Читать книгу Runaway Bridesmaid - Karen Templeton - Страница 11

Judging from Dean’s furtive expression, she’d been the topic of conversation. Judging from her mother’s, by Vivian’s, choice.

No way was she going there.

So she went instead to the refrigerator—acutely aware of Dean’s appreciative scrutiny of her legs as she passed—pulled out a Coke, then returned to the living room to check out the wedding gifts, leaving her mother and Dean to think whatever they liked.

Played it pretty cool the rest of the evening, too, if she said so herself. Whenever she caught Dean watching her at supper, she rearranged her features into what she hoped was an expression of aloof nonchalance.

Not that the rest of her would cooperate. She forced herself to eat—otherwise four people would have jumped on her case—but the corn and burgers and salad and watermelon and apple pie felt like wet sand in her stomach.

Dean’s own peculiar expression didn’t help matters, a look which she caught far more often than she liked simply because the man would not take his eyes off of her. They didn’t exchange as much as a dozen words during the meal, which nobody noticed what with Jennifer and Katey and her mother all holding forth about the wedding, but she felt as if he was trying to absorb her through his eyes. Just as she was fixing to tell him to perform some physiologically impossible feat, Jennifer came to the rescue.

“So, c’mon, Dean,” her sister wheedled as only she could. “You’ve just gotta tell me what this wedding present is.”

Dean finally tore his eyes away from Sarah and contemplated her sister with an oblique smile. “Oh, I’ve gotta tell you, huh?” he said, winking at Katey. “And why is that?”

“Oh, boy,” Lance interjected with raised hands and a laugh. “You do not want to know what this woman is capable of once she sets her mind to something. Might as well give it up now, while you still have all your toenails.”

“Lance!” Jennifer slapped him with her paper napkin. “You make me sound like Attila the Hun or something. I’m not that bad—”

“Yeah. You are.” Lance caught his fiancée in his arms, eliciting a tiny squeal. “That’s why I love you so much.” He sealed his left-handed endearment with a smacking kiss on her lips.

Jennifer tenderly grazed his cheek with two fingers, then faced Dean again. “So? You gonna tell me or sacrifice your toenails?”

Chuckling, Dean wiped his mouth and hands on his napkin and stood up. “It’s in the truck.”

“The truck!” Jennifer’s eyes grew wide as the watermelon rounds stacked on the plate in front of her. “You left my wedding present out in the rain?”

“Trust me,” Dean said, backing toward the driveway, “when I pack furniture, nothing short of a nuclear disaster is going to harm it.”

“Furniture?” By now Jennifer had jumped up from the table and zipped past Dean on the way to the Dakota, followed one by one by the rest of the family. “Lance said you had enough orders to keep your shop busy through Christmas…” She’d reached the truck and now danced with impatience. “But you found the time to make something for us?”

“Sure did.” Dean swung down the tailgate and hopped up into the bed where a lumpy, canvas-wrapped object nestled near the cab. After several minutes of peeling away layer after layer of protective covering, he picked up the object—which still wore its last layer, like a chaste slip—and jumped down off the truck with it. Now everyone followed Dean and the object up onto the porch, where he set it down and stepped away, nodding toward Jennifer.

“Be my guest.”

Jennifer hesitated, then slowly drew off the last layer of canvas. “Oh!”

The fine handrubbed finish of the mahogany rocker glowed in the last rays of the setting sun like the embers of a dying fire. A Windsor design, with delicate, smooth spindles splayed upward from the seat, the arms were gracefully curved, the rockers perfectly balanced. But everyone there knew just how difficult such a deceptively simple-looking object can be to make, because there was no room for the slightest imperfection.

Sarah blinked, then swallowed. She’d always known Dean was talented, remembering the beautiful pieces he’d build in his father’s workshop. But the care and attention to detail in the chair said it all. She’d always said he’d make something of himself. Never doubted it for a single second.

And would he have gotten as far as he had if he’d stayed? If he hadn’t gone to Atlanta, his talent would have withered like a seedling not given the proper light or food or water. As would have their love, eventually.

It all made sense. Now.

“That is the loveliest rocker I have ever seen,” Vivian, never one to flatter, allowed, and the smile that lit up Dean’s face was nearly Sarah’s undoing.

“Thank you,” he said softly, then addressed his brother and Jennifer, who stood with their arms around each other’s waist. “I just hope the two of you enjoy using it half as much as I enjoyed making it for you.”

“Oh, Dean…” Jennifer slipped away from Lance and took Dean’s hand, stretching up to kiss him on the cheek. “It’s absolutely gorgeous. Thank you.” She giggled and gestured toward the chair. “Can I?”

“Well, ma’am, chairs aren’t meant to be looked at, now are they?”

With another giggle, Jennifer slid into the chair, sighing in contentment. “It really is perfect.” Sarah saw Dean lean over and whisper something that brought a flush to Jen’s cheeks and a hand to Dean’s wrist as she nodded and smiled. Then Dean skipped down the porch steps and back out into the yard, where he was accosted by a vociferous little girl who just had to show him around the property before it got any darker. Vivian then dragged Lance off to help her with some chore or other, leaving the two sisters on the porch.

“So.” Sarah leaned against the railing, arms crossed. “What did he say?”

Her sister went crimson.

“Good Lord, Jennifer—what did he say?”

“Promise you won’t say a word to anyone? Not even Mama?”

“What on earth…?”

Jennifer cleared her throat, stroking the satiny arms of the chair with her fingertips. “He said that…he hoped I’d get to rock our babies in this chair.”

Sarah let out a whoosh of air. “Is that all? Perfectly understandable, considering the nature of the present—”

“Sarah. You don’t understand.” Jennifer leaned over and pulled her sister closer. “I’m late.”

“For what?”

“Sa-rah…” Jennifer waited. Expectantly, as it were.

Sarah’s mouth fell open. “You’re preg—?”

“Shh!” Jennifer madly flapped her hands. “Nobody knows. Not even Lance. It’s only three days. It may be a false alarm.”

Sarah squatted in front of her sister, grabbing her hands. “You little minx!” With a throaty chuckle, she added, “You ever been late before?”

“Not even ten minutes.”

They both dissolved into giggles.

“What’s going on?” Lance asked behind Sarah, making them jump.

“Oh, nothing. Just girl stuff.” Sarah got to her feet with her back to Lance, winked at Jennifer. “You going to tell him?” she mouthed to her sister, who gave a twitch of a head shake in response.

“Saturday,” she said, and Sarah understood.

What a wedding present, she thought as she made her way back to the picnic table. She rifled through the leftovers as if checking out the goods at a yard sale, finally plopping down on the bench with the last piece of apple pie. A pair of thin arms threaded around her neck. “C’n I show Dean the kennels?”

Her mouth full of pie, Sarah twisted around to Katey. And Dean.

“Ob cos,” she mumbled around mashed apples and piecrust, then swallowed and thought probably a smile was in order. For Katey, at any rate. “Of course,” she repeated. “Just don’t bother Mariah if she’s nursing, okay?”

“I know,” Katey said with a tolerant sigh, then took Dean by the hand.

Sarah’s heart wrenched when she saw Dean’s strong, callused fingers close so carefully around the little ones trustingly placed in his. Unthinking, she looked up, and found her eyes caught in his much the same way his hand held Katey’s—with a tenderness that spoke of trust and loyalty. And unbroken ties.

It had been a long, long time since she’d seen that look in his eyes.

She didn’t want to see it now.

“Come on, Dean.” Katey tugged at his hand, leaning all of her sixty-five pounds away from him. “It’s getting dark. Let’s go.”

“Okay, honey, I’m coming,” he drawled, turning to her with a wide smile. “Let’s go see those beautiful dogs your Mama’s raising.”

Dean shared the smile with Sarah as he swung Katey up on his back for a piggyback ride, then loped off toward the kennels, the little girl dissolving into uncontrollable giggles when he broke into a gallop. Sarah simply sat and watched, her chin sunk in her hands, as the glue holding together her broken heart disintegrated a little more.

Lance straddled the seat beside her and followed her gaze. “They sure hit it off,” he said.

With a little start, Sarah straightened up, nodded. “Yeah.” She swung her legs to the outside of the table and rested her elbows on the top, staring back at the house. Away from the kennels. As if cued, hundreds of fireflies began looping in and out of the bushes and long grass, reminding Sarah how she used to pretend they were actually tiny flashlights carried by a band of invisible little people who lived under the porch. When had she stopped believing in magic?

Stupid question.

“Where’s Jen?” she asked Lance.

“I don’t know, exactly. She disappeared inside to look for your mother. Had the oddest look on her face, too.” He turned worried brown eyes to her. “You think everything’s okay?”

Sarah fought to keep a straight face. “She probably thought of something she had to tell Mama that couldn’t wait one second longer. You know Jennifer.”

“All too well,” he said with a half laugh, then immediately frowned. “But what’s up with you and my brother? Is somebody going to fill me in as to what exactly’s going on here?”

Sarah peered from underneath her lashes at Lance, whose only resemblance to Dean was the same slanted smile. Dean favored his father; Lance had clearly inherited his mother’s delicate features and dark hair. “That depends,” she hedged, “on how much you already know.”

“Shoot, Sarah…I don’t know enough to fill a postage stamp. Other than remembering you two hanging out a lot when you were kids. I mean, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention, but I thought you were close. What happened?”

Sarah sighed, plucking an acorn the wind had deposited in her lap and pitching it back at the tree whence it came. She liked Dean’s brother a lot. At twenty-three, he’d gotten his accounting degree and even started his own fledgling practice, mainly trying to help the outlying farmers understand the concept of cash flow and credit so they didn’t keep getting screwed in the middle of planting or lambing or harvest season. No way to get rich, but he wouldn’t starve. Besides, he was acquiring enough clients with actual money here and there that in a few years he’d probably do pretty well.

And he was crazy about her sister. Jennifer could have done far worse than Lance Parrish, that was for sure. The young man doted on her but never let her take herself too seriously. And Jennifer kept him from getting buried in his facts and figures, kept his sense of humor fine-tuned so he never took himself too seriously, either. They were a good match. And they’d make great parents.

A hand waved in front of her face. “Hello?”

“What? Oh…sorry.” She shifted slightly on the bench to restore circulation to her posterior, looking just past Lance toward the back pasture, quickly being swallowed up in darkness. “Yeah, your brother and I go way back. And we went together for a while. But we broke up. He went to Atlanta. I stayed here.” She rolled her shoulders. “End of story.”

“Uh-huh. And that’s why he kept staring at you all through supper with that stupid expression on his face.”

Sarah felt her own face tingle. “It’s the hair,” she parried, ruffling it. “He just can’t get over the fact it’s not there anymore.”

“And if you believe that…” Lance shrugged and let the sentence hang like smoke in the air.

With a brisk shake of her head, Sarah said, “Look, I’ll be completely honest, okay? Just so no one starts imagining things that aren’t there.” She hooked one heel up onto the bench, laced her hands around her knee. “Your brother hasn’t set foot in Sweetbranch since he left, has he?”

“Well, no…”

“Doesn’t that tell you something? Honey, Dean obviously wants the big-city life, the big-city glitz and glamour and excitement. He made that more than clear to me the day he told me it was over between us. There was nothing here to hold him then, and nothing has changed on that score.” She stood up, stretched out her legs. “He’s made his life. I’ve made mine.” One shoulder hitched. “We live on different planets, Lance. What I guess I hadn’t realized was that we always had—”

“Sarah! Josh Plunkett’s on the phone!”

She swiveled toward the house. “What’s he want?” she called back to her mother.

“Says one of the lambs got out during the thunderstorm. Dang mule somehow stepped on it, broke its leg. The boy’s next door to hysterical.”

“Tell him I’ll be right out, to keep the lamb still and himself calm.”

Sarah started for the house to get her shoulder bag and car keys when Lance called after her. Eyebrows raised, she looked back over her shoulder.

“What you said about you and Dean being from two different planets? They’re making remarkable strides in space travel these days, you know.”

Sarah allowed a half smile for the young man, not having the heart to point out that Dean’s planet was probably in another galaxy. Billions and billions of light years away. And she drove a Bronco, not the USS Enterprise.

A couple minutes later, as she steered the car out onto the road and headed north toward the Plunkett farm, she saw Katey and Dean come out of the kennel, easily visible thanks to the sensor light over the kennel door. As Sarah acknowledged Katey’s exuberant goodbyes with a wave of her hand, she couldn’t help but see Dean still wore that whipped-dog expression. Frowning, she concentrated on the twin beams of light in front of her.

And ignored the panic threatening to choke her.

Even though Dean had left the Whitehouses’ hours ago, he still couldn’t get the image of a pair of endless legs out of his head.

No. It was more than that, he thought, scrunching his pillow under his head. There were plenty of long legs in Atlanta. None of them, however, belonged to Sarah Whitehouse.

And there were other images, like specters, determined to plague him that night: Sarah’s brilliant smile and quick laugh and gentle, loving teasing; Sarah sitting with one long finger tucked under her chin as she concentrated on some convoluted explanation of Katey’s; Sarah head to head with Jennifer as they shared sisterly secrets; Sarah joking with her mother, their laughs blending in the sweetest harmony heard this side of the Robert Shaw Chorale.

The way that laughter died whenever she caught him looking at her.

Finally, tired of flopping around in bed like water on a hot skillet, he sat up and perched on its edge, raking both hands through his hair. Too many Cokes, he thought.

Too many memories.

He fumbled for his Timex on top of the nightstand, waiting a moment until the tiny phosphorescent green numerals came into focus. Twelve forty-five. He’d been in bed for nearly two hours and hadn’t been to sleep yet. Didn’t look as though the sandman was going to pay him a visit anytime soon, either.

The old floorboards protested when he stood and crossed to the open window. He leaned against the sill, curtains of some diaphanous material—his aunt had redone his old bedroom immediately after he’d left, Lance had told him—brushing against his bare shoulders, making him shiver. The moon was full; stark, deep shadows carved the front yard and road beyond, between patches of silvery light bright enough to read by.

He needed a walk.

Thirty seconds of blind rummaging through his soft-sided suitcase yielded a pair of clean jeans and T-shirt. He stumbled a bit in the dark as he pulled them on, the harsh grating of the zipper magnified in the deep middle-of-the-night country silence. Seconds later, he was out the back door.

The only sounds he heard as he ambled down the road in the general direction of Sarah’s house were the occasional chirping of an insomniac cricket and the murmurings of leaves as the night breeze disturbed their repose. The navy blue sky, punctuated with too many stars to take them all in, showed no signs of the earlier storm, but the air was cool and clean and fresh, the hems of his jeans soon soaked from the dampness leeching from the ground.

He passed the row of cypresses bordering the west edge of the Whitehouse property and stopped, staring at the house, wondering what the general reaction would be if he just walked up and knocked on the door. Took all of two, maybe three seconds to decide there were easier ways to commit suicide.

Then he noticed her car wasn’t in the driveway. Concerned, he checked out the back…nope. She’d left on her call at nine-thirty. Where the hell could she still be at 1:00 a.m.?

He stood, hands on hips, mouth drawn. Okay, so whatever he and Sarah had once had was shot to hell. He knew that. He also knew—for the sake of family harmony, if nothing else—he owed it to both of them, to everyone, to at least try to salvage something of the present.

Otherwise, he might never be able to sleep again.

He settled himself into an Adirondack chair on the front lawn, and waited.

Nothing was ever simple. The lamb’s leg had refused to respond to her normal manipulative techniques, so she had to load the eighty-pound animal into the Bronco and take him into the clinic where she could do a radiograph and see exactly what was going on. Turned out the joint had been sheared in half right at the growing cartilage, with the farthest piece displaced sideways. That meant sedation—at one point, Sarah wondered if the thirteen-year-old Josh would need it more than the lamb—and some careful pulling and twisting until everything was lined up and she heard that reassuring “click” that indicated the joint had slipped back into place. If the animal managed to keep on the splints, with some careful tending he’d be just fine.

She hoped her own prognosis was as good.

As she pulled into the driveway, she muttered a prayer of gratitude that the Bronco wasn’t a real horse that needed stabling. Cut the engine, go to bed…the day was over at last—

“What took you so long?”

With a little scream, she banged into the open car door, scraping her arm.

“Lord Almighty, Dean! You scared the hell out of me—”

“What took you so long?” he repeated.

“The call was more complicated than I expected, what do you think?” she lobbed back, rubbing her whacked arm. “That happens, far more often than I usually admit. And what on earth are you doing here at—what time is it…?” she tilted her watch up to the moonlight, squinted at it “—one-fourteen in the freakin’ morning?”

She could make out broad shoulders lifting and falling, delineated by a thin outline of moonlight. “I couldn’t sleep. So I took a walk, ended up here, saw you weren’t and got worried.”

“Well, here I am, nothing ate me on my way home, and I’m about to drop in my tracks.” She slammed shut her car door. “I’m going to bed, if you don’t mind.” She started up the driveway toward the house, spinning around in shock when Dean grabbed her arm.

“We need to talk.”

Oooh, no, she thought, smelling danger like a wolf. She was exhausted, and vulnerable, and the damp night hair had heightened Dean’s scent far more than she knew she could safely handle.

“Look—if I don’t want to talk to you when I’m awake, it’s a sure bet I don’t now.” She jerked away from him and continued toward the house, awake enough to notice even that brief contact had sent a wave of shivers skittering over her arm. “Good night, Dean,” she tossed over her shoulder.

She should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

“Sarah, I’m sorry—” she heard behind her “—I know it’s way overdue, but I feel terrible about what happened between us.”

Ignoring the little voice that said keep walking, don’t respond, don’t get into it, she whipped around. “And that’s supposed to mean something to me? Please don’t tell me you’re that naive.”

“I’m just trying to apologize here, if you’ll give me half a chance—”

“You are that naive!” she countered, incredulous. She crossed her arms across her ribs so tightly it hurt. “Here’s a flash for you, Parrish—apologies are what people do when there’s some chance of making things better again. You could apologize for, maybe, being late for a date, or dialing a wrong number, or forgetting a birthday, even. There’s no apology for what you did to me—”

“Give me a break, would you?” he shot back, his voice tight with restraint. “I was twenty years old and confused and stupid, all right?”

Her hands flew into the air as she backed away, shaking her head. “I don’t want to hear this, Dean—”

She stumbled over something, which slowed her down enough for Dean to snag her wrist. “Well, too bad, because you’re going to. You don’t think I saw the hurt in your eyes tonight, every time I looked at you? You don’t think I know why you took off before dinner? For God’s sake, Sarah—this is me. Maybe it’s been nine years since we saw each other, but I can still see inside your head better than anyone else.”

He dropped her wrist; she stayed put, pinned by the electricity in his gaze.

“Running away isn’t going to change anything, and you know it,” he said, more softly. “And I don’t think either one of us wants this crap hanging over our heads on Saturday. So let’s have this out, right now, right here, so we can get on with our lives.”

She hesitated another few seconds, realized he’d just pester her to death until he had his say. “Okay.” She let out on a short breath. “Talk.”

A ragged sigh of relief floated over her head, but remorse flooded his features. “My aunt kept hammering away about how different we were, how you had all these goals, and I didn’t. And your folks…I knew they liked me and all, but when things started to get serious between us, you don’t think I knew what they were thinking, too?”

Before she could even think of what to say to that, he went on.

“And eventually, I thought, yeah, they were right…if I stayed around, if we got married, you probably wouldn’t finish college, we’d end up having a couple of kids, and a few years down the road you’d realize you’d thrown your life away for some worthless high-school dropout with no future. I couldn’t let that happen to you. So…I decided the best thing was to leave, to get away so you could do what you needed to do and I wouldn’t get in your way. Especially…” He pinned her with tortured eyes. “Especially after we made love,” he said, his voice low, the words arcing dangerously between them.

She went very, very still.

“No comment?”

All she could do was shake her head.

“Don’t you see, honey? We’d gotten in way too deep. Even as a twenty-year-old airhead, I knew that much.” He paused, still apparently expecting a reply. When there wasn’t one, he added, “I loved you so much…and I didn’t know what else to do, how to fix things.” He lifted his hands, let them fall to his sides again. “It seemed to make sense at the time.”

She stared at him for several seconds, the words not fitting together in any sort of logical order at first. Then, suddenly, they did, and her skin went cold.

“You lied to me?”

A breeze stirred the leaves overhead; something skittered underneath the rhododendrons. “Yes,” he finally said. “I lied. And what really sucks is that I can’t even say I never meant to hurt you, because I did. I had to make you hate me, or I never would’ve been able to leave at all.”

She regarded him for another moment, her hands braced on the back of her hips. Her shoulder bag slipped, the strap banging into her forearm; she let it slide down to the ground, walked away a few steps, then strode back. “All…all that business about hating Sweetbranch was an act?”

Dean ran his hand over his face, then through his hair. “I never hated my home, Sarah. I didn’t want to leave. But I thought I had no choice.”

“And this is somehow supposed to make me feel better?” As the implications began to sink in, she felt bitterness choke her heart like bindweed—invasive, profuse and virtually impossible to get rid of. “Let me get this straight—you lied to me, told me you’d never loved me, that you found everything about me and this town so boring you couldn’t stand the thought of being here one minute longer, not even long enough to take me to my prom. And you did this because you loved me?”

He looked away, a muscle popping in his jaw.

“You jerk!” she shrieked, taking a wild swing at him which he easily dodged. Tears of fury pricked at her eyes, but she would not let them come. She would not. What she did was walk away.

Twenty paces later, she found herself standing next to the forty-foot willow in the middle of the yard, one knee on the wrought-iron seat circling its base, her head and right hand resting on the trunk.

So. He had loved her, just as she thought. No—not as she thought. As he thought, in some convoluted manner unfathomable to her. She would never have just run from a problem, especially not a problem with Dean.

The suffocated laugh didn’t even make it past her lips. Yeah, right. Who was she kidding? Hell, if running from problems was on Olympic event, she’d be a gold medalist.

Suddenly, she knew nothing about anything, except she was so very, very tired.

The grass rustled softly as Dean came closer; she didn’t move. Despite the fury raging inside her, she realized how few males in her admittedly limited experience would have come clean the way Dean just had. Man had guts, she had to admit. Still, his confession wasn’t going to eradicate the past, just like that.

“I cannot believe,” she began, rocking her forehead on the top of her hand, “the only solution you saw to this so-called problem of our differences was to make me think everything we’d shared was a complete sham.”

“You had all these plans,” he said quietly, his voice as much of a caress as it had always been, “these dreams…and I let myself be convinced I couldn’t be a part of all that.” Her eyes actually hurt when she looked at him. He shrugged. “I told you…it was stupid.”

Now she turned, collapsing like a rag doll on the bench, her back against the tree. She could only see his silhouette. Just as well.

“Oh, what you did goes way beyond stupid, Dean. You didn’t care enough to even attempt to talk about what was bothering you. To see if we could work this out together. That concept completely eluded you. Instead, you made me feel like some cheap throwaway who wasn’t worth even losing a little sleep over. Do you have any idea what that summer was like for me, Dean? After you left? Do you?”

After a long pause, he said, “They told me you got sick. Mono, right?”

She hadn’t expected he’d known that. Momentarily thrown, she scrambled for her next sentence. “Before that. Of course I missed the prom, which, like any normal teenage girl, I’d been looking forward to since the first day of high school. But then, I was supposed to give the valedictorian speech at graduation, remember? I didn’t want to read from cards, ’cause I always thought that looked tacky, so I memorized the speech. Except, I blanked.” Her laugh was harsh. “Couldn’t remember one single word. I was completely humiliated.”

Even in the dark, she could see his posture turn defensive. “You blame me for that?”

“It’s a known fact that sleep deprivation causes severe loss of memory function. And I couldn’t sleep…at all…for three weeks after you left.”

He swore.

“My sentiments exactly.” Several beats passed. “I’d never planned on saying any of this to you, you know, considering I didn’t think I’d lay eyes on you again. But since we’re playing True Confessions tonight and I’m so tired I don’t give a flying fig what comes out of my mouth, you might as well know exactly how much you hurt me. And trust me, telling me nine years later that none of it was true doesn’t do a damn thing to erase what I felt during those nine years.”

“I didn’t think it would,” he shot back. She saw his hand snake around to the back of his neck. “But it didn’t seem to make any sense to let you continue to think it, either.” He hesitated, then sat down beside her in such a way she had no choice but to meet his gaze. She did chose, however, to ignore the pain she saw there. If she acknowledged it, she would lose her advantage. That was not an option. “I know I screwed up, Sarah. I also know, no matter what I do, I can’t turn back the clock. I’m not trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.”

Again, she had nothing to say to that.

His head fell back against the trunk. “Does it still hurt?” he asked gently. Too gently. Like the old Dean. Like her Dean, the one who’d always protected her, supported her. Loved her.

“No,” she lied. “I got on with my life. Which as you can see is going pretty well. Now, if you don’t mind…” She slapped her thighs with the palms of her hands, then pushed herself off the bench. “I really need to get some sleep—”

He’d risen when she did and spun her around so his face was inches from hers. His heat was everywhere—in his touch, in his breath on her face, in the feral glint in his eyes. Just like it had been the night they’d become lovers. She gasped, softly, from arousal, from the lingering betrayal, from a determination not to react to any of it.

“Maybe it doesn’t hurt you anymore,” Dean said in a fierce whisper, “but I can’t say the same for myself. I had no idea the pain would bounce back on me like a back draft, consuming my every waking thought. And there are a lot of waking thoughts, because you’re not the only one who lost a great deal of sleep after we broke up.”

“That’s too bad,” Sarah said, attempting to pull away. But his grip strengthened.

“Sarah, listen to me! Whether you ever forgive me or not, you will understand how much I regret hurting you the way I did. How much I regret what I lost.”

Every muscle in her body tensed, her fingers curling into fists as she resisted the urge to slug him. “And exactly how long have you felt like this?”

“Since the moment you ran out of my room, nine years ago.”

For a stunned moment or two, jubilation and fury warred in her head, only to be swiftly eclipsed by as a sense of bitter hopelessness, as it hit her, hard, just how much his confession upped the stakes. Oh, dear Lord…how different things might have been, if she’d only known, if he’d bothered to say something sooner…

“All this time…” She shook her head. “You know, Atlanta’s only two hours away. And we’ve always had a phone, even way out here in the boonies. We get regular mail deliveries, too—”

“I get the point,” he said with a sad smile. “But I figured you probably hated my guts. And…” He sighed, looking up for a moment. “I still thought I’d done the right thing, for a long time. By the time I realized I hadn’t, I figured it was too late—”

“Yes, it is,” she said, grasping at anything that would stop this, right now. She knew he was genuinely sorry, knew he meant every word he’d said. But she didn’t dare let his contrition get to her. She was only safe as long as he was still the bad guy.

“It is too late, Dean. So you know what I think? I think, if that cozy scene in the kitchen a few hours ago is any indication, what you want is another roll in the pine needles. You’ve got a first-class case of the hots, is all that’s going on here.” She planted both palms on his chest and pushed away from him. “In your dreams, buddy boy. Go on back to Atlanta and find yourself some big-city sweetie to scratch your itch. This hick ain’t puttin’ out, you hear?”

She picked up her bag from where she’d dropped it on the lawn earlier and hoofed it toward the house.

“Dammit, Sarah!” he roared, probably waking up everyone within a five-mile radius. “You haven’t heard a single word I’ve said!”

“Go home, Dean,” she called over her shoulder, praying Katey, at least, was sleeping through this. “Nothing’s changed.”

“I’ve changed, Sarah,” she heard behind her. “Hey— I can even read without moving my lips now, did you know that?”

His words slashed through her. But she didn’t stop.

“We’re going to be family, Sarah Louise,” he said, more softly but no less importunately. “For Jen’s and Lance’s sake, at least, we need to get past this.”

She’d gotten as far as the porch steps; now she turned, one hand gripping the newel post, and saw he’d followed her across the yard. He stood with his hands clenched at his sides, solid and determined and dangerous. His eyes glistened in the moonlight, and she thought once again how impossible, how easy it would be to let herself succumb to his entreaties.

And how wrong she’d been. Everything had changed between them. More than he even knew.

Dean stepped closer, his mouth drawn. “Look, I told you— I don’t expect things to get back the way they were between us, especially not after all this time. All I’m asking is for you to see me as I am now.”

She waited until the first, then the second, wave of pain passed, before she said, quietly, “I’m not sure I can do that.”

The man she once loved with everything she had in her glared at her for several seconds, then turned and strode off into the darkness.