Renegade. Kaitlyn Rice

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СКАЧАТЬ he said. “I was only trying to stop you from biting your nails.”

      “Just don’t touch me,” she said, and her loss of composure sent her eyes careering down his body, over the ribbed white undershirt that clung to a muscled chest and revealed, when his arms were raised to the cross-beam, an inch of enticing bare skin at his flat abdomen, just above the low-slung jeans.

      She pulled her shocked eyes up to his glittering ones. The realization that she was drooling over her family’s nemesis didn’t help at all. Clenching her hands into fists, Tracy said, “Otto wasn’t the only one who wanted you gone.”

      “Oh, really?”

      She held his gaze.

      “Did you want me gone?” This was said in the same patient voice he’d used when she was a scrawny girl and he was her not-so-secret crush.

      “I was a kid. What did I know?”

      “You knew me. Did you try to stand up for me?”

      She started picking the paint off the swing set, too, thinking back to the day she’d found out Riley was gone. The phone calls had come first. The high school geometry teacher had called the Gilbert house, looking for Tracy’s older sister, Karen. Riley’s basketball coach had called his house. Neither teenager had made it to school that day, the teachers reported. And in retrospect, no one in either family could remember seeing them the night before.

      Within a half hour, the two families had discovered empty closets, missing personal items and not a word of explanation.

      Everyone had looked to Tracy then, of course. Karen had been seeing Riley for a couple of months, but Tracy had been his buddy since days of training wheels and tree houses. None of the parents seemed to know how hurt Tracy had been by the first betrayal—when Karen had sought Riley’s attention and he had all too willingly given it.

      They didn’t know how left out Tracy had felt every time her best friend parked near the train trestle to do who-knew-what with her sister.

      They’d expected Tracy to know everything.

      She hadn’t known anything.

      Somehow, that seemed to be the biggest betrayal of all.

      “Did you defend me?” Riley prompted, grabbing her hand.

      She probably would have if she hadn’t been nursing a broken heart. She tried to release her hand again, but he held it firmly, confiscating her attention at the same time.

      “How could I?” she asked. “You left with Karen before she finished high school. Otto said—”

      “Since when would you believe anything my father said?”

      Being close to Riley tangled Tracy’s insides like one of Claus’s pilfered balls of yarn. She needed to escape. Wiggling her hand loose, she said, “Since you proved him right.”

      “The people of this never-never land sent me out on the plank before they heard a single word in my defense.”

      Tracy edged past him, toward the fence. “You had no business taking my sister to California with you.”

      “Maybe she was ready to leave,” Riley said from behind her. “And maybe I was a convenient ticket out.”

      “People haven’t forgotten.”

      “Then people need to enrich their lives.”

      He sounded closer. Tracy turned her head and saw that he was following her across the grass with her forgotten thermos. She scrambled over the fence and turned around. “My mom’s health has been fragile,” she said. “I don’t want her to be upset.”

      “Don’t worry,” Riley said with a smile that seemed too sincere to be believable. “I was planning to walk over and visit your mom and stepdad later this afternoon.”

      “You can’t.”

      He shifted his weight. “I’ve been gone for over thirteen years and I haven’t seen your sister in just as long. Your parents will listen to reason.”

      “No, I mean they’re not there,” Tracy said. “They’re on vacation. Dad took Mom to visit relatives.”

      Riley gave her a long assessing look, followed by a nod. “Gran said your mom had been in the hospital. Is she okay?”

      Tracy felt comfort touch her heart as Riley seemed to slide back into his old role as friend. Until she watched him step closer and recognized how easily he could hop the fence and catch her waist between his potent-looking hands.

      The thought was provocative in more ways than one.

      She stepped back. “Mom had a scare with pneumonia, but she’s better now.”

      “That’s good.” Riley’s crooked smile seemed too open, and he was cupping her tea thermos between his hands with a disturbing familiarity. The last thing she needed was to tie herself up with him again, in friendship or anything else.

      He was a stranger now. She wanted him to remain one.

      Tracy stared at her thermos, willing him to hand it across so she could leave and sort out her thoughts.

      A little more than a year ago, Riley’s father had been caught embezzling funds from the company where he worked. Although that particular news hadn’t been shocking, other things had been.

      For one thing, Vanessa had seemed unaffected by her husband’s troubles. She’d filed for divorce and headed south to a friend’s house in Oklahoma City just two days after Otto’s prison term began. For another, Tracy’s parents had learned that Riley’s grandmother actually owned the house.

      Lydia Stephenson was quirky but harmless. Since she was content in her retirement-village apartment, the house had been left vacant. Tracy’s mother claimed that sometimes she heard the old place sighing in relief. She’d been looking forward to welcoming new neighbors. It was a good thing she wasn’t home this weekend. Tracy could break the news gently.

      Riley rested her thermos on top of the fence post and shot a glance down Tracy’s body again. “Are you going to tell me why you’re hanging out in my backyard?”

      “I came to see you,” Tracy said. “I rang the doorbell and—”

      “It’s busted. My father was a slob.”

      Tracy bit back a retort about Riley having faults of his own. “—And when no one answered, I came back to admire the view. It’s better from your yard.”

      Riley grinned. “You can swing on my swing set anytime, little girl.”

      Tracy’s regard touched on his mouth and dropped down his torso again. When the blood circled back round to her brain and she homed in on his gleaming eyes, she sighed, resisting another urge to chomp her nails.

      “What do you want?” he asked in a voice that was in no way like the one he’d used when she was a child. This voice was soft, all right, but it was rich with suggestion.

      She СКАЧАТЬ