Free Divided Hearts by Susan R. Hughes Page A

air was cool out on the water, lifting her hair and raising goose bumps on her arms.
    At the helm, Simon looked focused and commanding. Observing him, a shiver ran through Faye; she could blame it on the cool wind that tugged at the neck of her blouse, but there was something about watching him command the vessel that stirred her feminine senses.
    It had seemed harmless enough to be alone with him here, out on the open water, exposed. Yet there was no one around, save for other small vessels far in the distance; and she and Simon were trapped together in this small space, with no way to avoid one another. The prospect struck her as both exciting and daunting.
    As the boat pushed forward, Simon pointed out the jagged shores of Smuggler Cove, and later the sun-blanched beach of Buccaneer Bay, wedged into the thickly wooded shoreline of Thormanby Island.
    “Such evocative place names here,” Faye remarked wistfully. “You’d think this area was a hub of illegal activity at one time.”
    “Aye, matey, a haven for scurvy pirates and bootleggers,” Simon quipped in his best West-country accent, casting her a roguish grin.
    “I can’t say I blame them, it’s just stunning out here,” she added, admiring the rugged coastal mountains rising in the distance. “Do you come out often?”
    “Between books. This is where I can really clear my mind and flesh out new ideas. It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone out here with me.”
    “Do you prefer to be alone?”
    “Not necessarily,” he replied, and Faye glanced back to catch him watching her, his blue eyes glinting in the sunlight like the shimmering surface of the water.
    “Your mom says you have an aversion to commitment,” Faye heard herself remark, before thinking better of it.
    “She said that?” He barked out a laugh. “Maybe she has a point. Like you, I never planned on having children, and a family is something most women seem to want. In the past they have tended to believe they can change my mind, if only they could get me to the altar.”
    Faye blinked at him in surprise. Watching him clown around with Hannah and Sienna, she’d never have guessed he didn’t want children of his own. Had Jenna known this about him? If so, maybe her reason for not telling him she was pregnant had been to avoid the rejection of her child that she fully expected. What she did was still terribly wrong, but it might explain her actions in some part.
    “Did Jenna fall into that category?” Faye ventured.
    Simon laughed again, but with more irony than amusement. “We never got that far. Didn’t she tell you anything about us?”
    “Not much.”
    “Jenna didn’t appreciate peaceful beaches and pretty sunsets. She’s a city girl, and the quiet here drove her mad.”
    “What exactly did you two share in common?” Faye wondered.
    Lips compressed, he considered for a moment before answering. “I suppose we were both feeling lonely, seeking companionship.”
    Faye supposed it made sense. Since the ninth grade Jenna had never been without a boyfriend for long, though she wasn’t particularly choosy, and her relationships tended to be short-lived. It was as though she couldn’t stand the idea of being alone, and any decent, available male would serve as an adequate place-filler.
    Not that she’d been scraping the bottom of the barrel by any means by dating Simon Blake. A man who was … lonely? Faye found it hard to imagine him lacking offers from female admirers.
    “For someone who didn’t want children, you’ve jumped into it with both feet,” she remarked.
    “I suppose I was afraid I wouldn’t take to it, or that I’d feel compelled to run away from it like my father. But now, I’m simply puzzled as to how he could do that.”
    “It’s hard to understand,” Faye agreed. “Parents aren’t supposed to act like petulant children. Before they act they should think of the consequences for their kids. Someone who can’t do that shouldn’t be a