LITMIR.BIZ

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an idea something was different about me.”

      He supposed she’d missed her period and was just too much of a lady to say it in front of him.

      “Then what happened?” he asked.

      “I ignored what everybody always says about keeping the bride and groom away from each other before the ceremony. It’s supposed to be bad luck if you see one another at that point, right? But I rushed to his dressing room, anyway.” She fidgeted with the edge of her sweater. “He wasn’t alone.”

      Jared tensed up.

      Annette noticed. “I see you guessed it. I wasn’t the only member of the bridal party who was saying ‘I do’ that day. And the worst part of it was that she was a friend. A good one, I thought.”

      “Annette...”

      “No, don’t be sad for me.” She tugged down the sleeves of her sweater, wrapping her hands in them, making her appear more soft and vulnerable. “Something came over me at that moment, just as she was fixing her dress and he was telling her to get out. I knew deep down that I could never love him after that. I felt stupid because I’d never even guessed he’d do something so awful.”

      “You’re not stupid.”

      “Okay, maybe ignorant is the better word because I never had all the information I needed about him. Looking back, I should’ve known that he was staying out late for more than oil company meetings with his family. Or that he was taking midnight calls in his study from more than business partners. Maybe I didn’t want to believe anything was wrong and I ignored the details.”

      Jared couldn’t believe any man could be so idiotic as to play a woman like Annette. But maybe Casey, his ex-wife’s husband, had thought something similar about him.

      Annette said, “I called the wedding off then and there. Turns out that Brett didn’t have the same conclusion in mind.”

      “He wanted to go through with it, even after that?”

      “Yes. He actually tried to justify himself. He told me that his father had been doing it for years and his mom didn’t seem to mind. ‘Everyone does it,’ he said. It was all very Kennedy-esque.” She laughed shortly. “Then there was the topper—he tried to apologize for me seeing him in the act.”

      It struck Jared that she had a maturity that went beyond her years. Maybe that came with the class she carried, even in a small-town waitressing uniform.

      “I imagine,” Jared said, “that you put him in his place.”

      “I did.” Her face went pink, but she didn’t add any more.

      Something about her reaction made a protective streak flash through him, but when she got to her feet before he could go over to help her up, he realized that Annette didn’t need any help from anyone.

      And that was fine by him, seeing as how knowing this much about her lent him a sense of responsibility that hadn’t been there before. It was a strange feeling for a man who’d never wanted any of it in his life.

      She strolled over to the bassinet, just as if she hadn’t revealed anything about herself to him. “You did a great job. Thank you so much for everything.”

      “It was nothing.” But that wasn’t true. This afternoon had been something.

      When she smiled up at him, it was as if his bones turned to hot water, which was apt considering that, if he got too much deeper into her, that’s what he’d be in.

      Hot, scalding, bubbling water that was likely to strip him bare.

      “You have that journal with you?” she asked.

      “It’s in my coat pocket.”

      “Mind if I read it while you see to the garden?”

      “Not at all.” He absently stroked the whiskers on his chin. “There’s something I was going to mention about that garden, though.”

      “What?”

      “I’m afraid I’ll make a mess of it.”

      She widened her gaze. “How much of a mess?”

      “A mess that might have me repotting and replanting.”

      She didn’t answer for a moment, and he saw his chances at finding any more Tony Amati relics circling a drain. He even wondered if he should start knocking on her neighbors’ doors to see if they wouldn’t mind a stranger making a disaster zone out of their own backyards.

      But a second later, she was smiling at him again. “Your peace of mind is far more important than some herbs. Dig away.”

      Jared never tolerated big shows of emotion, but he definitely felt a victorious inner fist pump inside of him now.

      “Great. Thanks, Annette.” He had the grace to seem sheepish. “Truth is, I have pots and tools from Gran’s in the back of my truck already.”

      Her eyes sparkled, just as they did when they were in the diner across the counter from each other. But this time, there was no barrier between them, and his heart started doing a panicked, stimulated dance.

      “You can predict what I’ll do that easily?” she asked.

      He managed a small laugh because she was leaning closer to him.

      And when she was just inches from him, he thought—no, he wished—that she would stand on her toes to plant a kiss on his cheek. The very idea seemed to shine in her eyes.

      Or maybe that’s just what he wanted to see there.

      His pulse seemed to fill the slight space between them.

      Bang, bang. Each sound echoed against her, then right back at him, hitting him hard in the chest, the belly.

      But then she blinked, as if she were coming out of a spell, and he did, too, barring his chest with his arms out of a lack of any better response.

      She laughed, cutting the tension, and started to walk out of the room. But then she turned back, her voice a bare, nearly shaking whisper, as if she’d suddenly realized that she shouldn’t have told him a thing about herself.

      “Jared, Brett doesn’t know where I am.”

      That protective streak reared up again. Good God. She’d run away from Brett?

      She was watching him closely. “You’re going to keep my secret, just like I’ll keep the one about Tony’s journal, right? Because I’m going to have to lie to the rest of this town. I don’t want Brett to ever find me.”

      That vulnerability he’d only now discovered in her clutched at his rarely used heart, and he couldn’t help giving himself over to her, just this once.

      His voice was as quiet as hers when he said, “I won’t say a word.”

      Chapter Four

      As the clouds parted to reveal a splash of afternoon sun, Jared tipped back his hat and got to his haunches, surveying the garden.

      And the mess.

      He’d started near the white picket fence, which lined the little concrete patio and herb-spotted patch of dirt that Annette called a backyard. It’d been obvious where she’d been digging when she’d come upon the journal—almost right up against the fence itself, near a dying butterfly bush that she’d told Jared she wanted to take out. It seemed that, when the fence had been put in, the workers had just missed hitting Tony’s journal with the posts.

      So Jared had started there.

      Yup, he’d been honest with Annette when he’d said he was going to do some damage, far more honest than he’d been a couple of hours ago, when he’d told her, I don’t know a thing about what it’s like to have a child.

      All the time he’d been working, the lie had stabbed at

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