Free The Hero’s Sin by Darlene Gardner

volcano. The family of tourists stopped eating and stared at him.
    “Whoa! Don’t shoot the messenger. Just passing on what I heard.” She backed away from the table, stopping to check on the nosy tourists on the way to the kitchen, leaving Quincy alone with his thoughts.
    His turbulent, roiling thoughts.
    Michael Donahue was still in town.
    Michael Donahue, who’d as good as signed Chrissy’s death warrant when he stole her away from Indigo Springs.
    Hatred flamed inside Quincy, hotter than fire.
    Donahue should never have come back. Quincy would make him wish he’d stayed away.

CHAPTER FIVE

    T HE ROAST BEEF was tender, the home-style gravy and mashed potatoes delectable and the strawberry pie transcendent, but Michael had never been more eager for a meal to end.
    His great-aunt obviously felt the same way. She rose from the sturdy white table in her brightly decorated kitchen to clear their dessert dishes even though Sara had another bite of pie left.
    “Thank you for the delicious meal, Mrs. Feldman.” Sara was still holding her fork. Michael thought she’d been about to stab the last morsel of pie when his aunt took her plate away. “Let me help you clean up.”
    “Oh, no. You’re a guest.” Aunt Felicia couldn’t have sounded more horrified if Sara had proposed tossing the dirty dishes in the trash. “It’s such a nice night. You and Michael go sit on the porch.”
    It sounded more like an order than a request, which Michael supposed it was, one he was glad to obey. When they were outside, he sat down on his aunt’s pine swing, which hung from large hooks screwed into the porch ceiling, and rolled his shoulders, wishing away the tension.
    Sara sat down next to him, running her fingers overthe smooth hardwood of the armrest. Tonight she looked beautiful in a sleeveless crinkled cotton dress in khaki green, but Michael had already figured out she’d look striking no matter what she wore.
    “I’m going to buy one of these swings for my deck,” she said. “Then I’ll stock up on mint juleps, never mind that this is the north. Mint juleps just seem like something you should drink while sitting on a porch swing. Don’t look at me like that.”
    She slapped him lightly on the arm, her smile charmingly embarrassed. He couldn’t help smiling back. Something about her—hell, everything about her—lifted his spirits higher than they’d been in years. “Like what?”
    “Like I’m…corny,” she supplied. “But I guess I can’t expect you to understand, with you not being a porch-swing kind of guy.”
    “I don’t know about that. I spent a lot of time on this very swing.” He scuffed his foot against the wood floor, sending the swing rocking. “I used to come out here at night, turn off the light and just swing and swing.”
    “So this isn’t the first time your aunt chased you out here?” Sara asked rhetorically. “Um, did I say something wrong tonight?”
    He decided to be honest. “You asked too many questions.”
    “What? How is asking Felicia whether she grew up in Indigo Springs and when she got married asking too many questions?”
    Aunt Felicia had initially been forthcoming, telling Sara about being raised in this very house, about Murray moving in after they got married, about staying on after her parents died.
    It was all good information, allowing Sara to understand how much the house meant to her. The manager of the Indigo Springs Bank was on vacation until Friday, but Sara was now determined to fight harder at the meeting she’d scheduled to make sure his aunt kept her home.
    “Those questions weren’t the problem,” Michael said. “She didn’t want to talk about me.”
    Aunt Felicia had clammed up after Sara asked about how she and Michael were related. Surely Sara had noticed. She’d revealed that her late sister was Michael’s grandmother, then shut up.
    “Why didn’t she want to talk about you?” Sara asked.
    He let the swing rock back and forth until it came