stilted.
He just had to keep chipping away at it and eventually maybe the whole thing would get to be history.
The way he and Lara were.
“Crazy-ass woman,” he grumbled, reminding himself of his appointment on Monday to take the Jag into the shop to have the dents she’d made in it repaired.
If his siblings and cousins hadn’t been so mad at him when he’d left for Europe one of them probably would have had it done while he was gone. But as it was, his car had been left sitting in the parking garage for three months, the way he’d left it, and now he had to get it taken care of.
Luckily he’d had the windshield replaced before he’d left so he could drive it now. But there was plenty of bodywork that needed to be done on the expensive sports car.
Just one more thing that was all messed up...
Now, in retrospect, he could see how it had gotten that way. Subtly. Insidiously. Quietly. He could see where he hadn’t listened to what his family was saying and should have. He could see what he’d been blinded to by his feelings for Lara. He could see where he’d crossed the line himself on her behalf. And he sure as hell wished that he’d never given in to that urge in him to be her damn white knight.
But regrets and merely seeing things in retrospect weren’t enough. There was a price to pay for what had happened.
He knew that. And he was willing to pay that price. But, unfortunately, payment was coming late. In the end, he’d had to escape to Europe for a while just to get out of Lara’s sights himself—and that time lapse with his family had widened the gulf and made things all the more awkward to put back together again now.
He just had to keep at it, regardless of how rough it might be or how much he wished he could turn back the clock and stop it all from ever happening.
On the up side, he told himself, it had only taken Lara three months to get engaged to some other poor sucker. When he’d heard about the engagement he’d figured the coast was clear to come home, finally address things with his family and hopefully get them all back on track. It would have been worse if he’d been gone longer.
He hadn’t seen or heard from Lara since he’d come home. Thank God! He had no desire to ever set eyes on her again as long as he lived.
And exhausting as it was to put back together everything she’d broken, at least he’d had a couple of wins today. Hopefully he’d gotten a few steps closer to being forgiven by arranging for one of the most highly reputed stylists around to work on his sister’s wedding with very short notice—a coup if Lindie liked Abby Crane’s work.
Plus he’d set the wheels into motion to relay to Abby all his grandmother had told him so she could know where she’d come from. And he was on the path to find a way to compensate her somehow for what she’d suffered because of the actions of his family.
Assuming that Abby Crane had suffered.
But he did assume that, especially coming from his own current situation.
He’d felt lousy the past several months being on the outs with his family and a continent away from them. He’d been at loose ends the whole time. Adrift. He’d felt so damn cut off and alone in the world. It had been a rotten way to feel and he still didn’t like the sense that he was being kept at arm’s length, that he wasn’t embraced by them all the way he was used to.
So what must it have been like for Abby Crane to grow up in foster care, moved from home to home, with no family of her own ever?
He couldn’t imagine that it had been good for her.
And yet, she wasn’t what he’d expected of someone who had been shuffled through the system.
He’d expected her to be hard-edged. He wouldn’t have been surprised by spiked hair or tight leather or all-black clothes. By tattoos and piercings. By an I-dare-you-to-cross-me attitude.
But that wasn’t Abby Crane.
Instead she was a fresh-faced beauty who looked as if she could have grown up in the country, on a farm.
A spectacular beauty, certainly without any obvious too-hard edges.
No, she was all soft curly hair—wild, thick hair that he’d kind of wanted to get his hands into. She was all smooth peaches-and-cream skin that didn’t show signs of ever having had so much as a blemish.
She was all fine, delicate bones in a nose that not even the most expensive plastic surgeon could have done as well. She had a slightly pointed, defined chin and high cheekbones dusted naturally pink and pretty.
And there definitely wasn’t anything hard about her soft-looking lips or those big brown doe eyes that somehow sparkled even from that deep, dark color.
Why he hadn’t expected someone quite that attractive to come out of the life she’d had he didn’t know, but he hadn’t. And he could honestly say that even if she had been on a rocky road in the past, it wasn’t reflected in the way she looked now.
About the only possible indication of a difficult youth had been in the way she carried herself.
She was relatively small—not more than five feet four inches—and trim under that black smock. He’d seen that when she finished his haircut and took it off, revealing a body with tight curves in all the right places. But she stood straight and tall, shoulders back, head high, as if intent on making herself seem bigger than she was and strong enough to take on the world.
And there was nothing effusive about her—that probably came from the way she’d grown up. She was friendly enough but not overly so. Self-contained. And while she seemed warm toward that China person, he certainly hadn’t felt an over-abundance of warmth directed at him.
She was slightly outspoken, too, he recalled, remembering her unabashed demand to know what he was up to. And she was no good at hiding the suspicion she’d felt. But that attempt to sound intimidating had just been adorable. Thinking about it made him smile the way he would have at the time if he hadn’t suppressed it.
So if foster care had left scars they weren’t readily visible. But it was something to watch out for anyway, he told himself. Like Lara’s true nature hiding just under the surface, Abby could have plenty of baggage that wasn’t easy to see but that could end up being hell to deal with.
Purely on a business level, of course. It wasn’t as if he was considering anything else. Anything personal. There wasn’t going to be anything personal between him and any woman for a long time. Not when he had so much damage control still to do with his family.
And even if he was ready for another relationship, even if all his fences with his family were mended, he’d be cautious of someone who came from Abby’s kind of background. Stable, steady, grounded—that’s what he’d be looking for when he started looking for someone again.
Someone who had been raised moving around from home to home? He didn’t see how that could breed stable or steady or grounded.
Maybe that wild hair of Abby Crane’s was the kind of clue that the clutter of Lara’s condo should have been.
And this time around he was reading it, noting it, and taking it very seriously.
