The Man She Once Knew by Jean Brashear Page A

price. However misguided her good intentions, he couldn’t let her fall into that trap. He should be looking for a way to send her running.
    Right now he was desperate to be alone, and it was almost completely dark. “It’s been a long day.” Hemanaged to make his tone carefully neutral, didn’t meet her gaze. “Come on. I’ll walk you back.”
    After a brief hesitation, she fell into step beside him. They walked side by side, if separate in their thoughts, for nearly a mile, the moon their only light. When a rut in the road loomed, he took her elbow to guide her around it, letting go the second she was past.
    Not a word was exchanged between them, but the night hummed with all they weren’t saying. He was unequal to the task of sorting out his own emotions, much less those she might have.
    “I would have been a terrible mother,” she said suddenly.
    He heard the wobble in her voice and stirred himself to respond. “You’d have done fine.”
    A sad chuckle. “Your memory must be impaired. Don’t you remember how utterly screwed up I was? What on earth did I think I could bring to a baby?”
    Love , he started to say, but everything he’d felt tonight was choking down his chest, squeezing his heart until a response was impossible.
    She didn’t speak again for a minute or two, then, “What happened after I left, David?”
    For an instant, he actually considered unburdening himself, but the instinct shouting Danger! was far too loud. He forcibly reminded himself that he did not know this Callie, could not afford to trust her no matter what yearning this night had stirred in him. He noted their position with relief. “Here’s your place. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    “David—” But she didn’t finish, and he didn’t respond before he turned away.
    But he felt her eyes on him every step down the road, as he cursed himself. And fate.
    And Ned Compton.
     
    C ALLIE WATCHED David go, fighting the impulse to race after him, but she didn’t know if she wanted to invite him in or yell at him or simply hold him. Be held by him again.
    When last their bodies had come together, it had been the night they’d buried their child. That night, filled with heartache and pain beyond measure, wasn’t one she cared to relive. Especially here and now when she’d stood with him once more over the baby’s grave, had seen David reaching out toward the angel as if some sort of salvation waited.
    He touched me. Willingly. For a second it had almost been like before.
    No, nothing like before. They were different, both of them, but at last— at last —the gap had been bridged, if only for seconds.
    Some part of him wanted her. Maybe needed her. The yielding of his body, the longing that had arced between them…oh, God, how sweet, how fraught with possibilities.
    Her body still echoed with need and yearning. She hadn’t been a nun while in Philly, but there had been no one special. No one who reached her as David had, deeper than the physical.
    If only she hadn’t touched him where he was almostcertainly still bruised from the beating, likely reminding him of his present reality. That had to be why he’d turned away so abruptly.
    More and more, she didn’t believe he’d started the altercation with Mickey Patton. So why was he fighting her at every step when the deepest yearning of his life had to be freedom?
    Such a tangle, their pasts and their presents. You don’t have enough strikes against you, so you jump right into a lost cause? Ted’s questions lingered. But if anything in the world supported her gut sense that he was innocent, that almost-kiss did. For precious moments, they’d been David and Callie again, the connection between them alive and more powerful than ever.
    She was reminded of their first kiss years before, how awkward it had been, yet the sweeter for that. She’d been trying to seduce him for weeks, throwing herself at him as inexpertly as only a fourteen-year-old virgin could. She’d done