Delicate Promises (Southern Bride 2)

I nodded. “I think you’re right. I’m still so mad at him, but I need to know why he’s insisting we follow through on this promise.”

“And you should be mad at him, but I really think y’all are overdue for a good heart-to-heart. You’ve both pushed your true feelings aside for so long. You’ve buried it all so deep it’s beginning to drown you. You have to get it out.”

Patty walked up and sat down, interrupting our little meeting. “I’m starving. Where are we going for lunch?”

I cleared my throat and said, “Italian. I’m for sure in the mood for a heavy overdose of carbs.”

Both Patty and Heather smiled.

“Italian it is!” Patty said, clueless to the conversation I’d just had with Heather. Patty might have been my cousin and one of my best friends, but Heather was my soul sister. I trusted her with my life and my truths.

And I was pretty sure she’d just heard every one of them.

As I walked up the porch steps of Miles’s childhood home, I felt my hands begin to shake.

What is the matter with me? Why in the heck am I so damn nervous? It’s Miles.

Miles.

I’d walked up those steps countless times in the past. Some of my favorite memories were made behind that door. Some of the worst moments of my life had also happened behind those doors. I was at Miles’s house when I found out my sister had been diagnosed with leukemia. I was on this porch when Daddy called Jen and told her to send me home, that June wasn’t doing very well. She died only hours later. Miles had been there for me, through all of it.

I sighed. Until he decided to up and leave me.

I glanced around the front porch. The last time I had been here was five years ago. So much had changed with the farmhouse. The entire front porch had been re-built. The house had been painted, the shutters on the windows replaced with black ones, and even little flower boxes now sat in each window. I smiled. Miles had made all this happen. He had sacrificed his future to make sure his family would be able to keep the farm and keep it in working order.

A small pain hit me in the middle of my chest. How selfish I had been when Miles said he was leaving. I was angry, but I never really stopped to think about why he was leaving. Because of him his mother had less stress, his siblings went to college, and their farm was thriving. They mostly grew grain and corn, but Jen had a garden on a few acres of their land that would put the chick on HGTV to shame.

Okay, Kynslee, get this over with and find out the real reason Miles is insisting on this silly marriage thing.

Before I made it up the steps, the front door opened. Miles stood there, dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt, and a baseball cap. Turned backwards. Why, sweet Father in Heaven? Why the backwards ball cap? That was just cruel and so damn sexy on a man, especially this man.

My eyes roamed his body slowly. His T-shirt was soaked in sweat and clung to every dip and curve of his muscles.

Lord, help me. The man is incredibly hot, both literally and figuratively.

I gripped the black iron railing as I took the last step. I needed some sort of tether to keep my legs from going out from under me. It should be a crime for a man to look this good. Seriously.

“Hey, Kyns.”

“Miles.”

He smiled, and my insides shook with a want that had been present since his arrival weeks ago. We may not have rolled in the sack together much, but I would never forget a single moment. Every touch, kiss, and orgasm. They were etched into my head. The last time we slept together popped into my memory. We’d been sitting in the barn on my folks’ place, he started drinking, made a move on me, and the next thing I knew, I was riding him like he was my favorite horse. Miles had taken me every way possible that night. And he’d told me he wanted a future, us together, that we would talk in the morning.

There were so many times I wished I had forced him to talk right then. Right in that moment when I saw the conflict, or confession or whatever the hell it was in his eyes. Miles wrapped me up in his arms after I confessed I was in love with him. It hadn’t been the first time I’d told him that, and he’d told me before too. That time had been different. We both knew it was more than an eighteen-year-old girl who was scared and angry because she was losing her best friend. No, it was a twenty-five-year-old woman who was being honest with her feelings.