href="#u1e05f251-d589-580b-a97f-a53e40de91d4"> Three
Hartley Tarleton had made a lot of mistakes in his life, but walking away from Fiona James—twice—had to be the dumbest. He’d had his reasons. Extenuating circumstances. Familial obligations. Still, he’d handled things badly. The woman in question was not likely to be in a conciliatory mood. Even worse, here he was—proverbial hat in hand—to ask for a favor.
Despite a host of misgivings, he parked across the street and a few cars down from her neatly kept bungalow-style home. The middle-class Charleston neighborhood had aged gently, preserving the best of the city’s Carolina charm in a price range single people and young families could afford. Fiona was a landscape painter. A very talented one with a quickly burgeoning reputation. Hopefully, her starving-artist years were behind her.
Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, Hartley rehearsed his speech. The home and the woman drew him, creating a burning ache in his chest. He’d spent two nights in that house, though not in succession. For reasons he wouldn’t examine too closely, he recalled every detail.
On difficult days this past year, he had calmed himself by remembering the vintage dinette set in Fiona’s tiny breakfast nook. The table was yellow, speckled with gray. He had imagined Fiona, with her naturally curly red hair and wide-set gray-blue eyes, sitting in one of the chairs with the chrome legs, a sketch pad in front of her.
Slowly, he got out of the car and stretched. This momentary procrastination was unlike him. If anything, he erred on the impulsive side. When he was a teenager, people criticized those tendencies as a sign of immaturity. He preferred to think of himself as grabbing the bull by the horns. He liked controlling his own destiny.
A trickle of sweat ran down the center of his back. The day was ridiculously hot and humid. Maybe he had been gone too long. Charleston was his home. Why then, did he feel like an interloper?
His heart hammered in his chest as he crossed the street and walked up the path. He had worried that Fiona might be out and about, but her carefully restored VW Bug sat in the driveway. The car was cotton-candy pink with tiny blue seahorses scattered across the hood. It was a whimsical vehicle, and perfectly suited to the imagination of an artist.
On the porch, he loosened his tie and told himself he wasn’t going to lose it. Grief and a host of other emotions bombarded him. His throat was desert dry. Grimly, he reached out and rang the buzzer.
Fiona heard the doorbell and sighed with relief. She had ordered several hundred dollars’ worth of new paint—oils and acrylics. The overnight rush fee made her cringe, but it was her own fault for not realizing sooner that she didn’t have what she needed to begin a newly commissioned project.
She was wearing a paint-stained T-shirt and ancient jeans with holes in the knees, but the delivery guy had seen her in worse. Her back protested when she sprang to her feet. Sitting in one spot for too long was an occupational hazard. When she was deeply involved in her work, she could paint or draw for hours and never notice the passage of time.
Sprinting through her small house to the front door took a matter of seconds. The only thing that slowed her down was stubbing her toe on the back corner leg of the sofa. Damn, damn, damn. The pain had her hopping on one foot. She had to hurry, because the package required a signature.
She flung open the door, breathless and panting, momentarily dazzled by the bright sunshine. The man standing on her porch was definitely not a delivery man. Nor was he a stranger.
It took her a full five seconds to process the unimaginable.
“Hartley?” Her shock quickly changed to anger. “Oh, heck no.” This man had bruised her ego and maybe even broken her heart.
She slammed the door on instinct. Or she tried to slam the door. One big foot—clad in a size-twelve Italian leather dress shoe—planted itself at the edge of the door frame. The foot’s owner grunted in pain, but he didn’t give up his advantage.
“Please, Fiona. I need your help.”
There it was. Her weakness. Her Achilles’ heel. Growing up in a succession of pleasant but unexceptional foster homes had taught her that becoming indispensable to the family in question secured a roof over her head.
She’d been self-sufficient for over a decade now—ever since she had aged out of the system. She had money in the bank, and her credit rating was unblemished. This perfect little house was almost paid for. Pleasing people was a habit now, not a necessity. A habit she had vowed to break.
But when she actually peeked at Hartley’s face, her resolve wavered. “You look terrible,” she muttered, still with her hand on the door blocking his entrance. Her statement wasn’t entirely correct. Even haggard and with dark smudges of exhaustion beneath his eyes, Hartley Tarleton was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. Muscular shoulders, slim hips and a smile that ought to be outlawed on behalf of women everywhere.
They had first met more than a year ago at the wedding of mutual friends, Hartley a groomsman and Fiona his matching attendant. He had escorted her down the aisle during the ceremony. Later that evening, after a raucous reception that involved copious amounts of extremely good wine and plenty of dancing, he had removed her ghastly fuchsia bridesmaid dress...in her very own bedroom. Where she had invited him to join her.
That night, their physical and emotional connection was immediate and seductive—impossible to resist.
When she woke up the following morning, he was gone.
Today, his coffee-colored eyes—so dark as to be almost black—glittered with strong emotion. “Please, Fee.” His voice was hoarse. “Five minutes.”
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