Читать книгу The Father Factor - Lilian Darcy - Страница 9

“L innie, oh, no, what is it?” Shallis gasped out as soon as she saw her sister. “What’s happened?”

It was five-thirty in the evening, and Linnie had just opened the front door of her modest ranch house for Shallis, her pretty gray eyes reddened and swollen, and tears streaming down her cheeks. Her shoulders shook with suppressed sobbing.

“Oh, it’s just the usual,” she said, trying to smile. “Not pregnant. Again. Come in.” Her voice cracked into a high-pitched squeak as she struggled for normality. She looked down at the decorative wicker basket in Shallis’s hands. “Oh. Nice. You’ve brought fruit.”

“Left from a conference at the hotel on the weekend.”

“You’re good. It looks l-lovely, with the r-ribbons and all.” Her shoulders shook some more. “Ryan’s not in from the barn yet, thank goodness.”

The house was plain and small, but it was situated on a beautiful piece of land, part of the infrastructure of the horse-breeding business Ryan had been building for several years. He’d recently renovated a couple of old cabins on the property, also, and they would be open for paying guests this summer, with optional breakfast and dinner included in the package.

Ryan worked very hard, as did Linnie, and Shallis wasn’t surprised to hear that he wasn’t yet back at the house. She’d been counting on his absence because she wanted a sister-to-sister talk, but she didn’t understand why Linnie would be feeling the same.

Linnie stepped to the side and Shallis crossed the threshold. “You don’t want to see Ryan?” she asked carefully.

“I don’t want him to see me. Like this.” Linnie flapped her hands at her blotchy face and attempted another smile. It looked heartbreaking. She kicked the door closed behind her.

“Oh, Linnie.” Shallis put down the fruit basket and hugged her sister, burning with love and empathy that just had no place to go, no way to translate into the right words.

“I’m sorry,” Linnie whispered in her ear, her voice tight and harsh with a continuing effort not to cry. “It’s so stupid. It usually only lasts around twenty minutes, so I’ll be okay again soon.”

“Twenty minutes? What does, Lin?”

“The sobbing.” Her body shuddered suddenly, and went still. “There. See? It just stops. And then I sometimes laugh at myself a little bit, because it shouldn’t feel so…so…tragic, you know? Ryan and I love each other, we love the farm and the horses, I love my teaching job, we have great families, plans to extend the house, we have so much going for us. And still I’m sobbing like a maniac every month just because I don’t have a baby. What more do I want out of life? The moon and stars on a big silver plate?”

She threw the words over her shoulder at Shallis on their way down the short corridor toward the kitchen. Her golden-brown hair looked limp and tired, and so did her green-toned skirt and top.

“Of course you want a baby,” Shallis said, following her with the fruit basket. “Of course it’s hard. You had an appointment with the specialist last week. Weren’t there some test results coming in?”

“His nurse called today, just after I got in from school. Which is why I guess I was already a little upset, even before…you know. Nothing conclusive, she said.”

“But that’s good news, isn’t it?” Shallis felt so far out of her depth.

She’d been on the pill for six months. A doctor had prescribed it in Los Angeles when the stress she’d been under there had led to painful and wildly irregular cycles. She had no idea how it must feel to be so desperate to conceive.

“Oh, sure,” Linnie answered. “I mean, it’s better than, ‘Guess what, you don’t have any ovaries,’ or something. But it leaves us still in the dark, nowhere to go. Technically there seems to be no reason why, in more than three years, I haven’t conceived. And if there’s no reason, then there’s no action you can take to correct it, you know?”

“I get it. Oh, Linnie…”

“Hey, want a big, stiff drink? Please say yes, because I’m having one.”

“What’re you having?”

“Bourbon and Coke, nice and strong. Two weeks every cycle I don’t touch a drop of alcohol. You know. Just in case I’m— Then on this day each month, I pretend to myself that getting a little tipsy is just what I’ve been looking forward to. Woo-hoo!”

She sounded so cynical and self-mocking, so not like the sunny, caring, capable Linnie that Shallis knew Ryan had fallen in love with. It scared her a little. Until three months ago, she’d been caught up in her life in Los Angeles, and she’d had no idea.

She’d known Linnie had some kind of fertility problem, of course, but she’d never suspected her sister felt that badly about it. Linnie was only thirty-two. She had time, didn’t she? And modern reproductive medicine could do so much.

In her e-mails and phone calls, Linnie just hadn’t let on the full truth, and neither had anyone else. Protecting Shallis’s important career, as usual. The PR career she hadn’t even liked, in the end, which was one of the reasons she’d come home.

“Does—could—does the specialist think that tying yourself in knots about it might be making it worse?” she asked carefully.

“That’s the myth, isn’t it? Just relax, and you’ll conceive. If I had a dollar for everyone who’s told us to take a cruise or a trip to Paris and just do what comes naturally… I’m telling you, Shallis, it doesn’t come naturally, any more. It’s like an Olympic event, with training and warm-ups and electronic timing. Ryan is getting—” She stopped suddenly. “So, want that drink?”

With scary efficiency, she reached into the fridge, the freezer, and a couple of cabinets just above her head. Slosh went the bourbon, fizz went the Coke, crack went the ice cubes. She pushed one brimming glass in Shallis’s direction and took a huge gulp from the other. Then she stopped with the glass and her hand in midair.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s one day a month that I do this, and it’s one drink. But boy, do I need the effect!”

Shallis nodded slowly and took a much more cautious sip of her own. She’d had a stomach upset over the weekend and was still eating and drinking carefully. “You were, um, saying something about Ryan.”

“Oh. Yeah. But I rethought.”

“Rethink again. I’m your sister. And I care about you. So much, Linnie.” Oh-oh. Foggy voice alert. They’d both cried enough in the past couple of weeks, about Gram’s death. She swallowed.

“Oh, it’s just… He hates this,” Linnie said. “In a different way than I do, but he hates it just as much. He hates that I’m a mess. He hates the Olympic event mechanical sex. We’ve had a couple of—” she stopped again.

“Arguments,” Shallis suggested.

“Fights.”

“Fights?”

“Yelling. Ryan never yells. It reminds me of his dad.” Who was a difficult man, Shallis knew. “I don’t like it.”

“No, of course you don’t.”

“And I don’t think he does, either. He’s always hated the thought of getting like his father.” She took another gulp of her drink, let it roll around her mouth for a moment, then swallowed and squared her shoulders. “Okay, can we close this subject for the moment?”

“Well, if you want, but—”

“What I want is to hear about your appointment with Mr. Starke today.”

She only said Mr. Starke, ran Shallis’s thoughts. If she’d said Abraham, I would have been obligated to say, no, it was Jared. This way, I can let her think it was his grandfather, if I want.

Yeah.

Right.

That level of honesty between sisters? After Linnie had just more or less admitted to a serious fear that her marriage was in trouble, on top of everything else? When Shallis had come out here pretty much on purpose to tell her about seeing Jared?

No.

“Well, I convinced Mom not to come, in the end,” Shallis began. “She really didn’t need to. And that was good, as it turned out, because it wasn’t Mr. Starke, senior, it was his grandson, who’s taking over the practice for a while. Jared.”

“Jared,” Melinda echoed blankly. “Jared?”

“Yes.” Your old boyfriend, Linnie, whom I would have stolen from you at sixteen, if I’d had the power. The one who dumped you, then tried to get you back at the altar, when you were marrying the man who was perfect for you.

“But he lives in Chicago,” Linnie said. “City of big shoulders and hogs’ breakfasts, or whatever that poet said.”

“Carl Sandburg. But I don’t think the hogs’ breakfasts bit is quite right.” Although Jared’s shoulders were certainly big enough… “He’s taking some kind of break.” Shallis took a breath. “And he was pretty helpful, actually. Professional. Sensitive. He said we could take our business over to Banks and Moore in Carrollton if we wanted, or let him get things rolling and then hand over to his grandfather as soon as he gets back.”

“Where has he gone?”

“Smoky Mountains. Fishing trip. Lo-o-ong fishing trip, Jared thinks. I went with the second alternative, but I have to ask how you feel about it, Linnie. You’re the one whose life he tried so hard to mess up. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want anyone in the Duncan family to have anything to do with him.”

“He’s probably not someone I’d enjoy having around, true,” Linnie agreed slowly. “In any personal sense, that is. You know, for fun family barbecues, and stuff. But the way I’m feeling right now, it would seem so petty and unimportant to sack the family law firm just because its temporary new partner spoiled a few of my wedding pictures six years ago.”

“He did a heck of a lot more than that, Linnie!” Shallis put down her drink, most of it untouched.

“You know what I mean. Jared didn’t change the bottom line. Ryan and I had a beautiful wedding, and we—” huge foggy voice alert “—love each other.” The words were barely even a whisper.

“He tried to tell you that you didn’t love Ryan at all!” Shallis’s indignation rose. “He hung around at the reception like a bad odor, with a nasty smile on his face.”

And I flirted with him to keep him away from you, and part of the time I enjoyed it.

“You sound as if you mind about it more than I do.”

“I’m just worried about you, Lin.”

“Thanks. But worry about the important stuff, okay? Our marriage, and our fertility, not Jared Starke. Keep him to deal with Gram’s estate, because it has to be more convenient that way. I expect he’s changed a lot now. Grown up. We all have.” Her face said very clearly that Grown-up Land wasn’t always a fun place to be. “You said he acted like a professional this morning?”

“Yes, he did.” And so did I, thank heaven.

“So give him the benefit of the doubt.”

This is not what I wanted you to say, Linnie. You were supposed to give me the perfect way out…

Shallis hadn’t realized until just now that this was what she’d been hoping for. So who was the person she really didn’t trust?

Herself?

Was that possible?

Ohhh, yeah!

“Did you get a chance to ask him about that strange property tax bill?” Linnie was saying.

“Yes, and he’s going to look into it.”

“Was he concerned?”

“He thought it seemed a little odd. But don’t start worrying about that…”

“…on top of everything else. No, I won’t. I think I hear Ryan. Are you staying to eat?”

“Can’t. I have a function at the hotel tonight. I’ll say a quick hi to your hubby, then I’ll head back to town.”

“So you only came out here to break it to me about Jared in person?” Linnie took another mouthful of her drink. She gave a wan smile which suggested it was sweetly funny of Shallis to think the issue important enough to warrant the price of the gas, and the wear and tear on the car.

Illogically this only made Shallis feel even more fiercely protective about her sister, and even more determined not to risk hurting her in any way. She said her hello to Ryan, and under the cover of a sisterly hug managed to whisper in his ear, “Look after her. She’s hurting today.”

“I know,” he answered, gruff and male and helpless. He’d never been big on fluent speeches, but his heart was in the right place. “I can tell just from her face.”

Shallis was back in town at ten after six.

This was the house on Chestnut Street. Number Fifty-six.

Shallis slowed the car and pulled close to the curb. She must have passed this place dozens if not hundreds of times in her life, but she’d never really looked at it before. The street contained a mix of Victorian architectural styles, and there’d been a mix of changes made to the original dwellings over the years, also. No two houses were alike.

Some of the best places in the street had been gorgeously restored for use as suites of doctors’ and dentists’ offices, elegant dwellings or the kind of bed-and-breakfast inns that featured in glossy travel magazines, but Number Fifty-six hadn’t. Made of a rust-colored brick, it seemed a little tired.

The guttering needed some attention, and so did the floorboards of the wraparound porch. The garden looked as if it received regular care, however. The lawn had been recently mown, and the shrubbery in front of the porch was free of weeds. But the bushes themselves were gnarled and old.

Was anyone living here?

From the street, Shallis couldn’t tell. She parked the car, then sat in it for a moment, debating her options. Several people at the Grand Regency would commence predictable panic attacks if she wasn’t back by six forty-five, but the hotel was only three minutes drive from here, right around the block, and everything had been under control when she left. She had a little time.

She climbed out and went to the small metal mailbox. Tentatively lifting the back flap, she saw two or three days’ worth of junk mail inside. Maybe whoever lived here was away. If the place was unoccupied, someone was definitely collecting the mail. The flap of the mailbox squeaked as she lowered it shut.

She walked up the slate path toward the front door, aware of the ambient sounds of the town around her. High overhead, a jet plane faintly roared, while closer at hand a car or two swished by, a dog barked and muffled radio music played. No sounds came from the house itself.

Stepping onto the porch, she felt like a trespasser. She rang an old-fashioned electric bell which seemed to peal inside the house like a fire station alarm, and she knew she probably wouldn’t have pressed that little black bakelite button if she’d really thought that anyone was home. After a two-minute wait and another press of the bell, she hadn’t sensed any sound or movement inside.

Time to leave.

Except that she couldn’t seem to do so just yet. She really wanted to know if the house was empty and unlived in, or just temporarily unattended. Its secrets seemed to whisper at her in the breeze that stirred the trees. The front windows were curtained, but she cupped a hand against her cheek and forehead and peered through the glass anyhow, in case there was a gap.

Yes. A couple of inches. It was dark inside the house, however, and she couldn’t see. Just a few dim shapes, edges and angles. Furniture? She thought so, but wasn’t sure.

She decided to make a quick trip around to the back of the place. Successful ex-beauty queens tended to be thorough. If there was anything to be learned here, she would learn it now and not need to make a second visit.

The back porch, like the one at the front, was wide and substantial and in need of repair, and a couple of the windows that looked onto it had raised blinds and no drapes. She saw a dining table through an open doorway and a primitive-looking kitchen with this year’s calendar on the opposite wall, still showing the February page.

Behind her, she heard footsteps and a voice. “Shallis, hi…”

Whirling around, she found Jared half way up the back porch steps. She took a too-hasty step and her dove-gray spiked heel rammed through a splintery crack between the old floorboards. She tripped, ending up on both hands and one painful knee, with the other foot bare and its shoe still jammed in the crack, some inches behind her.

“Shoot, this porch needs some work!” Jared dropped beside her and touched her shoulder. He didn’t let the contact linger, but his voice was resonant with concern. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Sure? Your foot—”

“Apart from the crowd of splinters having a family reunion in my knee.”

Shallis steeled herself for Jared to make the kind of comment that usually came next. Something along the lines of how lucky it was she hadn’t tripped like this on pageant night in front of the whole of America. She geared up to laugh and politely pretend she hadn’t heard variations on the same joke a hundred times here in Hyattville, on every occasion when she did anything even the slightest bit graceless or messy or natural.

But all Jared said was, “Let me have a look, okay? Got tweezers?”

“I possess tweezers, yes.” Go away. Stop looking at my knee like that. “But I don’t carry them around with me.”

This was another assumption she had to contend with on a regular basis—that she carried an elephant-size makeup and grooming kit in her purse everywhere she went, and did she happen to keep aloe vera tissues/a corkscrew/spare panty hose/a socket wrench set in it, by any chance?

“Mono-brow doesn’t grow back that fast, I guess,” Jared murmured, with such a straight face that it took her several seconds to react with a very unprincesslike snort of laughter. “You don’t look comfortable,” he added.

“I’m not.”

Still thrown off balance by a kind of humor she wasn’t used to, except maybe from Dad, Shallis rotated to a sitting position, and mentally added twenty minutes to her schedule so she could go home and change. The splintery wood had pulled several threads in the fabric of her skirt, and the gray of the porch dust wasn’t an exact match for the gray of the silk.

Since it was an expensive designer suit, she cared about the pulled threads a lot more than she cared about the splinters in her knee. Skin healed. Silk didn’t.

“Let me take a look,” Jared repeated. “Can I remind you that helplessness is considered an attractive quality in a Southern woman?”

“I can do it, thanks. I was an L.A. woman for five years. I don’t do helpless anymore.”

Especially not with you.

“People always wuss out on their own splinters. Splinters need tough love.” She felt the warmth of his breath on her knee, but he didn’t touch her. “None of these are stuck all the way under the skin, from what I can see. I can get them.”

“You don’t have tweezers.”

“We’ve already discussed this.” He looked up from his inspection. “Neither do you.”

“I have nails.”

And a gorgeous French manicure that would probably get as ruined as her skirt if she used her nails to get the splinters out. She’d counted five of them. Too bad. She wasn’t letting Jared’s fingers anywhere near her knee.

He’d gotten the message now, apparently.

Gritting her teeth, she scraped at her skin, pincered her nails and got four of the splinters out while Jared took out a pocket knife—not the kind equipped with tweezers, unfortunately—and used its strongest blade to lever the gap in the floorboards wide enough to pull her jammed shoe heel free.

“It doesn’t look too good,” he said, examining the piece of expensive Italian footwear. “The leather is all scraped.”

She glanced up from her inspection of a section of newly chipped nail polish. “It looks better than my knee.”

“How’re you doing, there? I haven’t heard any ouches.”

“I’m keeping them to myself. The last splinter wouldn’t come.”

“Okay, my turn.”

“I’ll get it out at home.”

“No, let me have a try.” He put the shoe down beside her, rested a hand on her knee before she could make another protest, and told her in a cheerful tone, “This is probably going to hurt.”

“Did you ever consider going into medicine?”

“For a couple of months when I was eighteen, but I dropped the idea pretty fast and took on the traditional Starke family career. Why?”

“Good decision. Because your bedside manner is way off. Ouch,” she added.

“Yeah, can’t help it,” was all he said, still cheerful.

How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways…

He pinched up her skin, scraped, pinched again. Shallis sat back on her hands and closed her eyes. She could hear his breath whistling softly between his teeth and over his firm lower lip. She could imagine the golden glint of concentration in his eyes. His hand was warm—ouch, again!—and confident. His knee pressed into her outer thigh, chafing her skin softly with the fabric of his summer-weight suit.

Focusing on the splinter, he probably wasn’t aware of the contact, but Shallis was. She felt like a traitor to Linnie and Ryan, but even more of a traitor to herself for the powerful and familiar tingle of physical response that built inside her.

He’d dropped the lawyer facade, and he was such a sexy man. A thousand women must have thought so. Chemistry on two legs. A dangerous assailant on at least four of her senses.

But he was the wrong man.

He always had been.

She’d met enough men with the same win-at-all-costs mentality in Los Angeles. And thanks to Linnie’s history with Jared she’d always recognized pretty fast what they were really like underneath the charming, sexy veneer, and that they hadn’t really wanted her, they’d wanted…

Well, take your pick.

Arm candy.

Another notch on their belt.

A passport to the next level of success.

She’d met losers, too, and they could be even worse.

Surely there had to be some kind of middle ground. A man of her own generation who had the same basic qualities as her dad. A man who knew what he wanted but had limits on what he’d do to get it. A man she could be attracted to for his strength and even, yes, his arrogance, but who knew how to laugh at himself, too. A man who hadn’t already proved himself to be a total jerk in the way he’d behaved to Linnie six years ago.

If she was crazy enough to give in to her chemical attraction to Jared Starke she could never say she hadn’t been warned.

She had been warned, so why didn’t this act as the perfect antidote to the delectable poison that was running through her veins?

She had little tingles chasing each other all the way up her legs and, darn it, a red-blooded woman needed a few tingles in her life. There had to be a couple of decent single men in this world who knew how to deliver them. If only she could get this man out of her system first.

“Got it,” Jared said, and his touch evaporated from her knee before she could open her eyes.

She wanted the contact back, and hated herself.

“Thanks,” she muttered, and sat forward again, to inspect what he’d done. There were a couple of pinprick sized droplets of blood forming. Jared produced a clean tissue, pressed it into her hand and stood up, watching her dab the blood away.

“That’s your car out front, I take it,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Nice.”

“It gets me from A to B.” The European-styled sports car was a part of her pageant winnings, five years old now but still widely admired. In the past, she’d had numerous dates with men who were more interested in the car than they were in her. “I had a few minutes, and I was curious about the house, so I stopped by,” she added.

“Same here. I walked down from Grandpa Abe’s place, in time to see you disappearing round the back.”

“It’s furnished, but do you get the same impression as me that no one’s living here? Not quite sure why the sense is so strong.”

“I know. Just a feeling, but you’re right, it’s definitely there.” He went and peered in the windows, just as she had. His body language was intent and focused. “Something about the stillness,” he murmured.

What was it? It wasn’t the words. It was the delivery.

“And the calendar in the kitchen, still on the February page,” she added. “Do you know any of the neighbors?”

“I don’t, but my grandfather must. I had a closer look at your grandmother’s files this afternoon, after you’d gone, but couldn’t find anything. I’ve tried calling him, but he only has a cell phone up at his cabin, and he has it switched off. So it doesn’t scare off the fish, I imagine.”

Shallis laughed. She kept doing that. He kept saying things that weren’t exactly hilarious, but somehow surprised her enough to tickle her funny bone, purely because they weren’t the same lame beauty queen jokes she’d heard dozens of times before. He was refreshingly different from most men in ways that didn’t really count, and exactly the same as the worst of the species in other much more dangerous ways that counted for everything.

“It’s twenty till seven,” he said. “I’ll try calling him again soon.”

“Oh, it’s that late?” She’d been here almost half an hour. Drive home to her garden apartment, freshen up, change. If anything was going wrong at the hotel…And speaking of cell phones, she’d left hers in her briefcase in the car, so if there had been a catering catastrophe, or something, she’d been out of contact. “I need to get home.”

He nodded. “It’s getting late. And there’s something about this place. It could get spooky after dark. Porch rocker starting to creak when there’s nobody there. Whispering voices echoing down the stairs.”

“Stop!” She went to slip her foot back in the damaged shoe. “You’re too good at creating atmosphere, Jared Starke.”

Various kinds of atmosphere, none of which she wanted.

“Don’t put on the shoe,” he said. He had that husky note in his voice again, that she’d heard earlier today. “Take off the other one and go barefoot. The path around the side of the house is pretty uneven, too, and I think you might have weakened the heel. Can’t guarantee I’ll be able to save you, next time.”

“You didn’t save me this time,” she pointed out tartly, bending a little and lifting her foot to scoop the second shoe off. The soft leather slid across the sensitive skin of her in-step and heel. “You didn’t even have tweezers.”

“True.” He watched her movement, his focus casual yet intent, as if her action with the shoe was significant.

Or sexy.

Her body warmed, as if beneath a row of hot stage lights.

“We’ll be in touch, then, as soon as either of us finds out more about this place,” he finished.

“Yes.” She walked ahead of him, since she knew he was hanging back so she could do so—her knight in shining armor, ready to be there for her if she stumbled.

No.

Not quite.

Ready to ogle the shimmy in her walk, more likely. Shallis hadn’t taken that kind of thing as a compliment since she was seventeen. And she couldn’t believe that she was even the slightest bit tempted to respond to it now.

The slate path felt cool under her feet, however, and she started thinking about the house again. It could be one of the grandest places on the street if it had the right treatment. It was three stories high, with a big round turret on one corner and a steeply sloping roof, made of slate that matched the path. Looking up, she saw that some of the slates were a slightly different color than the majority, as if the roof had been repaired with new stone, not too long ago.

Slate was expensive. A lot of people didn’t try to repair it anymore, just got rid of it altogether and put on a tar or wood shingle roof instead. Someone had cared about this place.

Her grandmother? Gram would have used slate. She wouldn’t have wanted this grand old lady to wear cheap tar when she was accustomed to being coiffed in elegant stone.

“If Gram owns this house, though, why on earth don’t we know about it?”

Turning to ask the question out loud, Shallis almost came to collision point with Jared. He’d about caught up to her, now, ready to head up the street toward his grandfather’s house. They both stopped, managed not to touch, and blurted awkward apologies.

“Can’t answer your question,” Jared said.

They were standing too close, he realized.

Again.

He stepped back, hoping it didn’t look too obvious that he was attempting to get himself safely clear of her space. With any other woman for whom he felt this powerful level of attraction, he would have used the opposite strategy—stepping closer, turning on the charm like turning on garden lanterns on a summer evening.

His history with Shallis and her sister was like the repelling force of two magnets pointing at each other the wrong way, and his questions about his own future and priorities only strengthened that force.

He wasn’t back in Hyattville to get involved in some disastrous, short-lived relationship with a blast from the past that would leave a sour taste in everybody’s mouth. He was here for some space, in order to work out, once and for all, who he wanted to be.

“No, I didn’t expect you to answer it,” Shallis said, cutting in on his thoughts. “If you’ll excuse me, Jared, I have a function at the hotel tonight and I really need to go home and change. But…uh…thanks for your help with the splinter and the shoe.”

“You’re welcome. Talk to you soon.”

He gave a short, careful nod, not too friendly, not too sharp—he hated controlling his every word and gesture this way—and set off along the sidewalk toward his grandfather’s house.

About thirty seconds later, he heard the smooth purr of her expensive car drift past him. They waved to each other again—casual hands, polite smiles—and he wondered what it was going to take for this to get easy.

Go back and erase the past, maybe?

Six years back, to Linnie and Ryan’s wedding, and then another five to the night of Shallis’s sixteenth birthday party, when he’d almost kissed her. That little word “almost” was the only thing that gave him any hope and any self-respect, when he looked back on his behavior that night.

He’d wanted to, and Shallis at that point in her life would have practically fainted with ecstasy in his arms. Yeah, her crush had been as obvious to him as the sweet champagne on her breath, and as innocent and doomed as a baby doe caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

She wouldn’t have turned him down, even though she wouldn’t have had a clue what was really happening. She’d have gone as far as he wanted, believed everything he said. The sweet-natured seventeen-year-old boy who’d been agonizingly and just as innocently in love with Shallis that year wouldn’t have had a chance.

And Linnie, who’d considered herself just about engaged to Jared at the time, would never have known…unless Shallis herself had told her. Jared would have gone on his merry way, feeling like a winner after an easy victory, as usual.

Two sisters wrapped around his little finger, when he didn’t have serious plans for either of them.

But he hadn’t done it. He’d run his fingers softly through Shallis’s golden hair. His mouth had come within an inch of hers. She’d sighed up at him, her eyes huge and awed and gorgeous, as she waited.

She was young enough to trust him, to have faith in her own feelings, and to believe that Linnie would forgive her such a betrayal, because this was love, and love conquered all.

He didn’t understand how he’d been able to read her layered feelings so clearly, but somehow he had.

Finally he’d muttered, “I can’t do this,” and he’d torn himself away, left with an enduring sense of protectiveness toward Shallis Duncan that he didn’t understand, either.

It was one of the few moments in his life that had had the power to convince him, over the past six years, that he had any sense of honor in him at all.