known the story would never raise an eyebrow with her parents and would work as a perfect cover-up. “It wasn’t a fence. Johnny cut me when he sliced off my top.”
Suzannah’s eyes widened; she smothered a gasp. Avery watched the pulse jump in her mother’s throat. “I’m sorry I never told you,” she whispered. “I should have told you. If I’d told the truth about everything then, told all of the truth, I would’ve saved so many people so much hurt.”
“Oh, Avery—”
“Sink’s done, Suzannah.”
David’s voice from the doorway drew Avery’s attention away from her mother’s forgiving expression. He stood there in his wrongly buttoned shirt, drying his hands, his hair disheveled, a short smear of grease on one cheek.
He was gorgeous, beautiful, a man made to turn heads. He sent her heart racing by doing no more than standing still. And her stupidity could have gotten him killed. She could have gotten him killed! And she’d lived with that truth now for fifteen years.
Shame came in waves, a tide of emotion causing her to feel very small. She was surprised he had any desire to speak to her, much less the sort of desire he’d shown her minutes before in the kitchen. How blind she truly had been.
“What was wrong?” her mother asked, following Avery’s cue and turning her attention to David.
He shrugged, blinked, moved his frowning gaze from Avery to Suzannah. “Looked like celery strings. And eggshells.”
The celery strings and eggshells could wait. Avery was done holding it in. “David, were you aware my mother has known the truth all this time about what happened with me and you and Johnny Boyd?”
David’s hands stilled on the rag. His focus moved from Avery to her mother and back. “All about it?”
Avery narrowed her eyes. “So, you did know.”
He shook his head. “I only knew what Johnny had told her. About me trying to steal away his girl. Not that she knew you were the one involved.”
“Actually, David, my daughter was just telling me, or rather, showing me the extent of her involvement,” Suzannah said, giving up Avery’s last secret. “It seems neither you nor I knew the full extent of the truth.”
At David’s fiercely questioning expression, Avery leaned forward over her knees and buried her face in her hands. She heard his footsteps on the plush mauve carpet as he came farther into the room and knew she wouldn’t be getting out of there without revealing all.
“Avery?” He said her name softly, as if she would bolt should he raise his voice. It didn’t matter what tone he used; his determination was clear.
Opening her eyes, she saw his work boots and realized he was standing too near, and she was going to have to face him with more of the truth, and why oh why hadn’t she moved to Tibet years ago and lived out her life as a monk?
Hands on her knees, she pushed to her feet to stand toe-to-toe with David, watching the pulse beat in the hollow of his throat even though she spoke in response to her mother when she said, “I never told anyone about the knife.”
“What knife?” he asked with a growl, his eyes flashing.
“The one Johnny used on my uniform top. I knocked it out of his hand before you arrived. I don’t think he knew where it landed.” She pulled aside her unbuttoned tunic and showed him her scar.
And then, as if her mother wasn’t sitting on the sofa three feet away, he reached up and touched her.
He ran his thumb over the faded welt along her collarbone, once and then repeated the caress again until he’d raised her temperature there, as if he could rub away the evidence of the long-ago crime. “I should’ve killed the bastard.”
“Which is why I never told anyone. It’s been hard enough living with the hurt I caused by being so stupid. Living with anything else…” And that was it. She’d had enough.
Stepping back and buttoning her top, she glanced toward her mother. “I’ve got to go to work to cover the afternoon for Yvette. You and David are welcome to the croissants that are left. I’ll pick up the basket later.”
Suzannah got to her feet, held out a hand. “Avery, sweetie, if you’re still speaking to me, I’d like to ask a favor of you.”
“Of course I’m speaking to you.” She was surprised anyone was still speaking to her! “What is it?”
“Well, Leslie will be back in town next weekend,” Suzannah was saying, as if