his hand brushed hers. She felt a little jolt, and against her will, she looked up. There was confusion in his eyes, and he shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
“You’re welcome.”
He gave her a shadow of a lop-sided smile and damned if she wasn’t in love with him all over again.
June was going to be a long month.
Chapter 15
Laurel was in the kitchen when she heard a knock at her front door. Before she could dry her hands and get to it, the door opened and a voice called out, “Hello, is anybody here?”
“Oh, hey, Ginny. I’m in the kitchen. Come on in.” Her sister appeared in the doorway. “What brings you here? You want something to drink?”
“Some water would be great.” Ginny accepted her glass with a smile of thanks. “I hope you don’t mind me just popping in like this. I haven’t seen the new kitchen, and I wanted to check out the place where my sister spends so much of her time.” She looked around. “I really like what you’ve done here. You’re so . . . artistic.”
Laurel rolled her eyes good-naturedly at the joke. “Well, I am an artist. But thanks.” She indicated a chair and sat down herself. “So, how’s it going with your houseguests?” Laurel asked, trying to sound disinterested.
“Well, we’re down by one.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, James is gone.”
Laurel swallowed hard and tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t convey the strange combination of relief and disappointment she felt, but Virginia continued before she could come up with anything.
“Yeah. He rented a cabin over near his sister’s for the rest of his stay.”
“I thought he was only staying a couple of weeks.”
“He told me he likes it here. He likes being able to see his sister, and since he has no job to get back to, he’s talking about hanging around for the rest of summer.”
“Oh?” Laurel’s ambivalence instantly changed to apprehension. She was not looking forward to running into James Marshall all summer.
“Yes. And he’s invited his former business partners for a visit. They’re arriving next week.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. The married one, Eric, he’s only staying for a couple of weeks, but the other one might stay a little longer.”
“That’s nice.”
“Laurel, can I ask you something?” Virginia sat down and fidgeted, turning her water glass in circles on Laurel’s tiny kitchen table.
“I suppose you can ask. Do I have to answer?”
Virginia smiled. “Not if you don’t want to, but after watching the two of you the other night at the cookout, I’m beginning to wonder what happened between you and James. I was gone that summer, but Stuart says you guys were always together. He thought James really had it bad for you. But then he just up and moves to Nashville the next winter and then to California a couple years after that, and Stu doesn’t hear from him for ages. And now, all of a sudden, he turns up again. Do you think he came back to see you?”
Laurel snorted. “No. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was the last person he wanted to see.”
Virginia looked at her and waited.
“We had a . . . relationship, I guess you’d call it. He wanted me to move with him to Nashville.”
Virginia’s eyebrows went up. “Wow, I had no idea it was that serious. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Laurel shrugged. “Like you said, you were gone, and after things with him ended, what would be the point in discussing it?”
“I don’t know — for a sister’s sympathy, maybe?”
“I guess I just didn’t want to talk about it much.”
“That sounds just like something you’d say. You’re so stoic, Laurel.” Virginia gave her sister a sad smile. “So, he asked you to go to Nashville . . . and you turned him down.”
“Well, not at first. I said I would, but a few months later, when I told him it was impossible, he was pretty upset with me. He thought I had led him on — and maybe I did, I don’t know. But mostly, I think I lied to myself more than him. Part of me wanted to go, but . . . ” She huffed, impatient with the tenacity of her feelings. “What did I know? I was eighteen years old and in the middle of my first year in college. He was so headstrong, so sure he was doing the right thing and everything would work out fine, but I wasn’t so convinced. I mean, he quit