Read Online Easter Blessings by Lenora Worth - Free Book Online Page B

you really are very pretty.”
    She put her gaze back on the road. “Are you flirting with me, Heath?”
    “Can I flirt with you, Mariel?”
    “I thought we agreed to a business relationship.”
    “Hey, you’re the one who asked me on this date.”
    “This is not a…date. You said you wanted to see Shreveport.”
    “And you’re being so very accommodating on that account. Can I help it if I like that dress.”
    She glanced down at her gathered skirts. “This was my mother’s dress. I found it in one of the closets at home.”
    “A classic,” Heath replied. “Like something out of a fifties movie.”
    Mariel shrugged. “It fit.”
    “It does fit,” he said, tilting his head toward her.
    They came to a stop sign and Mariel gave him a warning look. “Okay, enough about my wardrobe, or lack thereof. What do you want for Sunday lunch? Seafood—Cajun or Creole? Soul food? Or a good-old fashioned hamburger?”
    Heath frowned in mock-concentration. “Well, that all sounds good.”
    “Fine, I’ll take you to a place that offers all three,” she said. Then she shifted gears and blasted off toward the Interstate.
    Heath held on, his breath in his throat. Mariel Evans was a woman full of becoming surprises. He sat back to enjoy the ride, and wondered what might come next.
     
    Mariel wondered why she’d gone and asked Heath to come with her to Shreveport. She’d never been one to follow a whim. She’d never been impulsive. Simon had often teased her about being a stick-in-the-mud. He’d toldher she needed to lighten up and learn to be more spontaneous.
    Well, Simon would sure be proud of her today. Here she sat in a legendary downtown restaurant not far from the Red River, with a man she was only beginning to know and had yet to completely understand. And she’d invited him to lunch.
    I must have spring fever, Mariel thought as she watched Heath bite into a batch of fried crawfish. He grinned, wiped hot sauce from his mouth, then took a long drink of sweet tea.
    While Mariel swallowed back the surge of—what was it?—longing she felt each time she was around him.
    “Do I have hot sauce on my nose?” Heath asked her.
    “What?” Mariel mentally shook herself. “Oh, no. I was just enjoying watching you eat that. So you like fried crawfish, huh?”
    “I do now,” he replied. “Strange little creatures, but very tasty.”
    “We’ll have to have a crawfish boil at White Hill,” she told him before taking a bite from her shrimp salad. “Dutch can really cook a mean batch of mudbugs.”
    “Mudbugs?”
    “That’s what we call them around here. And we also have a hockey team by that name.”
    “A hockey team in Louisiana? That’s different.”
    “Yes, considering the only ice around here is in the arena. We get snow every now and then, but mostly we just get humidity.”
    He nodded. “Tell me about it. But the lilies seem to thrive in spite of that. It still amazes me that your grandmother has that wild field growing right up to her yard.”
    “That’s the original garden,” Mariel explained. “She’d never change that field. She insists on letting it grow at random.”
    “Well, that field has been good to her,” Heath replied. “I’m very glad to be here helping her keep up the tradition.”
    “I’m glad you’re here, too,” Mariel admitted.
    He leaned over the small table, causing Mariel to forget the buzz of hurrying waitresses and the noise of happy diners. “Even though you didn’t like me at first?”
    “Did I say that?” she teased, the intensity of his blue eyes making her question her better judgment.
    “Yes, you did,” he reminded her. “Hurt my feelings, not to mention my pride.”
    “I was just looking after my grandmother.”
    “Sadie is safe with me, I can assure you. She reminds me of my own grandmother.”
    “Oh, do you keep in touch?”
    “She passed away when I was a teenager.”
    “Oh.” Mariel took a drink of water. “I don’t want to think about Granny