If You Come Back To Me (If You Come Back To Me #1) Read Free

Chicago and everywhere in between. A small population of Arab-Americans had settled in many lakeside communities over the past several decades. Harbor Town was often held up as a banner example of how a minority group could not only blend with a community, but enrich and improve it. Her parents had belonged to a Lebanese faction of eastern orthodox Christianity—the Maronites. Despite the minority status of their religion among Arab-Americans, Kassim and Shada Itani had taken comfort in having others around who shared so many common cultural elements.
    “Oh, look! It’s Alex Kouri,” Mari exclaimed as a distinguished man in his sixties marched past. His eyes widened incredulously as his gaze landed on her, and he waved and mouthed her name.
    Mr. Kouri had been one of her father’s closest friends. Both of them had been Detroit-based businessmen who had brought their families to Harbor Town for summer vacations. Mr. Kouri and her father would frequently drive back and forth together from Harbor Town to Dearborn, Michigan, on Friday and Sunday evenings, leaving their families to idle away the hot, summer weekdays while they worked at their corporate jobs.
    Mari noticed how gray Mr. Kouri’s hair had become. That’s how her father would have looked, had he lived.
    She saw a woman standing at the curb, her rapt attention on Mari and Eric, not on the parade. Still as nosey as ever, Mari thought with a flash of irritation, recognizing Esther Fontel, the old neighbor from Sycamore Avenue. The woman had once ratted her out to her parents when she observed Mari sneaking out her bedroom window and down the trusty old elm tree to join Marc on his motorcycle one hot summer night. Mari still recalled how angry her father had been, the hurt and the disappointment on her mother’s face.
    Until she’d turned fifteen, Mari hadn’t fully understood the impact that her parents’ ethnicity and religious views would have on her. Her brother had dated and enjoyed any number of summertime, teenage dalliances in Harbor Town. When Mari became a young woman, however, she’d learned firsthand that Ryan and she would not be treated the same when it came to dating. Especially when it came to Marc Kavanaugh.
    Marc and Ryan had been close friends since they were both ten years old. Her parents had actually bothbeen very fond of Marc, and he was a regular visitor in the Itani vacation home.
    But the summer Mari had turned fifteen, everything had changed—and Marc Kavanaugh had quickly moved to the top of her parents’ list of undesirable dating partners for Mari.
    Mrs. Fontel looked pointedly across the street, and Mari followed her gaze. She stared, shock vibrating her consciousness. Two tall, good-looking men with healthy, golden tans and dark blond hair stood in the crowd. Her gaze stuck on the one with the short, wavy hair. He had a little girl perched on his shoulders.
    He looked just as good in shorts and a T-shirt that skimmed his lean, muscular torso as he had in the gray suit he’d worn in Chicago, Mari thought dazedly.
    Her glance flickered to the right of Liam and Marc, and Brigit Kavanaugh’s furious glare struck her like a slap to the face from an ice cold hand. Marc’s stare was fiercer, though. It seemed to bore right through her across the span of Main Street.
    It felt like someone had reached inside her and twisted her intestines. He’d said he only returned to Harbor Town a few times a year, she thought wildly. What were the chances he’d be here for the same handful of days she was?
    She shivered despite the heat. It was Independence Day. Tomorrow would be the anniversary of the crash. Perhaps the Kavanaughs had gathered to visit Derry Kavanaugh’s grave. Why hadn’t she considered that possibility?
    She jerked her gaze back to the parade, making no sense of the flashing, moving, colorful scene before her eyes, still highly aware of him watching her. He’d always been able to melt her with those blue eyes. She