Runaway Bridesmaid

His head fell back against the trunk. “Does it still hurt?” he asked gently. Too gently. Like the old Dean. Like her Dean, the one who’d always protected her, supported her. Loved her.

“No,” she lied. “I got on with my life. Which as you can see is going pretty well. Now, if you don’t mind…” She slapped her thighs with the palms of her hands, then pushed herself off the bench. “I really need to get some sleep—”

He’d risen when she did and spun her around so his face was inches from hers. His heat was everywhere—in his touch, in his breath on her face, in the feral glint in his eyes. Just like it had been the night they’d become lovers. She gasped, softly, from arousal, from the lingering betrayal, from a determination not to react to any of it.

“Maybe it doesn’t hurt you anymore,” Dean said in a fierce whisper, “but I can’t say the same for myself. I had no idea the pain would bounce back on me like a back draft, consuming my every waking thought. And there are a lot of waking thoughts, because you’re not the only one who lost a great deal of sleep after we broke up.”

“That’s too bad,” Sarah said, attempting to pull away. But his grip strengthened.

“Sarah, listen to me! Whether you ever forgive me or not, you will understand how much I regret hurting you the way I did. How much I regret what I lost.”

Every muscle in her body tensed, her fingers curling into fists as she resisted the urge to slug him. “And exactly how long have you felt like this?”

“Since the moment you ran out of my room, nine years ago.”

For a stunned moment or two, jubilation and fury warred in her head, only to be swiftly eclipsed by as a sense of bitter hopelessness, as it hit her, hard, just how much his confession upped the stakes. Oh, dear Lord…how different things might have been, if she’d only known, if he’d bothered to say something sooner…

“All this time…” She shook her head. “You know, Atlanta’s only two hours away. And we’ve always had a phone, even way out here in the boonies. We get regular mail deliveries, too—”

“I get the point,” he said with a sad smile. “But I figured you probably hated my guts. And…” He sighed, looking up for a moment. “I still thought I’d done the right thing, for a long time. By the time I realized I hadn’t, I figured it was too late—”

“Yes, it is,” she said, grasping at anything that would stop this, right now. She knew he was genuinely sorry, knew he meant every word he’d said. But she didn’t dare let his contrition get to her. She was only safe as long as he was still the bad guy.

“It is too late, Dean. So you know what I think? I think, if that cozy scene in the kitchen a few hours ago is any indication, what you want is another roll in the pine needles. You’ve got a first-class case of the hots, is all that’s going on here.” She planted both palms on his chest and pushed away from him. “In your dreams, buddy boy. Go on back to Atlanta and find yourself some big-city sweetie to scratch your itch. This hick ain’t puttin’ out, you hear?”

She picked up her bag from where she’d dropped it on the lawn earlier and hoofed it toward the house.

“Dammit, Sarah!” he roared, probably waking up everyone within a five-mile radius. “You haven’t heard a single word I’ve said!”

“Go home, Dean,” she called over her shoulder, praying Katey, at least, was sleeping through this. “Nothing’s changed.”

“I’ve changed, Sarah,” she heard behind her. “Hey— I can even read without moving my lips now, did you know that?”

His words slashed through her. But she didn’t stop.

“We’re going to be family, Sarah Louise,” he said, more softly but no less importunately. “For Jen’s and Lance’s sake, at least, we need to get past this.”

She’d gotten as far as the porch steps; now she turned, one hand gripping the newel post, and saw he’d followed her across the yard. He stood with his hands clenched at his sides, solid and determined and dangerous. His eyes glistened in the moonlight, and she thought once again how impossible, how easy it would be to let herself succumb to his entreaties.

And how wrong she’d been. Everything had changed between them. More than he even knew.

Dean stepped closer, his mouth drawn. “Look, I told you— I don’t expect things to get back the way they were between us, especially not after all this time. All I’m asking is for you to see me as I am now.”

She waited until the first, then the second, wave of pain passed, before she said, quietly, “I’m not sure I can do that.”

The man she once loved with everything she had in her glared at her for several seconds, then turned and strode off into the darkness.

Chapter 4

“Idiot!”

Dean kicked the mailbox post at the end of the Whitehouses’ driveway, then slammed his palm against the sturdy metal box. “Stupid, stupid, stupid…” He repeated the word like a bizarre mantra for several seconds, then rasped his smarting hand across a stubbled cheek.

Gee, Parrish. You handled that real well.

She’d said she didn’t want to talk. He could have waited until morning, maybe found some time when she was at least a little more receptive. But no-o-o—he had to blurt out some sorry-assed confession that made him sound even more callous than he’d been originally.

Dean was beginning to wonder if making stupid moves was part of his genetic makeup, or his destiny, or karma, or whatever the term was these days for repeating your mistakes.

He stared at the dark house for a moment longer, then finally hauled his butt back down the road, not wanting to go back to his aunt’s house, not knowing what to do, as razor-sharp fragments of emotions churned inside him.

Okay. She was right. He had lied. And she had every right to be furious.

But he hadn’t lied just then, and he didn’t know how to make her understand he never would again.

Ten minutes later, he halted in front of Percy Jenkins’s pasture, bordered with a haphazard post-and-rail fence he remembered the cows always seemed to take on faith was meant to keep them off the road.

His chuckle sounded bitter in his own ears. Lord. A lousy pasture, a few rotting timbers, and down reminiscence road he went. Oh, what the hell, Dean thought on a sigh, ominous in the heavy silence. Might as well get ’em all thought out and used up and done with. Maybe then he’d get some peace.

He leaned against the rickety fence and surveyed the moon-washed pasture, its emptiness bringing him an odd sort of comfort as he thought about cows and Sarah and old fences. They’d be out walking, passing this way, and the easygoing beasts would amble up to the so-called barrier, sticking their massive heads over the top with soft snorts and snuffles, knowing Sarah would always stop and rub their noses and shoot the breeze with them, just as if they were people.

She always did have a way with cows, you know?

For several seconds longer he stared into the silver-laced darkness, fighting. Then, at last, he lowered his head onto his arms and let the tears come.

The sun had been up for some time when he finished his hour-long jog. Which had had little positive effect, except perhaps to sweat a couple of quarts of poisons from his body. He’d meant to shower as soon as he got back, change out of his sleeveless sweatshirt and running shorts, but the scent of coffee lured him into the kitchen—where his aunt’s trenchant gaze slammed into him as she sat with her own cup of coffee at the chrome-and-Formica table in the center of the room. Only a desperate need for caffeine kept him from doing an about-face.

It was nearly eight-thirty; he was surprised to see her still in her pastel-flowered housecoat and slippers. But her thinning gray-blond hair was pulled back into its customary bun, not a single wisp allowed free of its confines, putting the world on notice that she was ready to face the challenges of the day, hardheaded nephews included. His head throbbed in spite of the exercise, his eyes were gritty, and his brain felt sandbagged: this he did not need.

Ethel Parrish had fifteen years on Dean’s father, had been married once, briefly, before he was born, but that was all he knew. He also knew she’d never resented taking on her nephews, including an eight-year-old, and she’d treated them well. That didn’t mean she was particularly easy to get along with.

She didn’t start in right away, which meant she was mulling over her plan of attack. Damn—it was much worse when she’d had time to think about what she wanted to say. Keeping a wary eye out in case she pounced, Dean found a bag of English muffins in the bread box, slipped one into the toaster.

The night, or what had been left of it, had been hell. Knowing sleep wasn’t in the cards, he hadn’t even bothered undressing. In fact, the only part of him that had fallen asleep was his backside, gone dead from sitting in the glider on his aunt’s porch for three hours while his thoughts tumbled around in his aching head like laundry in a dryer. But at least he could say the time hadn’t been wasted. Not by a long shot. Because, by the time somebody’s rooster a farm or two away started its raucous crowing at 5:00 a.m., he’d come to a number of conclusions, not the least of which was that Sarah Whitehouse had become an unreasonable, pigheaded, oversensitive pain in the neck and he was better off without her.

Oh, sure, his ego had taken it on the chin when she’d refused to listen to him, when she insisted his intentions toward her were less than circumspect. It had hurt. But now, in the daylight, he supposed he’d been the victim of some sort of nostalgic fantasy. That seeing her, after all this time…well, it wouldn’t be the first time his imagination had taken off without him.

Despite a physical attraction so intense it scared him, it was perfectly obvious now that nothing but guilt had driven him over there last night.

The muffin leapt out of the toaster, making him jump. He snatched it, wincing as the heat seared through his calluses, and dropped it onto a plate.

So, hey—if she wasn’t interested in what he had to say, he sure wasn’t going to bust his butt over it. Besides, there were other women who’d listen to him just fine. Lots of ’em. Especially in Atlanta.

Which had led him to debunking Nostalgic Fantasy Number Two, which was that Sweetbranch was no more a part of his life these days than Sarah was. After all, he had a thriving business in Atlanta which was just about to expand; he had even already looked at a couple of possible factory sites. Upward of a dozen people worked for him, depended on him; with the expansion, that number could easily grow to fifty. More.

That he hated living in a big city, he thought as he finally pulled himself together enough to butter the muffin, couldn’t be allowed to factor into the equation. He’d made his economic bed in Atlanta, so that’s where he’d have to lie for the foreseeable future. Even if it killed him.

Carrying the muffin with him, he found his way to the coffeemaker and filled the cup nearest to his shaking hand, refusing to look again at his aunt until he’d taken at least three large swallows of the brew. The instant he clunked the cup onto the counter, though, she said, “Heard you go out last night.”