The Bachelor's Northbridge Bride. Victoria Pade

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СКАЧАТЬ the fact that Marti was pregnant with Noah’s baby due to a one-night stand at a hardware convention—she said, “What about the baby? Are you and Wyatt okay with that?”

      The question didn’t seem to faze Ry. “We’re fine with it. Actually…”

      He moved slightly toward her as if what he was about to say was even more of a confidence, and Kate caught a whiff of clean, citrusy cologne that was like a breath of fresh orchard air enticing her a fraction of an inch closer to him, too.

      “…I hated what Marti had told us before,” he said in a slightly quieter voice. “She claimed she’d had artificial insemination and I was afraid she’d done it because she was so lonely after losing Jack that it had driven her to extreme measures. I felt like Wyatt and I must have dropped the ball, that we must not have given her enough time or comfort or attention. That we’d really failed her. But the thought that she had met somebody who made her realize that she hadn’t died along with Jack? Somebody she wanted to spend the night with? That just proves she’s human and let me know she was getting over Jack’s death. And to tell you the truth, it was a relief to me not to have to think we’d let her down somehow.”

      Kate couldn’t help smiling at that. And wishing he hadn’t just given her a reason to like him.

      “What about your side?” he asked then. “A reverend’s family? Are you all wanting to hang your heads in shame because the pregnancy came before the wedding? Or thinking less of Marti because of it?”

      “No,” Kate said without hesitation. “I mean, those of us who know Marti is pregnant don’t want to hang our heads in shame and we definitely don’t think any less of her.”

      “Those of you who know?”

      “Noah hasn’t told the Reverend yet—”

      “You call your grandfather the Reverend?”

      “No one calls him anything else,” Kate said. Then she went back to answering his question. “The Reverend would be outraged that a member of his family had conceived a child out of wedlock, so Noah put off telling him. In a month or so, Noah will announce it to him as if it’s just happened and leave it at that. But the rest of us know, and since this will be our first niece or nephew, we can’t wait. Well, I can’t wait. And Meg is excited, too. We’ve already started buying baby things. And we really do love Marti. We think of her as another sister. We couldn’t have picked anyone better for Noah ourselves.”

      “No, you couldn’t have,” Ry Grayson confirmed. Then, with that subject exhausted, he smiled a smile that was reminiscent of his earlier devilish one, and said, “So, we’re talking medical massage?”

      This time there was nothing about his teasing that seemed offensive. “That is what I’m trained in, yes,” she said. “And you hurt yourself riding a neighbor’s kid’s skateboard?”

      He grinned, deepening those lines around his supple mouth. “I suppose it was some of that spirit-of-youth,” he countered facetiously. “But I’ve dislocated the shoulder twice before so it doesn’t take much to set it off and when I tried the half-pipe I wiped out a few times. As a result the shoulder is pretty stiff and sore. But usually a therapeutic medical massage helps.”

      The way he said that—with a grin—made her smile, too. It was just so dangerous to be enjoying herself with a grown man who had hurt himself skateboarding. Kate knew it as surely as she knew she was standing there. But could she help it? Apparently not, because she was enjoying herself.

      But just for now, when there was no escape. It wasn’t going beyond this.

      “I’ll be at my office at the hospital in the afternoon tomorrow,” she said, forcing a heavy dose of professionalism into her tone. “I’m booked solid but if you come at six, I’ll stay an extra hour as a favor to Marti, since you’re family,” she said, thinking that maybe it might help to put him into those ranks.

      “Family…” he repeated. “Hmm…I don’t know that I like thinking of my masseuse as family.”

      “That’s what we are, though,” she insisted. “Just plain old family.”

      His smile then was small and amused as he shook his head, and his gaze touched on her hair before he said, “I hate to tell you, but there is absolutely nothing about you that’s plain.”

      The hair always did seem to be a factor, she thought, trying to take his flattery with a grain of salt.

      Rather than responding to his comment, she said, “It’s my turn to take the Reverend home and I’m sure he wants to leave since the cake’s been cut. So what’ll it be? Six tomorrow night or taking care of it yourself?”

      Ry Grayson laughed. Spontaneously, boisterously, wickedly. “Oh, I definitely don’t want to take care of it myself. I’ll be there at six—I’m sure someone can tell me where the hospital is.”

      “It’s on the west side of Main Street, a block up from South. You could walk from here.”

      “I’ll be there,” he assured.

      At some point after the lure of Ry’s confidences, Kate must have pushed herself against the corner walls again without realizing it because she had to straighten away from them now. But Ry had apparently not backed up any because when she did, it put her much closer to him than she wanted to be. Close enough to smell that cologne again. Too close for comfort.

      And he didn’t step away and give her any breathing room. He stayed where he was, looking down at her from a full six-foot-three-inch height that towered over her five foot four.

      His smile this time was boyish and sexy, and it made Kate’s heart beat a bit faster.

      “Absolutely nothing plain about you,” he repeated, more to himself than to her.

      Then he pivoted on his heels like a door opening to let her out, and Kate went past him.

      “Let me know if you change your mind about tomorrow night so I don’t wait around for you,” she instructed.

      “I need the massage, I won’t change my mind.”

      “I’ll see you then, then,” she said, feeling dumb for not finding a way to say that without using the word then twice.

      But once she had moved beyond him, she kept going, searching for her grandfather so she could get out of there before she had to see Ry Grayson again.

      Because while, yes, it was probably good to have established a relatively friendly rapport with her brother’s new brother-in-law, that was as far as it would go.

      He had a skateboarding injury, for crying out loud.

      Even without the other things she’d heard about him, even without both of his over-the-top entrances today, what could scream I-don’t-want-to-grow-up louder than that?

      And not only had she reached a point in her life where she knew exactly what she wanted, she also had experience to teach her what kind of man she could never get it from. Nothing she’d learned about Ry Grayson after meeting him had changed her preliminary opinion of him as that kind of man.

      The fact that he was fantastic looking, and as personable and fun loving as all reports had claimed, on top СКАЧАТЬ