Read Online Reluctantly in Love by Niecey Roy - Free Book Online

juju back I might write a mystery about a video game program heist.

Chapter Six
     
     
    I was bent over a pink cooler, digging like my life depended on it for an ice cold wine cooler. There were three different flavors, and the flavor I wanted must have been on the bottom.
    The sun beat down on the top of my head and sweat beaded at my hairline. This was not the Moss family lake house. This Fourth of July vacation was much more rustic than I was used to. I’d been dragged to the middle of no-freakin’-where.
    “Cabin my ass,” I mumbled. I’d been tricked.
    I rummaged through the ice for a strawberry daiquiri wine cooler. My friends had all been in on the deception. Jerks.
    I’d piled into the back of Leo’s vehicle this morning with my laptop and a paperback novel to pass the time, and hadn’t paid any attention to my surroundings. It wasn’t until mile marker fifty-three, and exactly two hours and fourteen minutes into our trip, that I looked up and realized I had no idea where we were. That’s when we rolled through a little town called Cedar Ridge and Leo admitted that camping this year would involve tents and a portable privacy shower. The idea of not having access to a plug-in for my laptop resulted in what might have been a mild panic attack.
    It was hot as hell out, and I was stuck in yee-haw country in the middle of nowhere. Which was why I’d had a regular visit with the cooler since pulling into this . . . pasture? I gazed around my surroundings. Leo had followed Matt’s pickup onto a road with the tracks worn down to the dirt leading through the grass and trees to a clearing along the bank of the river.
    There was an old fifth wheel camper parked on the property, and a spark of relief shot through me—until Leo assured me there wasn’t electricity. We were roughing it.
    I was a city girl. I needed electricity.
    “They’re lucky I brought a notebook along,” I grumbled. I found the strawberry wine cooler and pulled it out with a triumphant, “ Yes. ”
    Wiping the bottle cap off on my jeans shorts, I glanced around my surroundings. Here I was, sweating my ass off and nervous. In the wilderness, there were swarms of mosquitos and other noisy, merciless insects interested in sucking my blood. Mosquitos carried West Nile.
    And that wasn’t even the worst of it. I glanced at the canoes stacked on the trailer backed up to the riverbank. Canoeing. In the river. Shuddering, I twisted off the bottle top then gulped down half the bottle’s contents.
    If they were going to force me to canoe down this river, I was taking my cooler with me. The whole thing.
    I chugged the rest of the wine cooler and the carbonation stung my throat. I flipped the cooler lid open and set the empty bottle inside, then grabbed a cooler handle. Walking backwards, I pulled the cooler across the grass.
    “Holy crap,” I huffed. The thing weighed a ton. I squatted down and grabbed hold of the handle with two hands.
    “Let me help you with that.”
    The unfamiliar voice made me jump and the top of my head connected with something hard as it shot up.
    “ Ouch, shit! ” I pressed a hand to my head with a wince.
    The man in front of me stood shirtless, rubbing at his offended chin. His face was screwed up in a grimace. My apology caught in my throat when our eyes connected. I’d never seen anything so blue—they were like sapphires framed with brown lashes. His hand dropped and I had a perfect view of a chiseled jaw.
    “Are you okay?” he asked.
    I dropped my hand. “Yeah. Are you?”
    “I’ll live.” He offered me his hand, but my gaze was glued to his sculpted, sun-kissed chest.
    Holy pile of pecs. I blinked and took his hand.
    His gorgeous smile was intoxicating and contagious. He gave my hand a soft, yet firm squeeze, and said, “Chase Walker.”
    Chase Walker . . . the doctor. And then things clicked into place. Matt’s friend. The one I’d been dodging a blind date with for months. Gen must have amnesia, because