And Then Came You Read Online Free PDF Page B

still it wasn’t enough. She’d wanted more, always more. Of him. His kisses, his caresses, his voice, whispering in her ear how much he loved her. How much he would always love her
.
    She’d held him close, trapping his body within hers
,
as if a part of her had realized, even then, that happiness that sharp, that sweet, couldn’t last
.
    And it hadn’t.
    “Well, doesn’t really matter what he’s feeling now, does it?” she muttered and clambered out of the truck. Her knees were still a little weak, the force of that memory still quaking within her.
    Dusting her damp palms against her jeans, she shoved her car keys into her pocket, grabbed up her purse and slung it over her shoulder, then stepped back and, because she needed to hit something, slammed the truck’s door. Hard.
    The only way to insure that Jeff Hendricks got the hell out of Dodge was to go see him, and sign his stupid divorce papers,
again
. She didn’t owe him anything beyond her signature. But for her own sake, she would tell him about their daughter.
    Would he give a damn? she wondered. Would he be tormented by the same “what-ifs” that danced through her mind day and night?
    Would he even be interested to know that together they’d made a child and then lost it?
    Jeff gripped the phone a little tighter, but kept his voice even. Just a matter of control. And control was the one thing he’d been weaned on. In the Hendricks family, control was damn near a religion, without all the messy supplication—after all, genuflecting will ruin the crease in your trousers.
    The voice on the other end of the phone paused and he spoke into the breach. “It’s being taken care of. Should be wrapped up by tomorrow.”
    With any luck.
    Dammit, he had to get out of here.
    He hadn’t expected this mission to be as . . .
treacherous
as it was turning out to be. But then, he had a feeling that nothing was going to go as smoothly as he might have liked. Just seeing Sam again had been harder than he’d imagined. He hadn’t counted on that punch of
awareness
. The slam of something hot and needy that had damn near staggered him, despite the threatening stances taken by her sisters.
    Seemed that nine years wasn’t long enough to put out
all
the fires within.
    And just being here was already fanning those flames. He didn’t want the fires burning again. The last time he’d surrendered to the heat, he’d been reduced to a pile of ash. A hard lesson, but one he’d etched into his brain to keep him from ever giving in to his emotions again. Besides, the past—which he rarely allowed himself to revisit—was done. Over.
    The voice drifting through the phone receiver demanded his attention. “Right,” he said, forcing himself to concentrate on the conversation at hand. At least long enough to say good-bye. “Tomorrow. I’ll call you in the morning.”
    He hung up, letting his fingertips rest on the receiver as if trying to keep the connection to his present as a safeguard against the past. But the thread was frayed and he couldn’t quite hang on. Jeff felt as though he were a particularly meaty bone being fought over by the dogs of his past and his future. And the jaws of each were sharp enough to tear him to pieces.
    “A damn mess,” he muttered. All because some miserablelittle county clerk had decided
not
to do his job. Jeff just wished he had the man’s scrawny neck between his hands for five minutes. But the minute he considered it, Jeff reminded himself that he was a reasonable, civilized man. And Hendricks men never lost their tempers. Never gave in to the urge for violence, no matter the temptation. “So maybe I’d just turn the little bastard over to Mike Marconi, then stand back and watch.”
    Despite everything, he smiled to himself at the mental image. Hell, the Marconi women were nothing if not . . . exciting.
    Exciting
. Sam’s face rose up in his mind, and once again he saw her pale blue eyes glare at him. Even in memory, she could shoot