Secrets and Seduction: 5 Romance Novels Read Free Page B

in this two-bit town anymore.”
    She’d worried he would change when he went off to college, but three years ago, he’d asked her to marry him. And when he’d graduated he’d come home to Watkins Glen. She’d thought he wanted a life with her in this little town. But she didn’t really know what he wanted. She didn’t understand him at all.
    “You never said anything about wanting to live in a big city.” Marisa tried to keep the accusation out of her voice.
    “I liked living in Syracuse. I didn’t realize how much until I came back home. There’s nothing to do here, Marisa. My idea of dancing isn’t moving to the sound of a jukebox at the bar. I thought I could fit back in because this is my home. I’ve tried really hard these past months, but I’m suffocating. I’m stagnating. I want out.”
    He walked to the outer wall and looked down the hill toward the lake. “I’m giving my two weeks’ notice today.”
    Marisa sucked in her breath. This man she thought she knew well enough to marry was a complete stranger. He didn’t share her values, didn’t share her dreams. What had they shared beyond some lukewarm sex? Not a lot apparently.
    “If I didn’t own a business with my mother, what would you do?” she asked.
    “It wouldn’t make a difference, Marisa. You won’t leave her or this town.”
    It hurt to learn Kevin had grown beyond her. He’d actually left her behind when he went off to college, but it had taken them eight years to figure it out. He’d left her in suspended animation, his ideal of a high school sweetheart. But that ideal hadn’t survived the separation.
    She slipped the diamond solitaire off her left hand and held it out to him.
    Kevin hesitated, and then took it. “I’m sorry to do this to you today.”
    “It won’t be any easier if we wait. I’ll box up your stuff and leave it at your apartment with your key in the next few days. I’ll come by while you’re at work.”
    “I’ll leave your stuff by the door. Marisa, I … ”
    She held up a hand to stop him from destroying any more of her illusions. If anything else had been a delusion, she’d rather not know. “I hope you’ll be happy in California.”
    “Thanks, Marisa. Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you to work?”
    “No. I need to pull myself together before I tell Mamá about Carolyn.”
    He asked in a hesitant manner. “May I kiss you good-bye?”
    She’d kept the home fires burning for eight years. Even now, when he couldn’t hurt her any worse, she still loved him. “Sure, a good-bye kiss.”
    He took the few steps to her, the distance that had seemed insurmountable only moments before. Sliding his hand gently along her jaw, he lifted her face to his.
    His lips were warm, firm and familiar, the kiss relatively chaste. It was over before it began. There was regret in his brown eyes. His hand lingered for a moment against her cheek, then dropped away.
    “Good-bye, Marisa.”
    “Good-bye.”
    Long after Kevin’s car pulled out of the driveway, severing him from her physically as well as emotionally, Marisa sat on the porch trying to absorb the Indian summer heat. She felt cold and wished she felt numb. As she tried to come to grips with Carolyn’s death, tears tracked down her cheeks.
    She couldn’t get the graphic vision out of her mind. It hurt so much to remember Caro that way. Yet, having seen it firsthand was the only way she could accept that something so horrible had occurred. Things like that didn’t happen to the people you loved.
    When Carolyn’s parents had died in an auto accident last year, Marisa had been able to accept that. Car accidents were common. A train accident was a surreal nightmare.
    When this bout of weeping was done — she knew there’d be more — she headed down to her office on Franklin Street. The beautiful, handmade clothes of her mother’s business, Designs of the Heart, gave Marisa’s spirits a small boost. Her mother had sewn her clothes all her life.