The Way Home

The Way Home Read Free Page B

Book: The Way Home Read Free
Author: Cindy Gerard
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I don’t know. I thought we had a connection that night.”
    She swallowed hard, and suddenly, her heart pounded with an anger she hadn’t known she’d been harboring.
    “You mean that night more than a year ago, when I gave you guns and you went out and made a pretty good stab at getting yourself killed?”
    The legend surrounding “that night” was more fact than fiction and had been fodder for stories around the lake ever since. In certain “good ole boy” circles, where regulars like Boots and his cronies gathered in a restaurant booth or around a potbellied stove with their mugs of strong coffee or bottles of Scotch, the tale of the “shoot-out at the Nelson cabin,” where Tyler Brown and two other former spec-ops soldiers and the daughter of the secretary of State had ended up in a life-and-death face-off with a team of hired assassins, had been told, retold, embellished, and revered. When all the facts had come out, it had been pretty clear that he had almost gotten killed. And that he’d been a hero.
    Well, she’d been married to a hero. Look how that worked out.
    Why, today of all days, did this hero have to show up?
    He wasn’t smiling when she met his eyes this time—probably because her voice had risen before she’d been able to check it. He slowly nodded. “Yeah. That night. I’m sorry. I know what happened was upsetting.”
    Apt word, upsetting .
    He let it settle for a moment. “You saved our lives. Letting us have those guns . . . it was a brave thing you did. Trusting us. Trusting strangers.”
    “Some have different words for what I did.” Her brother-in-law, Brad, in particular had a lot of words . . . words like stupid , insane , reckless .
    “You trusted me then. I hoped you might trust me again, this time with nothing nearly as scary.”
    Oh, but this was scary.
    “I’ve thought about you, Jess. I’ve thought about coming back to see you for a long time now.”
    It was on the tip of her tongue to blurt out, Then why didn’t you? Why have eighteen months gone by without so much as an e-mail? He’d asked for her phone number and her e-mail address. She’d thought he would call. Who was she kidding? She’d been certain he’d call. The way he’d looked at her. The way his eyes had spoken to her.
    Even knowing he was the last kind of man she ever wanted in her life again, it had hurt when he hadn’t contacted her. And she’d felt foolish for thinking about him too much. The way she felt foolish now.
    “I hoped maybe you might want to see me, too,” he said, breaking into her thoughts. “Can we start with something that simple?”
    As if there was anything simple about this.
    Tell him to leave. Just say it and end this.
    But he’d come so far. Made such an effort.
    “Yeah,” she heard herself saying, despite the warnings banging around in her head. God help me. “I guess we could start with that.”
    He looked so relieved that some of her own tension eased out on a tight smile. “So we’re clear, though, you’re still paying for those minnows and the tackle.”
    He laughed and dug into the hip pocket of his jeans for his wallet. “Fair enough.”
    Before she could think it through or second-guess herself, she picked up the phone and dialed.
    “Shelley. Hi. Yeah. It’s Jess. Hey, I’ve got a fisherman here in need of a place to stay.” She glanced up at him, at his watchful eyes, then quickly looked away when she felt her cheeks redden. “Got any vacant cabins?”
    Shelley and Darrin Lutz were her friends and the owners of Whispering Pines Resort—and yes, they had an available cabin.
    “Thanks. I’ll send him your way, then. Name is Brown. Tyler Brown.”
    She couldn’t quite meet his eyes after she hung up. And she already hoped she wouldn’t live to regret making that phone call, because here was the deal. Ty Brown showing up out of the blue this way might represent a life-changing moment for her. A moment she didn’t want, a moment she actually

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