Читать книгу Return To Me - Shannon McKenna - Страница 5

Simon Riley cut the motor and coasted his bike to the shoulder of the road as soon as he topped the rise that led down into the LaRue River Valley. He pulled the helmet off to let the hot wind dry the sweat in his long, tangled black hair and billow out the jacket of his riding leathers. He needed a minute, or maybe ten, just to stare down at the town of LaRue, pull himself together and muster his nerve.

The cold clench in his gut was no surprise to him. Neither was the catch in his breath at how beautiful this place was. No matter how far he traveled, nothing in the world was like this green river valley in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.

There was nothing like this feeling, either. The electric shiver of disaster in the making, like watching a baby trying to stick a fork into a light socket. Or maybe he brought the danger with him. God knows, he never meant to, but it came down around his ears every goddamn time.

The place looked so mellow, like nothing had happened here for the entire seventeen years he’d been gone. Wouldn’t take long, though. Something here had it in for him. As soon as that something sniffed out Simon Riley’s presence, it was going to wake right up and roll over.

A burst of laughter shook him. Look out, LaRue. Fun’s over.

He took off his shades as he looked around. The colors and sounds and smells of this place prodded a part of his brain awake that had been buried for years under the hustle and noise of his chaotic life. The sultry aroma of peaches fermenting under a tree by the side of the road, a tangle of foliage choking a drainage ditch, the hypnotic drone of insects. The sharp-sweet tang of yarrow and balsam root, pine and fir.

A sultry, nose-tickling mélange. Home.

He knew this place so well. He’d explored every hill and gully, every canyon and rock and cave. Property lines and barbed wire fences had meant nothing to him back when he was a kid running wild.

He’d imagined himself brother to snakes and lizards, coyotes and bobcats, eagles and owls, even the occasional cougar that ventured down from the higher reaches of the Cascades. He’d imagined that they accepted him as one of their own, made a place for him in their world.

The way El had made a place for him.

He pushed the thought of El away. He was edging too close to overload already. Besides, being accepted by lizards and bobcats and one lovestruck teenage girl didn’t carry much weight when you were rejected by everyone else. Though in retrospect, to give them credit, he hadn’t handled their rejection that well. He’d always overreacted. Freaked out, fucked things up, made things worse.

You know you’re just hurting yourself, Simon.

Those words rang in his ears seventeen years later. He’d heard them so often, from the guidance counselor, the school principal, the sheriff, the harried lady from Children’s Services, just to name a few.

What the hell. He hadn’t listened to them then, so why listen to them now? Simon Riley was home, and gearing up to hurt himself with all the wild abandon that was his birthright.

His eyes searched for the ravine that threaded down between McNary Ridge and Horsehead Bluff, the ragged line that led down to Gus’s house. He blocked the sun with his hand and tried to breathe away the ache in his belly. It hung there, heavy and cold as a lump of lead. Too deep below the surface to be eased by any of his usual tricks.

Years back, he’d dreamed about a triumphal homecoming. In his fantasies, Gus was the way he’d been back when Simon was a little kid, before he’d crawled deep into the bottle. That Gus had opened the door for him and nodded with the silent approval Simon had felt on his skin whenever he did anything that Gus thought was praiseworthy.

Then Gus would slap together a meal of elk steaks, pan-fried potatoes and onions, biscuits, sun-ripened salted tomato slices and a beer. After they ate, he’d pull out one of those blocks of dark chocolate that he kept in the locked pantry shelf, far from thieving little-boy hands. He’d use the cleaver to hack a chunk into splinters to pick at off the cutting board. The two of them would let shards of bitter dark sweetness melt in their mouths like pure redemption as the kitchen grew dim and the time came to light the kerosene lantern.

And then, as shadows flickered and shifted on the wall, Simon would recount his adventures over the years since he’d run off. All the ways in which he had finally proven his worth.

But there would be no quiet approval or elk steak or chocolate. Gus had eaten his last meal five months ago, a .45 caliber bullet from his CPA auto. There would be no prodigal nephew’s return for him. Just a silent, desolate house. The sheer, fucking, maddening waste of it all.

He wasn’t even sure why he’d come back here at all. It was one of those blind impulses that had always gotten him neck-deep in trouble. Gus was five months gone, his body cremated. It had taken a long time for the news to make it to Afghanistan. It had shot his concentration all to hell. He’d started having the fire dream again. A roaring, ravenous circle of fire that closed in on him from all sides.

What had happened to Gus didn’t square with his memories of his uncle. Nor did it square with the cryptic e-mail that Gus had sent him on the day he died. That e-mail had sounded like the ravings of a paranoid madman, yes, but not a defeated, suicidal madman.

So here he was. Financially, he could afford a break. He’d never cared much about money, but he’d managed to make a lot of it, running the risks that he did. It just sat in the bank and accumulated, since it seldom occurred to him to spend it. Returning to LaRue was an idea to approach gradually, ease into gently, so he’d flown to New York and bought the bike. Three thousand miles of highway was a bare minimum of lead-in time, and he’d spent it trying to justify the impulse.

He had to find out what had happened to Gus. Flip the finger to everyone who’d written him off as a loser. Thank the people who had been kind to him. El alone was worth a journey of twelve thousand miles. His memories of El were so bright, they shone.

Oh, shit. It was impossible not to think about El when his belly ached like this. He’d gotten deep into the habit of thinking about El to comfort himself when he felt bad. The habit was backfiring on him.

All that time on the road still hadn’t braced him to give up his El fantasies and replace them with reality. There had been times when those fantasies had been his only refuge. A man had to have some safe place to go, even if it was only inside his own head. It was like not wanting to see a favorite book made into a movie for fear it would obscure his own mental images, only he knew the end of this movie would be different. And it was all just a head game anyway.

So reality would be hard. So it would hurt. Surprise, surprise.

He couldn’t bully his mind into submission today. It was running wild, wherever it wanted to go, and it wanted El. His fantasy El, the only other person in all of LaRue who’d given a damn about him. Gus had cared for him, when he wasn’t too drunk. He’d shown it with a gruff scrap of praise, or a dry, private joke shared between the two of them.

But El’s devotion had needed no hopeful interpreting. It was there for him whenever he wanted it, like the air he breathed. Constant, and sweet, and taken completely for granted.

Since he left LaRue, he’d taken nothing else for granted.

He shaded his eyes and squinted out at the grassy hills that hemmed the valley in, baked a deep, metallic gold. The handsome house that El Kent had grown up in was visible from the highway, perched on the bluff in an oasis of lush green landscaping and forever looking down its nose at Gus’s ramshackle house in the ravine below.

Kent House was a fancy hotel now. He knew that much from a random search for El’s name on the Internet. It had landed him on a page on fine hoteliers in the Pacific Northwest.

Kent House is a gracious Bed & Breakfast perched on a hillside overlooking the LaRue River…paradise for sports fishermen and white-water rafters…breath-taking view from every room…two-hour drive from Portland, but worth every winding, scenic mile…the weekday continental breakfast is worthy of special mention for the fine pastry, to say nothing of owner and pastry chef Ellen Kent’s awe-inspiring weekend buffet spread…

Rave reviews from fancy critics. Damn. Not bad.

He stared down into the checkered green bowl of the valley, and reminded himself for the thousandth time that over half of her life had gone by. She would have forgotten him. She was still using her maiden name, but that meant nothing these days. She could’ve married a guy named Scruggs or Lipschitz, and kept her own pretty name for business purposes. She probably had a bunch of noisy kids and an SUV.

Good for her if she did. He just hoped whoever she picked deserved the kind of love she could give more than he’d deserved it.

He wondered if she dreamed of the night he’d run away the way he still did. He’d gone to say goodbye to his friend and found himself in the arms of a lover. A storm of freaked-out passion and adrenaline.

He’d taken her virginity that night. The memory was etched in his mind. Every last, exquisite detail of it.

Wind pushed a bank of bruised-looking clouds across the sky. The cloud shadow that swept over him put an abrupt end to his speculating. Of course his return to LaRue would be heralded by a thunderstorm. It was obligatory.

He put on his shades and his helmet and accelerated towards town. The place hadn’t changed much. The strip mall was longer, with monster chain stores adrift in the oceans of their gigantic parking lots. A video store had replaced the Twin Lakes Diner. A multiplex cinema had taken the place of the drive-in theater.

He glanced up the hill to where the Mitchell Stables had once stood. It hadn’t been rebuilt. The country club’s golf course had been extended instead, into a smooth, bland swath of green lawn that sloped gently down towards the river. Part of his brain still expected to see it a blackened ruin. The ultimate fuck-up that had drop-kicked him out of this town, and ironically, it hadn’t been his fault.

The memory was all too vivid. Drinking beer with his pin-headed buddies out behind the stables until Eddie and Randy had gotten the bright idea to shoot off firecrackers. In August, for Christ’s sake. The whole forest could have gone up, and the town along with it. It was sheer, dumb asshole’s luck that only the stables had burned.

They hadn’t even seen how or when the fire started. Simon had felt the familiar prickle of impending disaster on the back of his neck when they were already halfway down the hill, and had looked back to see the dull, ominous glow of illuminated smoke. Not one of his so-called friends had gone back with him to let the horses out. He’d done it alone. The acrid sting of smoke in his throat and the high-pitched screaming of the maddened horses had haunted his dreams for years.

He glanced up at the lowering sky. He had a couple of minutes of grace—the time it would take to reach shelter under the awning of the Shopping Kart, where he could buy detergent and ask around for a laundromat and a hotel. Time to clean up and act normal. Not that any effort on his part had made a difference before, but hey. He could try.

Maybe he would get lucky, and no one would even recognize him.

“Did you hear the news, Ellen? Simon Riley is back in town!”

Peggy’s sharp eyes watched avidly for a reaction as she swiped Ellen’s eggs and paprika across the check stand’s electronic scanner.

Ellen stared back at the checkout clerk. She closed her mouth and arranged her face into a mask of polite interest. “Really?”

Peggy wasn’t fooled. Her mouth curled into a triumphant smile as she swiped Ellen’s cream cheese and butter. “I saw him with my own eyes. He’s a biker now! Big and dirty and sweaty, dressed up in black leather like a Hell’s Angel. Hair all the way down to here. If I’d been your mother, I’d have heaved a big sigh of relief when that boy disappeared. He was trouble then, and he looks like bigger trouble now. After that bad business with the fire, well! He has some nerve.”

“That fire was not Simon’s fault,” Ellen said tightly.

Peggy gave her a pitying look. “Whatever you say. That’s $32.79.”

Ellen handed Peggy the money with her teeth clenched. It was a mistake to let Peggy bait her. The woman had a nose like a bloodhound for people’s weak points, and defending Simon was as pointless an exercise now as it ever had been.

Ellen grabbed her bags and stalked out of the Shopping Kart without so much as a polite nod of farewell. The damp from the recent thunderstorm closed around her like a smothering embrace. She looked around, lost and blank. She’d forgotten where she’d parked her pickup.

Simon Riley. Back in LaRue. Her heart thudded. Her face had gone sweaty and hot. She fumbled in her purse for her sunglasses with jittery hands. She was light-headed. Dizzy. Maybe she had sunstroke.

Duh. There was her pickup, up the block. She’d opted for the shade in front of the insurance office instead of the blazing sun of the Kart’s parking lot. A sensible choice. She was a sensible woman.

She had to remember that. Hang on to that.

She hadn’t thought about Simon Riley for years. Dreams didn’t count, she had finally conceded, not even the feverish, erotic ones. She didn’t choose them, and therefore she couldn’t possibly blame herself for them. Neither did those thoughts that sneaked up whenever she wasn’t keeping herself busy. Which wasn’t too damned often anymore. Her life was rich and full and complete, and, of course, there was Brad, her boyfriend. No, not boyfriend. Fiancé, she corrected herself firmly. He was now her fiancé, as of two weeks ago Sunday, and a very nice fiancé he was, too. And in not too long a time, he would be her husband. She waited for the quiet, contented glow that reflection ought to give her.

It refused to show itself.

There had been a time when not thinking about Simon had amounted to a full-time occupation. Now she was an old pro. Now it was no big deal. She was halfway through the crosswalk before she realized that she’d walked past her own truck.

She marched the half block back to it, tight-lipped, and packed her perishables into the cooler. When Simon’s uncle Gus Riley had shot himself a few months back, the shock had briefly revived old gossip. People had wondered out loud about what happened to that wild boy who’d run off so long ago. Some speculated that he’d gone to the bad and was leading a life of crime in some big, nasty city.

Not Ellen Kent. Been there, done that. She had better things to worry about. She shoved plastic ice packs around the food, sealed the cooler and climbed into the truck. She wasn’t picturing Simon Riley, all big and dirty and sweaty in black riding leathers, his black hair blowing wild and loose all the way down to here. Huh uh.

She’d moved on.

The motorcycle bumped and jolted over the rutted logging road that snaked along the McNary Creek Canyon. Simon had braced himself in every way he could. He’d eaten a meal, he’d drunk strong coffee, he’d washed his clothes, he’d scrubbed himself in the waterfall’s icy pool. He could think of no other excuse not to face up to Gus’s house, other than the fact that the prospect made him feel sick and faint.

He cut the motor and coasted down towards the house. It was smaller and shabbier than he remembered, and it had been plenty shabby seventeen years ago. The paint had peeled away, and the house had taken on the eerie silver shade of a prairie ghost town. Everywhere he looked, time collapsed. He felt younger, angrier. Scared and confused. Fucking up every time he turned around.

He wasn’t a fuckup anymore, he reminded himself. Not at his work, at least. He was a seasoned professional, excellent at what he did. He’d achieved a certain amount of fame in the journalism world for his brazen fearlessness. More balls than brains, his colleagues said, but that was what sold, and everyone knew it.

A golden eagle swooped low, checking him out. The shadow of its huge wingspan brushed over him. A swift, quiet benediction.

He took courage from that and approached the house. The rotten porch boards sagged beneath his weight. The unlocked door creaked open. The smell of dust and mold filled his nose as his eyes adjusted.

Gus had never been much of a housekeeper in the best of times, and it was evident that these had been far from the best of times. Dishes were heaped in the sink, encrusted with dried, molded food. A cast-iron skillet thick with grease sat on the filthy propane stove top. Empty bourbon bottles covered the counter, crowded the floor. The pattern of the peeling linoleum was barely visible beneath the dirt.

He walked into the kitchen. A clutter of miscellany covered the tables. Dishes, silverware, paper, and, incongruously, a laptop computer. No electric lamps or appliances. Gus must have hooked the computer to his gas generator. It was connected to a phone jack, but he saw no phone. Gus had gotten a phone line just for the Internet.

He walked slowly through the broken-down house. Dirt and junk and cobwebs. Dead flies and liquor bottles. The desolation made his throat tighten. No guilt, he reminded himself. Gus had brought his loneliness on himself. Simon would have been glad to love his uncle.

Gus had driven his nephew away with his fists.

It made him sick. He wanted to fling something against the discolored wall, just to hear it shatter. One of those bourbon bottles would do just fine. He breathed deeply and let the impulse pass.

That was the past Simon, young and dumb and full of come. He had a handle on his temper now, and he hung onto it with both hands, but it was time to get out in the open where he could breathe.

Hank’s letter had said they had found Gus in front of the house. He waded out into the meadow. The grass was thick and high, a waving blaze of gold so deep the rusted cars seemed nearly drowned in it.

He couldn’t say goodbye to Gus like this, with his mind shut up tight against grief and memories. He closed his eyes, unclenched his fists, and let the tension relax. He opened his mind as if he were about to take photographs. Softening, widening, until he merged with what he was observing, until he and it were one.

He reached down deep, for his best memories of Gus.

The image blindsided him the moment his guard went down. Fire roaring up, just like his dreams. Greedy, raging, consuming violence. For an instant, the waving grass seemed an inferno of licking flames.

Just as suddenly, the perception was gone. He stood in a fragrant meadow humming and buzzing with life under the blazing August sun. Doubled over and shaking, his forehead wet with cold sweat.

He pressed his hand against his belly and willed the queasiness to pass. He knew this feeling all too well. A premonition of disaster.

He knew the impulse that followed it, too. The only thing in the whole world that would make him feel better.

He had to find El.

Ellen pulled into the Kent House driveway and parked in her own spot under the maples. She ran a practiced eye over the cars of the guests in residence in the small parking lot below the house.

The Phillips family’s Rover, Phil Endicott’s silver Lexus, Chuck and Suzie’s Jeep, bristling with sports equipment, Mr. Hempstead’s massive baby blue Chrysler. Everyone here for tea today. Then her eye fell on an unfamiliar silver Volvo sedan. A new guest, she hoped. She’d had an unexpected cancellation this morning, so she had a free room. She hoped that Missy, her part-time help, had mustered up the nerve to check the new guests in. She was trying to teach the girl to be less timid, but it was uphill work.

A gust of hot wind bent back the lilacs that separated her lawn from the scrub oak and meadow grass that led down to Gus’s moldering car graveyard. The Riley house had once been the carriage house of the Kent mansion. A crafty young Irishman named Seamus Riley had plied her great-grandfather Ewan with homemade white lightning until he lost his wits—and the house—in a drunken poker game back in 1918.

Seamus had settled comfortably into his new house, and married a Nez Perce woman that he’d met in Pendleton. Ellen had seen a photo of her in Gus’s kitchen one day when she’d brought over some fresh bread. Simon, her great-grandson, had inherited her prominent cheekbones, her black hair and her somber, penetrating eyes.

The place had been an eyesore for as long as Ellen could remember, but Gus had been flatly unreceptive to all offers to buy him out. Perhaps Simon would be willing to sell it to her.

“Hello, there, Ellen!”

A handsome middle-aged man pushed his way through the lilacs. Ray Mitchell, Brad’s father. Her future father-in-law was the very last person she expected to see stepping off of the late Gus Riley’s property.

“Uh, hi, Mr. Mitchell,” she said.

Ray beamed at her. “Keeping cool, honey?”

“Hardly,” she murmured. Ray’s hearty voice bugged her, for some reason. Hearty and Affable was one of his four settings; the other three being Solemnly Sincere, Deeply Concerned, or Indulgently Amused.

She was being unfair. Ray had never been anything but courteous to her. His social style was due to the fact that he’d been a public figure for so many years, she supposed. But Ray Mitchell’s public persona seemed to have taken over the private one. She hoped that wouldn’t happen to Brad if he decided to go into politics. It would drive her nuts.

“What a nice surprise,” she heard herself say. “Would you like to come in for a glass of iced tea?”

Ray took the cooler from her arms. “Let me get this for you, honey. Can’t stay long, but I’d be glad for a glass of your great iced tea.”

He followed her into the kitchen and set the cooler on the table. Ellen stuck a tumbler under the ice maker. “Peach or lemon?”

“Lemon, please,” Ray said. “Thank you. That’ll just hit the spot. Hotter than the fires of hell out there, isn’t it?”

He sipped his tea and murmured appreciatively. She waited to hear what he was gathering himself to say, though she had an intuition that she already knew. “You must have heard by now that Simon Riley is back in town,” he began.

Bingo. She’d guessed it. A headache gathered in the back of her head, throbbing with each beat of her heart. “Yes, I did hear that.”

“But you haven’t seen him?” Ray’s expression switched like a TV channel into Look #3, Deeply Concerned.

“I got home just now,” she said. “I was in town running errands.”

“So he hasn’t been by here yet, then?” Ray persisted.

“Haven’t seen a trace of him. What’s on your mind, Mr. Mitchell?”

Ray sipped his tea and gazed out the kitchen window at the bushes that screened Gus’s house. “I’m worried. Even before you got involved with Brad, I was uncomfortable with the idea of a lovely young lady living alone right next to someone so unstable as Gus Riley.”

“Hardly alone,” Ellen pointed out. “I never have less than six guests in the house with me at any given time.”

Ray waved that inconsequential detail away. “Be that as it may, Gus had a history of mental illness. He was a land mine that could have exploded at any time. What he did to himself was a tragedy, and I’m deeply sorry for his pain, but I won’t hide from you, honey—that mine has finally exploded. No one has to tiptoe around it anymore. That may sound callous to a tender-hearted young lady such as yourself, but…”

“Speak your mind. I can take it,” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t agree with you, though. Gus was always perfectly polite to me.”

Sort of. Whenever she’d brought goodies to Gus’s house, she’d been greeted with the sound of a shotgun being pumped. But since he’d always put the gun aside and offered her coffee, it was no big deal.

“Now there’s another unexploded land mine in town,” Ray said. “And it’s just too close to you. Again.”

“You mean Simon?” She blinked with exaggerated innocence, just to see if he’d notice her sarcasm.

He did not appear to register it. “Yes, I do mean Simon, honey. Entirely aside from that business with the fire—”

“Simon did not set that fire!” Her voice was getting shrill again.

“Ellen. Honey,” Ray said. “I saw him running away from the stables with my own eyes.”

“But you didn’t see him set the fire!”

Ray sighed. “Be that as it may. It’s been a long time, and I’m willing to forgive and forget—”

“How can you forgive someone for something they didn’t do?”

Solemnly Sincere took over on Ray’s face. “Let the matter of the fire be, honey. I just want you out of range. I want you to consider moving away from Kent House if Simon should decide to stay at Gus’s. I doubt he’ll stay long, since I’m quite sure his welcome here will be pretty darned cool, but for the time being, what do you say?”

Ellen stared at him blankly. “Mr. Mitchell, I run a business. I’m fully booked through October. Do you realize what you’re suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting that you might need to re-order your priorities,” Ray said earnestly. “You’re welcome to stay with Diana and me until the wedding. We have plenty of room. That would be the best solution.”

Ellen shook her head. “I appreciate your offer and your concern, but I just can’t do that. And now I really need to get started with my teatime preparations. So if you’ll excuse me…?”

Ray set his glass in the sink. “Think about it,” he urged. “Tell us the second you start to feel uneasy. The door is always open to you, Ellen. I promise that no one will say ‘I told you so.’”

“It won’t be necessary, Mr. Mitchell, but thanks very much.”

She watched Ray from the window. He cast a last, lingering glance down at Gus’s house before he got into the Volvo and drove away.

Another bizarre episode in an atypical day, but she couldn’t really focus on it. Her mind was stuck on Simon. If he ever did come around to see her, he would find her very changed. She wasn’t a lonely, puppyish kid anymore, begging for his attention.

Like she’d begged for his kiss the night he’d run away.

And oh, God, she really shouldn’t think about that. She had to think about something else. Quick. Softening the butter for the scones she had to bake for teatime. Rinsing the blueberries. Anything at all.

She started putting groceries away, but it was no good. The memory reeled through her mind, unstoppable.

The night that he’d climbed up the oak to her bedroom window to tell her goodbye, she’d told him to wait. Tossed the contents of her piggy bank into her pillowcase. Run downstairs to the kitchen, thrown everything she found into the pillowcase: salami, yogurt, granola bars, trail mix.

Her legs shook, and a lump like a cannonball was in her throat. She couldn’t bear for him to go. She’d never had a chance to make him see her as anything but a tagalong kid who needed help with her homework. She’d barely begun to grow boobs. She was a late bloomer, almost sixteen, but she looked about twelve. She would never know what it was like to kiss him, or dance with him, or—or anything else.

She’d found him on the lawn, shoulders shaking. His face was pressed against his knees, his long legs folded up tight against his chest, like he was trying to take up less space.

She’d dropped down to her knees next to him, and shocked them both speechless by demanding that he kiss her goodbye.

The memory still had the power to make her face go red, right there, in front of her open refrigerator, a slippery quart of half-and-half in her hand. She’d been so bold. Years later, she still had no idea where she’d found the nerve to do that. It was unimaginable.

At first he’d made fun of her, told her he didn’t feel that way about her, and don’t be a dingbat. Then the mocking smile faded out of his eyes, changed into a wary, waiting expression. And it happened.

Something intangible kindled between them. An ancient, prickling instinct, a swelling heat that made her skin feel too small for her body. Mysterious and powerful. Just remembering it made her shiver.

She remembered every sensual detail. Her hand splayed against his chest, his pounding heart, the damp warmth of his sweat. Her other hand against his cheek. The fine bones, the soft skin, the sharp angle of his jaw. The smell of smoke that clung to his hair.

The look in his eyes, almost scared. As if she, clueless, goofy, awkward El Kent had some mysterious power over him, to bestow or withhold something he was desperate for. It made her dizzy.

She leaned closer slowly until she felt his breath against her face, jerking in and out of his open mouth. The instant her lips touched his, the spark whooshed into flame. He’d pulled her onto his lap, wound his fingers through her hair and kissed her. Really kissed her, until her soul melted and mixed with his. Every part of her buzzed with his electricity. His lips coaxed her mouth open, ardent and eager.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, the world turning itself over and over until she was on her back, in the grass, crushing down her mother’s bed of purple petunias. His body was feverishly hot. His hands slid under her nightgown, shoving it up. Touching her all over, making her shudder and gasp.

She felt so clear and bright and sure. Now was the time, and he was the one. She’d chosen him years ago, before she even understood what she was choosing him for. She wrapped herself around his wiry, shaking body and offered him everything she had, everything she was.

And he took it.

The memory made her thighs clench. Clutching his back, staring into his wide, frightened eyes. Pain that was intimate and terrible and sweet. A storm of emotion and sensation. Collapsing into a tight, panting knot with him afterwards, both of them weeping.

Then the faraway whistle of the approaching freight train sounded, and his hot, lithe body went rigid on top of hers. He pulled away. Told her he had to make that train. Nothing could change his mind. Not even telling him she loved him.

Ellen laughed, but the laughter had a false, soggy sound. Look at her, sniveling over girlhood memories in front of a fridge that was gaping wide open in a heat wave. Serve her right if the milk went sour.

In all the lovers she’d had in her thirty-two years—not that there had been all that many—she’d never again told a man she loved him. Not even Brad. Though now that she thought of it, Brad hadn’t made any declarations of love to her yet, either. Until now, she hadn’t even thought of that fact in terms of an omission.

She couldn’t imagine saying those words to Brad. The pain and vulnerability associated with them were light years from Brad Mitchell’s high-quality universe, where things made sense. Things behaved. Whatever didn’t was judged to be unworthy and promptly rejected.

Brad valued her. He appreciated her and respected her, enough to want to be her partner for life. That was love for rational grown-ups. Love wasn’t ripping your heart out of your chest on a dark morning and being haunted by the smell of smoke ever since. That was juvenile stupidity. Or plain bad luck. Like a bout of food poisoning.

“Excuse me, miss. I’m looking for El Kent.” The low, quiet voice came from the swinging door that led to the dining room.

Ellen spun around with a gasp. The eggs flew into the air, and splattered on the floor. No one called her El. No one except for—

The sight of him knocked her back. God. So tall. So big. All over. The long, skinny body she remembered was filled out with hard, lean muscle. His white T-shirt showed off broad shoulders, sinewy arms. Faded jeans clung with careless grace to the perfect lines of his narrow hips, his long legs. She looked up into the focused intensity of his dark eyes, and a rush of hot and cold shivered through her body.

The exotic perfection of his face was harder now. Seasoned by sun and wind and time. She drank in the details: golden skin, narrow hawk nose, hollows beneath his prominent cheekbones, the sharp angle of his jaw, shaded with a few days’ growth of dark beard stubble. A silvery scar sliced through the dark slash of his left eyebrow. His gleaming hair was wet, combed straight back from his square forehead into a ponytail. Tightly leashed power hummed around him.

The hairs on her arms lifted in response.

His eyes flicked over her body. His teeth flashed white against his tan. “Damn. I’ll run to the store to replace those eggs for you, miss.”

Miss? He didn’t even recognize her. Her face was starting to shake again. Seventeen years of worrying about him, and he just checked out her body, like he might scope any woman he saw on the street.

He waited patiently for her to respond to his apology. She peeked up at his face again. One eyebrow was tilted up in a gesture so achingly familiar, it brought tears to her eyes. She clapped her hand over her trembling lips. She would not cry. She would not.

“I’m real sorry I startled you,” he tried again. “I was wondering if you could tell me where I might find—” His voice trailed off. His smile faded. He sucked in a gulp of air. “Holy shit,” he whispered. “El?”