and lonely and overwhelmed, and because his mother and the whole town had thought they’d make a perfect couple, hadn’t been the smartest thing he’d ever done. Not that he could tell Maddie that he’d made bigger mistakes than sleeping with her.
“What did you write in those damn letters?” he demanded, really curious.
“Nothing that could possibly matter now,” she said, too casually. “I was young and foolish. Money was tight. My girlhood fantasy got the best of my better judgment. You know, poor girl wins rich boyfriend after all…lives happily ever after with him in his big, white, legendary ranch house…and then everybody in Yella looks up to her. Some foolishness like that.”
“I think it’s high time I finally read them. I’ll be the judge of what’s foolish.”
Her brows flew together. “You still have them?”
“I threw them in a desk drawer, in my office, up at my big, white house, as you put it. They should be there…that is, if Lizzie put them back.”
“Lizzie?”
“On her deathbed, Lizzie confessed she’d found them when she was tidying up in my office and had steamed them open and read them. She said she resealed them and put them back. She made me promise to read them after she was gone, said I owed you that. And then she said she was sorry, truly sorry, she hadn’t told me about reading them before…but that she’d been too jealous to do so, too afraid of losing me. Imagine what a heel I felt like for having made her jealous over someone like you. Out of respect for her, I haven’t looked for them since her death.”
Maddie’s gaze was fixed on Cinnamon. “Well, there’s no need to read them now,” she said softly. “I’ll go….”
“I’m not finished,” he said. “I told Lizzie those letters didn’t matter, that they never had mattered, because I’d married her, and she’d been the most wonderful wife a man could wish for.”
“You were lucky then,” Maddie said wistfully. “I hope to be as lucky…someday soon.”
He hadn’t felt lucky. He’d felt guilt-stricken and low for never having loved Lizzie as she’d deserved because of Maddie.
“She always loved you. From the time she first saw you,” Maddie said softly.
“Yes,” he muttered, familiar guilt washing over him. He’d broken Lizzie’s heart to pursue Maddie in secret. After that first kiss in the barn, he’d burned for the town’s bad girl so fiercely, he hadn’t been able to help himself.
And now Maddie was back, as beautiful as ever. He still wanted her.
“Maybe it’s good we saw each other today, so we can face the fact that the past is over,” she said. “I’m sorry I ran off without saying goodbye. I was young, immature…” Her voice was even and polite, the voice she would use to console or dismiss a stranger. “It’s nice knowing you had a wonderful marriage, and I’m truly sorry for your loss. It can’t be easy…even now. Cole, I wish you well. I truly want you to be happy.”
“Thank you,” he muttered ungraciously.
“Someday you’ll find another woman. Maybe she’ll remind you of Lizzie. You’ll have children, build a family together….”.
Her voice grew choked and then trailed off awkwardly.
He didn’t want to be reminded of Lizzie, who had been the bride everyone else had believed would be perfect for him. They’d made each other very unhappy. He’d remained lonely even in marriage.
“Goodbye, Cole.”
When Maddie turned to walk away, he watched her slim, denim-clad hips swing and noted the way her damp T-shirt clung to her back.
Just watching her move with liquid grace as she vanished into the woods had his blood surging like fire in his veins. His breathing felt shallow. He wanted to strip her, to hold her, to kiss her. He wanted her naked and writhing with her legs wrapped around his waist.
He wanted her—period. Longed for her.
He’d stay crazy if he let her walk out of his life a second time. At the very least she still owed him some answers.
Four
The past, all her secrets, were supposed to be dead and buried. But Cole had her letters! And he’d never read them! He didn’t know about Noah!
Cole hadn’t rejected Noah as she’d believed. Instead, he hadn’t read her letters because he’d wanted to stay true to his new bride.
All these years, everything Maddie had thought about him had been wrong.
She’d hurt him when she’d left him. Imagine that. As she fought her way through the woods, back to Miss Jennie’s house, she wondered why it had never occurred to her that he might have felt that same shredding of the soul that leaving had caused her?
Because she’d had zero self-esteem. Because she’d been Jesse Ray’s daughter and he’d been a Coleman, and she’d told herself he would believe the worst of her as her mother had.
Even so, she had tried to call him and explain before leaving Yella. She’d been so hysterical she had called his home, no longer concerned with revealing their relationship. His mother’s cruel words would be forever branded into her heart and soul.
“You’ve got your nerve, Miss Gray. How do you know my son?”
“We dated. This summer. I need to talk to him.”
“You dated?” Hester’s voice had been shrill. “I don’t believe you. Maybe…he felt some cheap sexual attraction, but if he’d had any respect for you, he would have brought you home to meet his family. My son loves Lizzie. And I thank God for that! John doesn’t care about you any more than any of the men who’ve slept with your trashy mother have ever cared about her. You’re so far beneath him, all you’d ever do is drag him down into the gutter where your kind lives. I warn you, if you don’t let him go, my husband and I will do everything in our power to destroy you.”
“That won’t be necessary. Somebody else already did that,” Maddie had whispered.
She blinked at the blinding white light sparkling through the trees and came back to the present. She didn’t want to remember. It shouldn’t matter that Cole hadn’t known what Vernon had done to her or that he hadn’t known about Noah. It was too late to include Cole in Noah’s life because any contact with her son’s father was too dangerous to her own well-being.
Still, as Maddie walked away from Cole, the pain in her heart was so great she barely felt Cinnamon twisting and tugging against the leash. Even though the woods were dappled with golden sunlight, she felt that she was stumbling through a dark void.
She couldn’t afford to feel sympathy for Cole. No way could she let herself care about the young man she’d walked out on six years ago, or the wounded man he was now. Not when long-suppressed fears concerning her son gripped her.
Her work had taught her that lives were fragile, especially the lives of the ill, the elderly, the young, the learning disabled and the people like herself
