“Do your parents know you are here, Ava?”
She stiffened. “No. But I don’t need their permission. I’m twenty-three.”
A mocking smile curved his lips. “Still sneaking out to see me.”
“Just tell me!”
“I was a summer fling for the Kane princess. It didn’t last long, and then we were over. Simple as that.”
Ava’s throat tightened. She still felt as if she was missing something. He was being too distant, too offhand. But if it had only been a fling . . . what did she expect? Their connection would have been fleeting, even if she hadn’t thought herself capable of getting involved in something so shallow.
He’d said that she snuck out to see him. She must’ve hidden their affair. Willow hadn’t known they’d been having sex—she’d said that she’d thought Ava really liked Devlin and hung out with him some, but she obviously hadn’t known it’d gone so deep for the pair of them.
“So we were never friends at all?”
He dropped his hand and stepped back to the counter. He indicated the bread and turkey slices. “Would you like one?”
“No, thank you. Are you going to answer me?”
“We’re not friends. Our families don’t mix.”
She winced. She knew that. Her father, William Kane, owned the only meatpacking business in town, and Devlin’s father had been the town drunk, arrested many times for being a public nuisance. She and he had nothing in common, yet that felt like she was lying to herself. Their family had not socialized. None of the Calhoun boys had ever been invited to her parents’ annual barbecue, or her birthday parties, despite the youngest boy, Joshua, being only a couple years younger than her, and Devlin was only a few months older than Ava. She had a vague memory of the boys standing on the sidewalk peering with yearning on their faces, as they watched everyone else having fun at her twelfth birthday party. Her parents had despised the Calhouns, one and all and it seemed they still did. Perhaps they had not been lying, perhaps they had never really known only suspected that Devlin and her had been involved. “Then how did we end up having a fling?”
“You flashed your ass in front of me, and I wasn’t man enough to resist.”
She flinched at his crude response. Before she could answer, though, he threw her a question. “How did you get into an accident?”
She was strangely grateful for the shift in topic. “I don’t know. I was told that I was on the road to Cedar Bluff and apparently I ran off the road. The report said I’d been speeding, but I don’t remember, and there were no witnesses.”
His entire body jerked. “Which day was it?”
“December thirteenth.”
She stared at the white-knuckled grip he suddenly had on the counter. Obviously, the date was important to him. Should it be to her? She strained to feel some deeper connection to him, and came up blank. He was very attractive, with his whipcord-lean body, chiselled chin, and cool eyes, but the only feeling she could summon for him was lustful attraction. Outside of her fleeting snapshots of memories, he was a complete stranger. Sure, they’d attended the same high school, but he was just another member of the distant townsfolk she had no real connection with. It seemed almost impossible that they’d had anything deep and sensual or loving between them.
But then, from his own mouth . . . they hadn’t had anything between them. Certainly not friendship. Only sex. A fling. One which it appeared had not been worth her remembering. A fling which had been so unimportant to him, that it had not been worth him bothering to acknowledge her, when he saw her in town. She suspected she had even given her virginity to this man and she wasn’t worth an acknowledgment.
“I should go. The rain has let up and my parents will be worried.”
His green eyes captured hers and, for a moment in time, she was falling into them. She shook her head to clear her fanciful thoughts and gave him a tentative smile when he still said nothing. She grabbed her dripping coat and reluctantly climbed back into it.
Finally, he spoke. “Let me walk you out.”
Disappointment rushed through her. What had she expected? For him to ask her to stay? To demand they talk some more? She followed him through the gorgeous kitchen, then the living room, and into the hall. She felt so deflated, small and unimportant, as if she was worthless and so easily discarded. Without saying anything he o
pened the door. She hesitated before shoring up her courage to leave.
“Goodbye, Devlin,” she said softly and walked down the stairs towards the van.
Tears burned her throat. For some crazy reason, it felt as if she was walking away from her future as well, not only her past.
As the rain drizzled down on her, she prayed she was making the right decision in leaving. She knew in her gut they’d more than just a damned fling. She’d seen the concern in his eyes, the flare of pain and need. But she had no idea how to start breaching the walls of a reserved stranger . . . a stranger her body and mind had come alive for.
Chapter Four
He was a fool.
Devlin stood in the doorway and watched Ava walk down the porch steps. From the moment he’d open the door and seen her standing there, he’d wanted to draw her into his arms and devour her lips. Fuck. A fist of regret slammed into his stomach. She had amnesia, and he’d told her they only had a fling. She’d been his world, his only love, his heart. But he’d lost her, and he’d moved on.