This Time For Keeps. Jenna Mills
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Название: This Time For Keeps
Автор: Jenna Mills
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
isbn: 9781472028150
isbn:
The drive across town took less than ten minutes. He pulled off the quiet crepe myrtle–lined boulevard and wound his way through a few side streets before arriving at the small frame house.
Flowers bloomed. Everywhere he looked, a rainbow of colors screamed back at him. Pink and white from the azaleas, red from geraniums, yellow from daisies and daffodils. Even the trees rained colors, a veritable parade of dogwood and redbuds, all shimmering in the late-morning sun like something straight out of a picture book.
Once he would have grabbed his camera and gone down on his knee, searching for the perfect blend of light and shadow and color. That’s what Ainsley had always loved, the contrasts in life. The unexpected.
The house had been drab when she’d first showed it to him, gray in the dead of winter. He’d thought she was making a mistake, but she’d seen the promise, and she’d insisted.
Now she was gone, but the color remained.
Russell pushed the car door open and stepped into the seductive warmth of Texas in April. He was a man who thrived on the periphery, the complete opposite of his baby sister. No matter how much he did not want to go inside, he owed her. This, and a whole lot more.
Striding up the walk, he made his way between the armies of petunias lining the walkway, up the two steps to the screened porch, and yanked open the outer door.
Meg rose from the porch swing, the baby on her hip. “Hey,” was all she said.
He stopped, stared at her standing there in a fall of sunlight, her jeans faded, her scoop-neck olive shirt wrinkled. Her hair was soft, loose.
“Meggie.” Goddamn his voice for breaking.
She shifted little Charlotte on her hip. “Lori called, told me I’d just missed you.”
His hand tightened around the key.
“My meeting ran over,” she said as Charlotte fisted her hand in Meg’s hair and yanked. “I must have been crazy signing up to chair. You wouldn’t believe how many last-minute details there are.”
The edges of the key dug into his palm. “You always were one for staying busy.”
Her smile was lopsided, and with it about a thousand years fell away. “That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.”
The tension spun out between them, the stillness and the silence pushing in like invisible walls. Once he’d known this woman as well as he’d known himself, her body—her heart. Or at least, he’d thought he had. She’d been his wife and his friend, his coworker and confidante, his lover. They’d bought a falling-down house and turned it into a home. They’d shared meals and dreams, their bodies…
Now they stood in the cramped confines of the small front porch, without a freaking clue what to say to each other.
CHAPTER FOUR
Two and a half years before
THE HOUSE WAS QUIET. Not that long ago, the silence would have surprised him. Meg loved music. She always had it going, blasting so that she could hear it in every room. He would come home and find her doing the dishes to U2, dusting to The Boss, paying bills to Dave Matthews.
He’d never understood how she could concentrate with so much else going on.
She’d never understood how he could concentrate with what she called the scream of silence.
Now that silence filled the house. Once he would have called out to her, but now he moved quietly through the foyer. He didn’t want her to know he was home. Not yet. There’d been a Web site launch meeting that afternoon at the Gazette—but she’d never showed. Lori said she’d gone out for coffee a little after two.
She’d never come back.
She did that a lot these days.
He found her in the kitchen, the big walk-in pantry to be exact. The navy suit she’d put on that morning was gone, replaced by a boxy T-shirt and baggy jeans. They literally hung on her. Her feet were bare, her hair loose.
The urge to—Russell didn’t know. He didn’t know what he wanted to do—what he was supposed to do. Six weeks had passed since they’d lost their baby…a little girl. Dr. Brennan said Meg had recovered physically, but emotionally…
Julia said to give her time.
Meg’s mother, Lilah, said to give her love.
Russell had tried both.
Now he watched her alphabetize their canned goods, and wanted to put his fist through the goddamn wall.
“Hey,” he finally said.
She stiffened. His wife. She stiffened at the sound of his voice.
“Missed you this afternoon.” He’d quit asking if she was okay.
Slowly she turned, looked at him with those awful, blank eyes of hers. “The pantry’s driving me crazy.”
He felt his jaw tighten, didn’t have a clue what to say in response—she’d arranged the cans by size and color the week before. “Meggie—” He reached for her, stilled when he saw her wince.
His wife. Wincing because he wanted to touch her.
“I can finish up for you,” he said. “Why don’t you go ahead and shower.”
She blinked at him. “Shower?”
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