Sweeter Than Revenge Read Free Page A

syllables pulsed through the air, slid under her skin and pooled into a painful mass of loss and longing low in her belly. If she’d thought—hoped—he was a figment of her overwrought nerves, she now knew better. That low, deep voice—as thrilling as helicopter skiing and as smooth as black velvet—couldn’t belong to anyone other than David Hunt.
    “You came back,” she said unnecessarily, an unfamiliar Marilyn Monroe breathiness in her voice.
    Her father tutted before David could answer, stepping forward to press a light hand to the small of her back. “Now, Sugar. Is that any way to treat an old friend? Besides. I told you. He’s the new director.”
    Maria and David stared at each other, neither of them blinking nor acknowledging that Ellis had just spoken. The world shrank down to the two of them, to the intensity in David’s eyes and the leashed tension that pulsed between them.
    “Didn’t I tell you I’d come back?” David asked her in a low, silky voice.
    Maria shivered, wondering what to make of his tone. He sounded as if he wanted to rip the bikini from her body and enter her now—hard, fast and furious. He also sounded vaguely threatening, as if he wanted to rip her body limb from limb, to punish her, to humiliate.
    God, what was he doing? Why was he here?
    “Yeah, you told me you’d come back,” she said, keeping her voice steady even though it wanted to quaver. “I just didn’t think it’d take four years.”
    With that, she turned, sat on her lounge chair, stretched her legs out and tried to pretend he wasn’t there while watching him from under her eyelashes. During the silence that followed, Ellis shifted on his feet and brought his hand to his mouth to cover his uncomfortable cough. David’s jaw tightened, but he managed to look supremely unconcerned, although his gaze flickered over her body again. Maria prayed for the strength to remain detached, and for the hot tears that burned her eyes to wait until later, when she was alone, before they fell.
    Ellis cleared his throat. “Well, David,” he began, “why don’t we go in and—”
    “Where have you been?” Maria asked David.
    She regretted the foolish words even before she got to the question mark at the end of her sentence. Where was her pride? Why couldn’t she keep her big mouth shut? She would not give this man a reason—anotherreason—to laugh at her, nor would she act like she cared one iota about where he’d been or what he’d done. No, she would not.
    David turned to her, his expression amused and vaguely reproachful for her rudeness. In a gesture of consummate indifference, he slid his hands into his pants’ pockets, leaned against one of the pergola posts and crossed his ankles.
    “Oh…here and there.”
    “‘Here and there’?”she cried. “Is that near Duluth?”
    The men laughed at her, which only fueled her anger. The ancient scar over her heart, a memento of her affair with David, began to ache with renewed pain. So much for acting cool and aloof; she couldn’t even manage it for five lousy seconds.
    Whywas he here? To finish her off for good? What right did he have to show up, unannounced, back in her life? To look and sound so good and act bored when he hadn’t laid eyes on her for four years? Didn’t he have anything to say to her?
    David turned to Ellis. “Can you give us a minute? I’d like to talk to Maria.”
    “Sure.” Her father clapped him on the shoulder and favored him with the kind of loving smile he normally reserved for her. “It’s good to have you back, son.”
    Maria wanted to scream.
    David nodded, looking unaccountably touched. They shook hands and pulled each other into one of those gruff male hugs. Finally her father extracted himself. “Come inside when you’re finished. Miss Beverly’s fixing up salmon salads for lunch and then we’ll head on down to the office and I’ll introduce you around.”
    Ellis strode off toward the house, his step so springy Maria