Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,96

about them now.

But she was terrified of something and she needed to run. Otherwise it would all spill out of her here and she couldn’t handle it.

He nodded slowly, then he reached up and wrapped his hand around the back of her head, pulling her in for a kiss.

Feeling raw, her eyes stinging, she collected all of her clothes and dressed, acutely aware that he was watching her. She dressed quickly.

He got out of bed and heat flooded her as she watched him stride across the room completely naked.

He didn’t have a thing to be embarrassed about. She didn’t know they made men like him, not in the real world.

“Let me walk you to your car.”

He tugged on his jeans with nothing else underneath, then pulled his T-shirt over his head. He followed her down the stairs, barefoot, and she kept her hands clasped in front of her, deliberately not holding his hand. He opened up the front door, and walked her across the street. The street was completely empty, but she was still nervous about being seen.

“I’ll see you,” he said.

She nodded slowly. She thought about kissing him again. But... No. She shouldn’t.

“Good night, Adam,” she said softly.

“Good night, Rachel,” he said.

She got in her car and started driving back toward the inn, and that was when she started to shake. She had... With Adam.

Another truth clicked into place.

He’d been her escape this whole time. Her break from life. From reality. When she’d needed out of her real life, he was there, and when she added this to it, an attraction that had been simmering beneath the surface—even if it had gone unnoticed by her—it made her understand Anna all the more.

There were a thousand rationalizations spinning in her head. That she was more ready for sex than she was for a relationship—true enough—and that it made sense that it was him, because they did have some level of trust in each other.

If she couldn’t have Adam’s hands on her, she needed to be numb, though.

Better to be numb than to be in pain. And if she couldn’t have Adam’s hands on her...

Well, numb was the best thing.

She drove all the way home like that, and at some point she started to sing. To drown things out even more. Reality.

Tonight, and everything that had happened before it.

She was singing a hymn, which she thought might be somewhat sacrilegious, but she couldn’t think of anything else. She could use a solid rock to stand on, anyway, so it was as good as any other song. If not better.

She pulled into the darkened, private drive that led up to the Lighthouse Inn, and she parked her car in front of the Captain’s House. And she sat there for a moment, not quite able to absorb what it was that was wrong with the place.

The light was on in the kitchen.

It was late.

It was all right for the lights to be on in a guest space, because people had free run of the house. But they locked the kitchen at night, and no one was supposed to be in there.

Which meant, either her mother or Anna was in there, or the light had been left on.

Without giving it much thought, she parked the car and got out.

What she was doing was delaying the inevitable. The moment that she was going to have to be alone with her thoughts.

This gave her an errand to do. Maybe she would bake something. Maybe she would stay up, forget trying to go to bed.

She used the code to let herself into the Captain’s House, and began to head toward the kitchen. And just as she did, she heard a door open upstairs, and footsteps on the first landing.

And then, she saw her mother, wrapped in a guest robe. And there was a man coming down the stairs behind her.

“For God’s sake, Mother,” Rachel said, before she could even stop the words from falling out of her mouth.

“Rachel?”

“Yes,” Rachel said. “What the hell is happening?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m getting home from my date,” she said.

And as she said that, she realized that she didn’t look any better. Half in a coat, with her hair looking like Heaven knew what, and it was... Well, it was after midnight.

“Never mind,” Rachel said. She turned and started walking toward the door.

“Rachel...”

“I’m not mad,” Rachel said. “I’m not mad.”

She stumbled out the front door and down the steps, and toward the Lightkeeper’s House. The lunacy of it. And she prayed