Free Star Dust by Emma Barry & Genevieve Turner Page B

sending their light to this little planet circling an ordinary star.
    “Yes,” he answered. “I will.”

C HAPTER S IX

    Anne-Marie sipped her coffee and played with the heavy, flowered drapes. She’d made them for another house, another window. Heck, it felt like another woman had made them. Twenty-one-year-old Anne-Marie wouldn’t recognize the thirty-year-old version. Maybe she’d ditch the drapes for shades and complete the transformation.
    She tugged them all the way open and considered. Was she a drapes woman? Had she ever been?
    Before she could decide, someone else came into the picture. To be precise, he ran across it. Kit Campbell: astronaut, all-American man, and stone-cold fox.
    She’d discovered Kit’s jogging schedule earlier in the week. She’d noted the time he went out and his route so she could avoid him.
    He made, as far as she could tell, two laps. And for the second, he sometimes wasn’t wearing a shirt. Or he’d pull it up and use it blot his face. It was… glorious. In a very silly, very coarse way that she was going to get around to chastising herself for one of these days.
    And she hadn’t positioned herself in front of this window at 6:44 in the hopes of catching him. No. Absolutely not.
    Then he did it. He pulled his shirt up to wipe his face, and the muscles of his back rippled like water on the pond down the street. Just golden and splendid. It was even better when he did it running toward his house and she could see his stomach.
    She sighed, then slammed her hand over her mouth as if he could hear her. Of course he couldn’t, but she flattened herself against the wall just in case. It wouldn’t do for him to catch her watching.
    In fact, this was it: the last time. If she happened to be looking out the window and he came past… no, definitely not. If he came past, she was going to close the drapes—or the shades—and go into the other room. Because he was just like the rest of them.
    Wasn’t he?
    When they’d met and he’d patched her up, and again during their first conversation under the stars, she’d thought she’d had him pegged: cad, playboy, jerk. During her first week in the house, he’d done nothing to convince her this view of him was wrong.
    But after last night, she wasn’t sure. She hated not being sure.
    She levered herself up and watched his figure retreating down the street. The intentional pump of his shoulders. His hips, slim and insistent. He ran fast, it seemed to her, as if he was excising something from his body.
    “What are you running from?” she whispered.
    Or maybe he was running toward it—the stars, maybe. Fame. A room filled with blondes.
    Whatever it was, it wasn’t her and that was fine.
    The phone rang then, which saved her from having to think about him anymore.
    “Smith residence,” she answered.
    “Good, I caught you before work.”
    She set down her coffee and raked her hand through her hair. “Good morning, Doug.” She managed to say the words evenly. “How are you?”
    “Busy. Which is why I’m calling. I’m not going to get down there this month.”
    She took a deep breath. And then another. She shouldn’t be surprised. Even before she’d left Dallas he’d been finding excuses not to see the children.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “It’s this case. It’s just… it’ll be better in a few weeks.”
    He believed it and he didn’t. He knew it was a lie, but he hoped someday he’d stop telling it. Doug wouldn’t ever change.
    “I didn’t tell them you were coming.” She wasn’t mad, simply weary.
    “Oh, well that’s good. They won’t be disappointed then.”
    “That’s what you have to say about this? It’s good that I’ve lowered their expectations—and mine—so that no one is disappointed?”
    “What do you want me to say?”
    That had been his big question during the divorce. After a muttered sorry —which was an apology that Anne-Marie had found out, not that he’d been involved with his secretary—it had