Sweet Serenade (Riverbend Romance 3) by Valerie Comer Page A

a while ago. No one’s reported seeing it again.”
    He parked on the street by the black and white awning of Glacial Creamery then hurried around to open the truck door for her. He wasn’t going to slip on that one again. Especially not when he saw the smile curve her lips as she took his hand, not releasing it as they wandered toward the display window.
    She pointed at chocolate ice cream embedded with bits of brownies while Reed chose maple walnut.
    “Want to walk to the park? It’s not far.” Reed handed her the waffle cone with two chocolate-loaded scoops.
    “I’ve love to.” She fell into step beside him.
    He couldn’t help but notice she held her ice cream cone in her left hand. Was it too daring to take her right in his own? New territory for him, this whole dating thing. He’d always figured he’d get married someday and have kids, but then he’d realized that required talking to girls long enough to find the right one. That had been a challenge since before puberty, and turning twenty-five hadn’t tipped the balance.
    Feeling like his canoe was poised at the top of the chute—and him wearing no life vest—Reed snagged Carly’s fingers with his.
    She rewarded him with a grin and a slight squeeze before taking another lick of her cone.  
    Reed ran the chute in his mind’s eye and did a victory salute with his paddle at the bottom. Please, Lord, don’t let me do something stupid and wreck this friendship. This new friendship he hoped would turn into more. He wasn’t done running the river yet. He hoped he never would be.

    ~*~

    Carly felt like a brazen woman as a flush stole up Reed’s tanned neck. So many guys wouldn’t think twice about holding a woman’s hand, but, to Reed, it obviously was a big deal. He’d apologized for kissing her yesterday, but hadn’t made it sound like a negative, even so.
    “Thanks for coming by after work. I wasn’t looking forward to a lonely evening at the apartment watching so-called reality TV with Brittany.” She swung their joined hands a little, just to catch a glimpse of them in her peripheral.
    “Me either. I mean I don’t like to watch TV when I could be outside. I didn’t mean I watched it with your cousin.”
    How cute was his blundering? Carly nudged his arm with her shoulder. “No?”
    He met her gaze, and his fingers tightened around hers. Those deep brown eyes held untold mysteries.  
    For a second Carly forgot to breathe. Then a drop of ice cream dribbled onto her hand. She sucked in a deep breath and ran her tongue around the edge of the cone.
    Reed’s eyes watched as though mesmerized.
    She nudged him again. “Yours is dripping, too.”
    He seemed startled as he lifted his cone and looked at it. “You’re right.”
    “Of course I’m right. Don’t forget.”
    “I’ll keep it in mind.” His grin returned, and so did that dimple. He turned his attention to his ice cream.
    Right. They’d been walking. Carly tugged him into motion again. A few minutes later they wandered onto a paved walkway in Riverside Park. Rose bushes bloomed all around the crisp white gazebo, and well-tended flowerbeds lined the walkways with petunias, marigolds, and alyssum.
    Shouts of happy children sounded from nearer the river. Carly pointed. “What’s going on over there?”
    “Riverbend’s newest attraction. Swimming ponds.”
    “You mean outdoor pools?”
    Reed pulled her in that direction. “Not exactly. These aren’t chlorinated and pristine.” He grinned. “You could say the river runs through them.”
    “This I have to see.”  
    And a few minutes later, she did. A little waterfall tumbled into a large round pond, a sandy beach reaching well beyond the water level. Another manmade stream tumbled into a second pond and from there into a third, where the water returned to the river beyond.
    “Amazing.”
    Reed leaned closer, pointing. “The top one is the shallowest, and the bottom one the deepest.”
    Which would explain why the top level