Revenge Read Free Page B

miles leading to Rimrock disappeared beneath the balding tires of her little car, she felt a growing edge of anticipation. Adrenaline clamped her fingers around the wheel while she tried to ignore the feeling that she was making the biggest mistake of her life—second biggest, she reminded herself. The first was falling in love with Max McKee. Clenching her teeth together, she shoved aside the little tug on her heart at the thought of him. She didn’t have time for second thoughts about Max. She’d been young and foolish. She was lucky she’d forced herself to forgo listening to her heart and refused to marry him.
    Max McKee may well have been her first love, but he certainly wasn’t going to be her last! Not that she needed a man. Being an independent woman had its advantages. She never had to worry about disappointing anyone else in her life, and if there was a void—an emptiness that sometimes seemed impossible to fill—well, that was all part of the choices she’d made. She wasn’t the type of woman to moan and cry about lost loves or missed opportunities.
    From the carrier in the back seat, her cat, Kildare, let out an impatient cry.
    â€œNot much farther,” Skye called over her shoulder. The cat, named for the doctor in Skye’s mother’s favorite medical show of all time, sent up another plaintive wail, but Skye ignored him and stared through her grimy windshield to the gorgeous Ochoco Mountains. The road edged the river as it cut a severe canyon through the towering hills topped with the stony red outcrop that had given the town of Rimrock its name.
    The wind teased her hair and she rarely saw another car. She’d missed this—the solitude, the majestic stillness of the mountains, the peaceful quiet of the countryside—while she’d spent the past few years of her life in the frenetic pace of the city. Portland wasn’t a large town compared with New York, Chicago or Seattle, but for a girl who had grown up in a community with a population of less than a thousand people corralled within the city limits, Portland had seemed immense, charged with an invisible current of electricity. The streets were a madhouse where drivers surged from one red light to the next, anxiously drumming fingers on steering wheels, smoking or chewing gum or growling under their breath about the traffic. Where the smell of exhaust fumes mingled with rainwater. Where night was as bright as day.
    At first, she’d loved the city, the change of pace, the demands of medical school. In her few precious hours of free time, she’d explored every nook and cranny of the restless town, indulging in the nightlife, the theaters, the museums, the concerts in Waterfront Park. She’d learned, as a matter of self-preservation, to be suspicious of nearly everyone in the city, and yet she’d met some of the most honest and true friends of her life while studying to become a doctor.
    And yet she was drawn back home.
    â€œHome.” She mouthed the word and it felt good.
    She hadn’t been forced to return to the hills of eastern Oregon. She’d had options when she’d graduated and could have joined the staff of several hospitals in the Pacific Northwest, and another in Denver. Instead, after a year with Columbia Memorial, she’d decided to nose her little car due east and accept Doc Fletcher’s offer to buy out his practice in Rimrock.
    Because of Max. Because there’s unfinished business between you.
    Her fingers began to sweat over the steering wheel and she snapped her mind closed to that particular thought. Max was married, and she, perhaps romantic to the point of being an idiot, believed in the sanctity of marriage. Although her father was no longer alive, her parents had shown her love, laughter, trust and commitment.
    So Max McKee was off-limits. Good. Even if he was still single, she wouldn’t have wanted him. She’d never met a more