Read Online That Summer Place by Susan Wiggs, Debbie Macomber, Jill Barnett - That Summer Place - Free Book Online Page B

and explained more slowly, “There’s no hot water in the house without the boiler.”
    “I know what a boiler is, Catherine.”
    What a grump.
    He turned without another sarcastic word and took a tool belt off a hook near the door. Besides an annoyed look, he was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans that were worn almost white in spots and that time and wear had molded to his body. He might be a grump in the morning but he sure looked good for fifty.
    What would he look like in a suit? Catherine was a sucker for a man in a suit. And if a man wore a tux, well, she got all weak-kneed. Heck, Bill Gates probably looked sexy in a tux.
    Life was unfair. Here she had to hike up her bra straps and slather on alpha hydroxy creams with a trowel. Some days she had to lie down on the bed to zip up her pants. He was three years older, wearing a plain old pair of jeans, and he looked stronger and sexier than he had when he was twenty.
    The faces of all the men who had aged so well flashed through her mind: Sean Connery, Nick Nolte, Robert Redford, James Garner, James Brolin, Michael Packard.
    She watched him strap and buckle the tool belt low on his hips the way Paul Newman had strapped on his guns in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
    It seemed like such an earthy, male thing—a man doing up his belt buckle; it was sexy and suggestive and made her mouth a little dry.
    He stuck a pair of work gloves into his back pocket and turned back around. She quickly looked away.
    “I need to find the toolbox. I’ll be right back.” He grabbed a key and walked past her.
    She nodded without looking up, then decided to follow him. She didn’t suppose luck would be on her side and there would be a tux in the shed, but heck, he might undo the belt buckle again.
    She smiled a wicked little smile as she crossed over to a small shed he had already unlocked.
    Heaven be praised if he didn’t bend down to search through it. His jeans pulled tight over his thighs in a way that made her give thanks to Levi Strauss.
    Then he knelt on one knee and leaned inside. If she stepped back just a foot or so she had a great shot of his backside. The work gloves stuck out of one back pocket and looked like fingers waving at her. It was almost as if they were calling to her, “Look here.”
    “Here it is.” He stood up with a battered old red toolbox.
    She quickly looked up at the sky. After a slight pause she said, “Nice day. No clouds.”
    He followed her gaze upward, then frowned. “The radio said it was supposed to rain today.”
    There was one thing different about this Michael Packard; he was no Mr. Sunshine in the morning.
    She walked ahead of him on the gravel path between his place and hers. The silence just about drove her nuts.
    Her mind was going a mile a minute, wondering what he was thinking, wondering if they could go the whole day without bringing up the past.
    When they were about halfway there she braved the beast. “I wrote you five letters.”
    “I never got any letters from you.”
    She stopped, spun around and planted her hands on her hips. She looked him straight in the eye. “Are you saying I’m lying?”
    “No. I’m saying I never got any letters.” He paused, looking squarely at her. His expression grew tighter. “What I did get was a promise from your father that he’d press charges of statutory rape if I tried to contact you.”
    “Oh God. Michael…” She sagged back against a tree, staring at the ground. “Did he really do that?”
    “Yes.”
    “He was upset. I don’t think he would have sent you to jail.”
    “Yes. He would have, Catherine.”
    There was nothing between them but a lapse of tense silence.
    She looked at him again. “Did you really think I could just walk away after that summer together and never have any contact with you again? Didn’t you know me better than that?”
    “I could ask you the same thing.”
    “How do you figure that?”
    “You thought I would ignore your letters.”
    “Give me a