Evening Stars Read Online Free PDF Page B

asking her to keep her word wasn’t exactly applying brute force, but he only nodded.
    “I love you,” she whispered.
    He looked at her then. “Sometimes I’m not so sure.”
    * * *
    The next morning, Nina woke without the alarm. One of the perks of a Saturday morning. She’d had a restless night. While she’d avoided the brownies calling her name, she’d given in to the wine. Worse, she’d dreamed of Dylan on and off. Probably the result of seeing him and then watching The Day After Tomorrow.
    She would guess that most women remembering a breakup went for a more classic romantic comedy or a movie that would make them cry. She would have, as well, but it was right after seeing The Day After Tomorrow that Dylan had broken up with her. She’d been making a point on global warming, and he’d announced he wasn’t going to be coming back to the island on weekends anymore.
    Now the shots of ice and snow were firmly linked in her brain with the pain of losing the only man she’d ever loved. In her pathos, she’d noticed that the sheer size of the storm had matched the vastness of the emptiness filling her heart. Dylan had filled so much of her world, and now he was going to be gone.
    All this time later, he was back. Not that it was going to be an issue for her, she told herself as she sat up and stretched. It wasn’t as if he’d sought her out. Their meeting had been completely random. Even on an island this small, she was unlikely to run into him very much.
    For the best, she thought, standing by the bed. She would simply—
    “Crap. My car!”
    She’d never called Mike about it. Never asked him to tow it to his shop and start work on it. All because she’d been distracted by a handsome man from her past. Dylan had a lot to answer for.
    She glanced at the clock and saw it was nearly eight-thirty. Which meant Mike’s repair shop had been open for an hour. Saturdays were busy for him, and she was pretty sure someone else would have gotten the beat-up truck that was his loaner car.
    She walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone. Mike’s business card was one of a dozen held to the refrigerator by a tacky magnet designed for the tourist trade. No surprise to anyone, Nina’s mother collected them.
    Mike answered on the third ring. “What?”
    “It’s Nina Wentworth.”
    “Hey, listen, I’m good but I’m not that good. I’ll get to it later today. I’m guessing the fuel injector, but I mean it. That’s a guess.”
    Nina blinked several times. “Excuse me?”
    “Your car. That’s why you’re calling, right? You’re not going to try to sell me any damn magazine subscriptions, are you?”
    “What? No.” She walked over to the kitchen table and sat down. “My car is there?”
    “Sure. I got a call yesterday just before closing to go pick it up. I had Benny drop off the loaner last night. You telling me you don’t know about this?”
    She stood and walked into the living room. As she looked out the front window, she saw a battered pickup in the driveway.
    Dylan, she thought, unable to believe he would have bothered. But there wasn’t another explanation.
    “I, ah... Thanks, Mike,” she said. “I’m sorry to bother you. Let me know when it’s ready and I’ll be in.”
    “Sure thing. Probably Monday. You can come on your lunch break.”
    “Sounds great.”
    She hung up, more than a little confused by what had happened. She checked the window again. Yup, there it was. The loaner.
    She put down the phone and walked into her bedroom. She had a mile-long list of things to get done today, and none of them had involved mulling over an old boyfriend. Dylan had been nice. That spoke well of his character. The fact that she didn’t want him to be nice was her own issue.
    * * *
    By nine-thirty, Nina had arrived at Blackberry Preserves. As it was a Saturday, she changed the sign to read Open—not that she was expecting many customers. It was too early in the season for a lot of tourists, and locals