at him. “Don’t you dare touch me!”
Stunned by her hostility, he stepped back, his palms up. “Whoa, hold on, lady. You’ve got the wrong idea. I’m not looking to ravish you.”
Her eyes had become icy cold, but her cheeks were fiery red. “If you were, Matthew Garvock, it wouldn’t be the first time.”
Jolted more by the bitterness of her tone than the fact that she knew his name, he gaped at her. Had they met somewhere before? If so, he had no memory of it. He tried to see beyond the pale skin and the pale hair and the pale clothes, to the person vibrating with such blatant antagonism behind them.
And finally, just as he was about to give up, he recognized her.
“Good Lord.” He felt his heart tremble. “It’s Beth.” Emotion threatened to close his throat. “I can’t believe you’ve come back. After all this time.”
She had regained her composure. And she fixed him with a gaze so stony it tore him apart.
“Yes, it’s me, Matt. I’m back…and I’m here to stay. As to Laurel House being your ‘home’—”
At last he’d found his voice again. “You’re welcome to stay here, for as long as you want—”
Her laugh was harsh. “Oh, I plan to. You see, Matt, this is rightfully my home, despite what my father may have led you and his lawyer to believe—”
He was hardly listening to her. He could scarcely believe she’d come back after all these years. Thirteen years. Thirteen years during which he’d never managed to shake free of the racking guilt and the aching regrets—
“…so tomorrow,” she was saying, “I’ll go see Judd Anstruther, my father’s lawyer, and I’ll sort everything out.”
With an effort, he focused on what she was saying.
“Judd’s retired,” he said.
“Who took over his practice?”
“I did. Whatever you decide to do, I’ll be involved.” Agitatedly he raked a hand through his shower-damp hair. “Beth, we have to talk. About…what happened, thirteen years ago—”
“No.” Her throat rippled convulsively. “You have nothing to say to me that I would want to listen to. But I have two things to say to you. And I want you to listen, because I don’t want to say them twice. The first is, don’t call me Beth. I’m no longer that naive teenager, and I no longer go by that name. If you have to call me anything, call me Liz. Or Ms. Rossiter. Either will do and I answer to both…but in your case, I’d prefer the latter.”
He had slipped the pizza into the oven to keep it warm while he had his shower; now he noticed the steamy smell of pepperoni and grilled cheese, and he knew he would always associate that specific aroma with this specific moment.
“And the second thing?” he asked.
The faint lines bracketing her mouth deepened. “Don’t ever,” she said, “try to talk to me about the past.”
Uh-uh. No way. He wasn’t about to go along with that. “But I want to t—”
“You want to what? To say you’re sorry?”
“I want you to know that afterward I tried to—”
“Afterward?” Her mocking tone made him wince. “Matthew, I have absolutely no interest in what happened afterward.”
“But—”
She stopped him by slashing a hand between them. “But what?” she asked fiercely. “Do you have anything to say that can change what happened? Can you change the past?”
She had broken his heart when she’d disappeared out of his life. But he knew he must have broken her heart, too. And while he had deserved all the agony he’d suffered, she had not.
“No,” he said wearily. “No, I can’t.”
“Then please don’t try.” Her tone was crisp. “And please don’t ever bring up the subject again. I’ve put the past behind me. And you,” she said as she turned away, and started toward the door, “would be wise to do the same.”
He moved fast and got to the door before she did. Blocking her exit, he said, “Where are you going?”
“To bed.”
“I’m not budging from the house. I paid good money for it. And I have all the papers to prove it.”
As soon as he’d spoken, he felt like a heel. Now that he was close to her, he realized she was even more fragile than she’d seemed. Fragile and vulnerable.
And here he was, confronting her, in the way a school bully would challenge a weaker child. Remorse poured through him like bile.
“So what are we going to do now?” he asked gruffly. “It looks as if we’ve reached an impasse.”
Fragile and vulnerable she might be, and bone-tired by the looks of her, but she was one thing, he saw as she straightened her spine, that she hadn’t been as a teenager.
Liz Rossiter was a fighter.
She looked up at him, and in her beautiful khaki eyes he could have sworn he saw a spark of cynical humor.
“You’re bigger than I am,” she said, “and as I recall you were a champion amateur boxer, so I won’t even try to throw you out. At least, not bodily. But you’d better start looking for another place to stay, because I promise you, Matthew Garvock, I’m going to win back this house.”
“Is that,” he asked softly, “a declaration of war?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, in a tone that was equally soft—as soft as steel, he thought, sheathed in a velvet glove!— “a declaration of war is exactly what it is!”
CHAPTER TWO
LIZ slept badly.
Her father had been a difficult man to love but still her pillow had been drenched with the tears she had shed for him before she finally drifted off. Then her dreams had been racked by images of him in one of his rages, so that when she woke up in the morning, it was with a feeling of guilty relief that she would never have to face him again.
Later, as she stood under the hot spray of the shower, her thoughts slid inexorably to Matt.
She’d been stunned to find him in the kitchen—although of course she hadn’t at first recognized him. At some time during the thirteen years she’d been away, someone had—to put it politely!—rearranged his face.
The Matt she remembered had been attractive in a clean-cut way, his lean features symmetrically sculpted and his face unscarred despite his many bouts as an amateur boxer.
“Pretty Boy.” That’s what his university buddies had called him, and he’d accepted the nickname with good humor. But he’d confided to Liz that keeping his face unmarked was a point of honor with him. As a fifteen-year-old, he’d promised his concerned mother that if she gave him permission to join the school boxing club, he’d never hurt her by coming home with his face battered. He’d kept that promise.
At least while Liz knew him. But now…no one would ever call him Pretty Boy again. His hair was the same—black with copper highlights; his eyes still dark-lashed and the incredibly rich green of a glacial lake. But his nose had been broken and was markedly ridged; one cheekbone had been flattened; and his lower lip sported a thin, long scar.
He looked tough now, and he looked rugged.
And he still—heaven help her!—made her heart beat faster.
But he must never know it.
And he must never know that she’d lied when she said she never thought about the past. Now that she was pregnant