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“Xander…” That was all I could come up with, because even I wasn’t hardened enough to not be touched by his words.
He smiled and shook his head. “Don’t say anything, Mara. Not yet. I’ll be seeing you soon. Real soon,” he said, and pressed a soft, chaste kiss to the side of my mouth. “Count on it.”
Instead of staring off into space, reliving that kiss, my gaze remained glued to Xander’s ass, tight and hard and perfectly high. The shorts didn’t show it off quite as gloriously as his Sheriff’s uniform, but they came pretty damn close.
Xander
“Hey man, you with me or you plan on daydreaming all day?”
Chris’ words brought me out of my head where I replayed the events of this morning, the way Mara’s lips felt against mine, the way her lush body writhed against me. The way she moaned into my mouth. It was pure lust, sure, but lust meant more when it came from a woman who thought she hated you, so I knew I could work with that. And I would.
“I’m here. I swear.”
“Good, because if I could build this treehouse by myself, I wouldn’t have asked for your help.” He didn’t sound grumpy at all, more amused than anything, and I looked up to see him smiling at me.
“What?”
He shook his head. “Who is the girl?” With his arms folded across his chest, Chris waited with a smile.
I grunted and shook my head. “Like you don’t already know.”
“I don’t. I have my suspicions, sure, but I have no facts. Tara, if she knows, is tightlipped other than to say your charm isn’t helping you at all, which she finds amusing by the way.”
“Yeah, she hasn’t made that a secret.” And it made me appreciate our friendship a little more, knowing that she hadn’t told my secrets to the man she loved. “It’s Mara. Sort of.”
“Mara, really?” Chris’ brows lifted high on his forehead in disbelief and he took a step closer. “I have to hear this because I was pretty sure she was the only woman in town impervious to your charms.”
“You’re not wrong,” I assured him because it was the truth. That kiss had happened because of the chemistry that burned between us, that still hadn’t died out, not because I had charmed her in any way. “But we have history.” It took a few minutes, but I gave Chris a brief history of young high school love and the best summer of my life, before it all turned to shit. “She thinks she hates me.”
“That much is obvious, but why? High school relationships break up all the time, what did you do to make her hate you?” He held up his hands defensively, palms facing me. “Why does she think she hates you?”
I sighed and told him the rest of the story. “I just found out why, and it wasn’t me who did anything, it was my parents.” That part still rankled and I was still avoiding their calls, furious that they would sacrifice another kid’s future for my own, and worse, for a future I never wanted in the first place. “Am I crazy for thinking that it’s even a possibility that she’ll forgive me?”
“Yes and no.” He raked a hand through his hair, eyes taking that faraway look that said he was giving the matter serious thought.
“Gee, thanks for the clarity.”
Chris sighed and shrugged. “It’s not all that simple man. Sounds like she stopped believing in love, like she stopped trusting people. That creates a lot of complicated emotions, so yeah she might forgive you, but it won’t be the easy road you’re imagining it to be. Your charm and pretty boy good looks won’t help you much.”
“They haven’t helped yet, so why start now?”
“Man, she went to jail for the man she loved, so he could have the big important life he wanted, and he abandoned her. Would you be charmed by nice tits and a sexy laugh in that situation?”
“I didn’t abandon her,” I growled at him, angry and frustrated.
“She knows that now, but that doesn’t undo more than a decade of hate and rejection and abandonment, especially with her background.”
“What do you know about her background?”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t take a genius to figure it out, man. She keeps to herself, barely talks about her past even with her close friends, doesn’t date. That spells trauma, and considering she’s had no visitors since I came to Pilgrim, it’s safe to say she has no family either. She was probably in the system.”
I was shocked. “I only found out recently. We were in love, each other’s firsts for everything, and I hadn’t known. How could I not know?”
“She didn’t want you to, and the fact that you didn’t figure it out probably made her love you more. She could just be Mara with you, not the orphan or the foster kid or the charity case.”
