Free The Returning Hero by Soraya Lane Page A

time with me, and I didn’t want you to feel so sorry for me that you were missing out on seeing someone else. Someone…” Special was what she’d been thinking of saying. He might have said he wasn’t seeing anyone, but it didn’t mean he wanted to spend all his free time with her.
    Now his expression was serious, completely different than before. “I’m not here because I feel sorry for you. Don’t ever think that for a second.”
    She stared back at him, lost in his dark gaze, his eyes stormy and almost black in the half-light. She’d thought he looked beyond handsome before, but all riled up he looked even more irresistible.
    “Don’t get me wrong, I love having you here, but I feel guilty about keeping you from what you want to be doing,” she said. “I know I need to stand on my own two feet, learn how to be alone.” Just because she knew it, didn’t make it any easier.
    “Jamie, I only came back to Sydney for you.”
    She swallowed, not quite sure what to say. He wouldn’t have come back to his home city if it hadn’t been for her? Maybe she’d heard him wrong.
    “I’m the one who should be feeling guilty, for taking so long to get back here. For not being here for you when you needed me,” he said. “I’ve been beating myself up about deserting you for months, so believe me when I say that this is exactly the place I want to be. Sam was family to me, and that makes you family. I should have been here sooner.”
    “Oh, Brett, you were injured and you’d lost your best friend and your dog. You have nothing to apologize for,” she told him. “I just appreciate seeing you again, having you here, but I wouldn’t have judged you if you’d decided not to come home at all.”
    He cleared his throat, leaned across the table toward her and then seemed to change his mind, clasping his hands and staring back up at the sky.
    “I didn’t come back for no reason, Jamie.”
    When he looked back at her, she had to force herself not to hold her breath. Because she had a feeling that what he was struggling to tell her was something that would change everything between them. More than a touch or a drunken kiss ever could, which meant this was something she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear.
    Just because she was having feelings for him, knew that the way she felt about him had changed, didn’t mean that she was ready to hear him admit the same to her.
    “You don’t need to tell me,” she heard herself say, afraid..
    “You know when we met, all those years ago? Before you had even met Sam?”
    She did remember, well. It wasn’t something they’d ever really discussed, but it wasn’t something she’d ever forgotten, either. “You were dating that gorgeous blonde.”
    “She was gorgeous, but I finished with her that night.”
    Jamie felt her eyebrows pull together. “Why?” Now she did want to hear what he had to say. Why would any man end things with a woman that beautiful?
    “Because after I met you, you were all I could think about. I didn’t want to ask you out while I was involved, because I wanted to do it right, but by the time I found you…”
    No, he couldn’t have. Jamie gulped. “I was already with Sam,” she finished for him.
    “You were already with Sam,” he repeated, “and he was happier than I’d ever seen him in his life, so there was no way I would have ever stepped in, even at the start. Sam was like my brother, and I’d have sacrificed anything for him. And I did .”
    “But you were looking for me?” she said, voice low, almost a whisper. “You actually came looking for me after that night?”
    “Yeah.” He chuckled. “Kind of ironic, huh? It all just blew up in my face like I’d never even met you, like that night had never even happened.”
    “And you never told Sam? You just let us…” She didn’t even know what to say.
    The night she’d met Brett, at a party where she’d hardly known anyone, she’d been drawn to him immediately. But their flirting