Karen Templeton – Falling For The Rebound Bride (страница 1)
Weeks before her wedding, Emily Weber walks away from her planned society shindig and her cheating fiancé—straight to her cousin’s New Mexico ranch. Everyone’s advice: Emily’s got to work it out of her system, and her childhood acquaintance—all six feet of dark good looks—is just the guy to help.
Colin Talbot recognizes someone on the run from their life. Hell, the rootless photojournalist hasn’t been on his ranch in years, till now. But he’s not about to indulge in a promise of pleasure, not with a potential for disaster. Emily still wants marriage and babies; he can’t wait to bolt. So he’ll keep his distance before she has him wanting what he can’t have: a family and a forever love.
“I’m your man.”
She laughed. “Actually, I’m your woman. I’m here if you need someone to talk to. In the past few weeks you’ve let me be me more than anyone else ever has. Only fair to return the favor.” She leaned back on the picnic table, stretching the fabric across her breasts. “And the best part? Once we go back to our lives, we’ll probably never see each other again. But even a momentary connection is better than nothing.”
He had a feeling there was an underlying meaning to that last part. “Are we still talking about... talking?”
Emily turned to him, giving him a glimpse of gorgeous leg.
“This is me going with the flow.” She drew in a deep breath. “Seizing the moment.”
“Being reckless.”
“That, too. But the great thing about knowing what the possibilities are—or aren’t—from the get-go is that there are no expectations. So you can relax and enjoy the moment.”
His blood pumped so hard he could hardly hear her. He didn’t need to; he knew what she meant. Still... “Emily, I can’t take advantage of you.”
“I’m not asking you to. But hey, if you don’t want to—”
“Want has nothing to do with it.”
She leaned in close to him. “Actually, it has everything to do with it.”
* * *
Wed in the West: New Mexico’s the perfect place to finally find true love!
Falling for the Rebound Bride
Karen Templeton
KAREN TEMPLETON is an inductee into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. A three-time RITA® Award–winning author, she has written more than thirty novels for Mills & Boon. She lives in New Mexico with two hideously spoiled cats. She has raised five sons and lived to tell the tale, and she could not live without dark chocolate, mascara and Netflix.
To my five guys
Who made our home more than we could have ever imagined.
Love you.
Contents
The young woman had been eyeing him from the other side of the luggage carousel for several minutes, her pale forehead slightly crimped. Far too wiped out to be paranoid—or return her interest, if that’s what it was—Colin instead focused on his phone as he reflexively massaged an unyielding knot in the back of his neck. Although truthfully his entire body was one giant screaming ache after nearly two days either on a plane or waiting for one—
“Um... Colin? Colin Talbot?”
Instinctively clutching his camera bag, he frowned into a pair of sweet, wary blue eyes he was pretty sure he’d never seen in his life. Clearly he was even more tired than he’d realized, letting her sneak up on him like that.
With a squeaky groan, the carousel lurched into action, the contents of the plane’s belly tumbling down the chute, bags and boxes jostling each other like a bunch of sleepy drunks. The other passengers closed in, ready to pounce, many sporting the standard assortment of cowboy hats and beat-up boots you’d expect to see in New Mexico. Colin squinted toward the business end, keeping one grit-scraped eye out for his beat-up duffel, then faced the young woman again. Crap, his backpack felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. Not to mention his head.
“Have we met? Because I don’t—”
“I was a kid, the last time I saw you,” she said, a smile flicking across a mouth as glossy as her long, wavy hair, some undefined color between blond and brown. “When I visited the ranch.” She tucked some of that shiny hair behind one ear, the move revealing a simple gold hoop, as well as lifting the hem of her creamy blouse just enough to hint at the shapely hips her fitted jeans weren’t really hiding. Hell. Next to this perfect specimen of refinement, Colin felt like week-old roadkill. Probably smelled like it, too, judging from the way the dude next to him on that last leg from Dallas kept leaning away.
The smile flickered again, although he now saw it didn’t quite connect with her eyes. She pressed a slender, perfectly manicured hand to her chest. “Emily Weber? Deanna’s cousin?”
Deanna. His younger brother Josh’s new wife. And their dad’s old boss’s daughter. Now, vaguely, Colin remembered the gangly little middle schooler who’d spent a few weeks on the Vista Encantada that summer more than ten years ago. Vaguely, because not only had he already been in college, but she was right, they hadn’t talked much. If at all. Mostly because of the age difference thing. That she even recognized him now...
“Oh. Right.” Colin dredged up a smile of sorts, before his forehead cramped again. “You don’t look much like I remember.”
Humor briefly flickered in her eyes. “Neither do you.”
He shifted, easing the weight of the backpack. “Then how’d you know it was me?”
A faint blush swept over her cheeks. “I didn’t, at first. Especially with the beard. But it’s hard to ignore the tallest man in the room. Then I noticed the camera bag, and I remembered the photo I spotted at your folks’ house, when I was there a few months ago for the wedding. Josh’s wedding, I mean.” She grinned. “There’s been a few of those in your family of late.”
Seriously, his brothers had been getting hitched like there’d been a “buy one, get two free” sale on marriage licenses. First Levi, then Josh—his twin younger brothers—and soon Zach, the oldest, would be marrying for the second time—
“In any case,” she said, “enough pieces started fitting together that I decided to take a chance, see if it was you. Although you probably wondered who the creeper chick trying to pick you up was.”
Colin glanced back toward the carousel. “Thought never crossed my mind.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her gaze lower to her glittery flat shoes. “Crazy, huh?” she said, looking up again. But not at him. “After all this time, both of us being on the same plane to Albuquerque.”
“Yeah.”
This time the sound that pushed from her chest held a definite note of exasperation. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude on your privacy or whatever. I just thought, since I did recognize you, it’d be weird not to say anything. Especially since we’re probably both headed up to the ranch. Unless...” Another flush streaked across her cheeks. “You’re not?”