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Two
Emilia squeezed her eyes shut,still too boneless with shock to move. The energy around her shifted, and her body wobbled back and forth, threatening to introduce her to the floor.
She sucked in a breath and vowed to treat this moment like ripping off a plaster, unpleasant but necessary. While her back remained to the room, she ached for an ability to teleport out of this nerve-shredding situation.
I could run again. I’ve already done that once this week.
No, she really couldn’t, no matter how much she wanted to. She’d exhausted her funds running that first time. The least she could do now was dig out her courage and face her uninvited guest. She’d spent years faking pleasantness and could do it again.
She forced her eyes open and turned from the ugly olive-green wall ahead, shuffling her feet slowly beneath her. Harsh morning light poured from the open back door and stung her eyes; that light caused her to squint. All she could make out of her visitor was the silhouette of a long torso and strong-looking calves, a pair of weighty work boots, and…
The tradesman.
No, he’s more than that. So much more.
He’d only said one word. Her name. It sailed upon his warm, rumbling tone and still somehow ricocheted within her brain, refusing to leave.
He took a small sidestep, the sun no longer obscuring her view. That view ripped at her heart and brought about a genuine pain. One that flowed from her chest and into her back, before a sharp shockwave shot through her muscles and burrowed that pain into her bones.
Oh yes, she recognized him. And recognition had her fearing her heart might fall out altogether and land with a bloody splat on the already disgusting wood floor.
Useless blasted heart. When have you done me any good?
Certainly never when it came to this man.
His pale green eyes, so familiar—as if ten years hadn’t passed—they darkened to a deep chartreuse, his full lips tightening into a perfect frown. The ex who’d once lived in Minnesota. He still lived in Minnesota. Or at least, he’d moved back. Why?
Her pain intensified, prodding the idea that maybe she already knew why. His conflicted glower burned holes through her, seeming to confirm her theory; and still, nothing stopped his name from falling from her lips. “Blaine?”
Blaine.Despite the hard tug at her heart, it felt good to say his name. Maybe because she’d been forbidden from speaking it for over a decade. But saying his name, even just thinking it, should have been the last thing she wanted.
He was the beginning and end of her teenage rebellion. Nothing less than the end of her freedom as an adult… before her adulthood had even started.
Maybe I’m seeing ghosts. No. Not ghosts. Demons! Ghosts or demons would be better than this.
Not that there’d ever been anything bad about him. No, the complete opposite. Though his presence now proved once again that hell had, and still did, exist.
“Emilia.”
Her name fell from his mouth, another full and unwavering statement, like he didn’t need to bother posing her identity as a question. Like whatever glance he’d had of her earlier provided enough proof.
Like he’d never forgotten.
Of course not. He’s etched on my soul forever, and maybe I’m etched on his…
That thought alone stole her next breath from her lungs. So, she did the one thing most likely to spare her from collapsing. She ran. Literally ran. Though not in a true straight line, which meant she cracked a shoulder into the vomit-colored door frame, the thing exacting revenge for her earlier thoughts on its ugliness.
Pain shot through her shoulder and down her back, but none of that mattered. She kept running until she reached the bathroom Frank had shown her minutes before.
She snapped the locks shut and sank to the cold tile floor in an attempt to catch her breath.
“You are to stay away from that Irish boy. I won’t hear the name ‘Blaine’ in this house ever again. Do you understand?”
Her head ached from a rush of adrenaline, her father’s voice haunting her.
His thick Italian accent rang in her ears as if he’d spoken those words just yesterday. Stupid girl. She should have listened. Should have played by the rules and played her part. The great Vittorio Bonacci had designs for her life, and far be it from her to stray from that plan.
Still, even as she’d done as her dad decreed, time and a wedding hadn’t faded anything. Blaine Callaghan remained the old flame she couldn’t extinguish.
