His Rebel Heart. Amber Leigh Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ out of sports. He dropped out of life in general. He partied by night, every night, and slept through class by day. The teachers hadn’t known what to do with him—neither had his friends. He skirted the ones who reached out and meant well, retreating to the center of a darker, more troublemaking circuit. The drinkers, smokers, joyriders and general hell-raisers.

      Which had led him to another car crash, this one at Carlton Nurseries. James was still a couple of months underage at the time of the second accident so he was tried as a minor and sentenced to community service, repairing the damage he’d caused and toiling the summer away under Adrian’s parents’ watchful eyes.

      Adrian remembered the exact moment she first felt the walls of her heart tremble for him. It was an especially hot day and she’d been trying to move heavy bags of fertilizer from the bed of her father’s truck to the storeroom. She hadn’t heard James come up behind her; he hadn’t said a word. All she felt was a hand on her arm, gentle, maneuvering her out of the way. She stepped back, saw it was him and opened her mouth to tell him that she could handle it when, shirtless, without so much as a grunt, he’d hefted a bag over his shoulder.

      He’d turned, and his gaze met hers—that wild, blue gaze. There had been beads of sweat on his face, crawling down his chest. He’d looked a shade pale, but there was a determined set to his jaw and, in those eyes, a kind of desperation. She hadn’t known what it meant, but as attraction and answering emotions swam beneath the surface of her skin, she hadn’t been able to do anything but step aside, allowing him to pass and do the chore for her.

      They worked like that for several days—wordlessly, side by side. Close enough for her to begin to feel the sadness and torment leaking off him in waves. The helpless boy he’d been at his father’s funeral was clearly trying to fight past his pretense of badassery and James was wrestling with it, the struggle heightened now without the aid of liquor or drugs.

      It wasn’t until another moment, when Adrian found James hiding in her parents’ barn, that her empathy turned into understanding. James was slouched on the bed of a tractor, flicking a Zippo lighter and watching the flame burn and die, burn and die, over and over again. She remembered how ill he’d looked. His skin had a gray tinge, there was a sheen of sweat cloaking his face and neck and a noticeable tic in his jaw. His foot tapped restlessly against the dusty concrete.

      He wasn’t coping well with the withdrawals. She knew it as soon as he raised his gaze to hers and again she saw the desperation and more than a touch of helplessness.

      Unable to help herself, Adrian had taken him by the hand and led him back to the farmhouse. She fixed him a glass of lemonade, watched him drink it and talked herself silly. He began to talk back, haltingly at first. Then their conversation had flowed easily as they emptied the pitcher of lemonade. Adrian even managed to work a smile out of him. He looked loads better, the desperation and helplessness vanquished. The shadows under his eyes weren’t quite so dark as they locked on hers across the room and snagged her breath.

      His effect on her had been disconcerting, but she’d held that gaze, thrown it right back at him. Then Adrian’s mother came into the kitchen and eyed James like a hawk. Adrian quickly ushered him out. As they walked back to the nursery together, James had thanked her.

      That was the day they became friends. It was less than a week later that she drove him home and he admitted that it was the anniversary of his father’s death. She comforted him. Somehow his mouth found hers and he kissed her. By God, had he kissed her. And their relationship, as it was, had blazed on from there like the doomed supernova it was.

      The summer romance ended abruptly when her father was attacked.

      It was after hours at the nursery. James had crawled up to her second-floor room in the farmhouse and woken her. Sometime in the early hours of morning, he had snuck out while she slept, spent from his loving.

      The next day brought upheaval.

      During the night, her father had been assaulted by an unknown assailant. All Van Carlton had been able to remember as he lay in a hospital bed with his head and arm heavily bandaged was that his attacker had been wearing a letterman jacket.

      All signs pointed to James. Her mother had been the first to say so. The police dragged him from his father’s moored boat, where he had been sleeping, down to the station to question him. When Adrian found out that James had been arrested, she drove to the police station and, demanding to see the detective on the case, made it known that James had an alibi.

      James was released. Her parents were shocked and disappointed by the fact that she and James had been together. It had taken her father months to look Adrian in the eye again. The real perpetrator was never caught.

      As the weeks wore on and she neither saw nor heard anything from James, Adrian became deeply disturbed. When she went to his mother’s house, Mrs. Bracken informed Adrian that when his community service time was over, James had skipped town.

      Adrian waited for word from James, becoming more frantic when she realized she was pregnant. That franticness eventually warped into devastation. From there, her own brand of desperation had taken over. There could have been no other explanation as to why she married a man like Radley after knowing so little about him. All that had seemed to matter at the time was that he appeared to be a kind man. At her weakest point, she’d latched onto that kindness in the face of her parents’ deep disapproval.

      It had taken years for Adrian to dig herself out of that hole of bad decisions, to regain the respect of her parents, her peers, to put the abuse she’d suffered at Radley’s hands behind her and—hardest of all—to forget how hopeless she had felt when she realized the boy she loved would not be there for her, even after all she had done for him.

      Eventually Adrian’s heart did harden and turn cold. Thoughts of James Bracken and the hot summer they spent together grew fewer and farther between as she threw herself into making a new life for Kyle and herself.

      She never counted on seeing James Bracken again, much less his moving into the house next door.

      Growing restless once again, Adrian paced the shop before shouldering out the front door.

      Spring air greeted her. Drinking it in, she veered around the silver buckets of blossoms and the chalkboard easel she’d set out announcing today’s sale. By the time she reached the worn wooden door of Tavern of the Graces, she was muttering to herself.

      The bar was empty. Her footsteps echoed in the absence of boisterous conversation and jukebox rock that usually blasted through the tavern. Knowing where to find her friend Olivia, Adrian made her way behind the counter and past the swinging doors. The first door to the left in the hallway beyond was open, the light streaming out.

      Blowing a relieved breath, Adrian entered Olivia’s office with its cluttered desk, large wall safe and sagging, green couch. “I have a problem,” she announced, then stopped short, feet halting when she saw her friend sitting in the desk chair, hands on her knees, head hanging.

      “Liv?” Adrian asked, alarmed when Olivia didn’t look up or stir. “Are you okay?”

      Olivia lifted a hand. The fingers trembled a bit. “Fine. I just...oh, crap.” Her head lowered farther between her knees, her blond curls falling forward as she braced her hands on the arms of the chair. “Hang back... I may hurl on your shoes.”

      “What’s wrong?” Adrian asked, taking a step into the office.

      “Oh, just sick as a damned dog.”

      “The flu’s СКАЧАТЬ