LITMIR.BIZ

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       If he wanted Monroe’s, Seamus would give it to him. If Deuce wanted the moon and stars and a couple of meteors for good measure, Seamus would surely book a seat on the next rocket launch to go get them.

       The prodigal son had returned, and the surrogate daughter might just be left out in the cold.

       Kendra squared her shoulders and studied the face she’d once loved so much it hurt her heart just to look at him. Deuce Monroe could not waltz back into Rockingham and wreck her life…again.

       But she’d never give him the satisfaction of knowing he had any power—then or now.

       “You can follow me over there,” she said with such believable indifference that she had to mentally pat herself on the back.

       “You can ride with me,” he replied.

       “No thanks.” How far could she push indifference? Didn’t he remember what had happened the last time they’d been in a car together?

       “You can trust me.” He winked at her. “I’ve only been banned from race tracks, not the street.”

       Of course, he was referring to his well-publicized car crash, not their past.

       “I just meant that I saw your father yesterday. You haven’t seen him in years. No doubt you’ll want to stay longer than I do.”

       “Depends on how I’m received.” He turned toward the door, but shot her a cocky grin. “It’s been a while.”

       “No kidding.”

       The grin widened as he added another one of those endless full-body eye exams that tested her ability to stand without sinking into the knees that had turned to water. “Is that your way of saying you missed me, Kendra?”

       If any cells in her body had remained at rest, they woke up now and went to work making her flush and ache and tingle.

       She managed to clear her throat. “I’m sure this is impossible for you to comprehend, Deuce, but somehow, some way, without formal therapy or controlled substances, every single resident in the town of Rockingham, Massachusetts, has managed to survive your long absence. Every. Single. One.”

       He just laughed softly and gave her a non-verbal touché with those delicious brown eyes. “Come on, Ken-doll. I’ll drive. Do you have everything you need?”

       No. She needed blinders to keep from staring at him, and a box of tissue to wipe the drool. Throw in some steel armor for her heart and a fail-safe chastity belt, and then she’d be good to go.

       But he didn’t need to know that. Any more than he needed to know why she’d dropped out of Harvard in the middle of her junior year.

       “I have everything I need.” She held the envelope in front of her chest and gave him her brightest smile. “This is all that matters.”

       She couldn’t forget that.

      “SO WHAT THE HELL happened to this place?” Deuce threw a glance to his right, ostensibly at the cutesy antique stores and art galleries that lined High Castle Boulevard, but he couldn’t resist a quick glimpse at the passenger in his rented Mustang.

       Because she looked a lot better than the changes in his hometown. Her jeans-clad legs were crossed and she leaned her elbow out the open window, her head casually tipped against her knuckles as the spring breeze lifted strands of her shoulder-length blond hair.

       “What happened? Diana Lynn Turner happened,” she answered.

       The famous Diana Lynn again. “Don’t tell me she erected the long pink walls and endless acres of housing developments I saw on the way into town. Everything’s got a name. Rocky Shores. Point Place. Shoreline Estates. Since when did we have estates in Rockingham?”

       “Since Diana Lynn arrived,” she said, with a note of impatience at the fact that he didn’t quite get the Power Of Diana thing.

       “What is she? A one-man construction company?”

       Kendra laughed softly, a sound so damn girly that it caused an unexpected twist in his gut. “She didn’t build the walls or houses, but she brought in the builders, convinced the Board of Selectmen to influence the Planning Commission, then started her own real estate company and marketed the daylights out of Rockingham, Mass.”

       “Why?”

       “For a number of reasons.” She held up her index finger. “One, because Cape Cod is booming as a Hamptons-type destination and we want Rockingham to get a piece of the action instead of just being a stop en route to more interesting places.” She raised a second finger. “Two, because the town coffers were almost empty and the schools were using outdated books and the stoplights needed to be computerized and the one policeman in town was about to retire and we had no money to attract a new force.” Before point number three, he closed his fist around her fingers and gently pushed her hand down.

       “I get the idea. Progress.” He reluctantly let go of her silky-smooth skin. “So Diana Lynn isn’t a gold digger.”

       She let out a quick laugh. “She’s a gold digger all right. She’s dug the gold right out of Rockingham and put it back in those empty coffers.”

       He was silent for a minute as he turned onto Beachline Road and caught the reflection of April sunshine on the deep, blue waters of Nantucket Sound. Instead of the unbroken vista he remembered, the waterfront now featured an enclave of shops, which had to be brand-new even though they sported that salt-weathered look of New England. Fake salt-weathered, he realized. Like when they banged nicks into perfectly good furniture and called it “distressed.”

       He didn’t like Diana Lynn Turner. Period. “So, just how far into him are her claws?”

       “Her claws?” Kendra’s voice rose in an amused question. “She doesn’t have claws, Deuce. And if you’d bothered to come home once in a while to see your father in the past few years, you’d know that.”

       He tapped the brakes at a light he could have sworn was not on the road when he was learning to drive. “That didn’t take long.”

       “What?”

       “The guilt trip.”

       She blew out a little breath. “You’ll get no guilt from me, Deuce.”

       Not even for not calling after a marathon of unforgettable sex? He didn’t believe her. “No guilt? What would you call that last comment?”

       As she shifted in her seat, he noticed her back had straightened and the body language of detachment she was trying so hard to project was rapidly disappearing. “Just a fact, Deuce. You haven’t seen your dad for a long, long—”

       “Correction. I haven’t been in Rockingham for a long, long time. Dad came to every game the Snakes played in Boston. And he came out to Vegas a few times, too.”

       “And you barely had time to have dinner with him.”

       This time he exhaled, long and slow. He didn’t expect her to understand. He didn’t expect anyone to understand. Especially the man he was about to go see. Dinner with Dad was about all the motivational speaking he could stand. The endless coaching, the pushing, the drive. Deuce liked to do things his way. And that was rarely the way his father wanted them done.

       Staying away was just easier.

       “I talk to your brother Jack every once in a while,” he said, as though that connection to Rockingham showed he wasn’t quite the Missing Person she was making him out to be.

       “Really?” She seemed surprised. “He never mentions that.”

       “He seems to like his job.” It was the first thing he could think of to prove he really did talk to Jack.

       She nodded. “He was born to be in advertising, that’s for sure. He’s married to that company, I swear.”

      

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