LITMIR.BIZ

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when I left…and too ashamed to call you again after your mother had so soundly rejected me.”

      “You sure as hell should have been ashamed.”

      “It took me a while to get over…what happened.” Her eyes darkened with pain. “But when I finally called you again, you didn’t want to talk to me. No—you were cold and arrogant.”

      Because he’d been afraid he’d break if he spoke to her, because he’d been trying to be faithful to Lizzie, damn it.

      “I don’t see why you’re dredging all this up now, Cole.”

      Maybe because nearly a year had passed since Lizzie’s death, and he finally felt free to pursue whatever the hell he wanted. Because Maddie was here, looking even lovelier and more vulnerable than before. His reaction wasn’t logical. He knew that. But somehow his involvement with Maddie wasn’t over. Seeing her again had thoroughly convinced him of that.

      “So, what was in those letters you wrote me after I refused to talk to you?” he asked. He remembered too well signing for those two certified envelopes and then angrily tossing them in a drawer and telling himself he had to forget them.

      Maddie gasped and lost even more color. “Didn’t you read my letters?”

      “No. I signed for them, but I couldn’t read them, for the same reason I couldn’t talk to you on the phone—because of Lizzie. Maybe someone like you can’t understand this—but I would have felt like I was cheating on her if anything you said tempted me. Then she died, and I couldn’t read them out of loyalty to her. She’d been my wife. What had you ever done—except jilt me for Turner?”

      Maddie drew in a sharp, anguished breath. Licking her lips, she swallowed hard. “Okay,” she finally said. “You just signed for them…. Well, whatever I said in those letters can’t matter now,” she said. “You owe me nothing. And I owe you nothing.”

      “I’m beginning to see they’re a piece in a puzzle I need to explore in more depth.”

      “No! The past, which includes you, doesn’t matter now!” But her voice shook. “I—I was nothing to you.”

      “How can you say that and act like I mistreated you—when you ran off with Turner?”

      “You should thank me. I set you free so you could marry your precious Lizzie and have everyone in Yella think the best of you. And that’s exactly what happened.”

      He remembered resenting how anxious his mother had been to push Lizzie on him after Maddie ran off and his father died. Maybe marrying Lizzie because he’d been sad and lonely and overwhelmed, and because his mother and the whole town had thought they’d make a perfect couple, hadn’t been the smartest thing he’d ever done. Not that he could tell Maddie that he’d made bigger mistakes than sleeping with her.

      “What did you write in those damn letters?” he demanded, really curious.

      “Nothing that could possibly matter now,” she said, too casually. “I was young and foolish. Money was tight. My girlhood fantasy got the best of my better judgment. You know, poor girl wins rich boyfriend after all…lives happily ever after with him in his big, white, legendary ranch house…and then everybody in Yella looks up to her. Some foolishness like that.”

      “I think it’s high time I finally read them. I’ll be the judge of what’s foolish.”

      Her brows flew together. “You still have them?”

      “I threw them in a desk drawer, in my office, up at my big, white house, as you put it. They should be there…that is, if Lizzie put them back.”

      “Lizzie?”

      “On her deathbed, Lizzie confessed she’d found them when she was tidying up in my office and had steamed them open and read them. She said she resealed them and put them back. She made me promise to read them after she was gone, said I owed you that. And then she said she was sorry, truly sorry, she hadn’t told me about reading them before…but that she’d been too jealous to do so, too afraid of losing me. Imagine what a heel I felt like for having made her jealous over someone like you. Out of respect for her, I haven’t looked for them since her death.”

      Maddie’s gaze was fixed on Cinnamon. “Well, there’s no need to read them now,” she said softly. “I’ll go….”

      “I’m not finished,” he said. “I told Lizzie those letters didn’t matter, that they never had mattered, because I’d married her, and she’d been the most wonderful wife a man could wish for.”

      “You were lucky then,” Maddie said wistfully. “I hope to be as lucky…someday soon.”

      He hadn’t felt lucky. He’d felt guilt-stricken and low for never having loved Lizzie as she’d deserved because of Maddie.

      “She always loved you. From the time she first saw you,” Maddie said softly.

      “Yes,” he muttered, familiar guilt washing over him. He’d broken Lizzie’s heart to pursue Maddie in secret. After that first kiss in the barn, he’d burned for the town’s bad girl so fiercely, he hadn’t been able to help himself.

      And now Maddie was back, as beautiful as ever. He still wanted her.

      “Maybe it’s good we saw each other today, so we can face the fact that the past is over,” she said. “I’m sorry I ran off without saying goodbye. I was young, immature…” Her voice was even and polite, the voice she would use to console or dismiss a stranger. “It’s nice knowing you had a wonderful marriage, and I’m truly sorry for your loss. It can’t be easy…even now. Cole, I wish you well. I truly want you to be happy.”

      “Thank you,” he muttered ungraciously.

      “Someday you’ll find another woman. Maybe she’ll remind you of Lizzie. You’ll have children, build a family together….”.

      Her voice grew choked and then trailed off awkwardly.

      He didn’t want to be reminded of Lizzie, who had been the bride everyone else had believed would be perfect for him. They’d made each other very unhappy. He’d remained lonely even in marriage.

      “Goodbye, Cole.”

      When Maddie turned to walk away, he watched her slim, denim-clad hips swing and noted the way her damp T-shirt clung to her back.

      Just watching her move with liquid grace as she vanished into the woods had his blood surging like fire in his veins. His breathing felt shallow. He wanted to strip her, to hold her, to kiss her. He wanted her naked and writhing with her legs wrapped around his waist.

      He wanted her—period. Longed for her.

      He’d stay crazy if he let her walk out of his life a second time. At the very least she still owed him some answers.

       Four

      The past, all her secrets, were supposed to be dead and buried. But Cole had her letters! And he’d never read them! He didn’t know about Noah!

      Cole hadn’t rejected Noah as she’d believed. Instead, he hadn’t read her letters because he’d wanted to stay true to his new bride.

      All these years, everything Maddie had thought about him had been wrong.

      She’d hurt him when she’d left him. Imagine that. As she fought her way through the woods, back to Miss Jennie’s house, she wondered why it had never occurred to her that he might have felt that same shredding of the soul that leaving had caused her?

      Because she’d had zero self-esteem. Because she’d been Jesse Ray’s daughter and he’d been a Coleman, and she’d told herself he would believe the worst of her as her mother had.

      Even so, she had tried to call him and explain before leaving Yella. She’d been so hysterical she had called his home, no longer concerned with revealing

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