The Man She Once Knew Read Free Page B

foot high as she sought to spare the one indulgence in a sober wardrobe bought to ensure that, at only thirty, she was taken seriously in her position.
    The reminder was a good one. She did not belong here, and it was no business of hers what happened with anyone or anything in Oak Hollow. Her life was elsewhere. She’d fought to make it so.
    Thus resolved, she went inside, washed her cup and did a quick, impersonal check of the premises to be sure everything was squared away. Then, with a moment’s hesitation over leaving the door unlocked, she got into her car and started it. In less than five minutes, she was parking across the street and down a bit from Albert Manning’s law office. She walked swiftly, preoccupied with thoughts of what she would do first when she got back to Philly.
    As she passed the post office, the door swung wide, and she nearly smacked right into it. A quick dodge to the side, and she tripped over a crack in the sidewalk.
    A hand grabbed her arm and steadied her.
    She lifted her head. “Excuse—” Every last thought vanished as she stared into a face she had once known intimately.
    “David,” she finally managed, her arm still tingling where he’d touched her, even through the fabric of her jacket. Whatever she might have meant to say dried up at the sight of him.
    He only stared down at her, his face a mask.
    He was big, so tall. She wasn’t the tiny girl he’d known—she’d grown three and a half inches after she’d left here, five seven now. With her stilettos, she was an inch or so shy of six feet.
    But he’d grown, too—six four, six five now at a guess—but it wasn’t his height or even the layers of muscle that made the biggest impression on her.
    It was his eyes. Once they had been mossy-green and soft, had spoken volumes to her, whether of love or heat or amusement. Patience had often lingered there, as well, far beyond what anyone would expect from someone so young.
    When Callie had been exiled to Oak Hollow by a mother who wanted freedom to play with her latest sleazy boyfriend, she hadn’t tried to hide her contempt for the hick ways of the locals. In return, she’d been ridiculed by the kids for her Goth attire and disliked by adults for her bad attitude. She’d pretended she didn’t care, but David had found her in the woods one day, crying her eyes out. A compassionate soul, he’d talked to her and begun coming around, even though the other kids gave him a hard time.
    She could accept all the changes she now saw in his frame, the new angles to his face, even the lines time and misery had carved into it.
    But his eyes were a stranger’s, hard and blank. Flat as though he and she had never met. As if they were nothing to each other.
    Then astonishingly, he stepped around her without a word.
    “David—” She reached out to stop him.
    He shrugged her off and kept moving.
    Callie turned and stared at his back. He’d once been so kind to her, so gentle. They’d shared something profound, yet he was pretending not to know her? Fury rode to the rescue. How dare he? She hadn’t asked him to show up yesterday and set tongues wagging. She’d tried not to think of him last night, but he’d been one of the specters haunting her dreams. Now he disappeared from sight without a single glance back, as though she had no meaning to him.
    Nothing could have put her back up quicker. She’d been judged wanting for too much of her life, and she had spent years of painstaking effort making sure she excelled, that no one could ever find her lacking again.
    She stared in the direction he’d gone. Fine. We’re done. Good riddance .
    One hour. She would give the attorney one hour for whatever he needed to say.
    Then Oak Hollow and all it had meant to her was over and done with.
     
    K EEP WALKING . Get the hell out, get away from her before it’s too late. David’s long strides ate up the ground, the day’s promising beauty lost on him as he barely kept himself from breaking