The Bride Wore Blue Jeans by Marie Ferrarella

Author:Marie Ferrarella [Marie Ferrarella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2003-12-06T05:00:00+00:00

There were times when she liked to come to the grave site by herself and just talk things out with her mother. That there was no audible response never troubled her too much. If she was very quiet, she could feel the response in her heart.

This was one of those times.

She bit her lip, debating. She really did have work to do. Hay didn’t take care of itself.

The debate was short-lived.

On impulse, June abandoned her work and stopped to pick a handful of wildflowers that seemed to have grown expressly for the purpose of decorating her mother’s grave. They were wild roses. Her mother had always loved wild roses.

It was what her father had called her. Wild Rose.

June placed the freshly plucked bouquet on the seat beside her and drove toward the town’s small cemetery. She needed to be near her mother. To share a moment in time the way she hadn’t been able to in life.

The cemetery contained the remains of all the past citizens of Hades who had come here in search of something, or to flee something. The former had been the case for the two oldest bodies buried on the hill, that of two miners. They had been the original founders of the small town, one of whom had given the town its name in a fit of despair and desperation. He’d thought of it as hell, but society being what it had been in those days, he’d called it by the only acceptable label that could have been given then: Hades. It had stuck and aroused a kind of dry humor when referred to in the dead of bone-chilling winter.

She’d always been amused by that story, June thought as she approached the small wrought-iron-gated area.

Her smile faded a little as she saw that she wasn’t going to be alone here, the way she’d hoped. There was someone else there at the cemetery already. His back to her, he stood over a grave.

She didn’t recognize the coat.

The town’s population was still small enough for her to be able to recognize not only all the inhabitants of Hades, but also the clothing they wore.

Maybe Mr. Kellogg was carrying a new line of winter apparel at the emporium. The coat looked too warm for this time of year.

She stopped the car and took measure of the person she deemed a stranger.

The man was tall, with flowing iron-gray hair. Though he was broad shouldered, his shoulders seemed to be slumped, as if life had beaten him down year by year, inch by inch.

A relative? A curious stranger absorbing the names of past citizens for some unknown reason of his own? They had a few tourists here in the summer, but this wasn’t exactly a tourist draw.

Taking her key from the ignition, June got out of the vehicle.

Strangers were supposed to invite caution, but she had never been the cautious type. Especially since, she realized, the man stood over the very grave she wanted to put her flowers on.

What was he doing here?

There were flowers on the grave already.

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