Lost in His Arms Read Online Free PDF Page A

facing each other.
    â€œHow’s your knee?” she asked. She wanted, needed conversation to take her mind off the feel of his chest against her own.
    â€œSore,” he confessed.
    She frowned thoughtfully. “I hope you aren’t doing further damage by walking on it.”
    â€œI don’t have much choice.” He frowned and raked a hand through his hair. Elizabeth noticed the dark stubble that shadowed his cheeks and chin, a growth of whiskers that merely added to his attractiveness. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. About all of this.”
    She gazed at him in surprise, waiting for a cutting remark, a touch of sarcasm, a subtle indication that somehow everything that happened was her fault. There was none of those things. His eyes showed genuine contrition.
    â€œThere’s nothing to apologize for.” She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, still looking at him. “You didn’t crash your plane on purpose, right?”
    â€œRight, but I do intend to have a conversation with my mechanic.” The hard glitter in his eyesmade her grateful she didn’t have the responsibility of maintaining Talbot’s plane.
    â€œSo, tell me about Twin Oaks. Why did Richard want to take Andrew there so badly? Why did he want me to meet him there?”
    Talbot leaned back against a tree and extended his legs in front of him. “I can only guess what Richard thinks by the conversation we had before he left. I told you, the last week or so he’s been pretty introspective, and when he does talk, it’s been about Twin Oaks. Twin Oaks was the place of our childhood, a time in our lives when everything seemed wonderfully right.”
    Elizabeth leaned forward, captured by his words, by the very idea of a childhood where everything seemed “wonderfully right” when her own childhood had been so horrifically wrong. “Tell me about it,” she urged.
    His features relaxed and a smile curved his lips, letting her know his memories were pleasant ones. “Twin Oaks is so tiny it doesn’t even warrant a dot on a map. We lived there until we moved to Morning View, Kansas. That was a year before our mom and dad’s deaths. Twin Oaks is the kind of town where everyone knows everyone else and there’re lots of potluck dinners and town gatherings.”
    â€œSounds lovely.” And what was even lovelier than his words was the warmth that emanated from his smile. She’d never before bathed in the warmthof Talbot’s smile, and it was a distinctly pleasant experience.
    â€œIt was,” he said. “I remember it as the only time in my life when I was carefree, and the biggest responsibility I had was going to school.” His smile widened and his eyes lit with humor. “And my biggest worry was if Mom was going to make another of her terrible surprise casseroles for dinner.”
    Elizabeth gazed at him thoughtfully, suddenly realizing the burden that had been placed on him by his parents’ untimely death. “It must have been hard for you to be twenty-one and suddenly responsible for a fourteen-year-old.”
    He shrugged, the smile gone. “The way I saw it at the time there wasn’t any choice. I became responsible for Richard, or I let him become a ward of the state and go into foster care. He’s my brother and I could never allow that to happen.”
    He got to his feet. “We should get moving,” he said, and in his words she heard him slam the door to any discussion about his past.
    Still, as they continued to walk, Elizabeth found herself thinking about the twenty-one-year-old Talbot taking on the role of parent for his younger brother.
    When most young people were exploring their first real breath of freedom and adulthood, going to clubs and dating, Talbot had taken the reins of his father’s company and accepted the responsibility fora teenage brother. For the first time ever, she felt a