Bombshell For The Black Sheep. Janice Maynard

Чтение книги онлайн.

       One

      Hartley Tarleton had made a lot of mistakes in his life, but walking away from Fiona James—twice—had to be the dumbest. He’d had his reasons. Extenuating circumstances. Familial obligations. Still, he’d handled things badly. The woman in question was not likely to be in a conciliatory mood. Even worse, here he was—proverbial hat in hand—to ask for a favor.

      Despite a host of misgivings, he parked across the street and a few cars down from her neatly kept bungalow-style home. The middle-class Charleston neighborhood had aged gently, preserving the best of the city’s Carolina charm in a price range single people and young families could afford. Fiona was a landscape painter. A very talented one with a quickly burgeoning reputation. Hopefully, her starving-artist years were behind her.

      Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, Hartley rehearsed his speech. The home and the woman drew him, creating a burning ache in his chest. He’d spent two nights in that house, though not in succession. For reasons he wouldn’t examine too closely, he recalled every detail.

      On difficult days this past year, he had calmed himself by remembering the vintage dinette set in Fiona’s tiny breakfast nook. The table was yellow, speckled with gray. He had imagined Fiona, with her naturally curly red hair and wide-set gray-blue eyes, sitting in one of the chairs with the chrome legs, a sketch pad in front of her.

      Slowly, he got out of the car and stretched. This momentary procrastination was unlike him. If anything, he erred on the impulsive side. When he was a teenager, people criticized those tendencies as a sign of immaturity. He preferred to think of himself as grabbing the bull by the horns. He liked controlling his own destiny.

      A trickle of sweat ran down the center of his back. The day was ridiculously hot and humid. Maybe he had been gone too long. Charleston was his home. Why then, did he feel like an interloper?

      His heart hammered in his chest as he crossed the street and walked up the path. He had worried that Fiona might be out and about, but her carefully restored VW Bug sat in the driveway. The car was cotton-candy pink with tiny blue seahorses scattered across the hood. It was a whimsical vehicle, and perfectly suited to the imagination of an artist.

      On the porch, he loosened his tie and told himself he wasn’t going to lose it. Grief and a host of other emotions bombarded him. His throat was desert dry. Grimly, he reached out and rang the buzzer.