Love.
She scoffed at the word now, but once upon a time she had believed in it with everything she had in her. Mama and Pa had set the example and she’d grown up in a house filled with love and affection. She’d had every intention of following in their footsteps, even thought she’d found the right man to do that with.
She’d been wrong.
Her parents had been the exception to the rule. The rule being that love was not something solid and strong. It was weak and fleeting and deserted you without hint or warning or reason. All it left in its wake were memories, and oh, how those could taunt. She drew up her knees and dropped her forehead to rest against them.
She had made the right decision to forsake such a fair-weather friend. Besides, she was a businesswoman now. Independent. She didn’t have time for softer emotions or relying on others. It was better that way. Really.
Oh, but the audacity of Hunter Donovan to show up on her doorstep and demand to know what she was doing here, stirring up everything old and stored away. The bravado! He had no right. No right at all.
Anger sluiced through her veins and teased her jagged nerves. Seeing him had left her unbalanced. Throughout her trip back to Salvation Falls she had wondered if the years would have left him untouched. They hadn’t. Instead they had honed the young man he’d been into a sharper image, chiseled in the fine details, added layers. The lankiness of youth had been replaced with lean muscle and an air of almighty confidence that told him he had the right to show up at her door and demand answers to his questions.
What had he seen when he looked at her? She dared glance at the full length mirror on the opposite wall. Her reflection was captured there, undone and pooled in wrinkled silk damask. Had she at least appeared poised when facing him? Or had he been able to see through the facade to how his sudden appearance had rattled her?
Her fingers tangled into her dress to keep them from shaking, but her insides did not comply. They roiled and twisted around the memories she had buried deep, coaxing them back to the surface. She tried to stuff them back down, but their residue lingered, sweet and intoxicating, bitter and hateful.
Tomorrow she would have to face him again. To do battle with her memories. Seeing him, standing close enough to touch him made every scar he’d laid across her unruly heart throb with pain and regret.
How much could a body withstand before it suffered too much? Before the floodgates opened and dropped her to her knees.
She had a sinking feeling she was on the verge of finding out.
Going to see Meredith last night had been a colossal mistake. He’d blindsided her and as a result she’d gotten her back up. Then Bancroft and his brood had descended poking into their business. Hunter loved this town, but just once he’d like to do something without everyone in Salvation Falls dipping their toe into his life like they had some right to it.
He wondered if that was how Meredith had felt when he showed up at her door like a puffed-up buffoon and demanded to know what her intentions were. He groaned and dropped his forehead onto the smooth surface of his desk, banging his head lightly against the wood. He should have tried a softer approach but it had been so long since he’d tapped into anything remotely resembling a soft emotion he wasn’t even sure he’d remember how. His job as sheriff demanded he be strong, steady, often tough and forceful. Softness didn’t enter into it.
Given their parting seven years ago and the circumstances surrounding it, he had to expect he’d be the last person she’d want to see. If only he’d cooled his heels long enough yesterday to remember that before he went barreling over there to pound on her door.
Hindsight was a rather smug beast.
He lifted his head and leaned back in his chair, swinging his feet up onto the corner of his desk. Her return had set him on edge, no doubt about it. If he’d thought he had locked away their past and put it to rest, her arrival had proved him wrong. On first sight of her, everything had come rushing back in a tidal wave of memories. The good. The bad. The incredibly ugly.
To this day he still wasn’t sure which one outweighed the other. He couldn’t think of the good without the bad and ugly creeping in, and so he’d put them all away. Tucked them down deep where he didn’t have to look at them or face what he had done. It had been hard enough to do when she wasn’t here. He suspected it was going to be damned near impossible if she was front and center in his life day in and day out.
He needed to convince her to return to Boston. This time, however, it was for his safety, not hers.
It didn’t help matters that he’d spent the better part of the night tossing and turning trying to figure out how he was going to accomplish such a feat when it was obvious she wasn’t interested in one word that came out of his mouth. By the wee hours of the morning he was no closer to a solution. He’d dressed and come downstairs to his office to relieve Jenkins. With Bill Yucton’s penchant for escape, he wasn’t taking any chance of leaving the man unwatched.
He pushed himself out of his chair and crossed over to the woodstove, stoking the fire to ward off the cold creeping down from the mountains. He poured another cup of coffee. He had hoped the first cup would awaken enough of his faculties to force the image of Meredith from his mind, but he was three mugs in now and her image still lingered. A strange mesh of the girl from his memories and the woman she had become.
Time had left her skin smooth, untouched. The freckles he remembered were no longer in evidence. Her ivory skin did not appear to have met with the sun’s rays in some time. Maybe it didn’t shine much in Boston. And her eyes. Lord help him. The cornflower blue seemed even more brilliant against her flawless skin than he remembered. They’d stared at him in surprise when she first opened the door. He watched myriad emotions scuttle across them like fast-moving clouds when a storm was brewing.
Her words drifted back to him as they had over and over again through the night.
I plan on proving my father’s innocence once and for all.
That could prove problematic.
He took a sip from his mug and winced. The sludge tasted like a disgusting mixture of burnt tree bark and dirt. He should have let Jenkins make a pot before he took Yucton to the bathhouse. He’d enlisted Kincaid’s aid in transporting the prisoner. The bounty hunter had been none too pleased to be roused from his slumber, but since he’d taken to bunking in the empty cell to sleep off his latest bender, Hunter figured he wasn’t in a position to argue.
Besides, he needed some time to think.
The return of Bill Yucton and Meredith Connolly at the same time was a bit too coincidental for him to swallow. He’d never put much faith in happenstance. Then again, he hadn’t put much faith in anything of late.
He stared at the narrow file cabinet wedged under the small window next to his desk. He kept meticulous files, a trait McLaren had not shared and not one Jenkins seemed inclined to pick up. He’d had to go into the bottom three drawers repeatedly to refile whatever he’d given to Jenkins. It was as if the boy had never been introduced to the alphabet.
But the top drawer he’d left alone. It had been two years since he’d opened it and pulled out the worn leather notebook. Years earlier, he’d gone over its contents six ways from Sunday, reread every word he’d put into it in the vain hope they would reveal whatever it was he was missing. They hadn’t, and so he’d stuck it in the drawer and tried his best to wash his hands of it.
Dig deeper...the trial...syndicate...
The words had confused him at the time and haunted