Expectations. Brenda Novak

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      ADAM LAY AWAKE long after the rest of the house grew quiet, his head swimming. The evening had been an eventful one. Not only had he discovered his high-school sweetheart living with his grandparents, he’d heard the voice of his old friend, Dennis, for the first time in fifteen years.

      Only he hadn’t liked what Dennis had to say. They’ll need a body bag by the time I’m through with you.

      Adam’s hand flexed with the urge to connect with Dennis’s face, even though Dennis and Jenna’s problems had nothing to do with him. He was just visiting for the weekend. Monday would see him whizzing back to San Francisco in his new Mercedes coupe, with the top down if the weather was warm enough—his hometown and the friends he’d left there easily forgotten.

      No, purposely ignored, maybe, but not forgotten. He remembered the hurt in Jenna’s eyes the day he’d broken up with her and the regret that had weighed on his heart at odd moments since. She might have married Dennis, but she’d haunted Adam’s life like some elusive ever-present ghost. She was the standard by which he measured all other women.

      Blocking out the sadness of their final month together, he shifted his thoughts to better times and settled eagerly on the day they’d first made love. They’d already been dating for two years and knew each other better than Adam had ever known another human being. That day, they’d gone swimming in the ocean, as they often did. But this time Jenna hadn’t stopped him from removing her swimsuit when they left the water and stretched out on the beach.

      Giving in to the smile that tempted his lips, Adam closed his eyes and relived the moment of seeing Jenna naked for the first time. She’d been beautiful, with the wind whipping her dark hair about her face, her blue eyes gazing up at him with complete trust, nipples drawn tight and hard with desire.

      When he touched her, his hand shook as it did now, just remembering the feel of her silken limbs entwined with his own. He felt again the grit of the sand on his palms, the warmth of the sun on his back, the sound of the sea in his ears—and Jenna beneath him, tight and warm and willing.

      After the initial pain she’d experienced, she had matched his eagerness and his passion with an honesty and an intensity that would never fade from his mind. Since then, he had searched for that same responsiveness, those same feelings, but he’d never again achieved what he’d had with Jenna. Maybe he never would, as punishment for pledging her all his tomorrows and then breaking that promise.

      As much as he’d wanted her, loved her, some inner devil had urged him to leave Mendocino before he became an innkeeper like his grandparents. He wanted to see the world, challenge himself, and eventually become part of the stiffly competitive legal world in San Francisco.

      A year after he left Jenna, he’d winced at the news that she’d married Dennis, but he’d forged ahead. A law degree, a prestigious practice, becoming one of four partners in a firm of sixteen. Two hundred thousand a year, then three hundred, and finally half a million turned his beat-up Chevy truck into a Buick, a Lexus and now his first Mercedes. He drove one of the most expensive cars on the market. He had a big home on the bay, powerful friends, important clients. He’d made it to the big time, hadn’t he? He should be glad of the path he’d chosen.

      And he was. He’d had no real doubts until he’d seen Jenna tonight. The sight of her wide sky-blue eyes had pulled him up short. The curves of her body beneath the robe, the body he’d once known so well, had made him wonder what he’d missed—and if it wasn’t better than what he’d had, after all.

      At the sound of someone in the bathroom, Adam checked his alarm clock in surprise. He’d feared it СКАЧАТЬ