hard on a kid. You must have been scared.” His voice warmed with sympathy.
“Scared, mad, you name it. You know what it’s like when you sense that something’s terribly wrong and no one will tell you the truth?”
He seemed to understand what she didn’t say. “Your mother?”
“It was cancer. She didn’t make it.”
She wouldn’t tell him the rest of it—that her father, always dependent on her mother’s strength, hadn’t known what to do with her after her mother’s death. That she’d spent most of her time after that at boarding school or farmed out to friends, her home life gone.
She moved her hand to her stomach. That’s not going to happen to you, little Sarah.
“I’m so sorry.” His shoulder pressed warmly against hers. “That was rough.”
Her throat tightened, and again she felt that irrational longing to lean against him. But she couldn’t. It was time to lighten this conversation.
“Be sorry for everyone around me that summer. I made their lives miserable, too.”
“They could probably take it.”
She glanced at him. He had a cleft in his chin that seemed to mitigate his face’s stern planes. “Actually, I remember a certain lifeguard telling me to stop being a brat.”
“Me?” He raised those level brows. “I’d never have said that to a kid. You must be thinking of someone else.”
“No, it was you, all right. Nathan Sloane, the most popular guy on the beach. All the teenage girls vied for your attention. It’s a wonder one of them didn’t try drowning herself to get it.”
He grinned, his face relaxing. “Actually, I did hear a few phony calls for help in my time.”
His smile did amazing things to his usually serious face. No wonder the girls had been crazy about him.
“I also remember seeing you hanging around the baby-sitter Enid had for Trevor and me. In fact, I caught you kissing her one night right down there on the dock.”
She gestured toward the spot, then turned back toward him. Her heart jolted. The smile had been wiped from his face, leaving it stripped and hard.
Then she remembered. Linda. The baby-sitter had been Linda Everett. The woman he married. The woman he’d lost.
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