McKenna Homecoming Read Free

he’d said yes to her request. If he’d gotten on that plane and spent the past ten years with Leah instead of staying in Boston, treading the same water over and over. He’d let her down when she’d needed him; guilt hit him again.
    “Your father
    ?”
    “Yeah, I had a lot going on,” she said.
    She didn’t elaborate. The days when the two of them told each other everything were far in the past. Hell, she could have another man in her life now, though a quick glance at her bare left hand confirmed if she did, it wasn’t serious.
    He wanted to ask about her family, her life, her years in California, but he sensed a wall between them. Maybe they hadn’t been as close as he’d thought in high school, or maybe she had moved on—and away—from everything in her past. Or maybe he had hurt her too much for her to want anything to do with him anymore. Across the room, Alec saw Jim holding up a glass filled with amber liquid. Jim gave Alec a wave and pointed at the empty stool beside him.
    Alec returned his gaze to Leah. “Well
    I should let you get back to doing whatever a reunion chair needs to do.”
    He’d chickened out. Damn. But how did he get from “How are you” to “I was a jerk”? He started to move away when she put up a hand.
    “Actually, there’s one thing I need to do.” She picked up a paper off the table, wrote something on it, then pressed it against his chest. Her hand was warm, and even through the cotton of his shirt, he could feel her touch, as if she’d branded him. His gaze met hers, capturing those bright green eyes, looking wider, more luminous in the incandescent lighting of the ballroom chandeliers. He reached to cover her hand with his own, but hers had already dropped away.
    “You, uh, forgot your name tag.” She gave him a sheepish smile.
    The heat of her touch lingered, and opened doors he’d thought shut a long time ago, doors he hadn’t intended to open tonight. His mind rocketed back, flashing quick images of Leah in his arms, Leah touching him, Leah kissing him. She could have handed him the tag, but no, she’d put it on him herself. Why? Was there still something between them?
    Or was he looking for a connection that didn’t exist?
    “You think people forgot me?”
    “No,” she said softly, her eyes dropping to the table. “I don’t think anyone forgot you, Alec. At all.”
    Then she turned away, and headed for the other members of the committee. For someone so unforgettable, he felt very, very dismissed.

Chapter Three
    Leah busied herself with straightening the memory table, shifting pictures that didn’t need shifting and stacking yearbooks that didn’t need stacking. All the while, her heart beat a furious pace in her chest while the other couple hundred people in the room laughed and talked, unaware of the tension coiling in Leah’s gut.
    Her hand lit on a picture of Alec from high school. The football captain, mugging for the camera after a victory. She’d snapped the image herself. The photo captured Alec’s infectious grin, his devil-may-care attitude and the spontaneous spirit he inspired in everyone around him. At the time, she’d seen him as the yin to her yang.
    A mistake.
    When she’d talked to him earlier tonight, she’d expected to prove to herself that their high school fling had been nothing more than a couple of teenagers thinking they knew what love was. But the minute her hand had touched his chest, she knew she’d been fooling herself. Even now, she could still feel the solid planes of his torso beneath her palm, see the surprise in his blue eyes. And feel the response in her own body.
    She had missed him, more than she’d realized, and more than she’d expected.
    Why had she touched him? She should have kept her hands to herself instead of opening herself to dangerous memories and desires. But knowing that didn’t make the urge to touch him again go away.
    She turned and noticed him standing near the bar, talking to DeeDee Carter, one