Runaway Groom by Virginia Nelson Read Free Book Online Page B

again and start scribbling notes.
    “You know how you like me to nibble that little spot behind your ear? I could start off with that. Then I’d trail kisses down your neck while my hands were full of those beautiful breasts of yours…”
    Again, her head popped up. The old woman didn’t pause for a second in her storytelling.
    “So back then, there was a patch of woods over on Satin Street, where the housing development is now. Us kids would sneak off…”
    “Braxton!” Abigail hissed. “She’s right there.”
    “She can’t hear a word I’m saying.” He glanced back, and the woman sipped her tea before continuing to tell them about how the kids would go over to the theater for a movie come the weekend.
    “How do you know?” Abby covered her lips with her hand before whispering it.
    “Lost her hearing aide.” He grinned at her before reclaiming the fascinating curl of hair he’d been toying with. “So I can say how lovely your breasts look in the moonlight and how much your kisses drive me wild and she can’t hear a word of it.”
    “You’re bad,” she whispered, but she didn’t shove his hand away from her hair.
    “You like it.” Leaning back, he let the sun warm his skin while Abigail asked a couple other questions and scribbled away. Soon, she tapped his arm and he realized he must have dozed off.
    “Wake up, sleeping beauty. Say goodbye to Mrs. Sabatina.”  
    Blinking fast, he stretched and yawned before loping up the two steps to snag the jug and glasses off the old woman. “I’ve got these, ma’am.”
    “Pretty manners.” She chuckled and he followed her back into the small, cluttered house. It smelled like a mix of mothballs, dust and cat, and he wrinkled his nose at the combination, but kept his thoughts to himself. When he made it to her kitchen, he washed up the jug and glasses before turning to face Mrs. Sabatina again.
    “Thanks so much for having us, ma’am.”
    “No problem. Next time you bring a lady to my home though, boy, you watch you keep your language appropriate with her.”
    Abby had just entered the kitchen behind Mrs. Sabatina and she quickly stepped back around the corner. Braxton didn’t doubt for a second she stayed though and eavesdropped from there. “Yes, ma’am.” Clearing his throat, he gestured with the dish towel. “You could hear me?”
    With a chuckle like wooden wind chimes clunking together, the old woman touched his arm with her very soft and dry hand. “No, boy. I told you, lost the hearing aide. I can read lips though. I was a teacher, you know.”
    Nodding, he apologized for his behavior before heading off to find Abigail, who’d already loaded herself into the truck and was laughing hard.
    “You think this is funny?” he asked her. “I just talked about your tits in front of a woman who has to be at least a thousand years old.”
    His words didn’t slow her laughter and tears snuck out the corners of her eyes. “You’re killing me here. The look on your face when she called you out…priceless.”
    The sight of her, so real and full of joy, triggered something and he couldn’t resist leaning closer, until their noses just brushed. “And here I was trying to be sexy…”
    He let the sentence dangle off to nothing, enjoying the passion that waked in her gaze and the way she slowly licked her full lips. “Yeah, well—”
    She swallowed and he leaned closer yet, capturing those lips with his own. Only once her breath sped and her fingertips clutched at his shirt did he back up enough to grin down at her. “You were saying?”
    “I don’t remember,” she confessed and leaned back in her seat.
    More interviews followed, and he used every moment to try to make her remember the feelings they’d once shared. It was the little things really. Brushing his arm against hers to watch her shiver while she talked to someone. She still felt something . Leaning into her space to glance at what she was writing, to get close enough to smell her