Whirlwind Reunion

Even knowing she would eventually have to see Matt, she had left Philadelphia, come home to Whirlwind and reopened her father’s medical practice. But the sheer depth and agony of coming face to face with him had been more than she anticipated. Still, she had done it, gotten it over with.

There would be other times—they both lived here, after all—but she wouldn’t get that close to him ever again.

Annalise Fine had some damn nerve. Returning to Whirlwind. Showing her face at his brother’s party. Black fury drove through Matt. He wanted to hit something. Or someone.

Once inside the Fontaine, he left Willow in the dining room with Ef Gerard, the blacksmith, and his new wife, Naomi, then slipped out the hotel’s back door. His gaze settled blankly on the hotel’s laundry house some yards away.

Seething, he clenched his fists, unclenched them. He was burning to get his gun and shoot at something. He didn’t care what. Maybe the cool temperature would soothe his temper. His body was throbbing, nerves stretched taut, sensation skimming the surface of his skin in a way it hadn’t in seven years. He could still feel her slender shoulders beneath his touch, the tease of her breath against his neck when she had run into him.

Her heart-shaped face was even more beautiful, the shock in her light-green eyes every bit as strong as the shock he had felt upon seeing her. She was still slim and delicate, but now her curves were more defined, womanly. Where they had once been more angular, her hips now flared slightly from her taut waist and her breasts were fuller. He’d felt that for himself when she had run into him. And her skin still looked as soft as down.

Immediately, he had wanted to put his hands on her, his mouth, which blistered him up good. He killed that thought real quick.

“Matt?”

He stiffened at the sound of his brother’s voice. The last thing he wanted was to spoil Russ’s wedding day.

“What’s wrong? Is it Annalise?”

He gave a sharp nod. With little effort, Matt had stayed away from her all night, then his past had walked right smack into him. There was no point in denying why he was so angry, especially to his brother.

Dragging a hand down his face, he turned, battling to force the sound of her smoke-and-honey voice out of his head. “It happened outside. How did you know about it?”

“You were lathered up when you and Willow came back into the hotel.” His brother, a year older, watched him steadily. “I knew it had to be because of her.”

Matt wanted to rip into his brother and ask why she had been invited, but the whole town had been. It wasn’t Russ’s fault Annalise had shown up. Wasn’t his fault the woman still affected Matt so strongly. Drawing in her light clean scent of primroses had tied his gut in nine kinds of knots. How could she still smell the same? Why did he have to remember it so well?

“I figured she might come,” Russ said quietly.

Matt had tried not to give it any thought.

“Did you talk to her?”

“Oh, she did all the talking,” he bit out. He felt as though he could explode any second. “Don’t you have a bride waiting?”

“What did she say?”

“Leave off.” Matt shoved a hand through his hair. “There’s no reason to ruin your night. You’ve got a good woman. You should be in there enjoying her.”

“Tell me.” Moonlight slanted across Russ’s face as he braced one shoulder against the hotel wall.

Matt knew that patient stance, the expectant tone. His brother wouldn’t leave until he knew. “She made some smart-mouthed comment when I started walking away. Something about how she recognized my back since I was so good at turning away from her.”

His brother cursed.

Matt gave a harsh laugh. “You and I both know who turned their back on whom. The minute her pa died, she planned to leave even though she—” He broke off as he wrestled with another savage urge to hit something. To ride the hell out of Whirlwind.

“Even though she had agreed to marry you,” his brother finished quietly. “What else did she say?”

“That’s it.” Which was one reason Matt couldn’t figure out why seeing her had hit him so hard. Had torn into the deep hole inside him he thought had healed. They had been inches apart for less than one minute. He’d seen the hurt in her eyes, but he didn’t care. He wouldn’t let himself. “It was no secret she had always wanted to be a doctor. I didn’t like her decision to go back east by herself, but I understood. Not the other though.”

“The miscarriage.”

His eyes stung. “If she hadn’t been so damn deter-mined to go to medical school right then, our baby would be alive.”

Even now, after all these years, Matt’s throat closed up when he thought about his child.

“She swore she didn’t know about the baby until after she arrived in Philadelphia,” Russ reminded. “That she lost the baby before she could write to tell you she was expecting.”

Matt had burned her letter, but it didn’t matter. The words she’d written weeks after leaving him were carved into his brain forever. “How could she not be aware that there was a life growing inside her? Her pa was a doctor and she helped him with patients often. She had to have known she was expecting.”

“Why would she lie?”

“She wanted what she wanted. She didn’t need anything here.” Even him, Matt thought.

“She’d been caring for Hardy for over a year.”

“And we helped her.” Them and Pa. That was when Matt had fallen in love with her. “So?”

“She left so soon after he died. Maybe she was grieving so hard she couldn’t think clear. Remember how I was after Amy ran off with that married man she’d been seeing while engaged to me?”

When he had lost his first fiancée, Russ had been negligent, withdrawn and as cantankerous as a bear with a thorn in his paw. Maybe Annalise had been a couple of those things, too. And if she had stayed in Whirlwind, Matt thought angrily, he could have helped her through it.

His brother shifted, disrupting the shadows. “Maybe she made a mistake by leaving then.”

“A mistake to go when she did, maybe, but claiming not to know about the baby? That was no mistake. That was a flat-out lie.”

It had been some years since he and Russ had talked about this in detail and his brother’s calm suggestion still angered him. And solved nothing. She was back, but for how long?

At the thought, hope rose. She had left once; it was entirely possible she might leave again. He jerked a thumb toward the hotel door. “Get back in there. I don’t want Lydia taking a strip off my hide because she can’t find you. You’re the groom, remember?”

There was an innate contentment about his brother these days, a sense of calm. Despite the somber expression on his face just now, Russ was happy. Settled. Matt had once thought he wanted that with Annalise. But he didn’t. Not with her, not with any woman.

Seeing his first love had left him feeling raw, cornered.

“You’ll be in for the toast?”

Matt nodded. “Get me a glass of champagne, okay?”

“If you’d rather, I can ask Pa to give it.”

“I’ll do it.” Annalise Fine wasn’t going to ruin this night more than she already had. Matt had moved on—many times—from her. He could do it again.

As his brother opened the door, he said, “I’ll be clear-headed when I make the toast, Russ. I won’t let you down.”

The other man squeezed his shoulder. “I know that.”

Matt stayed outside a few more minutes, trying to calm the fury pulsing through him.