LITMIR.BIZ

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just hadn’t been able to be nice.

      Of course he had been able to notice the rest of her when she’d stood. To register that there was nothing bad about the body, either. At least as far as he could tell through those shapeless clothes she’d had on. There was a little sway to hips that were just the right width as she’d gone into the office ahead of him, and enough behind the buttons of that boring blouse Charlie was snuggled up to on the countertop to let it be known she wasn’t flat-chested—to make him wonder if he should have untucked his shirt before he’d left home.

      But despite how she looked, despite her cover-up courtesy, he’d still been on his worst behavior.

      So I proved I can be as big a clod as she thinks I am….

      Actually, what was it she’d said when she’d thought he was out of earshot? That the only thing worse than a hayseed was a rude, nasty hayseed.

      Miss Priss could bark back after all.

      That had to go against the dictates of her highfalutin ways now, didn’t it?

      But even though she’d been insulting him, it made him smile to think that he’d gotten a rise out of her.

      Still, the way things had gone the day before were not how he wanted things to be at his sister’s wedding. Mara didn’t deserve that. Hell, if push came to shove, he had to admit that Faith Perry didn’t deserve it, either. She’d never actually done anything to him. So what if he—and the rest of Northbridge—didn’t live up to her standards? That was her problem. Her loss.

      But when it came to him and who he was, he didn’t want to be a jerk. Not even to someone who thought she was better than he was.

      In fact, he might go so far as to prove he was the bigger person and apologize for the way he’d treated her.

      “What would your mom think of that, Charlie?” he asked the pooch at his side. Then he answered his own question, “She’d probably just think she had it coming, huh?”

      Charlie sighed and nuzzled his hand to make him pet her once more. Boone did, wondering if the dog spent every night sleeping with Faith. Right beside her in bed where her hair would be free and so would her body under some filmy little nightgown….

      Jealousy? Was he actually feeling even a tiny pinch envious of a dog?

      Oh, no, uh-uh, he told himself.

      She might be beautiful, but she wasn’t getting to him. Not a chance in hell. He’d never set himself up for that now. No way.

      Not when he’d been so vividly reminded yesterday that it was only blue blood that impressed her.

      And his was as red as it came.

      “Do we have a verdict yet?”

      Faith had stopped by her sister Eden’s house late Monday afternoon on her way to the vet’s office. It was such a beautiful spring day that Eden was sitting outside on her front porch steps when Faith arrived. Faith had an ulterior motive for the visit but was in no hurry, so she’d accepted her sister’s invitation to join her.

      “A verdict?” Faith asked in response to Eden’s question after she’d perched beside her sister on the top porch step. “About what?”

      “Northbridge—if you’re staying forever or for a while, or if you’re already thinking about leaving as soon as cousin Jared’s wedding is over.”

      “I just got here Saturday night,” Faith reminded.

      “And did you bring your whole wardrobe or only enough for a quick trip?”

      Faith knew what her sister was getting at. “I brought enough for a while but not everything I own. The rest is still at the apartment in New Haven that Shu bought as part of the divorce settlement—”

      “So you’re keeping the apartment?”

      “I don’t know yet.”

      “Then there’s the chance that you’ll actually live there?”

      Faith heard her sister’s disappointment. Now that Eden had moved back to Northbridge and married a local cop—Boone Pratt’s brother, Cam—Eden and their other sister, Eve, who also lived in Northbridge, were hoping that Faith would make her home in the small town, too. They’d been trying to persuade Faith for months now and Faith knew Eden was fishing for a sign she had made her decision. But Faith hadn’t and so couldn’t give Eden the answer she was looking for. Or any answer at all, really.

      “I still don’t know what I’m going to do,” Faith said. “There is the apartment in Connecticut and I have an offer to go back to work full-time there if I want to—”

      “With the same party and event planners you were working for when you met Shu—isn’t that what Eve said?”

      “Yes. The Fosters wouldn’t hear of me working when I was married. That wasn’t my role as Shu’s wife. But I just had some dealings with my old cohorts over the plans for the opening of Nedra’s gallery and they said there was a spot for me if I wanted a job.” Nedra was Nedra Carpenter, an old college friend of Faith’s whom Eden had met several times during her visits to Connecticut.

      “But you don’t have to work,” Eden reminded.

      Faith shrugged. “No, I don’t have to. The settlement was beefed up substantially to keep me quiet. But I also don’t know what I’ll do with myself it I don’t work. That’s the problem—I don’t know what I want any more than I know what I’m going to do. I’m hoping to sort through it all here, remember? It was your idea when I visited in January for me to come back, bask in the peace and quiet and see if I could get my bearings again.”

      Faith had come to Northbridge at the start of the year for just a day to Eden’s wedding to briefly touch base with her family when they were in turmoil over the revelation that the grandmother they’d all believed to have run off with a bank robber more than forty years ago had secretly returned to work as a clerk at the dry cleaners. Because Faith had been packing up and leaving her in-laws’ house, one day was all she’d been able to spare. But Eden and Eve had persuaded her to spend some time in Northbridge to regroup once the last loose ends of her divorce were tied up. And the upcoming wedding was the perfect time to do just that.

      “And you haven’t come any closer to getting those bearings between January and now?” Eden asked.

      Faith shrugged again. “It isn’t easy when I find myself questioning everything I’ve been so sure of my whole life. You had the rug pulled out from under you when Alika was killed in the line of duty in Hawaii, you had trouble being able to accept that Cam was a cop, too, and in similar kinds of danger on the job—”

      “That almost seems silly now that I’ve really settled into Northbridge. Sometimes I wonder why we even need cops around here.”

      “Still, as bad as it was to lose Alika, and as hard as it was to get over your fear so you could be with Cam, you never had to doubt your choice of Alika as a husband or doubt the life you two had together. You didn’t have to look back and see that what you thought was real wasn’t and ask yourself if you were blind or stupid or if you’d gone after the wrong thing in the first place. Alika’s death left you afraid of being with another cop, not wondering if you were an idiot who couldn’t see what was right in front of your face for years. But me… I have to wonder if, somehow, I asked for what I got.”

      “Oh, Faith, how could you have asked for what you got?”

      Faith shrugged a third time. “I got what I asked for and the rest came with it.”

      “But what came with it was not what anyone would have asked for or could have expected.”

      “Maybe not—”

      “No maybe about it.”

      “The bottom line, Eden, is that on the surface

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