her way through the group gathered behind her at the foot of the oak-and-wrought-iron staircase. She reached the coat stands on the wall along the staircase and found her shawl.
Once outside, she took a deep welcome gulp of cool air. It felt good against her heated skin, bared by the square neckline of her jade-green silk bodice.
She swept the wrap around her shoulders and started off the hotel’s porch, looking down to pull the edges together. She saw a man’s boots at the same time she ran into a rock-hard chest. The momentum caused her to stumble.
Hard masculine hands shot out, cupped her shoulders. “Whoa, there.”
At the deep familiar rumble, the apologetic smile on her face faded. Her gaze jerked up, clashing with a hot blue one. Matt.
Her pulse stopped then resumed, beating so fast that her chest felt too small for her heart. The warmth in his eyes died, replaced with a cold flatness as he practically pushed her away. He dropped his hold so quickly, so forcefully that she had to take a step back to keep her balance.
A woman stood beside him, the same pretty blonde Annalise had seen with him earlier.
The other woman looked from Annalise to Matt. She slid her hand from his arm and nodded at Annalise. “Good evening, ma’am.”
“Good evening.” She was surprised to hear the words. Her throat felt as if it were bolted shut and wouldn’t work.
The blonde glanced at Matt. “I’ll wait for you inside.”
“No need,” he said harshly. “I’m coming with you.”
After another look at Annalise, the woman hurried around her. Who was she? She remembered Cora saying that a furious husband had confronted Matt last year and accused him of having an affair with his wife. Cora flat-out hadn’t believed it. But as Annalise stared into the face of the man she had once loved, a face she had once known as well as her own, she wasn’t so sure.
They stood there for a frozen moment, eyes locked. The world narrowed to her and him. The scent of man and sandalwood soap on the crisp winter air. The tiny lines of fatigue fanning out from his blue eyes, in the creases around his mouth.
When his lips tightened, she jerked her attention away from them. The stillness of the night and the muted music made it feel as though they were the only two people in the world. Thank goodness they weren’t.
Annalise hadn’t expected this feeling of suffocation. Of panic. The bone-squeezing pain in her chest.
His gaze slid indolently down her body, hungry and frankly sexual. A look that had been focused on her before. Just the memory made her shiver.
Then his expression changed to one of contempt. His eyes narrowed. He vibrated with anger. The realization had Annalise stiffening.
What did he have to be angry about? He was the one who had turned his back on her.
In the split second it took her to read his face, his eyes shuttered against her.
She was so furious she couldn’t breathe for a second. Before she could say anything, do anything, Matt stepped around her and onto the Fontaine’s porch. Pointedly, blatantly ignoring her. Turning his back on her again.
Enraged, she looked over her shoulder. “Ah, your back. The side of you I recognize so well.”
He went stock-still for a long moment, shoulders rigid, muscles coiled with tension.
She shouldn’t have said it, even though it was the truth. Breath suspended, she waited for his reaction.
He continued inside without a backward glance.
The blonde stood in the wide doorway of the hotel, flashing him a quick smile. “Who was that?”
“Nobody.” His voice was flat, brittle.
Pain slashed at Annalise. Angry tears stinging her eyes, she walked briskly toward her house at the opposite end of town.
Had she believed they could put the past behind them, even be civil? She knew better now. She made a sound low in her throat and walked faster. Just seeing him, being that close to him had caused her stomach to flutter. And her palms were sweating!
Even knowing she would eventually have to see Matt, she had left Philadelphia, come home to Whirlwind and reopened her father’s medical practice. But the sheer depth and agony of coming face to face with him had been more than she anticipated. Still, she had done it, gotten it over with.
There would be other times—they both lived here, after all—but she wouldn’t get that close to him ever again.
Annalise Fine had some damn nerve. Returning to Whirlwind. Showing her face at his brother’s party. Black fury drove through Matt. He wanted to hit something. Or someone.
Once inside the Fontaine, he left Willow in the dining room with Ef Gerard, the blacksmith, and his new wife, Naomi, then slipped out the hotel’s back door. His gaze settled blankly on the hotel’s laundry house some yards away.
Seething, he clenched his fists, unclenched them. He was burning to get his gun and shoot at something. He didn’t care what. Maybe the cool temperature would soothe his temper. His body was throbbing, nerves stretched taut, sensation skimming the surface of his skin in a way it hadn’t in seven years. He could still feel her slender shoulders beneath his touch, the tease of her breath against his neck when she had run into him.
Her heart-shaped face was even more beautiful, the shock in her light-green eyes every bit as strong as the shock he had felt upon seeing her. She was still slim and delicate, but now her curves were more defined, womanly. Where they had once been more angular, her hips now flared slightly from her taut waist and her breasts were fuller. He’d felt that for himself when she had run into him. And her skin still looked as soft as down.
Immediately, he had wanted to put his hands on her, his mouth, which blistered him up good. He killed that thought real quick.
“Matt?”
He stiffened at the sound of his brother’s voice. The last thing he wanted was to spoil Russ’s wedding day.
“What’s wrong? Is it Annalise?”
He gave a sharp nod. With little effort, Matt had stayed away from her all night, then his past had walked right smack into him. There was no point in denying why he was so angry, especially to his brother.
Dragging a hand down his face, he turned, battling to force the sound of her smoke-and-honey voice out of his head. “It happened outside. How did you know about it?”
“You were lathered up when you and Willow came back into the hotel.” His brother, a year older, watched him steadily. “I knew it had to be because of her.”
Matt wanted to rip into his brother and ask why she had been invited, but the whole town had been. It wasn’t Russ’s fault Annalise had shown up. Wasn’t his fault the woman still affected Matt so strongly. Drawing in her light clean scent of primroses had tied his gut in nine kinds of knots. How could she still smell the same? Why did he have to remember it so well?
“I figured she might come,” Russ said quietly.
