Authors: Rhyannon Byrd
10:00 p.m.
H
OPE DIDN’T KNOW
how long she’d been standing at the deep bay window, staring out into the thick fall of darkness at the faint, flickering glow of light just visible through the trees. Someone was out there, smoking a cigarette. She watched as the tip moved with a slow rhythm each time the person lifted it to their lips, took a drag, then lowered it again. She could just make out the shadow of their body leaning against the trunk of one of the thick, massive maple trees that lined the back garden. The form was decidedly male. Tall. Broad. Rangy and lean.
Riley.
A flurry of startled, disquieting emotions took flight inside her, and she pressed one trembling hand to her belly. It seemed so surreal now, and yet she knew she hadn’t imagined the things that had happened earlier that day. Her high school sweetheart showing up in her café, walking back into her life after all these years, blasting her with his sharp, potent energy. God, her skin was still tingling in the places he’d touched her, a wild
heat still blooming beneath her skin that made her press her cold hands to her cheeks for relief.
She should have never stopped throwing pies at him that morning, because once she had, she’d had to breathe…and look at him. It’d been impossible not to stare, her heart beating so hard it’d been a physical pain. He’d been gorgeous as a boy, but the man. God…the man was stunning, with a drop-your-jaw-and-stare-at-him-on-the-street kind of masculinity that no doubt got him noticed wherever he went. He was animal beautiful. Like something…something feral and wild. Predatory and dangerous.
She wasn’t buying the story he’d continued to spill when he’d come back that afternoon, but then he never had been able to lie worth a damn. In clipped, graveled tones, he’d explained how Saige had become an anthropologist, claiming that she’d been in search of a family heirloom that some dangerous people were working to get their hands on. An heirloom they had reason to believe was buried out in the woods, because of a map that Saige had found. When she’d pressed him for details, he’d refused to tell her anything more, saying again that the less she knew, the better. And while she found the whole story incredulous—the idea of something that belonged to the Buchanans being buried there in Washington…on
her
land—Hope knew there was something bad going on for Riley to still be there. Something was up. Something that was important to him, though God only knew what it could be.
But his frustration at having to deal with her had been obvious. She knew, if he’d had the choice, that he’d have turned and gotten out of Purity so fast he’d have left a trail of smoke behind him. And while she’d tried to tell herself throughout the late morning and early afternoon that she didn’t care if he came back or not, there had been a strange sense of panic in her chest until he’d finally walked back through the front door of the café at three o’clock.
The feelings rioting through her were a bad sign, but who knew? Maybe having him there would be a good thing. Help her to move on. Find closure. It was the only reason she’d given in that afternoon, pretending that she bought the load of drivel he’d given her, allowing him and his too-handsome-for-his-own-good friend to take one of their cabins.
Yeah, sure it was.
She blew out a shaky breath, and argued with the voice in her head. After all, allowing him to stay was exactly what her therapists would have told her to do. Closure, she reminded herself. That was what she could get out of this. Finally, after all this time.
The only problem was the way he made her feel, as if she’d crawl out of her skin if she didn’t get her hands on him. It was a strange, startling sensation, after going for so many years without feeling anything even remotely sexual. It was as if that part of her had shut down, only to be zapped back to life, and now she was hungry. Starving, actually. And nothing in the café’s
kitchen was going to ease the craving that churned through her veins like a molten burn of fire.
But she had to face the facts. She was one pathetic puppy. Even if she weren’t furious with him, she wouldn’t know how to get what she needed. From an early age, she’d been lectured on what good girls do and don’t do. Her mother had gotten pregnant by a married man at the age of seventeen, and left a newborn Hope with her devastated grandmother, then hit the road in search of a new life. Desperate to make her grandmother happy, Hope had allowed the woman’s lectures to form the framework of her personality, and it had led to disaster.
Good girls married the men they had sex with.
Good girls didn’t walk out on their husbands.
Good girls put up with whatever was forced down their throats.
And in the end, good girls paid for being such pathetic wastes of space.
She almost wished she could just forgive Riley for the pain he’d caused her all those years ago, shovel it off her chest, and for once in her life act on pure, gut instinct. Just open the door, sink her bare feet into the cool, damp blades of grass as she stepped out into the silvery moonlight, and go to him.
And when she reached him, she’d place her hands on that hard, wide chest, lift up onto her toes, and cover the grim, beautiful shape of his mouth with hers. And maybe, just maybe, he’d have the power to breathe some life back into her.
“Hope?”
Gasping, she jumped about a foot when Millie called her name as she came through the doorway that connected their house to the industrial-size kitchen they shared with the café.
“Christ,” she wheezed, pressing one hand to the center of her chest as she stared over her shoulder. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“Sorry,” Millie said, the gleam in her eyes warning that she was up to something. “I was just thinking that you should run up to the cabin and see if there’s anything those boys might need.”
“Stop,” she murmured, turning back toward the window to press her forehead against the cool glass. It surprised her that the heat in her skin didn’t leave condensation on the icy panes.
“Stop what?” her aunt asked with just the right amount of calculated innocence.
“I know what you’re doing, Mil,” she said with a shaky sigh.
“Oh? And what’s that?”
God bless Millie,
she thought. After things had gone south with her ex, it had been the recently divorced Millie who had stepped in and saved her. Who had somehow put the broken, jagged pieces of her back together and kept her from just slipping away. “Nothing is going to happen between Riley and me, so you might as well get those crazy thoughts out of your head.”
“Well, if that’s the kind of attitude you’re going to
have, then of course nothing is ever going to happen. Happiness isn’t something that comes easily in this world, Hope. You, of all people, should know that. If you want it, you have to be willing to work for it, to take risks.”
“Some risks are just too much. I still have too much toxic damage from how things ended before. There isn’t enough left to risk a second time around.”
“There’s always enough,” Millie insisted. “You’re just being stubborn.”
Looking back over her shoulder, she struggled to keep her tone even as she said, “He isn’t here to stay, Millie. He lives in Colorado and I live here. So what are you suggesting? That I try to have some kind of hot, sordid affair with him before he walks out of my life again?”
Millie’s gray eyes gleamed with a womanly knowledge. “When that boy walks out your door, you’re going to regret it one way or another. Might as well get what good you can out of it while he’s here.”
“He isn’t a boy, Mil.”
The older woman waggled her brows. “Noticed that, did you?”
She pressed her forehead to the cool glass again, her sigh leaving a fogged patch. “Of course I noticed. My eyesight works just fine.”
“And?” Millie pressed her, making Hope want to groan.
“He’s gorgeous, I’ll give you that. But I have too much self-respect to make a fool of myself over him for a second time in my life. Like I said before, I’m still stinging from the first time.”
Millie gave a ladylike snort. “Nonsense. You’re letting your experience with Neal color your attitude toward men. And you’ve been doing it for too long now.”
“You know what I think?” Before her aunt could answer, she straightened her spine and forged ahead, saying, “I think you should stop lecturing me, and start taking your own advice.”
Eyeing Millie’s reflection in the window, she watched as a frown tipped the corner of her aunt’s mouth. “What does that mean?”
“You still haven’t jumped Hal’s bones, and I know you want to.” Hal Erickson was a retired widower who lived in town and worked part-time as a local carpenter and handyman. He and Millie had become friends the year before, when he’d done some beautiful work remodeling the kitchen for them. And while Hope knew there was a mutual attraction between them, Millie had led Hal to believe that she was only looking for a platonic relationship.
“Hope!” Millie gasped, sounding flustered. Ha. As if the idea hadn’t occurred to her aunt. She wasn’t buying it for a second.
“Well, it’s true. You’ve been stringing that poor guy along for months now.”
“I’ve been doing no such thing,” Millie argued, crossing her arms over her chest. “He’s only interested in being friends.”
This time, it was Hope who snorted. “Yeah, and I
only torture myself with diets because I’m addicted to the mouthwatering taste of lettuce. Go on, Millie. Feed me another one.”
“You’re awfully feisty tonight,” her aunt murmured, while Hope eyed her own reflection in the window. The familiar image should have provided a measure of stability to the frenzied, chaotic swarm of emotions twisting through her, but instead it felt as if a layer of protection had been peeled away, like an X-ray, everything she tried so hard to conceal suddenly exposed…revealed. All her embarrassing emotions laid out on display for everyone to see. “I like it,” Millie went on to say. “You’ve been too closed down for too long. It’s good to hear you get some spark back in your voice. I’ve been worried about you.”
Hope knew her aunt was right, just as she knew how much the woman cared about her. “I’m sorry for worrying you,” she offered, the words halting…subdued. “But I’m fine. Really. I’ve just been tired.”
Millie finally took mercy on her and said good-night, heading up the staircase that hugged the far wall. Hope moved through the warm, inviting room with its off-white walls and comfortable, coffee-colored leather sofa and love seat, checking the locks on the windows, same as she did every night. It was a ritual, as if each sturdy, protective bolt could somehow shelter her from the darkness and the quiet hours of solitude, when she felt too vulnerable. When she didn’t have work to occupy her time. That was when her barriers were at their
thinnest, allowing in thoughts and memories that were best left forgotten.
When she reached the bay window again, she stopped. Staring through the glass, Hope realized the flicker of the cigarette was even closer now, as if drawn nearer to the house by the sheer force of her longing. Without giving herself time to think about it, she suddenly threw open the back door and headed out into the night, down the cold wooden porch steps, until her feet were buried in the damp blades of grass. The sharp chill made her gasp, but she refused to turn back. She couldn’t. Once she’d started moving, there was too much adrenaline to do anything but see it through.
Though his face was still in shadow, she could feel the power of Riley’s stare, the touch of that hot, darkly sensual gaze making her shiver more than the damp chill of the air. And then the clouds moved, revealing the ethereal glow of the moon, and her breath locked in her chest as the details of his face were illuminated by the hazy, lavender beams of light. It was so hard to believe that she was staring at Riley Buchanan—at the boy who’d given her her first broken heart. Not that she’d ever had much heart left to offer another man, once Riley was done with it, which Neal had blamed for their problems. But then her ex had enjoyed laying the blame for his failures on anyone’s shoulders but his own. Hope had often questioned how she’d ever let herself get involved with a man like Neal Capshaw. But then, he’d played her perfectly during their whirlwind
courtship, and she’d let herself be fooled by his act, too naive to know better.
In a way, she knew that much of Neal’s appeal had been the fact that he was the polar opposite of Riley. Fair to Riley’s dark looks. Social to Riley’s quiet intensity. And determined to keep Hope at his side, like something he owned, when Riley had just tossed her aside like yesterday’s garbage.
God, she could still remember how badly it had hurt when Riley had broken up with her. She’d had a crush on him forever, worshipping him from afar, and then, at the beginning of her sophomore year, she’d experienced one of those fairy-tale moments when he’d done the impossible and asked her out. She’d almost died, feeling as if she’d walked into a dream. Nervous and painfully excited, she’d gone with him for a milk shake after school, and that had been the start. They’d been inseparable from that point on. Until he’d shattered her heart.
Before today, she’d spent years wondering why she couldn’t get over him. Teenaged crushes were transient things, meant to come and go. Stolen moments in time to look back upon fondly, thinking how precious those first rushes of passion and discovery had been. They weren’t meant to scar you for life. To imprint themselves on you so deeply, it was impossible for anyone else to ever come close, to measure up.