Her eyes grew wet, and she began to tremble, but she didn’t relent. So deeply was she immersed in painful memories, she didn’t hear the hard, purposeful crunch of gravel beneath a man’s boots until he was nearly upon her.
A low vicious oath startled her. Expecting Tuck, Summer whirled, dabbing at her damp eyes with the back of her hand.
And there he was.
At the sight of Zach’s hard, chiseled features swimming through her tears, the pages she’d been holding fell to the wooden floor.
“Well, hello there,” he said.
“Zach.” She hated the way his low, velvet voice made her heart accelerate, made the air feel even hotter. Frantically, she dabbed at her eyes so he wouldn’t see her tears. “Gram said you’d been visiting a lot.” Her voice sounded choked and unnatural.
“Did she?” Black eyes narrowed as he pushed the screen door open. “She told me you were coming home.” Zach scowled. “You’re pale, and your eyes are red. Have you been crying?”
“No! It’s nothing,” she whispered. “I was just acting out a part.”
His lips thinned. “You always were damn talented at that.”
Good, he bought it.
Tall and dark in a long-sleeved white shirt and jeans, and as lethally handsome as ever, Zach’s tight expression told her he wasn’t happy to see her.
As she bent over to retrieve her script, his insolent dark eyes raked her body in a way that made her aware of how skimpily clad she was in her snug blue shorts and thin, clingy blouse.
Feeling strangely warm and too vulnerable suddenly, she bristled and sprang to her feet. “I told Gram to tell you. If she decides to sell, she’ll sell to me. So, why are you here now?”
“I haven’t spoken to her. My secretary arranged my appointment with your grandmother,” he said, striding closer. “When I saw you in those shorts, I imagined she told you I was coming and you were lying in wait….”
“As if I’d do—and, hey, it’s August. I … I have a perfect right to wear shorts,” she sputtered.
“Yes.” His gaze drifted over her appreciatively. “You look good in them. Too good—which I’m sure you know.”
“Gram didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“And she didn’t tell me to cancel my visit. I wonder why. Maybe she likes my company. Or maybe she’d prefer to sell to me. This old place and that brother of yours are way too much for her.”
“None of that is any of your business.”
“Your Tuck was running pretty wild, got himself fired from a bar because money went missing.…”
“As if you know anything about Tuck. He doesn’t steal!”
Zach’s black brows arched. “Still thinking the worst of me while you defend everybody else. Your stepfather’s been giving me hell, too.”
The comparison to her stepfather cut her … deeply. Zach hadn’t been there for her when she’d needed him either, had he? He hadn’t cared….
Maybe because he hadn’t known.
“As a matter of fact, I like your grandmother. That’s why I hired Tuck. When I happened on him late one night, he’d had a flat tire. He didn’t have a spare or money or a credit card, and his phone was dead. So he accepted my offer to haul him to a service station and buy him a new tire on the condition that he become my pool and errand boy and work it off.”
“I see through your Good Samaritan act.”
“I was sort of suspicious about it myself.”
“You’re just using Tuck to get at me in some way. So go,”she whispered. “You are the last person I want involved with my family, especially with Tuck, who’s extremely vulnerable.”
“Well, sorry if my return to Bonne Terre upsets you, or if Tuck’s being my employee bothers you,” he said, not sounding the least apologetic. “But since I’ve got business in this town for some time to come, and Tuck works for me, I suppose you and I were bound to meet again … sooner or later.”
“Gambling? Is that your business?”
“Yes. What of it? You’re an actress, someone skilled at weaving seductive illusions. You sure seduced me with your little act. And I let you off easy. You should feel lucky. I’m not known for lenience with people who betray me.”
Easy? Lucky? New Orleans lay like a weight on her heart.
“All you see is your side.”
“I was the one who damn near got strung up because of your lies,” he said. “I’m the one who’s still found guilty every time some reporter decides to write another story about us.”
“Well, maybe you don’t know everything!” She stopped. She would never make the mistake of trying to confide in him. But despite her best intentions, she said, “You … you can’t believe I ever wanted to accuse you, not when I begged you to run off with me, and when it was my idea to …”
“To seduce me?” he finished.
His silky whisper and the intense fire in his black eyes rubbed her nerves raw.
“It wasn’t like that and you know it. I … I couldn’t help it if Thurman hated you for what I did.”
“Let’s not kid ourselves. You did what you did. I don’t give a damn anymore about why you did it.”
Shame and some darker emotion she didn’t want him to sense scorched her cheeks as she turned away from the coldness in his face. “If I could have undone what I did or said, or what I caused people to believe about you, I would have.”
“Hollow words … since you could have stepped up and cleared my name at any point. You didn’t. Like a fool, I waited for you to do just that. I was young. I believed in you back then.” His mouth tightened into a hard, forbidding line. “But, no, you ran off to New Orleans where you probably seduced somebody else.”
“There was never anyone but you….” She swallowed tightly. “I—I tried to apologize … and explain. You refused to take my calls. I even went to Houston looking for you after your uncle took you away, but you wouldn’t see me.”
“By then I knew what a talented manipulator you were.”
At his dark, unforgiving scowl, she sucked in a tortured breath. “If you hate me so much, why won’t you just go?”
“I don’t hate you. Frankly, I don’t consider you worth the waste of any more emotion. What I’m doing here isn’t about you. I’ve made a name for myself in other places. When Nick called me a few months ago, I realized I’d never let go of what happened here and neither have the people of this town or the media. Maybe I’ve decided it’s time I changed a few people’s minds.
“Your stepfather used to be the biggest man in these parts. Not anymore. I intend to be bigger than he ever was. I intend to make him pay for what he did—to kill him with kindness, bestowed upon his town.”
“I want you to leave Gram and Tuck alone. I’m buying this property from her because I won’t have you cheating her to get back at me.”
“You’d better not make accusations like that in public.”
“And you’d better stop trying to make me look bad to my grandmother, who’s started nagging me about not coming home often enough!”
“Haven’t you been neglecting her?”
“Well, if I don’t come home, it’s because