The Playboy (Chandler Brothers 2)

He waited until she’d settled as comfortably as possible on the hard iron surface and sat, knees bent beside her. “It’s not paradise, but it’ll do.”

“Actually it’s pretty close.” She lifted her face toward the direction of the warm breeze and let out a contented sigh. “I take it you were feeling claustrophobic inside?”

He stiffened. “What makes you say that?” Mind reading wasn’t a game he was familiar with and they’d been in synch twice already tonight. After Chase’s married couple crack, it was enough to make him damn uncomfortable.

She met his gaze. “Because I asked you to talk. To open up. And you’ve gone so far out of your way not to do that, I figured you must be feeling cornered now.”

“And you’d know all about feeling cornered?” He hazarded an accurate guess, knowing she’d spent her life running from whatever it was that prevented her from settling in one place.

“Would you stop doing that?” She smacked her hand against the floor in obvious frustration. “Ouch. Dammit.” She shook her hand out in front of her.

He lifted her palm and pressed a kiss against her stinging flesh.

She yanked her hand back. “Don’t try and distract me. You’re too good at turning the tables on me. I’ll ask you a question and seconds later I’m spilling my guts instead of you.”

He grinned. “What can I say? I’m trained in interrogation tactics.”

“Trained in avoidance tactics is more like it,” she muttered. “You’re the one who’s feeling cornered right now, not me.”

Rick glanced up at the dark night sky. The time had come to either reveal his innermost pain or walk away from Kendall for good, before she walked away from him. Which she’d probably do anyway. He rubbed his hand along the back of his neck. “Jillian and I knew each other since she moved to town. I was a few years older than her but we became good friends and stayed that way all through high school.”

“Just friends?” Kendall asked.

“Yeah, just friends.”

“But you wanted more.”

He shrugged. “I was a guy. She was a pretty girl. Of course I wanted more.” Rick wanted to get through this telling as easily as possible, no emotion or theatrics involved. “I graduated high school and commuted to Albany for college, trained and joined the police force. Jillian was doing the commuting thing too and had finished her third year of college when she came home that summer.”

“Pregnant.” Kendall lay a hand on his arm and he covered it with his own.

“Four months.”

Kendall sighed.

Even if she had forced the story out of him, her presence and support meant a lot to him now. There was no one else he’d rather share his past with than Kendall. No one he’d rather share his future with either. The thought hit with greater impact and force than a bullet and he sucked in a startled breath.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine.” Yeah right.

“So finish the story,” she gently prompted.

He gathered the fortitude from somewhere deep inside him. He no longer had feelings for Jillian, of that much he was certain. He wasn’t dealing with raw emotion or lost love when he told this story now. But he was coping with a loss. One he’d never fully acknowledged before. Because Jillian’s leaving represented the end of the life he’d always wanted. The life he’d accepted that he’d never have.

Or thought he’d accepted until he met Kendall. Somehow this wanderer had reignited the desire for family he thought he’d put behind him. Ironically, even as she’d fed the yearning, she couldn’t provide the fulfillment.

But Rick couldn’t blame Kendall, not when she’d been honest from the beginning. Because she’d been deprived of love, caring, and stability all her life, she thought she didn’t have it in her to stay in one place. To trust in someone else’s word and deed. Yet she knew just how to provide and evoke all those wonderful feelings in someone else—in Hannah, and in Rick. She was just afraid to reach out and grab those same things for herself.

“Rick?” She said his name tentatively. “If you can’t do this—”

“I can.” He couldn’t force her to stay, but he could confide in her now and still hope she’d come around on her own. Her honesty with him earlier demanded the same truthfulness now. He regrouped to explain. “Jillian had told the father that she was pregnant but he’d just graduated and wasn’t ready for commitment.”

“Nice of him to inform his sperm of that,” Kendall said in disgust.

“I can’t argue with you there.” He let out a bitter laugh. “She was too far along for an abortion and her parents threw her out of the house. It was a scene out of a television drama, not reality. At least not reality in Yorkshire Falls. But she showed up on my doorstep. I was renting a small apartment near the station in town. She moved in and things progressed from there.”