Barefoot in Pearls (Barefoot Bay Brides Book 3) by Roxanne St. Claire Read Free Book Online Page A

for a second, scanning the dark shadows outside the truck. He’d fought too many wars to follow blindly. He reached into the side compartment and snagged a small but powerful flashlight, slipping it into his pants pocket. Swinging down to the ground, he rounded the truck to meet her. Neither spoke as they got close enough to make out each other’s face, and Luke automatically reached for her hands.
    “Don’t tell me you want to go into that house,” he said.
    She eyed the building, even the outline of it nearly impossible to see now. “Not now. I want to take you to the hill. I have to show you something.”
    “In the dark?” He almost pulled out the flashlight, but stopped, waiting to see what she had in mind with this midnight adventure.
    “You can feel things better in the dark.”
    Like…her body? An automatic male response cut through him, getting primed for what he hoped she had in mind, despite her all-business attitude.
    With a surprisingly calm demeanor, she held his hand and started walking away from the truck, with an utter lack of…sensuality.
    “This isn’t about sex, is it, Arielle?”
    Her step slowed. “That’s why you think I brought you out here?”
    “The thought crossed my mind.”
    She let out something between a sigh and a laugh, carefully navigating over the dirt road that rounded the side of the house and led toward the base of the hill. “I have an apartment, you know.”
    “Not as adventurous.”
    She smiled up at him, her white teeth showing in the dark. “I suppose you like adventure, having been in the French Foreign Legion and all.”
    “Unlike a lot of the seven thousand guys I fought with, I didn’t join for the adventure.” He heard the flat tone in his voice, felt it in his gut.
    “Then why did you join?” she asked as they walked.
    He didn’t answer while they found the closest thing to a path there was, his brain going back to his run along here in broad daylight. He’d made the trip once with his eyes open, and she hadn’t been there. Then he’d repeated the course with his eyes closed, as he’d learned to do in every run drill he’d practiced. That time, he nearly flattened the unexpected visitor.
    “Or is that part of the thing you don’t talk about?” she prodded to break the silence.
    “I thought my sister told you the story of why I left the States.”
    “I know there was the accident that scarred her and that you felt guilty for your part in it and ran away,” she said. “That’s her perception of why you left.”
    “That’s why I left the States,” he said. “Not why I joined the Legion.” For some reason, he wanted to confide in this alluring woman, which didn’t make sense, but here, in the deep, dark night, that need felt right. So he went with it.
    “You of all people will appreciate what actually happened.”
    She leaned into him, silently asking for more.
    “I made a bad, bad bet and lost.”
    “What did you bet on?”
    “I bet I had the balls to kill a guy for money, and when push came to shove, I didn’t, and I had to get the hell out of Dodge before someone killed me.”
    She slowed down, and his eyes had adjusted enough to the lack of light to see the stunned look on her face, underscored by a low, distant rumble of thunder far out in the Gulf of Mexico.
    “Are you surprised I was involved in something like that?” he asked.
    “I’m surprised the thing you did after you discovered you weren’t able to take someone’s life for money was join an army to, well, I assume, kill people for money.”
    “Trust me, the irony wasn’t lost on me. And it really wasn’t for money. The Legion doesn’t pay enough for that to be the sole reason for joining.”
    “So, what was your reason?”
    Oh, hell. He was all in now. “I was hiding, to be perfectly honest. In the French Foreign Legion, you get a new name, a new identity, and you’re completely protected and anonymous.” He put a hand on her back to guide her to where the