had worked for years and where her mother had worked during her tumultuous relationship with Sharon Lynn’s daddy before their wedding, had given her a reason for getting up in the morning, but it had done nothing to heal her broken heart.
She had been in love with Kyle Mason forever. An honest, decent man, he had bought a ranch that neighbored the family spread at White Pines. Then he had quietly and persistently courted Sharon Lynn, consuming enough milk shakes at Dolan’s that it was a wonder he’d been able to stand the sight of them. Once he’d caught her attention, there had been no turning back.
But when it came to getting to the altar, one thing after another had delayed their vows until that fateful night.
After waiting patiently for marriage, only to have it snatched away from her in a heartbeat, Sharon Lynn had finally concluded that she was not destined for either romance or the family she had always dreamed of. She had resigned herself to a quiet, lonely existence—if it was possible to be lonely with an entire clan of Adamses on her doorstep daily with one feeble excuse or another. Cheering up grief-stricken Sharon Lynn had become the family’s mission. All the attention was wearing her out.
She wasn’t the one deserving of pity, though. It was Kyle, barely thirty when he’d been killed. She shuddered and forced the memory of that night aside. The guilt, however, wouldn’t budge, despite what everyone had said. The official sheriff’s report had exonerated her completely. Her cousin Justin, who’d been on the scene in the horrible aftermath of the collision, was a by-the-book kind of deputy. If there’d been any question of her guilt, though he would have hated laying the blame on her doorstep, he would have done it. Knowing that, she should have been able to rest easy, but she couldn’t.
Even all these long months later and despite her best intentions, the images crowded back, refusing to be ignored. She’d still been wearing her wedding dress, her beautiful silk-and-lace gown, but by then it had been torn and spattered with blood. Her husband’s blood. When her cousins had wanted to get rid of it, she’d refused to let them. It was packed away in the attic as a grim reminder of what might have been. Someday she would have to let it—and the memories—go.
“Oh, God,” she murmured as tears streaked down her cheeks. When were the memories going to blur? When would this unbearable, soul-sick pain stop?
Blinded to everything except her own internal misery, it took a blast of icy air from the unexpected opening of the door to snap her out of it. She hadn’t even seen the man approaching, hadn’t expected anyone to be out on such a cold and furious night. She glanced up to meet worried brown eyes flecked with gold.
“What’s a pretty lady like you doing all alone on a Friday night?” he asked in the easy way of a man to whom flirting was second nature. The words were barely out of his mouth when the crooked smile faded from his lips and worry creased his brow. He stepped closer and skimmed a knuckle down her cheek. “Tears? Darlin’, are you okay?”
There was a gentleness to his voice that soothed, even as alarm flared at the startling way that touch awakened her senses. She looked him over—from the curling black hair damp with rain to the soaked sheepskin jacket, rain-streaked jeans and well-worn boots. Despite the kindness in his voice, there was a hardness to him, not just to his lean body, but in his eyes. It was an intriguing combination, a dangerous one. That must be why her pulse was ricocheting all over the place.
Was he a would-be robber, checking to make sure she was all alone before seizing every penny in the cash register? Her imagination roared off down a frightening path.
Let him try, she thought fiercely, thinking of the gun that Justin had insisted she keep in the store if she was determined to hang around here alone until all hours of the night. She was a better shot than most of the family and not a one of them missed what they aimed for. Of course, there wasn’t much cash worth killing over. She’d taken most of it to the night-drop at the bank just before the new pharmacist had left for the evening.
She scowled up at the man, saw then the exhaustion in his eyes, the stubble