LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

Adrian shouted, unable to hold back the dangerous tidal wave of desperation and anger a moment longer. “If James wanted to know about the baby, he would have stuck around. He would have stood by me. He would have done all those things he told me he would.”

      “Like what?” Olivia asked.

      “Like...” Adrian stopped, breathing hard, and brushed the hair out of her eyes. They had been silly, sweet things that James had said, she thought, looking back now with a bit more clarity. There had been few promises for the future, but she’d been certain James wanted to be with her beyond that summer. For a time, she even thought he was as in love with her as she’d been with him.

      Olivia seemed to deflate as she read Adrian’s helpless face. “Okay, let’s try approaching this from another angle. How did you find out it was him moving in? Did you see him, face-to-face?”

      Adrian nodded, wordless. She thought of the pie lying facedown, ruined, on James’s front porch. So much for the warm welcome.

      “So he knows it’s you, too?”

      “Yes,” Adrian admitted. Unfortunately.

      “And?” Olivia asked. When Adrian only looked at her in question, Olivia lifted her shoulders. “How did he look?”

      Adrian frowned deeply. “What does that have to do with anything?”

      “Just indulge me,” Olivia insisted.

      Sighing, Adrian gave in and lowered to the arm of the battered couch. “He looked...like a grown-up.”

      “Meaning?”

      “Meaning he was different,” Adrian said, rubbing her hands together. They were sore. During her anxiety attack, she had clenched and unclenched them over and over. “He used to be long and lean and...well, he’s still long and he’s in good shape, damn it. But he’s bigger here.” She lifted her hands to either of her shoulders. “His hair’s thicker, a bit shaggier. And he’s got a beard and tattoos.”

      Olivia raised an interested brow. “Oh?”

      “A whole sleeve of them, from what I could tell,” Adrian said. “And one here.” She pointed to her neck. “Though I couldn’t see what it was exactly.” Taking several, calming breaths, she frowned at the floor. “He looked good. The bonehead.”

      Olivia looked as if she was trying very hard not to smile. “You know...this could very well be a good thing.”

      Adrian’s frown deepened as she saw the gleam in Olivia’s eye. “Don’t even think about it.”

      Again, Olivia’s shoulders lifted as she feigned innocence. “What am I thinking?”

      “That this is Briar and Cole all over again and you’re going to fix James and me up and we’re going to spend the rest of our lives driving each other crazy.” Adrian rose and walked to the door. “It’s not gonna happen for me, Liv. Especially not with a deadbeat asshole like James Bracken.”

      Olivia turned to watch her walk out. “Aren’t you just a little bit curious about what he’s been up to all this time?”

      “No,” Adrian replied. “And you know why? Because he left. He had better things to do than stick around and be with me. Why should I care what he’s done with his life or made of it?”

      “I don’t know. For Kyle, maybe?”

      Adrian’s hackles rose. Then she realized it wasn’t so much a low blow on Olivia’s part to say so as it was clear-cut sense. Kyle knew that Radley wasn’t his real father. Adrian had worked to find the right time and the right words to tell him just that. She’d told him very little about the man who had fathered him. She’d believed there was little chance James and Kyle would ever meet so she had let Kyle’s imagination fill in the blanks.

      Every so often, Kyle would ask a question about his father...questions Adrian didn’t know how to answer. Even though she’d remained ambiguous through the years, she knew that Kyle’s curiosity about his paternal heritage was a barely contained bud she didn’t have the heart to suppress completely.

      Olivia trailed Adrian from the office into the hall as she headed for the back door that led out onto the inn’s lawn behind her greenhouse. “What’re you going to do?”

      “I don’t know,” Adrian said wearily. Damn it, she had enough to worry about on a day-to-day basis without a dilemma this size obstructing life in general. “I’ll...think of something. I have to.” She stopped, propping the door open with her shoulder and knee as she glanced back. She noted the way Olivia was leaning against the wall, the bags under her eyes. “Is Gerald home?”

      “Yeah, writing. Why?”

      “You should go. Have him take care of you. Seriously. You look like shit.”

      Olivia frowned over the sentiment. “So long as we’re being honest...does it strike you as coincidence that James is moving in next door to you?”

      “What do you mean?”

      Olivia lifted a shoulder. “Maybe he already knows what you don’t want him to know. Maybe he’s trying to edge his way back into your life—to be a dad, a man. Not the screwup he was eight years ago.”

      Adrian pressed her lips inward, rubbing them together as she thought back to their abrupt reunion. James had seemed as surprised to see her as she was him. Though, could Olivia be right? Did James know something about Kyle already? The thought made Adrian’s heart race like something preyed upon.

      There was no way anyone was going to get to Kyle. There was no way anyone was edging their way into her life and taking her son from her.

      Adrian raised her chin. “If that is the case, then he can kiss his chances goodbye. It’d take a heck of a lot more than a new house to convince me that James Bracken has become an honest man, much less daddy material.”

       CHAPTER THREE

      ADRIAN CARLTON. UNBELIEVABLE.

      After the movers left him alone with the boxes and furniture, James went over to the little cottage next door. It was a charming yellow clapboard house with a well-tended yard and picket fence. He knocked on the red-painted door a few times, then returned home, disappointed, when no one answered.

      She must have gotten home late that night. He hadn’t seen or heard a car pull in. And she must have left early the next morning, too, because after he rose, showered and had what he could find for breakfast in the nearly empty pantry, he’d gone over again to knock. No answer.

      Put off by the fact that she had evaded him again, James got in his sportster and drove into town. The garage on Section Street was another work in progress. Still, it was in better shape than the house. It was an old service station in desperate need of a paint job and some TLC. James had wanted it from the moment he heard it was for sale.

      He’d already had several of his old cars brought down from North Carolina, some favorites he had collected over the years of good fortune. He pulled in next to the cherry-red Shelby he had bought to replace the one his father owned—the one James had plowed hood first into the office of Carlton Nurseries. As he got out of the sportster and walked around the Shelby, his hand automatically reached out to graze the restored hood. He veered around the tow truck the previous garage owner had generously left him and, digging the keys from the pocket of his worn jeans, rounded the front of the building.

      Bending over, he unlocked the latch at the bottom of the steel door and, grabbing it from the bottom, shoved it up over his head. The door rolled up and bright morning sunlight spilled into the garage, revealing the automotive and mechanic’s tools James had already started to arrange around the room. Taking off his sunglasses, he moved past rolling toolboxes, a couple of jacks, the electric car lift he’d recently spent a weekend installing and even a rough-hewn table covered in wrenches,

Скачать книгу