The House On The Creek by Sarah Remy Page A

didn’t reach to pull her in again, but his fingers lingered on her arm.
     
    Abby remembered the clasp of his grip around her wrist three days earlier, and wanted to reassure.
     
    She couldn’t let herself. Because he had broken her young heart so long ago, and even after so many years she still remembered the grinding pain of that betrayal.
     
    “I,” she swallowed, hard. “I haven’t finished explaining, yet.”
     
    “I’ve heard enough, Abby. The rest can wait.”
     
    She closed her eyes against the hunger on his face, and shook her head quickly. “Everett. You called me your father’s whore.” That particular recollection was less painful than a young girl’s shattered heart, but it still smarted enough to make her flush up again in remembered temper.
     
    “I said I was sorry.”
     
    “You didn’t. You never said it.”
     
    “I am. I am sorry, Abby.”
     
    “Then you believe me?”
     
    He hesitated a fraction of an instant, and then nodded. “Abby, please. Come inside.”
     
    It as only a fraction of an instant, but it nearly broke Abby’s heart all over again. Blinking back foolish tears, she made herself look at her watch, and was both relieved and astounded to see how much time had passed.
     
    “I have to go. Chris hates it when I’m late.”
     
    “Abby.”
     
    “Not now. Later. Just, not now.” She wouldn’t let him see how much he could still hurt her.
     
    “All right, later.” He followed her into the kitchen. “Tonight. Let me take you to dinner.”
     
    “Chris and I already have plans tonight.”
     
    “Lunch, then. Tomorrow.”
     
    “I’m working.”
     
    He stopped her in the hall, and stepped across hardwood before she could reach the door. Fading sunlight gilded his face and made Abby shiver.
     
    He was beautiful. Gawky Everett Anderson had grown beautiful and his old wildness, his awkward tenderness, had changed into something she wanted to touch, to taste, to sample.
     
    He was almost beautiful enough to make her forget the past.
     
    “Lord,” she breathed, and reached past him to the door.
     
    “Abby. Dinner tomorrow. You owe me that much.”
     
    “I owe you?” She whirled on him, ready and willing to shout. Maybe a good, wholesome fight would clear the lust from her belly.
     
    But he was grinning, so obviously and fleetingly at ease with himself and the world around him that Abby wanted to freeze the moment and keep it forever. “Hell, yes, you owe me. Sex with Abby Ross in the back seat of her ma’s Mercedes should have been mine. You gave it away without a thought to my wounded feelings.”
     
    “You left me.”
     
    “And now I’ve come back. And you owe me dinner, at the very least.” His eyebrows quirked upward, self mocking and expectant.
     
    She laughed in spite of herself. He let her, opening the door and escorting her onto the front stoop. While she snorted, he retrieved her work boots and set them at her feet.
     
    “Dinner.” He prompted. “Tomorrow night. I’ll pick you up at seven.”
     
    “I’ll have to check with my sitter,” she protested through fits of mirth and the nagging of her conscious.
     
    “Then do it. And Abby, book the sitter until morning.”
     
    That stopped her laughter. “I can’t.”
     
    “You can.”
     
    He was all arrogance once again, but Abby thought she could glimpse a speck of awkwardness beneath the mask.
     
    She couldn’t refuse him, not when he watched her so carefully and, she realized, hopefully. So she chickened out, grabbed her boots, and ran down the front steps. Barefoot all the way to her car.
     
    She wouldn’t let herself look back at him as she cranked the Mercedes to life. But she knew he watched her until the woods closed around her mother’s car.
     

Chapter Seven
     
    “SHIT!”
     
    “Christopher!” Horrified, Abby shoved breakfast dishes into the kitchen sink, and turned to stare at her son.
     
    Unrepentant, Chris glared into the backpack he’d dropped on the