A Defender's Heart. Tara Quinn Taylor

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      As someone who paid attention to people—although, admittedly, he’d used what he got to his own advantage—he was curious why his ex-lover and, he privately suspected, the one woman he’d ever loved, had issued that invitation. Curious enough to maneuver into a spot between two sparkling-clean SUVs and pocket his keys.

      He’d have stayed anyway, curious or not. His goal was atonement.

      It didn’t come easy.

      * * *

      “YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL...”

      In a figure-hugging, short black dress and matching wedge heels, with her blond hair in a sophisticated updo, Heather smiled as yet another of her parents’ friends spoke to her as she passed by on her way to somewhere else. She’d occasionally worn the dress clubbing in LA, but had little reason to put it on now that she was back in Santa Raquel full-time. She exchanged a few more pleasantries, acknowledging that, yes, her independent polygraph business of five years was thriving, and moved on.

      She was looking for Charles. She’d seen him a total of five minutes max since they’d arrived at her parents’ beachfront home, just down the road from Charles’s house—and ten minutes from her own beachside bungalow.

      Fifteen years her senior, her fiancé was handsome. Fit. A dentist who was actually popular with his patients. He had a way of putting people at ease. She’d known him since he’d moved into her parents’ neighborhood after his divorce ten years before; she’d been home visiting while on break from college. And she’d started dating him the previous summer, when they hooked up at a neighborhood Fourth of July bash she’d attended with her folks.

      Because she’d been too lame to have plans of her own.

      Or a date.

      She thought she saw his thick, slightly graying hair on the other side of the living room and moved in that direction, hoping she could make it to him without being waylaid again. The party had been her mother’s idea. And the guest list pretty much comprised the people invited by her parents and by Charles.

      Heather’s friends had mostly faded into lives of their own when she’d started dating Charles—and before that, too, after the “big breakup.” She’d been part of a couple for almost six years, and while mutual friends had stuck by her—and him—she’d been the one to pull away from the group.

      She’d been the one to break things off with him.

      Thinking she’d go through the kitchen and enter the living room from the other side, Heather slipped away from the party and walked into a much smaller gathering—the two guests she’d invited, Lianna, her closest friend from elementary school on, and Raine, her college roommate. They stopped talking the second she came in.

      “What’s going on?” she asked, wondering if there was a problem with the food. Not that they were in charge of it. Her mother’d had the party catered. But they were in the kitchen and...

      “I’ve been looking for you two,” she added, glancing from green eyes to blue, red hair to blond. “You’re supposed to keep me sane here!” She was only half joking. She couldn’t wait to marry Charles—sometime after the year engagement she’d insisted upon—but this gathering was not her favorite part of the festivities.

      If it hadn’t been for Charles’s need to introduce her to his large circle of acquaintances, she never would’ve agreed to have the engagement party, no matter how much her mother nagged her about social etiquette and doing the right thing.

      Lianna and Raine exchanged a glance, Raine cocking an eyebrow at Heather’s closest childhood friend. Almost as though conceding best-friend status or something.

      “What’s going on?” she asked again. The two had met a few times, but didn’t know each other well enough to be involved in some big heart-to-heart. If this was about which of them was going to be maid of honor...

      Her mother had been after her to make a choice—strongly preferring Lianna, of course, since the redhead had been part of their family since grade school. But Raine had seen her through the best, and then the worst, times of her life. The ones that had defined the woman she was, and would be.

      Still, she couldn’t imagine getting married without Lianna, her rock, by her side. And Raine was her safety net...

      It was all too much. She’d decide later. Right now, she had to get to Charles.

      “We’re worried about you,” Lianna blurted when Raine gave her a far-too-obvious silent nudge.

      Heather chuckled. “About me? Are you kidding? I’m finally at a place in my life where there’s no need to worry.” She looked from one to the other, knowing that what she said was true. “Seriously.” And then, when they both looked unconvinced, she added, “A year ago, yes.” She’d come close to the brink of despair, close to not caring if she lived or died, when she packed up and moved out of the home she’d shared with Cedar. “But I’m fine now. Great, even. Or I will be as soon as this party is over.”

      “This engagement is so sudden...”

      “Charles and I have been dating for more than six months. I moved in with Cedar three weeks after I met him.” The math was important to her. She wasn’t jumping into love ever again. Hadn’t figured herself for someone who’d ever have done so.

      She’d allowed herself that mistake, with the promise that she’d learn everything she had to learn from it, so she wouldn’t have to repeat the lesson.

      “And I insisted on a yearlong engagement,” she reminded them. And herself. Charles wanted to get to the justice of the peace as soon as possible and start a family together.

      Understanding that he wanted to be young enough to play ball with his kids, to coach Little League and soccer teams or move stage sets for dance competitions, she’d shortened the engagement from two years to one, but because of the oh-so-painful past, a result of the three-week courtship, she was holding firm on that year.

      “He’s fifteen years older than you.” Raine acted as if she was making some big announcement. Heather slowed down for a second and stared at her two best friends.

      “Surely the two of you aren’t having a problem with our age difference? My God, Raine, your stepfather is closer to your age than your mom’s, and you love him to death. Because, for the first time in your life, she’s happy. Truly happy.”

      In colorful leggings that hugged gorgeous legs and a black formfitting shirt that defined hips that were just about perfect, Raine withstood Heather’s intent look without fidgeting. Or answering.

      “And you...” She turned to Lianna. “Dexter’s only five years younger than Charles.”

      “We fit each other,” Lianna came back without a second’s hesitation. She took a step closer. In black dress pants and a cream-colored silk blouse, she could command any room she entered. “Charles fits your parents, sweetie. Look at him in there. He’s having the time of his life.”

      “And you’re in here.” Raine came closer, too. “Trudging through a party you didn’t want and counting the seconds until it’s over. Is that really how you want to spend the rest of your life? Counting the seconds away?”

      So СКАЧАТЬ