Read Online Tides of Love (Seaswept Seduction Series) by Tracy Sumner - Free Book Online

child's.
    Asking for a translation was a remarkably devious way of diverting her father's attention. Especially for a boy who had once dragged her into the mercantile and made her apologize for stealing apples.
    Propping her feet on a tasseled ottoman, Elle hoisted the book against her ribs. She flicked her finger over the dog-eared pages, paused to read the notes scribbled in the margin.
    An hour later, the case clock chimed; the book thumped to the floor. She reached for it, stopped, sighed. Noah's accomplishments were buried in the index at the rear: doctoral research, expeditions in the Pacific. He had even lived up to his childhood nickname. Heavens, she had eaten lunch with a true professor with her skirt hiked around her knees.
    She kicked the book, then curled her toes in pain. She hated this feeling of... inferiority, of envy. If she had finished university, maybe she could converse about science or literature, history or mathematics. A semester of domestic economy wasn't likely to help her much.
    Elle let her gaze stray to the pilot coat hanging over the arm of the love seat. She drew her hand back before her fingers brushed the sleeve. She and Noah did not have one interest in common except a thirst for knowledge, something he did not even recognize in her.
    She wasn't sure who he was anymore. The person in the book; the biologist who had traveled the world and written research papers; the man who received perfumed letters from a married woman and stood so tall he had to duck through doorways.
    She didn't know him.
    She didn't think she would ever know him again.
    * * *
    Noah felt the stare burning into his back a full minute before he turned. Shading his face, he squinted into the sun, seeing only the darkened silhouette of a woman. A jolt of undesired anticipation tore through him, then trickled away when he caught the scent.
    Fruity. Banana? Somehow, he knew Elle Beaumont would never smell like banana. An angry sea or a fistful of dirt, maybe, but never banana.
    The silhouette hopped up a step, going from sunlight to shade. Flashing blue eyes tipped at the corner. Hollow cheeks, slim lips. Young and blond, very blond. Noah shrugged away his discomfort.
    She took another step, her pleated skirt brushing his trouser leg. "Hello," she said in a laughing, breathless rush.
    "Hello." He caught the nail that dropped from his lips. "Can I help you with something?" He perched his hip on the coach house railing, which wobbled precariously.
    Another addition to his repair list.
    "No." The young woman bounced on her toes, buckling her boots where the patent leather cap cut in. "My name's Meredith. I'm waiting"—she giggled and glanced over her shoulder—"for Miss Ellie to finish her other lesson. I come twice a week from three to four. She's teaching me to do my daddy's accounts. He owns the mercantile. I wasn't too good in school. Numbers and all, I mean. But Miss Ellie says I can do anything if I set my mind to it. Even add my daddy's accounts and not tangle them up worse than two tomcats in a feed sack. My daddy would rather have a son do them, if he had one. But he doesn't, so he's stuck. With me, and with Miss Ellie, who he thinks is tetched." She emphasized this by drawing a circle around her ear. "But it's only because she's smarter than he is."
    Noah swung his gaze toward the coach house. The metallic ping of a typewriting machine had woken him from restless slumber, dreams idling just below the surface. Zach and Caleb... and Elle, circling a campfire on Devil Island, youthful faces glowing in the amber light.
    "I remember you," Meredith cut in, before he had time to refocus on her face.
    He glanced back slowly, raised a brow as he tugged his leather glove off with his teeth.
    "You used to stop in my daddy's store when I was real little. Bought a lot of cotton handkerchiefs, for ship's sails you told me. Your brother Caleb even let me see the models one time, in his shed out behind your momma's house."
    Noah