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“Three weeks.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he murmured roughly. “So fucking sorry.”
She met his eyes. “Where were you? Why weren’t you in my life?”
His expression shuttered. “Wouldn’t you prefer to eat your breakfast first?”
“No.”
He leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “You broke up with me.”
She stiffened. “I did?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it bad?” she asked.
“Bad enough. I was leaving town.” He cleared his throat. “My father had just died and I needed to leave. To get away. I asked you to come with me. You said no, and I left.”
His eyes held a wealth of pain, even though his voice was so carefully neutral.
“What aren’t you telling me? Please I would like to know everything from the beginning. How did we meet? What do you like to do?”
He stared at her for so long Ava feared he wouldn’t answer.
“The summer of 2014, I caught you skinny dippy in Lake Coonan.”
She sucked in a breath as the memory exploded straight into her mind.
“What are you doing here?” She had said demanding his attention, as if her nudity had not already got it. She had expected him to apologize, turn around and go away. He had been amused at her imperious posturing.
“Does the Kane princess think she owns the lake?” he had sneered strolling even closer to her distress.
“Of course not. I…I…I just didn’t expect anyone to be here. I’m naked!” Ava had tried to protect her virtue by swimming out even further into the lake so the water stopped at her chin.
“I can see that.” A sensual smile quirked his lips, then he started to undress slowly like a dancer, confident of his masculine beauty. And she had watched, no, she’d devoured him with her eyes and he had grinned lazily back at her, knowing his sensuality. She had tried to deny her fascination, but had been unable to.
“What are you doing? You can’t come in here!” She had felt shocked at his lack of modesty in his nakedness as he had stood stretching, displaying himself to her, shocked as her body had reacted with a longing to touch.
“The night is hot, princess, and I came out to have a cooling dip in the lake. You can leave if you wish. I won’t stop you…”
“I am not leaving.”
“Neither am I, princess.”
Ava smiled. “I remember . . . I don’t remember how we got together, but just now I recalled our meeting. You stripped, and dove into the water.””
He nodded. “That night, we spoke for the first time since school and we never really talked there. I had just sold my first piece to the mayor, and I wanted to celebrate by dipping my ass naked in the lake.”
At her obviously puzzled look he expounded. “I make things, tables, headboards, furniture . . . with my own unique designs.”
Ava glanced around the kitchen, noting the high quality and beauty of the cupboards, table and chairs. She knew she’d imagined furniture like this in the past. A memory, in which she was talking animatedly about her dream house to someone—had it been him?—flashed through her mind. This room was everything she’d described. “Oh.”
He shifted in his chair and pushed away his plate, even though it was still full. “Even today, I’m not sure how it started. But we bonded that night. And we started meeting at the lake. Every night. You were afraid your father would see us together and, at first, I understood. I was a Calhoun, the son of the town’s most famous drunk and brawler. It got to the point where, for dinner, we would drive miles to the other towns. But I didn’t mind, because I had you. I fell in love with you within weeks, and after eight months of dating and sneaking around I asked you to marry me. You said yes.”
Her heart jerked. “We’re engaged?” the memory of the straw ring he had given her roared in her head again. How could her parents not have known she was engaged?
A cynical smile curved his sensual lips. “We were still not trumpeting the knowledge around town. We were being careful, as you had wished. But then I did something that angered you and you broke it off.”
