Her Reason to Stay Read Free

she was hard to fool. She eyed him steadily until he continued. “I looked. Aside from the financials, I found stuff on your track-and-field results.”
    She almost told him he hadn’t dug deep enough, but why send him straight to the truth about her past? He and Raina would think even less of her.
    “She’s alone. You could help her. She might help you, too.”
    “Alone’s a bad place to be.”
    A man in a business suit burst through the door from outside, shaking rain off his umbrella. Patrick pulled her away from the door.
    “People have already tried to take advantage of Raina.”
    “I don’t doubt that.” It was the way of the world. “But I didn’t, and I wouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have come here. This place…It makes me think of families and old-fashioned closeness. I’m used to bad guys who wear their evil on their sleeves.” She couldn’t articulate her experience of the town thus far. Of course, her exposure had been limited, so maybe she should see more before passing judgment. “My sister is content in a world I’m not sure I could live in even if I wanted to. I’m used to larger, more anonymous cities.”
    “How do you know until you try?”
    “It might be pointless, Patrick.”
    She hadn’t meant to say his name. It was too personal. It invited proximity. As if acting on that invitation, he stepped closer. Her awareness of her surroundings narrowed until she saw—felt—only Patrick.
    Each breath pressed his chest against her shoulder. The situation grew personal in the extreme.
    “You don’t know this place. Raina’s been lost since her mother died. You could help her life make sense again. I can’t do any more for her.”
    He wasn’t acting the part of a knight in a business suit. He truly cared about Raina. His love for her dragged Daphne back to earth with a thump.
    She twisted away. “I don’t understand what goes on between you two, but you make me feel claustrophobic.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    Maybe he’d never longed for that one person who made him feel he had a place, a love stronger than anything else he’d ever known—a love to fill the gaps created by years without affection or concern. But Daphne had. And she began to suspect that Patrick loved Raina that much.
    Daphne hadn’t resented Raina’s luckier ticket in the adoption lottery, and she’d been glad her sister had never been forced to fend off unwanted male attention. Right now Daphne envied the connection between Raina and this man.
    “I’m sorry.” Daphne held out her hand. “You’re my sister’s answer. She doesn’t want love from me. You matter to her. Goodbye, Mr. Gannon.”
    He stared at her for a moment, the look in his eyes confused as his hand clasped hers. Her palm disappeared in his. Her fingers felt crushed and her arm grew heavy from her wrist to her shoulder. Heavy with awareness.
    “I didn’t expect you to be like this,” Patrick said. “You’re strong enough to walk away.”
    She retreated, fighting her attraction. A woman who’d grown up with inappropriate men, Daphne recognized the danger of being vulnerable to a man like Patrick—one who got through her defenses, one who was committed elsewhere. Affairs always started this way. Sexual longing. Looking too deeply into his eyes. Him holding her hand too long, drawing out perfectly natural physical contact, making it something more. That path, however tempting, led to heart-ache. It led away from the real, safe love she deserved.
    She should run, if only because of Patrick and the threat of a relationship that had nothing to do with her reasons for coming to Honesty.
    But there was Raina. Suppose he was right. Suppose she really wanted to know Daphne, but she didn’t know how to say so.
    Wasn’t it worth another day or two in this little town to have the chance to know her sister?
    “I’ll stay.”
    Instead of sagging with relief, he seemed to grow larger. His shoulders went back as he took a deep breath.
    “But