Free Lover's Leap by Emily March

Lori isn’t here.” Sarah folded her arms. “She has an internship this summer, so she didn’t come home.”
    His hard look suggested he didn’t believe her, but once Sarah met his gaze with the righteousness of truth, he sighed. “Maybe it’s best it occurs away from Eternity Springs. Where is she?”
    Sarah opened her mouth, then hesitated. “I don’t know yet if I’m going to tell you. This is a mess. I have to figure out what is best for her. Plus, she’s an adult. It’s her choice if she wants to see you or not. I can’t force her to do it. I won’t try.”
    Now it was Cam’s turn to open his mouth, then hesitate. Rather than speaking, he stepped forward and took a seat beside her. Not too close. No danger of touching. But she could smell the scent of soap on his skin. Irish Spring, of course. Some things never change. “I quit carrying that soap in the store because of you.”
    “Pardon me?”
    “Never mind.” Closing her eyes, she rubbed her temples. “For crying out loud, Cam. Why did you have to take the bull-in-a-china-closet approach here? For all that Eternity Springs has changed, in some ways it’s still the same. Hummingbird Lake will always be cold. The hot springs on Angel Creek will always stink. Murphys will always have ‘bad blood.’ Now Lori will be a bad-blooded Murphy whether she wants it or not. You took away her choice.”
    “That’s ridiculous.” He kicked at a pinecone lying beneath his feet.
    Yes, it was. But it was also reality, a patch of dirty, threadbare cloth in the quilt of Eternity Springs’s history. “Maybe so, but that’s the reputation your family has had around this town for over a hundred years. Just because no Murphys have been living here doesn’t mean that people here have forgotten them—or their evil genes.”
    “That’s just small-town, small-minded idiotic.” His mouth thinned and his eyes went hard as he shoved to his feet and began pacing the confines of the gazebo. “I didn’t have bad blood. I had a father who beat me and nobody— nobody —stepped in to help.”
    Sarah winced at the charge. That was true. Shameful, and true.
    “That’s why I acted like an ass growing up. I was an angry kid who didn’t know any better than to act out. I’ll tell you something else, too. If these people start treating Lori like dirt just because of who I am, then she’s better off living elsewhere.”
    She couldn’t argue that point, either. And yet … “This is our home.”
    “Only because you’ve never tried anything different,” he snapped back. He flung out his arm, pointing west. “It’s a big world out there, Sarah, and there are plenty of great places to live. Places a whole lot better than Eternity Springs.”
    A ribbon of nerves fluttered through her. What he said, how he said it, sounded like a veiled threat. What was he thinking?
    Would he try to take Lori away from here? Away from me? Sarah’s stomach sank. Until that moment on the wharf in Cairns, Lori had loved Australia.
    No, don’t be silly . He couldn’t do that. Her daughter wasn’t going anywhere. She and Lori were tight, and besides, Lori didn’t want to have anything to do with this man.
    And yet what did Sarah really know about him? She knew he had a son, lived in Australia, did some sort of work for a tour company, and could model for GQ . But what about the boy’s mother? Sarah hadn’t missed the fact that Cam’s ring finger was bare, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t married. Why had he really traveled halfway around the world at this point in time?
    He could be the world’s biggest liar and she wouldn’t know. She hadn’t spoken to him in more than twenty years. For all she knew, he was sick and needed a kidney and that’s why he’d come looking for Lori!
    “Are you on dialysis?”
    “What?”
    “Never mind.” You’re losing it, Reese .
    Maybe so, but she would do anything to protect her daughter. Did Cam Murphy pose a legitimate threat to Lori? To