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“Who’s that?” she pointed and turned to
him.

“No one you would know.”

For a moment the two of them stared at each
other in silence, and he thought that maybe a shadow of hurt
crossed her face. If so, it was gone just as fast as it had come,
replaced once more with the cool, composed woman he’d come home
to.

She was a stranger to him, and yet…

She wrapped her arms around her body as if
seeking warmth and rested her gaze on the table he was working on.
She blew out a long breath and took a few hesitant steps forward,
though when Pia barked once more she scowled.

“Okay, your dog needs to relax.”

“Pia’s a little territorial,” Shane
replied.

“Well she doesn’t have to worry about me,”
she retorted frostily.

“She’s not.”

“She’s not,” Bobbi repeated.

“Nope.”

The dog glanced between the two adults and
growled.

“I find that hard to believe,” Bobbi said as
she took one step back.

“It’s me she’s worried about.”

Bobbi muttered something unintelligible under
her breath before nodding toward the table and gesturing around the
large, main floor of the carriage house. The entire area was his
workspace, the one place where he felt at home and relaxed.

That is until today.

“I thought you worked for Logan at his
shop.”

“I do,” he answered easily. He had returned
to New Waterford because at the time he’d had no choice. As an
ex-con, fresh out of prison and on parole, he’d had to procure
employment and Logan had stepped in, offering him the chance to
work in his bike shop, building custom rides. It’s something he
enjoyed and it served its purpose, but it wasn’t his dream.

“So what’s all this?” she asked, finally
meeting his gaze.

Shane shrugged. He wasn’t in the mood to play
nice with Bobbi. Not today. Not ever.

“I’m just fooling around.”

Her delicate eyebrows furled and he knew she
wasn’t going to let this go.

“Since when do you love working with
wood?”

“Since prison.”

Her face flushed and she muttered, “Oh.”

He’d skimmed the facts for sure. Working in
the wood shop had pretty much saved him because when Shane had been
sentenced to his three year term, he was definitely in a bad way.
He’d checked out on life and didn’t give a shit about anything. If
not for Wilson, the old man in the painting, he wasn’t sure where
the hell he’d be right now.

Awkward silence fell between them and Shane
rolled his shoulders as the muscles across his back tightened. Two
minutes in her company and he was already wound tighter than a damn
top.

“Get dressed and I’ll take you home,” he said
roughly, nudging Pia aside with his foot as he nodded toward the
stairs.

Her chin shot up. So did her eyebrows.

“I’m not going anywhere until we discuss what
happened last night.”

That surprised him. He thought she’d want to
hightail it out of his place as soon as possible.

She fingered the edge of his T-shirt
nervously and glanced away, her large eyes suddenly shadowed. It
hit him then. She wasn’t just hung over. She was suffering from the
after effects of one too many shots of tequila. The main one being
memory loss.

A cool grin touched his mouth as he moved
forward, and something perverse and dangerous rifled through him
when he saw the panicked look that crept into her face.

“You want to talk about last night,” he said
slowly.

She swallowed and his gaze rested on her
mouth. That damn, delectable, soft and wicked mouth. Bobbi cleared
her throat as the air between them exploded in a crackle of
fireworks and sizzling energy.

“Well,” she began breathlessly, her pulse
beating fast and hard at her neck. “Don’t you think we should?”

Shane was inches from her now. She should
smell like a damn brewery—or at least like the kind of woman who
had spent the night in a bar tossing back way too much whiskey and
tequila. But she didn’t. Hell the fuck no. The subtle fragrance
that clung to her hair and lived on her skin, was something
familiar and his groin tightened at the memory of it.

She smelled like summer. It was cold as hell
outside with a brisk north wind blowing and yet, Bobbi smelled like
fucking summer. Go figure.

“It was your wedding night,” he said gruffly,
pissed that she affected him so much.

Her pink tongue ran along her top lip and his
focus shifted. It had to. Because he was suddenly as hard as a rock
and was thanking the good Lord that his jeans had more than enough
room between his legs. Though if she kept it up…kept up with the
mouth and the lips and the tugging on the edge of his damn T-shirt,
there was no way he would be able to hide how turned on he was.

“In case you missed it, I ended up at the
Hard Rock in a wedding dress minus a groom.”

“True,” he answered. “Why did you run out on
Dooley?”

“I didn’t,” she began and then blew out a hot
breath. “I…didn’t,”

“You didn’t.” He arched an eyebrow and
narrowed his gaze.

“Well I did, but I’m,” she thrust her chin
out and glared at him. “I’m going to fix it.”

Shane snorted and cocked his head to the
side. Something black stirred inside him. “How the hell are you
going to manage that?”

Her eyes flashed and he knew she was annoyed
at his tone. “I got nervous. It happens. And I’ll explain all of it
to him and he’ll be fine.”

Her blue eyes were shiny, her mouth wet where
her tongue had darted out. In that moment the only thing Shane
wanted to do was pull her into his arms and taste her. Taste her
and rip his T-shirt off along with the sexy black panties he knew
was underneath.

Instead, he gave himself a mental smack
down.

“You think Dooley will be fine with the fact
that you left him at the altar and made a fool out of him on his
wedding day?”

She stared at him and said nothing, though
she nodded slightly.

“In front of half the town?”

She winced, but damn, she had the audacity to
nod again.

Shane snorted. “You’re crazier than I
remember.” She opened her mouth but he stopped her cold. “No, not
crazy…you’re deluded.”

“Gerald loves me and I’ll make him understand
it was just a mistake.”

“You expect him to believe that your decision
to
not
show up was a mistake.”

Her bottom lip trembled and he wasn’t exactly
sure why he was pushing her so hard. He didn’t care about Bobbi or
Gerald anymore. Bringing her here was a mistake. A lapse in
judgment and he was going to blame it on….Fuck he didn’t know what
he was going to blame it on, but he sure as hell knew whatever
they’d once shared was gone.

It was in the past..

He was done with her. Sure he still found her
hot as hell but that was it. It had to be, or he was screwed.

“I expect him to give me a chance and I know
he’ll listen to me, I mean he’s a decent guy but first…”

“But first?” he prodded.

“Well,” she exhaled nervously and bit her
bottom lip, a sure fire sign she was uncomfortable .

Suddenly he knew where she was headed and
that blackness that was stirring sharpened and intensified.

“You want to know if we slept together.”

She swallowed but didn’t answer, her eyes
shiny and wide.

“Would it matter?” he continued, as he moved
closer and didn’t stop until there was barely a whisper between
them. He felt her body heat and that insane smell of summer
assaulted him as surely as if she’d laid her hands on his
chest.

“What do you mean?”

“If we did,” he leaned down. “If I screwed
the hell out of you last night, would you run to Dooley and tell
him that you did the nasty with your ex, ex-con? Or would you keep
it a secret.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his tone.
“Because we both know you like keeping secrets.”

He bent low, and moved her hair away from her
neck leaving her Gaelic tattoo exposed. He traced the lines with
his forefinger, aware the air between that had changed. Her breaths
were falling faster, harsher, and that blackness inside of him
threatened to spill out.

In that moment he wanted to hurt her in ways
that he’d not thought of since that awful night, several years
back, when they’d broken up. When they’d trashed each other’s
hearts and souls with ugly, dark things—things neither one of them
would ever forget.

Suddenly he had enough. He had no desire to
do this dance with Bobbi. To revisit a past that would do nothing
but hurt them both. If she wanted to spend her life with someone
like Gerald Dooley, who was he to stop her?

Shane stepped back and nodded toward the
stairs.

“Don’t worry princess. Nothing happened last
night.”

She stared at him for several moments, chest
heaving, her pale cheeks now flushed a deep rose color.

“I’ll call Billie. I don’t need a ride,” she
said finally before turning and disappearing back up the
stairs.

Shane wasn’t sure how long he stood in
silence, gazing at the top of the stairs. Finally, he moved,
inserted his ear buds, grabbed the sander and once more ran it
along the huge piece of teak. Unlike his mind and his heart, his
motions were controlled and the sounds of classic Van Halen blotted
out the sound of a car pulling up to his place.

And of the slamming door behind the girl
who’d damn near broken him.

It was a week after the
wedding-that-never-happened and Bobbi was about to face her groom.
Or rather, the groom and fiancé she’d stood up. As it turned out,
he’d left for their honeymoon—taken his mother as his companion—and
had only gotten back to town the night before. He had left a
message with Herschel earlier and she knew he’d be by shortly.

Her sister Billie thought the whole thing was
weird—taking his mother along on what was supposed to have been his
honeymoon. According to Billie, it would have made more sense for
him to take a buddy—someone to drink and party his way through the
week with.

Bobbi knew that Gerald didn’t have too many
close guy friends, at least none outside of business and she
couldn’t fault him for taking the trip. It was certainly the
practical thing to do, though really, his mother?

She glanced down at the diamond that still
adorned her left ring finger, turning her hand slightly so the two
carat stone reflected the bright sunlight that filtered in from the
kitchen window.

“God, you’re still wearing that thing?”

She turned, her expression tightening as her
other sister Betty wandered into the kitchen, her lithe form barely
covered by a silky blue robe. Loosely belted, it gaped open,
showing off more than just a little peek of her breasts, in fact,
Bobbi’s frown deepened as her sister stretched and both of the
girls fell out.

“Are you kidding me? Can you please put some
clothes on? Gerald will be here any minute and he certainly doesn’t
need to see those things.”

Betty tossed her head, her long hair sliding
over her shoulder and grinned. Slowly…
carefully
, she tugged
the ends over her exposed nipples and then tightened the belt.

“Damn, I supposed I could get dressed. It is
two in the afternoon after all and lord knows Gerry doesn’t need
the added excitement of seeing something that he only fantasized
about on his uh,
honeymoon
.”

Something began to pulse back in the recesses
of Bobbi’s brain. A sharp, something, that drew Bobbi’s frown
deeper across her forehead.

There was a time, years ago, when Betty and
Bobbi had been close. Really close. The other triplet, Billie was
the one who never really fit in. She’d always been the third wheel.
The athletic tomboy who didn’t give two shits about clothes or
makeup or having a good time. But Betty? She was always down for
whatever kind of trouble Bobbi was willing to get into, and damn,
but they’d seen their share of trouble.

Yet, something had hardened inside her
sister. Something twisted and mean. And though Bobbi would like to
think it was because of the crazy life she’d fallen into—modeling
and acting—she wasn’t so sure anymore. Something was broken inside
Betty and the scary thing was, that sometimes, that blank, sad,
look she saw in her sister’s eyes, stared back at herself when
Bobbi looked in the mirror.

Bobbi sighed and glanced away. With all the
problems facing her at the moment she didn’t have the time, or the
inclination, to find out what it was or to try and fix it. Besides,
her sister Betty had to want to be helped. Her addiction problems
and crazy lifestyle had toned down a bit since she’d returned to
New Waterford in the fall, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t
trouble.

She was plenty enough trouble. Hell, the girl
had left Bobbi’s wedding-that-never-happened-reception, with Matt
Hawkins.
Matt freaking Hawkins
. He was one of the biggest
horn-dogs around—at the age of thirty five he had children with
three different women—and yet, Betty had left with him and was gone
for three days and three nights. She’d returned to the Barker
residence, in a pair of men’s jeans and an old ratty sweatshirt,
with her long hair a tangled mess and makeup that had run and
smudged.

She was either coming down from a high or
still drunk, but there was no doubt that Betty had walked through
the door looking like the worse walk of shame, ever—worse than
Bobbi returning in her stained, wedding dress. And Bobbi was glad
that neither Gramps, nor her father had been home to witness
it.

“Just please get dressed or go back up to
your room and do whatever it is you do up there.”

For a few moments the two girls stared at
each other in silence, the only noise was the ticking of the
ancient round clock above the fridge. They both jumped when the
doorbell rang and Bobbi smoothed her pin straight hair as she tried
to calm her nerves.