Deadly Notions - By Elizabeth Lynn Casey Page 0,79
and stepped onto the road, the butterflies in her stomach beginning to flap their wings. For over a year now, she’d felt that flutter every time she saw Milo.
And she knew why.
She squared her shoulders and marched up to his front door, her desire to see him all but squashing the nerves that had threatened to make her heed the notion of space. When she reached the top step, she lifted her fist to the door and knocked.
Then she knocked a little louder.
A light went on in the hallway followed by a flash of Milo’s form as he rounded the corner and peeked outside.
“I had to come back.”
His eyes fixed on hers through the screen door as a slow, albeit shy smile pulled his mouth upward. “I’m glad you did.”
She forced herself to remain rooted to the porch, the voices that had preached space growing louder in her head.
Give it time.
Don’t crowd him.
His ego is a little battered right now.
“I’m sorry about what happened earlier. I really am. If I’d known any of that was going to happen the way it did, I would have waited to call Nina.”
He pushed the door open and reached for her, wrapping his hand around her forearm and gently tugging her inside. “Why? So I could have continued being a blind idiot even longer?”
She stepped aside as he closed the door then trailed him into the living room and over to their favorite couch, the slight slump of his shoulders reminding her heart why she was there. “Giving an old friend the benefit of the doubt doesn’t make you an idiot. It makes you special. Rare, even. And I suspect it’s one of the many reasons a woman would track you down after fourteen years in the hopes of rekindling something long gone.”
“I wish she hadn’t.”
Bending her leg at the knee, she dropped onto the couch beside him. “You shouldn’t. You had fun catching up with her, didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “It was okay, I guess.”
“You laughed together, right?”
A secondary shrug segued into a nod. “Some, yeah. But you make me laugh all the time.”
She leaned into the back of the couch, her gaze locked on his. “True. And you make me laugh, too. But sometimes it’s nice to revisit a point in history that had its share of memories, too. And you guys had memories together.”
“Memories I’m starting to question.”
“Why?”
“Because no one changes that much and that drastically. That manipulative side had to have been there somewhere even back then, right?”
His words looped their way through her thoughts as she considered their merits. “Maybe. But maybe stuff has happened in her life over the past decade that’s made her desperate. Less secure. And by reaching out to you she was trying to reach for something about her that was long gone as well.”
“By lying?”
It was her turn to shrug. “That, I can’t explain. All I know is what I’ve lived. And two years ago I thought I’d found someone who could make me happy. I gave him love and trust and loyalty only to have him toss it back in my face with a big old side order of humiliation to boot.”
She braced herself against his chest as he tried to pull her close. “Wait. I need to say this. So when I moved here, my eyes were jaded. The last thing I wanted was to find someone who could, potentially, break my heart all over again.”
“I would never do that to you.”
“I know. And that’s because I’ve found a man with honor and integrity—rare things in today’s world. Which is something, I suspect, Beth discovered in the time that’s passed since college.”
He cocked his head to the left and studied her closely. “Go on.”
“See, she had the rare thing from the start and opted to let it go because she naively assumed it was an easy thing to find. Life showed her otherwise.”
“And that made her lie to get it back?”
“No. The desperation made her lie.”
Silence blanketed the room as he propped his feet on the coffee table and drew his hands up to cradle his head. She considered the notion of saying more, of highlighting some of the things Beth had done to back up what she was saying, but she opted, instead, to let the words she’d already said be enough.
Milo was a smart man.
When he finally spoke, his voice was its normal reflective self. “Do you think I was too hard on her?”