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You didn't come back for me. She didn't have to say it. He heard the words echoing in the silence of the small office.
"I thought you were married and gone," he admitted.
"Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"
The tightness around her perfect mouth could have been hurt. Except hurting would mean she still cared. And she couldn't. Not about him. He was still the town bastard, and she was the respectable Megan Bartlett. They'd never had a chance.
"What happens when you've made your peace?" she asked.
"We're leaving."
"You and Bonnie?"
"If I can't find a relative of hers, I'm going to adopt her."
"Because of what Williams did for you?"
He nodded. "And because I don't want to lose her."
"I wish I had known more back then." Megan stared at her lap. "I wish I could go back and change what happened between us."
"Why?" He lowered his feet to the ground with a thump. "Nothing would be different. You still wouldn't have left with me."
"I might have," she said softly.
"I don't believe you."
"I know. You think it's all about what other people think, and that I should just dismiss their feelings. It's not that easy. I was raised differently than you. I never learned how
not to care about the opinions of others, especially people who matter to me. My father would have disowned me. I was only seventeen, Justin. I was wrong, but I wish you could understand how hard it was for me. How hard it still is."
"No, I don't understand. ,, He waved his hand toward the window. "What is so frightening about Landing? Who has this hold on you?"
"I can't explain it."
He watched her as she reached across the desk and picked up the pocketknife that had been resting there. It was the same one she'd returned to him the night he'd been at her house. He still didn't know why she'd kept it all these years.
She turned the knife over in her hands and traced the initials with her fingertips. There was something familiar about the gesture, as if she'd done it a thousand times before. As if the knife had meant something to her. A dangerous line of thought, he told himself. One best left alone.
"Colleen doesn't like me working in the store," she said. "She thinks it's shameful that a single woman, a spinster, really, is engaging in commerce." She smiled slightly. "I think she's been reading too many society pages. It's not as if we have a social standing."
"You do in Landing."
She shrugged. "That doesn't count. But she keeps telling me that my working is wrong. That I should hire a man to manage the store for me and spend my time doing..." Her voice trailed off. "I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing."
"Looking for a husband," he offered.
"Yes, that, of course. Charity work, but only for those people whom she has deemed worthy."
He made a noise low in his throat. Megan glanced up at him. The gray had faded from her eyes leaving them hazel again, and sad. "You think this is funny. It's not to me. Colleen is the only family I have left. After what happened today, I'm not sure we'll ever speak again."
He tried to find it in his heart to be sorry, but he couldn't. Not being around Colleen might be best for Megan, if she could get over the guilt. He thought about her store, about
how well she was doing. If the wide variety of items for sale and the steady stream of customers were any indication, she was doing better than her father had done. He couldn't imagine Megan sitting home knitting socks for needy orphans. Nor could he imagine her married to someone else.
"There were no proposals after mine?" he asked.
She placed the knife back on his desk and folded her hands on her lap, looking as prim as a schoolgirl. "I was engaged for a short time, but when my father passed away, my fianc6 didn't agree with my desire to postpone the wedding until after the year of mourning. He broke off the engagement and married someone else."
"You must not have wanted to get married all that badly if you were willing to wait a year."
She straightened in her chair and glared at him. "You have no business—" She paused, then grinned. "You're right. I didn't love him. I couldn't. Not after—" she cleared her throat "—that is, not after everything that had happened to me."
