His Brother's Bride

“I came to say goodbye,” she said softly. “I need to get on with my life.”

The words struck a chord of irrational fear in Scott’s chest, as though Laurel had found a peace he’d been denied.

He couldn’t say goodbye. He had no life to get on with. There was just existence left. And work.

He didn’t deserve anything else.

She’d never given him a hint of encouragement, yet he’d allowed his love for her to cloud everything around him and lead him to a foolishness that had cost his brother his life. Yet even as he’d been telling Laurel the terrible news about Paul’s death just hours after it had happened, he’d been in love with her. He’d wanted to run away with her, lose himself—his grief—in her arms.

And now, more than three years and a whole load of guilt later, he had a very strong suspicion that he loved her still.

* * *

LAUREL COULDN’T STOP TREMBLING.

Coming back to Cooper’s Corner had been like rubbing salt in wounds not quite healed enough to withstand the onslaught. Seeing Scott ripped those wounds wide open again, as though in three and a half years there’d been not one fraction of healing.

He looked incredibly good, so tall and strong and solid. Seeing him in his dark blue uniform, one could be tricked into believing that he could really right wrongs. Save the needy. Make the world a better place.

His dark hair was exactly as she remembered, and those striking blue eyes...

“I thought I was ready,” she said, when a fresh spate of tears struck.

“You didn’t expect to see me.” He stood, hands in his pockets, just inches away.

“I thought you’d moved to Boston. You’d just taken that detective position.”

“After...the accident...I applied with the state police instead....”

She and Paul had moved to Boston a few years before the accident, when Paul had been accepted at Harvard law school. She had already graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in journalism and had accepted a position at the Boston Globe, working on the local desk.

Scott had been planning to move to Boston right after the wedding, keeping the Hunter home in Cooper’s Corner as a vacation place. He’d wanted to be closer to their ailing father, who was in an assisted living facility in Boston, but his father had died shortly after the accident. Laurel knew that. She’d sent a card....

After the accident she’d run away from Boston almost as quickly as she’d vacated Cooper’s Corner.

“So...you’ve been here...all these years?”

“Yes.”

She was warmed by the way he was looking at her.

“I moved to New York,” she told him.

“I know. I’ve seen you on the news a time or two when I’ve been on the road.”

She was glad. Though when Scott’s presence had become a comfort to her rather than the sharp pain it had been the last time she’d seen him, she didn’t know.

Maybe she had healed some.

“They say time heals all pain, but I don’t think the ache is ever going to go away.” Private by nature, she’d never have said such a thing to anyone else, but she sensed that Scott would understand. She had a feeling he knew exactly what she meant.

He nodded.

“He should be here,” she said.

“I know.”

She should be living in Cooper’s Corner. Raising Paul’s babies. They’d had it all planned.