Free The House On The Creek by Sarah Remy Page B

and met her eyes, and what Abby saw there made her look down and away.
     
    “Thought we were done with each other,” he said at last. He sounded indifferent, but Abby felt the heat of his gaze on the top of her head, and tried not to squirm as a frisson of reaction sped along her spine.
     
    “You made me mad,” she replied carefully, swallowing a mouthful of beer. “You were rude, and out of line, and...childish. About as rational as my preteen son.”
     
    “So you’ve come for more?”
     
    Abby thought she detected reluctant humor in his tone. Surprised, she lifted her head. But he was watching the woods, licking watermelon juice from his thumb.
     
    “We always used to drive each other nuts. Come to blows. Almost kill each other.” She cocked the neck of her beer bottle in his direction, knowing he watched her even if it appeared his attention was on the trees. “But we always made up, after.”
     
    “You want to make up?” He still wouldn’t look at her, but Abby saw the corners of his mouth curl upward and relaxed.
     
    Then she remembered that last summer’s preferred manner of ‘making up’, and felt the blood rush from the tips of her toes to her hairline.
     
    “I want to explain.”
     
    Everett leaned forward in his chair. He rested his forearms on his knees, and scowled vaguely in her direction. “I’m not sure I want to hear it.”
     
    Abby squelched a sudden strong urge to stroke the lines from his brow.
     
    She set the beer bottle at her feet and stood up, taking four steps across the deck to the porch rail. She set her back against the slats, tenderly avoiding honeysuckle vines, and faced him down much the same way she would a confrontational client.
     
    “Chris is not Edward’s child.”
     
    His mouth set into mocking lines. “Boy’s a dead ringer, Abby.”
     
    The man was surely hopeless. “There are other blue eyed men in this town. Twenty, maybe thirty. Maybe several hundred. Most of them are about three million times more desirable than Edward ever was.”
     
    “I’m telling you, he’s a dead ringer. I can see the old man looking right back at me.”
     
    Abby felt her resolve soften, and firmly shoved sympathy aside. “Only because you see his ghost everywhere. You always did, even when he was alive. Can’t you let him go?”
     
    He rose in a fluid motion and paced to her side, and then abruptly away again.
     
    Abby watched him retreat to the far corner of the porch. The bunching of his bare shoulders spoke of pain. Abby wanted to go after him, but knew better. He had never enjoyed her pity.
     
    “You’re saying I’m crazy.” The growing breeze carried his muttered words back to her, and stirred the honeysuckle. Abby inhaled the sweet scent and closed her eyes.
     
    “All I’m saying is that Chris is not Edward’s son. He’s mine.”
     
    “What about his daddy?”
     
    “Lives in Richmond,” Abby said slowly, eyes still shut. “He’s an investment banker.”
     
    She heard his cough, and smiled at the back of her lids. “Too straight laced and upstanding for me, I know. But he wasn’t that way when I met him. He was wild and funny and great with his hands.”
     
    The air shifted again. Abby opened her eyes and Everett stood at her side, hands curled around the porch railing. He studied her face across his shoulder.
     
    “Where did you-” He cleared his throat, and shook his head in annoyance.
     
    Abby considered the faint pinching of his nostrils, and found that she could answer without the old embarrassment. “In the back seat of Mom’s Mercedes. Three weeks after you ran away. He played varsity football, he was a senior. He had a great body, and he knew how to sweet talk a girl. And he was going places, you could see the fire in his eyes...”
     
    She shrugged. “I was mad at you, Ev. And lonely. You ran off on me and you didn’t even bother to say goodbye.”
     
    “It wasn’t like that.” For the first time some of the cynicism