the memories—the man. It was agreeing to go out with Adam that had done this to her. It had tripped a trigger of memories she’d bottled up, stored away, refused to take out and look at ever again.
She screwed up her eyes and shut them tight. Counted to ten. Opened them.
And felt her stomach plummet to her toes at the sight of him still standing there.
He wore jeans, a black sweater and a dark-green down jacket. He hadn’t shaved in a day or two. His cheeks and jaw were stubbled. His eyes were bloodshot. But his impossibly long lashes blinked away snowflakes as he watched her with amusement. And when he grinned a little more at her befuddlement, she saw that he had chipped a tooth. She didn’t think she would have hallucinated the chipped tooth.
So he was real. He was everything she remembered.
And worse.
Six years ago Sara had dreamed of this moment. Had held on to the hope that he would come back to Elmer, to her. For nine months she had planned and hoped and prayed. And he’d never come. Had never called. Had never written.
And now—out of the blue—he was here.
Sara’s heart turned over, and at the same time, she felt the walls slam down. A fury of pain so fierce engulfed her that she had to swallow and swallow again before she could find her voice.
And when at last she did, she prayed it sounded as flat and disinterested as she wanted to be as she acknowledged him. “Flynn.”
Flynn Murray. The man who had taken her love, given her a child and left her without a backwards glance.
It had been her fault. She knew that. He’d never promised to stay. Had never promised anything—except that he would hurt her.
And by God, he’d done that.
At the time, of course, she hadn’t believed he could. She’d been nineteen, naive, foolish and in love beyond anything she’d ever dreamed possible. She’d met Flynn unexpectedly when he’d come to their small town to cover the human-interest angle of a celebrity cowboy auction. It had been strange, serendipitous, and almost like finding the other half of herself.
She’d always been practical, sensible, driven. She’d had goals since she was old enough to spell the word. Meeting and falling in love with Flynn had turned them upside down. He’d come to her tiny town and changed her world.
Flynn had made her want things she’d never dreamed of wanting—and for a few days or weeks she’d believed she could have them.
She knew better now.
She knew about hurt and pain and getting past them. She knew she wasn’t letting it happen again. Ever.
“You look beautiful,” he told her. “Even more beautiful than I remember.”
Sara’s jaw tightened. “You look older,” she said flatly.
And harder. The lines and angles of his face were sharper, his features almost gaunt. He was still handsome, of course. Perhaps even more handsome, in a rough-edged harsher way. At twenty-six Flynn Murray had been all smooth easy smiles, pantherish grace and spontaneous Irish charm. At thirty-two he looked rugged and ragged and battle weary, like a man come home from war.
There were surprising flecks of gray at his temples. And a scar creased his temple and disappeared into salt-and-pepper hair.
Had some jealous boyfriend attacked him when Flynn had charmed a local girl?
Sara wouldn’t have been surprised. Living a fast-lane life must be tougher than she’d ever imagined. How hard it must be, Sara thought mockingly, tracking celebrities all over the globe.
Flynn’s mouth tipped ruefully and he shrugged. “You know what they say—it’s not the years, it’s the miles.”
“And you’ve gone quite a few, I’m sure,” Sara said acidly. And he could keep right on going. She didn’t need him here now. Didn’t need him upsetting her life, her hopes, her son.
Oh, God, Liam. A shaft of panic shot through her. He couldn’t have ignored Liam for five years just to turn up now, could he?
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
And as if he could read her mind as well as disrupt her life in every other way imaginable, Flynn said, “I want to meet my son.”
CHAPTER TWO
SARA’S jaw set. She steeled herself against his words, his intent and, mostly, against the green magic of his eyes.
“You’re a little late,” she said through her teeth. About five and a half years.
“I am.” He nodded gravely. “I just found out.”
Just found out? She blinked her disbelief. “Yeah, right.” There wasn’t enough sarcasm in the universe to flavor her response.
But Flynn didn’t seem to notice. He was rummaging inside his jacket, pulling a small manila business envelope out of an inner pocket. He opened the envelope and extracted a dirty creased faded blue one. Wordlessly he held it out to her.
Sara stared at it. Then, slowly, she reached out and took it from him with nerveless fingers.
The paper looked as if it had been trampled by a herd of buffalo. She turned it over and saw at least half a dozen addresses printed and scrawled and scratched out, one on top of another. One word caught her eye: Ireland.
That was a surprise. Six years ago he’d been delighted to be out of the land of his birth.
“Nothing for me there,” he’d said firmly.
Like her ancestors 150 years ago, she’d supposed. Her dad had often told handed-down stories about their own family’s desperate need to leave and find a better future for themselves. Though Flynn had never said it, she had no trouble believing it had been true of him, too.
Now, curious about his change of heart, she glanced from the envelope to the man. But his green eyes bored into hers so intently that her own skated away at once back to the envelope.
It had originally been a pretty robin’s-egg blue, part of a set with her initials on it that her grandmother had given her at high school graduation. Sara hadn’t had the occasion to write many letters. She still had some sheets of it left.
But this letter she remembered very well.
She had written it only hours after Liam was born. She had known that there was little chance Liam’s father would heed it. He hadn’t paid any attention to her previous two letters, not the first one telling him she was pregnant, not the later one telling him again in case he hadn’t got the first one.
He’d never replied.
She’d understood—he wasn’t interested.
But still she’d felt the need to write one last time after Liam’s birth. She’d given him one last chance—had dared to hope that news of a son might bring him around. She wasn’t proud. Or she hadn’t been then.
