The Sinner. Kathleen O'Brien

that is?”

      “An intense but temporary hormonal flare-up. Quite pleasant, as long as you don’t read anything more serious into it.”

      She felt her cheeks grow hot. Part of her simply couldn’t believe he’d said that. Were they talking about the same night? Her veins buzzed a little whenever she remembered it, even now.

      But she had no intention of sitting here begging him to admit that their interlude had been something magical. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe it had only seemed extraordinary to her because she had so little to compare it to.

      “All right,” she said, struggling to keep her voice from sounding as hot as her face. “If you say it meant nothing, I believe you. Even so, I would have thought that you might, at the very least, respect my efforts to remake my life. But if you don’t, that’s not going to stop me, because this isn’t, in the end, really about you—or even us. It’s about me.”

      “Lara—”

      “Please. Hear me out. I didn’t come here to pester you, and I don’t intend to. Heyday is small, but surely we can avoid each other if that’s what you’d prefer.”

      She stood up. “And now I think I’d better get home. Because, as ridiculous as it might seem to you, I have an early class in the morning.”

      CHAPTER FIVE

      BRYCE HAD A BAD NIGHT, thanks to the encounter with Lara, which had gotten under his skin more than he would have expected. He kept rehashing their conversation, wondering how on earth she expected him to believe a word of it. Movie star turned music therapist? Trading the red carpet for troubled children and chemo-therapy patients? Right. She’d tire of this little game in…he’d give her about another month.