scared.
“El?” He took a hesitant step forward. “Do you recognize me?”
Her soft mouth thinned. “Of course I recognize you. You haven’t changed at all. I was just, ah, surprised that you didn’t recognize me.”
“I didn’t remember you being so pretty.” The words came out before he could vet them and decide if they were stupid or rude.
Based on her reaction, he concluded that they were. She grabbed a wad of paper towels from the roll on the counter, wiped up the eggs and dropped the mess into the garbage pail. She dampened another paper towel. Her hair dangled down like a veil. She was hiding.
“What’s wrong, El?” he asked cautiously. “What did I do?”
She knelt down, sponging off the floor tiles. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“But you won’t look at me,” he said.
She flung the soggy towel into the garbage. “I’m called Ellen these days. And what do you expect? You disappear for seventeen years, no letter, no phone call, not so much as a postcard to let me know you weren’t dead, and expect me to run into your arms squealing for joy?”
So she hadn’t forgotten him. His mood shot up, in spite of her anger. “I’m, uh, sorry I didn’t write,” he offered.
She turned her back on him. “I’m sorry you didn’t, too.” She made a show of drying some teacups.
“My life was really crazy for a while. I was scrambling just to survive. Then I joined the Marines, and they sent me all over the map for a few years while I figured out what I wanted to do with myself—”
“Which was?” Her voice was sharp and challenging.
“Photojournalist,” he told her. “Freelance, at the moment. I travel all the time, mostly war zones. By the time I got things in my life more or less straightened out, I was afraid…” His voice trailed off.
“Yes?” Her head swiveled around. “You were afraid of what?”
“That you might have forgotten me,” he said. “I didn’t want to face that. I didn’t want to mess with my own equilibrium. I’m sorry, El.”
She turned away without replying, and began to hang teacups on hooks on the wall. His hand on her shoulder made her jump. She dropped one, which knocked the one underneath it off its hook as well.
They shattered loudly on the marble counter.
Simon hissed through his teeth and lifted his hand away. “Christ. I’m sorry. Were those priceless antiques? Please say they weren’t.”
“Great-grandmother Kent brought them with her from Scotland. They traveled around the Horn with her in eighteen ninety-four.”
He grimaced in agony. “Shit. I hate heirlooms.”
“They were part of her dowry.”
“I said I was sorry,” he snapped.
There was an uncomfortable silence. “Still leaving a path of chaos and destruction in your wake, I see,” El said.
Anger made his defenses snap right into place. “Of course.” He echoed her careless tone. “Just like always.”
“Some things never change,” she murmured.
“Got that right,” he agreed dourly.
El edged away. “So, ah, what brings you back to LaRue?”
The chatty, let’s-move-on tone in her voice set his teeth on edge. “I just got word about Gus,” he said.
“Just now?” She looked puzzled. “But he died five months ago.”
“It took a while for the letter to reach me,” he said. “Hank Blakely wrote to me about it. My high school art teacher. Remember him?”
“Of course. I didn’t know he knew where you were. Where were you, anyhow?” Her eyes were full of wary curiosity.
“Afghanistan.” He offered no further explanation.
There was an awkward pause. “So he left you his property, then?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “I don’t particularly care.”
“And you hadn’t seen him since you—”
“Nope.”
El tilted her head to the side and studied him thoughtfully. “Why did you come back, then?”
He made a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. Gus, killing himself. I couldn’t take it in. I needed to see the place. Wrap my mind around it.”
“I see.” Her steady, penetrating gaze made him transparent. Like he was eighteen again, scruffy and needy and underfed.
He stared right back until his cool regard made her blush and look away. “I asked around for a hotel,” he said. “People told me you’d converted this place into an inn.”
Her face tightened with alarm. “You want a room here?”
“I can’t stay at Gus’s place. There’s no water, no power, and it’s a foul mess. I’ve slept in worse places, but that one I can’t take.”
She twisted her slender hands together. The downy hair on her arms was pale, glittering gilt. Her nails were pink-tinged mother of pearl. He made her nervous. She didn’t want him in her house. It was childish to get his feelings hurt. He knew damn well he should take pity on her and haul his ass to another hotel, but knowing it wasn’t enough. The contrary bastard inside him that took after Gus wanted to goad her.
“If you’re scared of me, I’ll leave,” he said. “I don’t want you to sweat nails, El. I’ll go to the hotel out on Hanson.”
“Scared of you? For heaven’s sake. Don’t be ridiculous!”
He shook his head. “Nah. If you’re uncomfortable with—”
“Why should I be uncomfortable? I’m a professional. The motel on Hanson smells! And there are cigarette burns in the furniture!”
“God forbid,” he murmured.
She glared at him. “And bugs! Do you want to share your bathtub with cockroaches? Do you want cobwebs in your window curtains?”
Bull’s-eye. He got her. He lifted his hands in surrender and struggled not to grin. “Anything but that.”
Her narrowed eyes said that she knew she’d been manipulated. “So I take it Missy hasn’t checked you in?”
“If you’re referring to the girl who was at the front desk, no,” he said. “She took one look at me and ran. She seemed pretty freaked out.”
El sighed. “Oh God. What am I going to do with that girl?
