High in Trial - By Donna Ball Page 0,31
trying to see if I will. Still, I wish you’d stop doing it. It’s a waste of time.”
One corner of my lips turned down dryly. “No more petty fights,” I agreed. “We’ve got too many real things to fight about.”
“True enough. One more thing you should know.”
I glanced at him.
“My house is almost finished. Mel and I will be moving to Hansonville full time when she gets out of school. You’ll be seeing a lot more of us.”
Miles and I had met when he bought the mountain adjacent to my property and started scraping away the wilderness to make room for a ridiculous resort community complete with condos, golf courses, and an airstrip. Needless to say, our relationship had started out on a contentious note and I made no secret of the fact that we would always be on opposite sides of that particular issue. I knew he intended to build a house for himself on the property, but I’d never given much thought to the fact that one day he might actually move into it.
An odd mixture of delight and trepidation rippled through me. Part of me was thrilled, mostly because I did enjoy Melanie. Another part of me knew perfectly well there was a huge difference between the playful, mostly long-distance relationship Miles and I had sustained these past few months and the kind of relationship that would develop when we saw each other every day. When he became part of my world.
He went on. “So that’s about it. If there’s anything else you need to know, I have a fairly comprehensive Wikipedia page.”
“I know,” I admitted. “I looked you up.”
He chuckled and dropped a hand lightly upon the back of my neck, gently caressing. “So what is it you think I don’t know about you that I need to know?”
I was uncomfortable, not at his closeness, which I enjoyed, but at his easy openness, which I could not reciprocate. The dawn was beginning to fade away the worst of the shadows, and Cisco tugged a little at the leash, so I followed him into the field. I said, “I don’t like to talk about myself.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“I think it’s a Southern thing. Girls are taught to be modest.”
He made a dry sound in the back of his throat and I glanced at him suspiciously. “Your modesty was the first thing I admired about you,” he assured me with a perfectly straight face, and I scowled at him.
“Anyway, I really can’t think of anything you need to know.” I focused on Cisco and on picking my way across the stubbly ground. “I suck at this relationship thing. So do you. I’m a mess. You’re a mess. We’re a perfect team. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Let me help you out.” He took a sip of his coffee. “You take a lot of chances—with everything except your heart.”
I smothered a sniff of laughter. “That’s pretty cliché.” I really didn’t like the way this conversation was going.
“My thoughts exactly.” He went on. “You’ve never been really close to anyone outside the county you were born in, so I’d say you have a few trust issues. You seem to have a habit of marrying the same man over and over again. No offense to the sheriff, who I actually like, but you need to stop that.”
I started to smile, but his next words wiped the smile away.
“You tend to get carried away by your passion for a cause, and last year that passion put you on the wrong side of an FBI investigation. It also put you in the arms of a known terrorist.”
I stopped dead and stared at him in the dimness. He was watching me carefully. I said stiffly, “Andy and I had been friends since we were kids.”
He said quietly, “Honey, I know about Andy Fontana. I know what happened and I know how it ended. I’m not judging you. I just want you to know I understand.”
I didn’t talk about Andy, not to Miles, not to anyone. I tried not to even think about him, even though sometimes I still woke in the night with my cheeks wet with tears. There was no reason Miles should not know about Andy, of course. The FBI shootout had made all the papers and been local headline news for weeks afterwards, and it wouldn’t take too much investigation to discover that Andy and I had grown up together and had shared an off-campus apartment in college. And still I