sound audible was the pounding of her own heart and God did she hope he couldn’t hear it, too.
“Yep.” Emily she said tightly. “Never left.” Twelve years after Scott had disappeared from Maple Woods, she was still right where he had left her. Pathetic.
Scott nodded again, dropping his gaze to the floor as his face reddened, and she knew she had hit a nerve. Well, good! It was about time that Scott gave some sort of reaction for what he had done to her, even if it was a decade or so too late.
“I always wondered about that,” he said, his voice so low she had to strain to hear. “I always wondered about you,” he said, looking up to properly meet her eyes.
Emily’s stomach rolled over, but she pushed back the temptation to dwell on his words, to extract more meaning from them than he’d probably intended. She straightened her spine.
“Well, you could have called. Or written.” She cursed herself for allowing the hurt to creep into her voice. But damn it, she couldn’t help it! His words were empty, falling flat and meaningless. She wondered briefly how many of the other things he had said to her were equally insincere. Most of them, she decided. As much as she hated to realize this, it was just the cold hard truth.
“I’ve never been good about keeping in touch. No matter how much I wanted to be,” Scott said, frowning. His eyes locked with hers until her pulse skipped and she had to look away.
He wasn’t here for her. He hadn’t come back for her. That was all that mattered.
“I’m sure Lucy’s eager to see you,” she blurted. “Half the town is at the diner for lunch. I’m sure they’d be thrilled to see you walk in.” Scott was the high school football star, after all, the kid from the good family with the good looks and “things going for him.” He had always been loved around town. Especially by her.
“I had hoped to avoid the diner for a while,” he admitted, offering her a rueful grin. “At least until everyone knows I’m back in town.”
“People do love to talk around here,” she mused as she set a stack of napkins next to the cash register.
Their gazes locked and she noted the warmth of his smoky blue eyes, and felt nearly sick with humiliation at the pity she saw float through them. She didn’t want his sympathy, or anyone else’s for that matter. She wanted to break free, to start over. To live a life where she could be so many more things than this town had allowed her to be.
“Too much,” Scott said quickly, and Emily gave him a brief, tight smile. He knew the things people used to say about her family. It hung in the air, in the leaves of the maple trees that lined Main Street. It triggered family dinner conversations and prompted Sunday prayers. It was a name spoken in whisper, with lowered eyes and a shake of the head. Those poor Porters.
Emily shook herself from the darkening thoughts. “Well, I’ve just put on some fresh coffee and there’s plenty of pie. Feel free to wait here, if you’d like.”
He hesitated, shifting back on his heels. “Why not?” he suddenly said with a shrug. His eyes softened their hold on hers, causing her pulse to skip a beat.
“How about a slice of pie?” she asked nervously, squeezing her fists to keep her hands from shaking. “There’s strawberry and cream, pecan, apple crumb—oh, we have a lovely cherry here,” she offered before she could stop herself. She hadn’t even remembered until now that it was his favorite.
“You know me well,” he said with a sigh, sliding into a seat at the counter.
Emily offered him a small smile in return, then, her heart heavy, turned her back to him to plate the pie, paying careful attention in getting the first wedge just right. It was tricky, but she’d learned the knack through practice. Long before her father had died on a construction site when she was just a little girl, Sunday pie had been a ritual in her household, and she still took comfort in his memory every time she pulled one from the oven. No matter how rough the week had been, there was always some reassurance in the time-honored tradition. Pie could bring comfort in a world that could be cruel. It was something to be shared. It brought people together. In the most difficult of circumstances, she liked to think it helped keep them together, too.
“Here you go,” she said to Scott now. “I made it this morning, so it’s fresh.”
“You always made the best pies, Emily Porter.” He grinned, and his eyes shone bright on hers until he caught the heat in her expression and looked down at his plate.
She sucked in a breath. “So,” she said briskly. “What brings you back to town?” It certainly wasn’t her. He’d made a promise—dozens of beautiful, hope-filled promises—and broken each one right along with her heart.
“My dad asked me to help oversee the construction of the library.” His jaw twitched and he scratched at a day’s worth of stubble. “Well, Lucy asked, actually.”
“Lucy mentioned once that you were in construction, just like you’d always planned.” She frowned at the thought. Why couldn’t he have stayed in Maple Woods and taken over Collins Construction, the family business? It was a fine company, well respected by the town. Her own father had proudly worked there.
Scott paused. “My father isn’t up to the job at the moment.”
Emily nodded. Scott and Lucy’s parents had never been warm to her, but she’d decided a long time ago not to take it personally. Her father had worked for Mr. Collins for more than fifteen years before the accident on the job took his life when she was eight years old. It had been human error, the police had said, his own negligence in failing to put the emergency brakes on the excavator that rolled down the slope and killed him. Mr. Collins had been there that day. He’d dealt with the police, and as a courtesy to the family he had helped cover the funeral expenses, but he had been tense around her family in passing ever since.
“Sticking around for long?” She held her breath, waiting for an answer she knew deep down wouldn’t make a lick of difference.
“Only as long as I have to.”
Emily held his sharp gaze and then lowered her eyes with a slow nod of her head as her heart began to tug. He was still the same old Scott. The same charming guy with dreams beyond Maple Woods. And she was still the same old Emily, still living in the same small town, still waiting for life to really start.
Well, it was time to do something about that.
* * *
Of all the people he had hoped to avoid in this town, Emily was at the top of his list. So he supposed it made sense that she was the first person he ran into. The one girl who had crawled under his skin and remained there. No matter how much he wanted to resist her, to turn his back and leave, he just couldn’t.
He rested an elbow on the counter, grateful for its barrier. If it wasn’t there, keeping them apart, he wasn’t quite sure he would have been able to refrain himself from greeting her with a hug, to feel the warmth of her body pressed against his, to hold her close and know that she was real and that she was okay. That no matter what had happened, what he had done, that she was all right.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way with them. They’d had plans—plans he’d intended to stick to—until that horrible summer night, his last night in this town, when his entire world came crashing down around him and Emily was lost to him forever.
Swallowing
