The Cowboy's Homecoming. Carolyne Aarsen

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      Her only reply was a curt nod. She gave him a humorless smile, then turned and walked away.

      Lee dragged his hand over his face. Well, that awkward meeting was done with.

      If he played his cards right, he might not have to see her again, which was fine with him.

      She was a reminder of the past he had spent a lot of years trying to atone for.

      * * *

      “Dumb, dumb, dumb,” Abby Newton muttered as she strode through the underbrush toward the road, yanking her cell phone out of her pocket. Of all the clumsy, stupid and just plain humiliating things to happen, she had to end up falling out of a tree right on top of Lee Bannister. And then she flirted with him.

      She didn’t know why her brain had been firing so slowly that it took so long for her to recognize him.

      Abby swallowed hard. She blamed it on her own prejudicial memories. This guy looked nothing like the Lee Bannister she had seen swaggering out of the lawyer’s office on his way to prison, as if he couldn’t care less about destroying her family. That Lee Bannister was a slender young man with shortly cropped hair who wore a perpetual smirk and acted as if the world owed him a favor. He had always been a too-large personality in her life, but for a few months just before graduation, they had dated. She had naively thought she had tamed the wild man. Until she found out about the bet his delinquent friends had made with him about going out with her.

      The shame of that could still catch her off guard from time to time.

      Now it seemed that Lee’s rebellious attitude had morphed into a hardness that seemed bred into his very bones. His shoulders and chest had filled out. His hair was long, dark and framed a face with a strong chin, pronounced cheekbones and eyes enhanced by slashing dark eyebrows. In short, his features held a rugged maturity she suspected came from his time in prison and his years of manual labor after that.

      For a heartbeat she felt a glimmer of sympathy.

      But all it took was the memory of her father, a broken and hurting man, lying in a hospital bed to remind her that Lee could never pay enough for what he’d done to their family. Her father was a changed man after Lee hit him with his truck, drunk, on his way back from a party. The alcohol that had impaired Lee’s driving had also taken over her father’s life. He became an alcoholic, stopped working and spent days in physical pain.

      Abby’s family was sundered in two when her parents divorced a year after the accident. Cornell left town and she only heard sporadically from him after that, the most recent time being a few weeks ago.

      She shook off the dark memories as she strode to the road, punching in her friend’s number on her cell phone.

      Abby had made her own way in the world in spite of what had happened to her family. She had put Lee and the heartbreak he had caused behind her. As if determined to prove that her life’s tragic circumstances were not going to define her, she had graduated from high school and college with honors, and then worked tirelessly to pave a thriving career for herself.

      A shiny black pickup truck was parked, askew, just off the highway when she came out of the lane. She suspected it was Lee’s. Though it wasn’t the candy-apple-red truck his parents had given him in high school—the vehicle that had mowed her father down—it still looked expensive and new.

      She shook her head. Some things didn’t change, she thought as she lifted her phone to her ear.

      “Can you come and get me?” Abby asked when Louisa answered. She tucked her cell phone between her chin and shoulder as she dug in her backpack for her water bottle. Her mouth was dry, but she suspected that had more to do with the meeting she’d just had than the warmth of the afternoon.

      “Did you get some good pictures?” her friend asked.

      Abby thought of the breathtaking view, but somehow the satisfaction she had with the photos was tempered by seeing Lee Bannister. Not that she should be totally surprised. She knew she would be crossing paths with him at some time during her visit. Saddlebank was a small town after all.

      Truth was, for many years she had imagined her first face-to-face meeting with Lee. But, in her thoughts, that reunion was one where she was aloof, calm and in charge of the situation.

      Not falling on top of him and then flirting with him.

      She had climbed the tree to get a better panorama shot of the river valley through a break she saw in the pine branches. Though it did net her some great images, in retrospect it might not have been the best decision.

      “What’s your ETA?” she asked her friend.

      Louisa’s sigh didn’t sound encouraging. “I’m about ten miles out yet. Jaden needed some groceries, so I said I would help him. I was on my way back to you when I got a flat tire. I’m so sorry.”

      Abby suppressed an angry sigh. When she had pulled over to take some pictures, Louisa asked if she could borrow the car to drop off some things at a friend’s place only a mile down the road. Abby wanted to take her time snapping the pictures, so she had agreed. However, Louisa’s going all the way to town with her car had not been discussed.

      “How did you get a flat? I just put new tires on.”

      “I think I might have run over a nail at Jaden’s place. The yard is a junk heap. I just called roadside service,” Louisa said. “They can’t come for half an hour, though.”

      “You can’t change it yourself?” Abby bit her lip, trying to think what to do. She had told her mother she would be there by four. It was quarter to the hour now.

      “Not everyone is as self-sufficient as you, girl.”

      Abby didn’t want to remind her that same self-sufficiency was a by-product of being the oldest child of a family whose father had withdrawn into alcohol. Whose mother’s bitterness over their circumstances had caused her to retreat well within herself. The day after her father’s accident, much of the responsibility of running the house, taking care of her brother, had fallen on Abby’s slender shoulders.

      It had eventually taken a toll.

      “Okay. I’ll see you when I see you. Maybe I can hitch a ride.” Abby tried not to get riled up at the idea that Louisa had her car and she had to hitchhike.

      Skyline Trail, the name of the road she was heading down, wasn’t that busy, but it was a Friday afternoon. Surely someone would be headed to town.

      “Again, I’m so sorry,” Louisa said.

      She seemed to be on the receiving end of a lot of apologies today, Abby thought crossly as she ended the call.

      She dropped her phone into one of the pockets of her vest and then pulled her camera out again to check it better. She frowned when she saw the tiny flecks of blood she had missed cleaning off one corner of the camera’s body.

      Lee’s blood.

      She stuffed the camera back in her bag. Later. She would deal with that later.

      She strode to the road, then stopped, tapping her fingers on her arm trying to figure out what СКАЧАТЬ