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“I’d like a chance for us to start over.”
“As friends?”
The corner of his mouth kicked up in a wry smile. “We were more than friends.”
For one night, they’d been lovers. One night that had changed both of their lives more than Ryder could possibly know.
Lindsay swallowed. “Ryder, I—I can’t. We can’t go back. It’s not possible.”
“And what about going forward? Is that impossible, too?” Reading the answer in her gaze, he came to his own conclusion as he eased far away from her on the crowded bench. “Because you can’t forgive me for what happened.”
“It’s not that,” Lindsay protested quietly. “It’s—”
That when I tell you the truth about what really happened that night, I don’t know how you’ll ever be able to forgive me.
* * *
The Pirelli Brothers: These California boys know what love is all about!
His Secret Son
Stacy Connelly
STACY CONNELLY has dreamed of publishing books since she was a kid, writing stories about a girl and her horse. Eventually, boys made it onto the page as she discovered a love of romance and the promise of happily-ever-after. When she is not lost in the land of make-believe, Stacy lives in Arizona with her three spoiled dogs. She loves to hear from readers at [email protected] or www.stacyconnelly.com.
To Cindy Kirk and Vicki Lewis Thompson-Even though this book is set in the fictional town of Clearville, California, for me it will always be my “Tucson” book.
Contents
The place hadn’t changed, Lindsay Brookes thought with a touch of nostalgia as she drove her SUV down Main Street. The tiny Northern California town where she’d been born and raised seemed caught in a time warp. The Victorian buildings that housed eclectic shops and restaurants had stood proudly for well over one hundred years, surviving the passage of time and even the occasional earthquake. Had she really thought they would undergo some sort of drastic modernization in the mere decade since she’d been gone?
Just because she’d worked so hard to make over the shy, awkward girl who’d graduated from Clearville High didn’t mean the town had changed, too. Didn’t mean the people who lived there would see how much she’d changed.
Shoving away the old insecurities, she sucked in a deep breath and tightened her hands on the wheel. She had her reasons for returning to her hometown, and the faster she accomplished her goals, the sooner she’d be back in Phoenix, where she belonged. Where people only knew her as the strong, confident woman she was now and had no memory of the painfully shy, desperately lonely girl she’d once been.
As she glanced in the rearview mirror at one of her reasons for coming back, her heart filled with love—and yes, concern—at the sight of her son with his ever-present tablet in hand.
“Robbie? Robbie?”
“Huh?” He blinked as he looked up through his too-long blond bangs, his eyes slightly unfocused behind his Harry Potter–frame glasses.
It worried her a little, how fixated he was with his video games though she strictly limited them to ones she thought appropriate for a nine-year-old boy. She tried to monitor the time he spent playing them, too, but that was more of a challenge.
You were the same way at that age, she reminded herself even if it had been books and not games that had captured her imagination and led her away into the land of make-believe. But as much as she loved her son—his sweet shyness, his quirky humor, his sometimes scary intelligence—she didn’t want him to follow so closely in her footsteps. She wanted him to have fun that didn’t involve a high-definition screen and make friends who lived outside a computer-generated world.
“What do you want on your pizza?” she asked even though she already knew the answer.
“Pepperoni and peppers.”
Lindsay didn’t know where her son’s craving for spicy foods came from. She could barely handle more than a few shakes of black pepper. Had to be from being born and raised in Phoenix, where Mexican restaurants dominated the landscape along with palm trees and cacti.
A sudden image teased the