A Bride For Abel Greene by Cindy Gerard Read Free Book Online

he’d accepted when he’d left the lake all those years ago as an angry and rebellious eighteen-year-old. He’d never intended to come back. Only when he’d run out of options had he returned. And only when the loneliness had gotten a choke hold, had he let himself be duped into placing that damned ad.
    “What about you, green eyes?” he murmured, searching the fire and seeing those young-old eyes that captivated him. “Is that why you’re here? Have you run out of options, too?”
    He reminded himself he couldn’t afford to invest in someone else’s misery. He especially couldn’t use it to temper his own. No matter how tempting she was.
    Besides, wisdom dictated that he send her away. He had to get her out of here for her own good. If his suspicions played out and the last of his business mishaps—a fire at his main storage shed just last week—wasn’t an accident, that meant it had been deliberately set. He didn’t want to believe it, but it was a possibility, and he couldn’t involve her or her brother in a potentially dangerous situation.
    If someone wanted him gone—and he had a pretty good idea who that someone might be—that someone was in for a surprise.
    Abel Greene had reset his roots. He wasn’t going anywhere. And if he did have a problem, he’d deal with it the same way he had every other problem in his life. Alone.
    He’d had it all in perspective when he’d come in from taking care of the horses this morning—and then he’d run into Mackenzie Kincaid in his office.
    She’d looked sleep mussed and dewy soft and so very touchable. All the speculations he’d wrestled with through the night—the feel of her, the softness of flesh over fragile bones, the heat and scent of woman—were speculation no more.
    His hands were still shaking from holding her. Lower in his body, deep in his groin, an ache, hot and demanding had begun to intensify and burn at the memory of the soft brush of her thighs against his legs, the cushion of her breasts pulsing against his chest.
    “That’s what you get, Greene,” he muttered under his breath as he stalked out of the living room and headed for the kitchen.
    “You hold up out here for five years like a damn hermit and then you’re surprised when a body with breasts knocks you for a loop.”
    He jerked open a cupboard, grabbed the coffee can off the top shelf and slammed around making a fresh pot.
    Then he tried to get a grip. Bracing his hands wide on the counter, he dropped his head between his hunched shoulders and dragged in a deep, controlling breath.
    “She can really piss a guy off, huh?”
    He spun around like he’d been shot.
    Sitting at the table, digging into a bowl of cereal, sat the kid. From the look on his face, Abel surmised he’d heard every muttered word.
    He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “I’m not angry at your sister.”
    The boy shrugged. “Whatever.” Then a nasty smirk curled his upper lip. “So...are you gonna do her?”
    Anger exploded inside Abel like a bomb. He skirted the table in two strides, grabbed the boy’s shirt in one fist and jerked him nose to nose before he had a chance to run for cover.
    “Look, you little punk. I don’t know what’s eating you, but a man doesn’t bad-mouth a woman because his nose is out of joint. Don’t ever make reference to your sister in that tone or that way again. Understood?”
    Eyes bulging, face red, hands clasped in a death grip around Abel’s wrist, Mark nodded. Once. Then again, in a series of rapid, jerky movements.
    Slowly Abel let him go. Slower still, aware that the boy was watching his every move in wary silence, he backed away. Without breaking eye contact, he reached behind him to the counter where he’d left the boom box after he’d repaired it earlier this morning.
    Without a word, he set it in front of him.
    Unsure of what he was supposed to do with it, the boy stared first at the box then at Abel.
    “Don’t give me a reason to break it.”
    Humbled, yet