More Than Friends Read Free

squirreling her into a nearby storage room, and making love to her with his back to the door. On the evening he'd won his law school moot court competition, they had done it in his car. When he'd learned he had passed the bar, they had run to the inn adjacent to the college where Annie was taking graduate courses. Their room had been charming, all two hours' worth. Nine months later Jonathan had been born.
    He drove with a smile on his face and an ache in his groin, both of which burgeoned when he pulled up the circular drive to the front door of the brick Tudor. Flushed with anticipation, he swung out of the car, strode up the short path, and threw open the door.
    "Annie? Good news, sunshine!"
    He took the steps two at a time to the second floor, then her third-floor office. This time of day the sun would be spilling through the skylights and across her desk. He had visions of making love there.
    "Annie?"
    She wasn't in her office, though her briefcase was open and the desk covered with papers. He searched the second floor, then the first, calling her name repeatedly. When he checked the garage, he saw that her car was gone.
    Undaunted, he picked up the kitchen phone and dialed her office at school. He could be there in ten minutes.
    But she wasn't there.
    He checked the kitchen calendar. It was blank for the day. She might have gone shopping for food or clothes for the kids, in which case, given her limited patience in stores, she would be back soon. Then again, she might be meeting a friend for lunch. That would take longer.
    Frustrated, even vaguely annoyed, certainly feeling he might explode from excitement if he didn't share it soon, he went out the back door and set off through the woods. The trees were newly gold and rust and smelling of autumn. He crossed the brook in a single long stride, passed beneath the tree house that he and J.D. had built for the kids so long ago--that Annie and he had used not so long ago for very adult purposes--and snaked his way along the path and between shrubs into the Maxwells' backyard.
    After crossing the flagstone patio, he went through the back door into the kitchen. "Teke?"
    The coffeemaker was on, a good sign. The thought that Annie might be with her raised his arousal another notch. Teke would understand if he dragged Annie back through the woods. Teke understood him nearly as well as Annie did. She was as close to a sister as he'd ever had. Knowing the Maxwells' house nearly as well as he knew his own, he checked the den off the kitchen. Teke wasn't there. Nor could he see Annie's car in the driveway, though she might easily be parked in front.
    "Teke?" he called again, then louder, "Teke?" Teke stirred at the sound of Sam's voice. She was in the living room, tucked in a corner of the sofa, nursing a cup of coffee that had long since gone cold. She was wearing the silk wrap J.D. had given her the Christmas before. It was too conservative for her taste, not her usual upbeat style, but she needed all the help she could get to remind herself who she was. She was feeling unhinged. Grady Piper's letter had done that to her.
    Grady had been her childhood sweetheart, the light of her young life, the source of her fire. She had grown up in his arms, both literally and figuratively. Twenty two years had passed since she had seen or heard from him, but not for lack of trying on her part. She had begged him. She had sent letters. She had tried to call. But he had turned a deaf ear to her pleas, had returned her letters unopened and refused to take her calls. He had rebuffed her at every turn. In the end he had actually said he didn't want her.
    Heartbroken and defeated, finally believing he was out of her life, she had gone off to college, met Annie and Sam, met and married J. D. Maxwell, given birth to three children, found a whole new life. Now Grady was back--or his letter was, at least-at a time when her marriage was floundering. It was a subtle floundering, a quiet frustration, an