Water Witch Read Online Free

returned to the boulder. A breeze ruffled the damp tendrils around her face and rustled through the scrub oaks as she ate her meal and looked out over the rolling hills, remembering happier times. Remembering summers long ago when she walked those rocky hills with her grandfather.
    *    *    *
    Sam Garrett paused as he climbed to the crest and watched Max, half reclining and propped on one arm, staring into the distance, nibbling an apple. Even in field boots and jeans, she was lovely. All night and all morning his mind had been full of her. Those black eyes had haunted him. He’d almost convinced himself that his fantasies had exaggerated her appeal.
    He was wrong.
    Her hair, in a thick braid over one shoulder, was the same color as the long silky tufts of delicate grass dried golden by long days in the summer sun. The curve of her hip and long line of her leg were a contrast in softness against the weathered gray boulder. He ached to capture her beauty on canvas—or better yet, in his arms.
    A crunch of gravel brought Max out of her reverie. Glancing toward the sound, she saw Sam Garrett, thumbs hooked in the pockets of low-slung jeans, sauntering toward her. A deep rust-colored knit shirt, nearly the same shade as his hair, molded his big frame and matched his cowboy boots. A peculiar feeling fluttered over her as she watched his approach. He was even better-looking in daylight.
    “Hello,” he said, flashing a wide grin. “Found any water yet?”
    An answering smile sprang to her lips. “Not yet. I’m just getting acquainted with the land. It’s a beautiful view, isn’t it? I can understand why Mrs. Barton wants a house here.”
    Sam sat down on the hard outcropping beside her and followed her gaze out over the slopes and arroyos where twisted junipers, prickly pear cacti, and stunted mountain laurels clung to the craggy inclines. “It’s even prettier in spring.” He pointed toward the highway and the open fields below. “When the bluebonnets bloom, that whole area is a sea of blue. Honey Bear loves bluebonnets.”
    Max laughed. “From the number of paintings at the cottage, I kind of figured that.”
    “You should see the house in Houston. Her blue-bonnet paintings are liberally sprinkled among the Renoirs and the Wyeths. Even I have several. She often gives everyone in the family a bluebonnet painting for Christmas. They’re real gifts of love.”
    “She sounds delightful,” Max said, tossing her apple core toward a stand of scrub oaks where she’d seen a white-tailed doe earlier that morning. “She deserves a home here where she can enjoy the hills. I’ve always loved this country. In another month or so the sumac will begin to turn red and yellow and orange. My grandfather always said sumac looked like fires dotting the hillsides.”
    “Your grandfather?”
    She nodded. “He lived here until his arthritis forced him to sell his business and move to East Texas with his sister. He had a water drilling company in Kerrville. I spent every summer with him here until I was about fourteen. I adored him. Most of my happiest memories are of the vacations I spent with Gramps. He died less than three years after he left the hills.”
    “So now you’re carrying on the family tradition.” Sarn picked up the forked branch lying beside Max and began absently snapping off bits of the wood and tossing them toward the spot where Dowser was snoozing. “Are you a ground water geologist?”
    Horrified when she noticed that Sam was mutilating her dowsing stick before her eyes, Max almost shouted at him to stop. Then she caught herself and clamped her mouth shut. She couldn’t tell him that she was a dowser, a water witch. At best, most people thought that finding water by such methods was superstitious mumbo jumbo. For some reason she didn’t think she could tolerate this man, of all people, ridiculing her.
    “I beg your pardon?” She’d missed his question when she’d seen him pick up the willow