favor, pretty lady. He gestured toward the building. “You strike me as a budgeting type.”
    “And what does that mean? Obsessive-compulsive?” She laughed, a musical sound that drove the cold from the snow and the mean from the wind. “You would be right.”
    “No, no.” He noticed a spot of ice outside the back door, where she was heading, so he put his free hand on her shoulder, just to steady her. Just in case. And if a trickle of tenderness lit up the depths of his sorry soul, well, that was something he was just going to have to ignore. Completely. “You’re the neat type, aren’t you? Everything in its place. Every check recorded in the check register.”
    “Nothing wrong with being tidy. I like to keep track of things. And it has nothing to do with trying to control my environment.”
    “’Course not.” He could joke, too. It was easier that way. He did it with his brother all the time. Safer to bark and bite and not mean it, than to say what he did mean. He wasn’t comfortable with that. He wasn’t good at it.
    He saw the moment her boot slipped on the ice, she lost her balance and dismay crossed her face. He gripped