The Naked Truth (The Honeybrook Hamdens)

Julie sat outside the house for a long time before she walked in. The little gathering after the funeral was sparse, filled with people that didn’t seem to know each other. Phil, she noticed, hadn’t bothered to come. Just like the funeral. Just like the wake.

Still, enough cars speckled the sidewalk in front of her house that she knew it was wrong to dawdle and leave her mother playing hostess, so she swung herself out of her beat-up Cavalier and made her way up the little stone pathway toward the house.

Instead of walking toward the living room, though, she first climbed the stairs to her bedroom, ready to take off the heavy black sweater her mother had forced her to wear.

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When she opened the door, she found Chase in her rocking chair, waiting for her.

“Hey,” she stammered.

“Hey,” he said. “I wanted to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For keeping my secret.”

“It was nothing.”

“It wasn’t.” He said it so matter-of-factly that she didn’t bother arguing with him.

“I helped pick out the quilt for your bed,” she offered, then sat on her own and looked at him.

“It’s great.”

“It’s terrible.” She smiled. “Gran never got the hang of quilting. But it’s warm enough. And you’ll be here now. With your family.” Her heart broke for him just saying the words, but he smiled up at her.

“Just for the summer.”

“Right,” she said. “Just for the summer.”

And what a summer it was going to be.

Present Day

She felt like a sixteen-year-old girl again.

Which, of course, was to say she felt like an idiot.

She'd tried on all the clothes she'd brought with her from the city, and still nothing seemed to fit the way she wanted it to or do the things to her body she hoped they might.

Not that it mattered. She should have just worn a potato sack and gotten the whole evening over with. She didn't care, after all, what Chase thought of her or if he found her attractive. Although, considering the way he'd looked at her the other night in the bar, and even yesterday in the dining room, he clearly had something on his mind other than friendship...

But no. Even if he insisted on calling this a "date" she didn't have to treat it like one. She'd just wear an old flannel shirt, some well-worn jeans, pull her hair in a ponytail, and pray that the night would end quickly and quietly.

It had been nearly ten years since they'd been alone together. There was no guarantee that things were just going to fall into place like old times. It was entirely possible that she wouldn't be able to make him laugh the way she used to. That he would have developed some annoying habit she couldn't stand.

That he'd suddenly gotten hideous overnight?

No, even she couldn't hope for that much of a change. If there was one thing about Chase Westmore that had stayed the same for as long as she’d known him, it was that he was drop dead, cross your heart and hope to die gorgeous. Except now he was a man, too. He had the broad, chiseled shoulders of a man who knew how to work with his hands. The lean, trim waist.

It was enough to make her swoon just thinking about it.

So the only solution was to not think about it. Tying a jacket around her hips, she made her way down the creaky old steps and sat on the edge of the landing. Yup, staring at the door and waiting for him was exactly what an adult in her situation would do. Or, say, a particularly well-trained dog.

She got up and hustled to the kitchen, then poured herself a glass of water.

The house was in one of its rare states of emptiness with Amy having mysteriously gone somewhere and her mother having left for her weekly Mahjong tournament.