He stood and watched as she fumbled through unlocking the door. Already, the acute pain of her ankle injury had begun to fade to a dull, insistent throb. She figured that was a good thing but it still made it a challenge to enter her house with any degree of dignity.
When she made it through the doorway, she turned around and gave him a little one-finger wave then closed the door firmly.
When she knew she was out of sight, she sank onto the conveniently placed bench in her entry and pressed a hand to her foolish heart.
Of all the rental properties in Hope’s Crossing, why on earth did he have to pick the one just a few hundred feet from hers? She would be aware of him all the time now. Every time she drove down the street and passed his house, she would wonder if he was home, what he was doing, how he smelled....
If she wasn’t careful, she was afraid she would turn into that fifteen-year-old again, a crazy stalker girl with a crush on the sexiest boy in town.
No problem. She would just have to make sure she was very, very careful.
CHAPTER FIVE
SPENCE WALKED BACK down the steps of Charlotte Caine’s house, off balance by the tangle of emotions.
Charlotte Caine.
He still couldn’t get over it. Whoever would have guessed she could have such a lithe, curvy body now? He was still having a hard time reconciling the girl he had known to the sexy armful he had carried to her house.
She had always had pretty-colored hair, he remembered, blond shot through with gold and red streaks. When she was a girl, though, she had worn it long, her bangs hanging in her eyes and around those big thick-framed glasses.
He supposed he had changed, too. What did she see when she looked at him now? He was no longer that cocky kid blessed with uncommon ability who thought the world was his to conquer.
Life had a funny way of knocking guys who needed it back down to size.
How had the years treated Charlotte, beyond the physical changes? Her store seemed to be doing well. Did she have someone special in her life? Had she been married? Engaged? He hadn’t noticed a ring on her finger but he had certainly learned a little piece of jewelry didn’t always mean anything.
So far, he knew she had come home to Hope’s Crossing with a business degree but their few moments of conversation while she had been in his arms hadn’t exactly unlocked her life story for him.
He pulled out his key and let himself into the rental.
After one night here, he hadn’t made up his mind yet whether he liked the place or not. The house was meticulously and expensively decorated, but compared to the glimpse into Charlotte’s charming little cottage he’d caught when she had opened the door—plump pillows, bright textiles, bookshelves overflowing—the furnishings here seemed cold, almost sterile.
He wasn’t sure if he would be here long enough to redecorate. He and Pey had only packed a few suitcases between them for the drive. The rest of their belongings still filled their Portland house. He hadn’t decided yet how much to haul down here.
He would have to see how things went first with the job before he made a decision about that.
He heard noises coming from the kitchen and headed in that direction. When he walked in, he found Pey seated at the breakfast bar, a huge bowl of cereal in front of her, looking at something on her phone.
“Good morning. Did you sleep well?” he asked, then cursed the stiff politeness in his tone. This was his daughter. He shouldn’t sound like he was on a business trip, bumping into an associate in the hotel’s free buffet line.
She shrugged, a spoonful of cereal almost to her mouth. “Okay, I guess. I need a fan or something. It was too quiet.”
“We can probably find you something. Was the bed comfortable?”
“I don’t know. I guess. It was a bed. I slept.”
She took another bite of cereal and he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a water bottle and a yogurt, grateful he had taken a moment to order groceries the night before. It took him a few tries to find the silverware drawer for a spoon before he leaned back against the counter adjacent to her.
“We can change anything you don’t like in your room.”
“Can you transport it back to Portland?”
He bit down his frustration at her continual refrain. This was why he walked on eggshells around her, because she was prickly and moody all the damn time.
“Nope. Can’t do that. How’s your cereal?”
“Fine.” She poured a little Cinnamon Toast Crunch into her milk. Where did she put all the food she ate sometimes? he had to wonder. She was skinny as can be, like her mother had been.
Once he had found that attractive. He must have. Hadn’t he been enamored with Jade at first and thought her the most perfect creature on earth?
Of course, he had been only nineteen and in his rookie year with the Pioneers, starry-eyed and heady with the success that had come far more quickly than a dirt-poor kid who had spent his life watching over a drunk of a mother could either comprehend or cope with.
When a gorgeous supermodel like Jade Howell, three years older and infinitely exciting, wanted to date him, what teenage boy would have refused?
Not him, even though he was pretty sure now she had been more drawn to all those new zeros in his portfolio from his record-breaking contract than she had been to a naive nineteen-year-old kid.
At the time he had been too caught up in the high life of instant fame—fast cars, magazine covers, avid fans—to see that she was a troubled, damaged soul constantly in need of reassurance. Or maybe subconsciously, he had seen it and had in some twisted way thought that, if he could make things work with Jade, in some way he might be able to scab over all those open sores from his childhood.
A therapist would probably tell him he had a pretty severe case of knight-in-shining-armor complex from all those years he had tried to look out for his mother. Even so, after six months, he had grown tired of Jade’s moods and her petty piques and probably would have ended things if she hadn’t gotten pregnant with Peyton.
He didn’t like thinking about Jade or the way their hasty marriage had disintegrated before Peyton was even in preschool. Though his wife had certainly loved the creature comforts his income provided, she had hated everything about his career—the traveling, the fame, the fans—and had constantly accused him of cheating.
He took a spoonful of yogurt. It had been a miserable marriage. If not for his daughter, he would have walked away but Jade had threatened to tie him up in court so he would never see Peyton again. He had known she wouldn’t have been able to win but the energy in fighting her would only have hurt their daughter.
As poor a father as he had been, he had been raised the only child of a bitter, lost, addicted soul, and he couldn’t condemn his child to that same fate.
Eventually, he and Jade had worked out an arrangement of sorts. They lived virtually separate lives in
