Read Online The Wedding Ransom by Geralyn Dawson - Free Book Online Page B

tone. Gus didn’t talk this way. It worried her; it frightened her. She stealthily eased her head around the bramble blocking her view and peered at her grandfather. His gnarled fingers held the branch of a willow, mooring him to the shore as he floated neck deep in the green—tinted water, embarrassment painting a slash of red across his face.
    Maggie couldn’t see Rafe Malone from where she stood, but she heard his words clearly. “If you think you’re bad off, you should see my pa. How old are you, Gus? Sixty-one? Sixty-two?”
    “Sixty-nine come August.”
    “Well, I’ll be dipped. Never would have pegged you for that old. My pa is sixty. Damn near a decade younger than you. He’s been falling over things for at least five years now. And he’s getting soft in the head. What I’d give for him to have his mind back all sharp like yours.”
    After a long pause in the conversation, Gus said, “Reckon I’m like a broken-backed rattler. I still have a little bite left in me. Only saving grace in all of this is that none of the others were here to see me. The men would give me ever-loving grief, and Maggie, well, she’d get all fretful. Worrying is bad for her health; she’ll sometimes have a spell if she gets to stewing too much. Now, I never did get your word to keep quiet. Say it, then help me out of here, boy.”
    “You have my word.”
    Ducking back behind the bush, Maggie heard water splashing and the rustle of brush.
    “You sure you’ll be all right?” Malone asked. “That’s a nasty tear in your shirt.”
    “Didn’t even break the skin. Now back off, boy, and keep your hands to yourself. I’m telling you I’m fine! I’ll not be needing you for a walking cane. In fact, I think I’m in the mood to hike back to the hotel. It’ll give me time to dry out before the others can get an eyeful. If you want to help, you can fill the bottles and row the boat back to the hotel for me.”
    Maggie took brisk but careful steps back toward the boulder. There she paused. From the sounds of it, Papa Gus wouldn’t want her to see him this way at all.
    Glancing around, she spied a leafy holly and dashed behind it just as Gus lumbered into sight.
    “No barnacles on me yet,” he grumbled as he passed her hiding place, his expression set with determination. “Plenty of spring in my step. Can sail rings around men half my age. I’ll be a cracked-shell crustacean before I let the years win.”
    That’s the way to talk, Papa Gus,
Maggie thought as she blinked away the sudden tears flooding her eyes. She knew her grandfathers wouldn’t live forever, but she wasn’t prepared to lose any of them anytime soon. She stared unseeing at the path where he’d disappeared, her mind lost in fears of the future and memories of the past.
    “You can come out now.”
    Rafe’s voice startled Maggie, and she jerked her head up and back. The man was naked again! Half—naked, anyway. He wore only a pair of snug buckskin trousers.
    Heat from a blush stained her cheeks, and she attempted to turn around. A fierce tug at her scalp was the first indication she’d caught her hair in a bramble bush behind her. “Son of a blowfish,” Maggie muttered beneath her breath.
    To her embarrassment, Malone laughed. “Why, Miss St. John, I am appalled. Such language from a lady.”
    She closed her eyes. Just her luck the man had hearing good enough to hear the sun rise.
    “Of course,” Malone continued, “it took me a few hours in your grandfathers’ company to realize y’all have your own particular way of cussin’. I must say I’ve wondered about it.”
    He could just keep on wondering. Maggie didn’t feel like explaining that her papas had cleaned up their speech when she, at five years of age, had spoken a particularly vulgar curse during a moment of frustration. Instead, while she lifted her hands to her hair to work it free of the thorns, wincing as the movement yanked at her scalp, she asked, “How did you know I was