More Than Friends by Susan Mallery

your way back into my sister’s life, you can just forget it. She doesn’t need you. Go away, Chase. Go back to your fancy home on the rich side of town. We don’t want you here.”
    “You haven’t changed at all Anne. Still protecting your own,” he said.
    “Someone has to.” Her chest rose and fell with each agitated breath. “How dare you sit on Jenny’s porch advertising your presence.”
    “I needed to talk and—”
    “Oh sure. Talk. As if that’s what people are going to think you’re doing. Don’t you care about her reputation? This is still Harrisville. It might be the nineties in the rest of the world, but we have small-town values here. Haven’t you done enough?”
    Chase walked to the end of the porch. Anne stood on the first step. He was taller by several inches to begin with, but now he towered over her. Rage returned. And frustration. He knew it showed on his face. He waited, but she didn’t back down.
    “I don’t scare so easily,” she said softly. “I love my sister.”
    “Once I loved her, too.”
    “A lot of good that did her.”
    The shot hit home. Chase turned away and walked over to the railing. “I have a couple of things to say to Jenny. When I’m done, I’ll leave her in peace. As soon as things are taken care of with my father, I’m out of this town. You’ll never see me again. Satisfied?”
    “No.”
    He glanced at her over his shoulder.
    She shrugged. “You could have waited on the back porch.”
    “My truck would still be parked in the driveway. Is it that terrible that the neighbors see me here? Jenny and I used to be friends.”
    “Some friend you turned out to be.”
    He knew she was trying to get a rise out of him. What she couldn’t know was that nothing she could say was worse than what he’d already told himself. He was all the things Anne thought of him and more. His anger faded as quickly as it had flared.
    “You’re right,” he said, holding her gaze. “I am responsible for what happened. I can’t change the past, but I can try to make up for—”
    “Make it up?” She climbed up until she stood next to him. “Are you crazy? This isn’t some broken doll you can fix with a little glue. We are talking about a person. What happened to Jenny—” She paused. “Wait a minute. How do you know? She didn’t tell you, did she?”
    “No. Your father had that pleasure.”
    “Oh.”
    “It’s not important how I found out,” he said. “What matters is that I know now. I understand I can’t completely erase what happened, but there are things I can do to make it easier. I owe her that.”
    “Then leave her alone.”
    “No.”
    Anne shook her head. “You don’t get it, do you? We don’t need you. Jenny doesn’t need you. We look out for our own here.”
    “And I’ve never been one of your own.”
    She shrugged as if to say why dispute the obvious.
    “It always comes back to that damn mill.”
    “Us against them,” she agreed. “It’ll never change.”
    It would when his father died, he thought grimly. But this wasn’t the time to go into that. “You’re right, Anne. Nothing ever changes in Harrisville.”
    “Except Jenny,” she said softly.
    He shifted until he was sitting on the porch railing. “I know that.”
    “No. You don’t. You plan to fix her.” Green eyes met and held his own. “But she’s all grown-up. The past is behind her. What will you do if she doesn’t want or need fixing?”
    A beep from a car horn interrupted them. Chase turned and saw Jenny pulling into the driveway, next to his truck. She opened the door and climbed out. A combination of shame and anger and pleasure and guilt flooded his body. The urge to run battled with the need to ask for her forgiveness. If Anne hadn’t been standing beside him, he would have raced off the porch and pulled Jenny next to him just to reassure himself that she was okay. But he couldn’t. After all, the neighbors might be watching.
    “Anne,” Jenny said as she walked up