Follow A Wild Heart (romance,) Read Online Free Page B
Author: Bobby Hutchinson
Tags: General Fiction
see the mess she makes when Mommy feeds her pablum. Yuck."
Danny swallowed half his burger in one gigantic bite and announced patronizingly, "That's nothin', Mom and I have a baby moose at home named Mort, he's about six weeks old, too, and you oughta see the mess when he eats. Once he swallowed the nipple right off the bottle we were feeding him from, and he steals whole loaves of bread off the table, and he chewed Mom's underwear—"
"Danny." Karena's scandalized voice made him pause, but he went on momentarily.
"Well, you know he did, Ma. Three pairs, remember, that day it was cold and he was in the house?"
The twins, and Logan as well, were now paying fascinated attention to mother and son.
"You actually have a baby moose?" Logan asked a discomfited Karena in a bemused voice, and she reluctantly nodded, wishing Danny hadn't blurted that information quite this soon.
The twins were already deluging Danny with questions, and under the cover of their voices, Logan said softly, "Well, Karena Carlson from Minnesota, I knew you were a fascinating woman the moment I saw you on that log. Care to tell me how you came to be foster mother to a baby moose who devours underwear? Or better yet, go back a few years and tell me why you started dancing on logs at an early age."
Karena looked across at him, pondering what she should say. To answer his questions honestly would be to reveal a great deal about herself, about her way of life, a way of life she felt no need to defend.
And yet, would there be any need for defense with Logan?
She studied him. She wasn't used to talking much about herself, certainly not with strangers, and this quiet man with his glasses, his crooked smile, his beguiling manner, was very much a stranger.
Wasn't he?
There was that curious sense of familiarity between the two of them that caused her defenses to slip more than they usually did with people she'd just met.
Her glance slid from the strong, square lines of his face to his shoulders, wide, but not overly muscular, down his long arms to his strong hands, folded around a Styrofoam coffee cup, and she shivered in the heat.
What was wrong with her today? She worked with numbers of brawny men every day of her life, and certainly none of them made her shiver, even though she'd read that women's sexual desire increased as they got older. She'd be thirty next year.
Was that what this was, a physical response to a need she usually subjugated with hard work and exercise?
The sleeves of his casual shirt were rolled back, and dark hair emphasized the clean lines of his forearms and outlined the edges of his plain silver wristwatch. There was nothing dainty about the size or shape of his hands. They were broad, with long, well-shaped fingers, as suited a tall, well-built man.
Just a man, like all the others, Karena, she told herself.
Yet none of the men she knew had hands like that, with clean, short-trimmed nails, no sign of calluses or roughened skin, no scars or deeply ingrained grease marks, not even any telltale nicotine stains on the fingers.
No rings, either, she noted absently, and she heard herself say bluntly, "You go first, Logan Baxter. I don't know a thing about you so far. What do you do for a living, for instance?"
As soon as the words were out, she cringed inwardly at how abrupt, how clumsy she sounded. Why, she agonized silently, had she never mastered the social niceties? She wasn't good at this at all, and for once she wanted to be. She hadn't had any experience at getting to know men outside of work.
But he didn't seem to mind, or notice. He nodded, as if her question was one he ought to have thought of himself.
"I'm a research forester, at the university in St. Paul, and I'm not married," he explained readily. "The twins' parents, my sister, Betsy, and her husband, Cliff, live on a farm here in Bemidji, and I often drive down to visit. I get to missing these kids," he confided earnestly, gesturing with a thumb at the twins, and
Danny swallowed half his burger in one gigantic bite and announced patronizingly, "That's nothin', Mom and I have a baby moose at home named Mort, he's about six weeks old, too, and you oughta see the mess when he eats. Once he swallowed the nipple right off the bottle we were feeding him from, and he steals whole loaves of bread off the table, and he chewed Mom's underwear—"
"Danny." Karena's scandalized voice made him pause, but he went on momentarily.
"Well, you know he did, Ma. Three pairs, remember, that day it was cold and he was in the house?"
The twins, and Logan as well, were now paying fascinated attention to mother and son.
"You actually have a baby moose?" Logan asked a discomfited Karena in a bemused voice, and she reluctantly nodded, wishing Danny hadn't blurted that information quite this soon.
The twins were already deluging Danny with questions, and under the cover of their voices, Logan said softly, "Well, Karena Carlson from Minnesota, I knew you were a fascinating woman the moment I saw you on that log. Care to tell me how you came to be foster mother to a baby moose who devours underwear? Or better yet, go back a few years and tell me why you started dancing on logs at an early age."
Karena looked across at him, pondering what she should say. To answer his questions honestly would be to reveal a great deal about herself, about her way of life, a way of life she felt no need to defend.
And yet, would there be any need for defense with Logan?
She studied him. She wasn't used to talking much about herself, certainly not with strangers, and this quiet man with his glasses, his crooked smile, his beguiling manner, was very much a stranger.
Wasn't he?
There was that curious sense of familiarity between the two of them that caused her defenses to slip more than they usually did with people she'd just met.
Her glance slid from the strong, square lines of his face to his shoulders, wide, but not overly muscular, down his long arms to his strong hands, folded around a Styrofoam coffee cup, and she shivered in the heat.
What was wrong with her today? She worked with numbers of brawny men every day of her life, and certainly none of them made her shiver, even though she'd read that women's sexual desire increased as they got older. She'd be thirty next year.
Was that what this was, a physical response to a need she usually subjugated with hard work and exercise?
The sleeves of his casual shirt were rolled back, and dark hair emphasized the clean lines of his forearms and outlined the edges of his plain silver wristwatch. There was nothing dainty about the size or shape of his hands. They were broad, with long, well-shaped fingers, as suited a tall, well-built man.
Just a man, like all the others, Karena, she told herself.
Yet none of the men she knew had hands like that, with clean, short-trimmed nails, no sign of calluses or roughened skin, no scars or deeply ingrained grease marks, not even any telltale nicotine stains on the fingers.
No rings, either, she noted absently, and she heard herself say bluntly, "You go first, Logan Baxter. I don't know a thing about you so far. What do you do for a living, for instance?"
As soon as the words were out, she cringed inwardly at how abrupt, how clumsy she sounded. Why, she agonized silently, had she never mastered the social niceties? She wasn't good at this at all, and for once she wanted to be. She hadn't had any experience at getting to know men outside of work.
But he didn't seem to mind, or notice. He nodded, as if her question was one he ought to have thought of himself.
"I'm a research forester, at the university in St. Paul, and I'm not married," he explained readily. "The twins' parents, my sister, Betsy, and her husband, Cliff, live on a farm here in Bemidji, and I often drive down to visit. I get to missing these kids," he confided earnestly, gesturing with a thumb at the twins, and
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