He wanted to kiss her.
Her eyes darkened a shade and her lids slipped down, as if they were too heavy to hold open, and her gaze strayed to his mouth. He found himself wondering what she would taste like, if it would be slow and sweet or hot and wild.
Definitely slow and sweet, he decided. She wasn’t the hot-and-wild type at all.
Unconsciously he lowered his head, and she must have read his thoughts because the spell was instantly broken. The guard she wore snapped back down over her eyes, and she pulled her hand away from his face.
“I—I have to go.” She backed up the porch steps. In the fading light he could see her eyes were like saucers, as if he’d scared the holy hell out of her.
Let her go, his conscience warned him. He’d pushed too far too fast. On the bright side, at least she was looking at him now. Looking at him as though he was the devil incarnate.
A little bit of damage control might even be in order.
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” he told her.
“I’m not uncomfortable,” she said.
She was lying, but he let it go. He thought about shaking her hand, but everything in her stance said to back off.
He tucked his hands back into his pockets instead. “Thanks for keeping me company. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
“See you.”
He turned and started down the path toward the main building, but he couldn’t help shooting once last glance over his shoulder.
She was already gone.
Abi closed the door and fell against it, holding a trembling hand over her wildly beating heart. Will had been about to kiss her. He’d even dipped his head a little.
She should recognize the signs; she’d seen the move a million times. Though she didn’t remember the thought of a kiss ever making her this weak in the knees before, the idea of intimacy with a man sparking this feeling of giddy anticipation. Not even her first time in the bed of Bo Reily’s pickup truck—of course, he’d had her so liquored up on Jack Daniel’s she hadn’t felt much of anything then.
She’d had enough sex in her life for five women, but she’d never touched a man the way she had Will, never felt the kind of intimacy she had with her hand on his face. Sex had been nothing but a vehicle to get what she wanted, a way to bend men to her will.
You use what assets God gave you, her mother used to tell her, and Tara Sullivan would know. She’d spent her life hopping from one man’s bed to another, and Abi had learned the apple never fell far from the tree.
She hadn’t known she could feel this way. This hot, excited, restless feeling that seemed to come from somewhere deep in her bones.
She’d felt something else, too. She’d felt vulnerable, and that scared her half to death.
She’d gone four years without a man in her bed, four years spent reprogramming her brain to reject the idea of sex in any form. And in the span of five minutes Will had undone it all. The woman she used to be, the one she’d thought was long dead and buried, was still sneaking around inside her somewhere.
God help her if she ever found a way out.
But she didn’t need a man to take care of her anymore. She’d proven to herself through determination and hard work that she was a survivor, and no one could take that away from her.
Brittney, Adam’s babysitter, appeared in his bedroom doorway and came down the hall toward her. “I thought I heard you come in. He had his bath and he’s playing in his room if you want to—” She stopped short. “Holy cow, Abi, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
A ghost. Huh. She couldn’t have put it better herself. “You know, Brit, I think I just did.”
Chapter 3
Abi breathed in the clean afternoon air, feeling the burn in her calves as she hiked with a group of a dozen kids—the ten-years-and-older group—along the nature trail at the foothills of the mountain and into the woods. All around her the forest was alive with sights and sounds and scents. Four years ago she never would have appreciated the simple beauty of it. She would have seen it as dirty and smelly and uncivilized.
Now it was her solace.
It still amazed her at times, the changes she’d made in her life. It hadn’t been easy, and she never wanted to go back to being that lost, confused young woman she had once been. At the time she’d thought she owned the world, but it had all been an illusion.
“Go talk to him,” she heard Leanne whisper.
“I told you, he’s a snob.” Cindy gave her younger sister a shove. “If you like him so much, you go talk to him.”
Abi watched the exchange from the back of the group where she walked with the younger kids. It was easy to see that the older sister was the dominant, outgoing sibling, and like Abi at sixteen, she probably considered herself an authority on the workings of the teenage male mind. As pretty as she was, Abi didn’t doubt Cindy had her fair share of attention from the opposite sex. What need would she have to go looking for it?
Despite her confidence and nonchalant demeanor, she was probably the one hurt the most deeply by their parents’ divorce. She was just better at hiding it. At least, that was usually the case. Leanne, on the other hand, wore her emotions right out in the open for everyone to see.
Though it was Cindy who Abi could identify with, it was Leanne who intrigued her. And she hoped the younger girl would work up the courage to talk to Eric. Since arriving he still hadn’t talked to anyone. Abi was biding her time, waiting for just the right moment to approach him.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he was still there, lagging behind, eyes firmly fixed on the ground. She worried about him staying in a cabin all by himself. Not that she thought he couldn’t take care of himself. He wasn’t known to be a troublemaker and at seventeen he was old enough to stay there alone.
That was exactly what worried her. The isolation. She had the feeling he led a very lonely existence to begin with. Would this only make things worse?
She felt a tug on her shirt and turned to find the youngest boy in the group, a ten-year-old named Noah, walking beside her.
“Miss Abi, I’m tired and my feet hurt. I want to go back.”
Though he was a sweet kid, he was quickly gaining a reputation as a whiner.
She rumpled the back of his blond head and gave him an encouraging smile. “We’ll be taking a break real soon. Can you hold out another couple of minutes?”
“Okay,” Noah sighed, then, shoulders slumped, he ambled off. From what Abi had heard, Noah’s father had replaced his wife and son with his much younger, pregnant mistress, and Noah’s mother was so beside herself with grief and resentment she could barely function. Noah had lost not only his father but the attention of his mother, as well. Financially they were set, but as Abi had learned, money didn’t buy happiness. It didn’t heal wounded hearts or erase past mistakes. In fact, it had a way of causing more trouble than it was worth.
Hopefully with therapy and time to heal Noah’s mother would come to realize how much her son needed her, and they would leave the retreat a little less heartbroken. It was the best Abi could hope for.
“Have you got room for one more?”
Startled by the familiar voice, Abi looked back to find Will Bishop walking briskly up the trail behind them. He wore green cargo shorts and a dark tank that showed off the lean muscles in his shoulders and arms. Her heart gave a funny little flutter at the sight of him.
What was he doing here? Granted, the trail was a frequently traveled one, but