One More Dance by Roxanne Rustand (best ebook reader for pc txt) 📗

She stood as if to usher him to the door, but he didn’t budge. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand plenty,” she shot back. “Good night, Jared. Have a good life.”

CHAPTER TEN

KATE LEANED HER FOREHEAD against the door, her heart aching.

She hadn’t expected to ever see Jared again, yet she still found herself looking for him at every turn. Foolishly thinking that every tall, dark-haired male student in the distance might be him. That every small black car in a campus parking lot would turn out to be his Mustang.

In her fantasy—one she’d try to dispel—he’d see her, and time would stand still for one long, aching moment. And then he’d come running, begging to come back. They’d be able to work things out, because all of the terrible things in her past wouldn’t matter.

Reality was, no matter how he denied them, his mother’s words still reverberated through her thoughts. And the cold facts remained. They were from different worlds, and her family background would have been an embarrassment, just as Sylvia Mathers said.

And there was nothing Kate could do to change it.

Even after she graduated from college and had DVM behind her name, it wouldn’t be difficult for a reporter to dig up the sordid details of her past.

One of the bedroom doors squeaked and Leesa tentatively peeked out. “Is he gone? Can we come out now?”

Kate raised her arms wide. “Be my guest. The Big Scene is over.”

“Humph.” Deanna stepped into the small central hallway and folded her arms across her chest. “I still think we should’ve confronted him together. The three of us—inquisition style. You know—grill him for a while, then take him to his knees. What kind of guy walks out on one girl and suddenly gets engaged to the next one? Maybe he was two-timing you all along.”

“We weren’t exactly going steady.”

“Yes, you were. Just not in so many words. You were together all the time.”

Leesa stepped past Deanna and into the hallway. “I liked the guy, really. And I thought he was totally into Kate from the very start.”

Kate bit her lower lip. “Then—”

A sharp knock sounded at the door and all three of them jumped. Leesa turned and peered through the security peephole. “Incredible timing. Should we just ignore him?”

“Really mature, Leesa—he knows I’m here.” Kate flipped the dead bolt. With her friends at her side, she swung the door open. “Forget something?”

“You.” He looked at the three women, one by one. “And I want to argue my case.”

No one moved.

“First, I wasn’t the one who provided the damaging testimony to...uh...the plaintiff here over Thanksgiving. It was my mother, who didn’t consult with me about my future plans, my current wishes or about my feelings for the woman in question. She was incorrect and, unfortunately, inappropriate in her remarks.”

A sheepish smile played at the corner of his mouth. “Though believe me, I’ve never had any luck at trying to influence her, and neither did my late father.”

When no one said anything, he held Kate’s gaze with his own. “And I’d like to set the record straight. I didn’t want to end our relationship, but you insisted. That failed engagement happened too fast. It was a classic case of rebound. But I wouldn’t care if you had a rap sheet a mile long or if your relatives belonged to the mob. I care about you. Not your family, not your past.”

Kate cast a sideways glance at her roommates. Deanna stared at him with a dreamy expression.

Even Leesa seemed rapt. “Gosh, I think I’d take that explanation, Kate. Works for me.”

Rolling her eyes, Kate grabbed his arm and led him down the stairs to the covered porch, where there’d be some privacy.

“Want my coat?” He brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek. “It’s awfully chilly out here.”

“This won’t take a minute. Look, I really don’t think—”

He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Then don’t think. Just look at me, Kate. Tell me that you don’t believe this could work. That you don’t feel something deep inside...a rush of excitement when you see me, because I sure feel that every time I see you.”

On the way down the stairs, she’d practiced the careful, logical words she should say. They were all swept away as soon as she looked up into his eyes. “I...”

“We’ve got our lives ahead of us, Kate, and right now I just can’t imagine that life without you. Just give us another chance...please?”

“I...”

“Give it a try?”

After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded and stepped into his arms for a heart-melting kiss.

What would it matter if they dated for a while? After graduation, he’d undoubtedly go to work for some fancy law firm in a big city and follow in his dad’s footsteps. She’d end up in a vet practice somewhere out in the country.

And they wouldn’t even last together that long, because the attainable grew boring, and love didn’t last. He’d meet some gorgeous law student or a medical resident, and then he’d be gone.

She’d long since learned not to give her heart away.

PRESENT DAY

Somewhere at the edges of Jared’s consciousness, beyond the fog of pain, he sensed tension. Rushing footsteps. Anxious voices...his mother’s sharp voice rising above the rest. Sylvia?

Clanging metal.

The rattle of wheels. And then he felt...

Alone.

Totally, helplessly alone; as if he were sinking back into a dark, bottomless sea.

The darkness was at once terrifying and a place of refuge from the pounding, intolerable pain that swelled and throbbed inside his head with every deafening beat of his heart.

Still, he tried to swim up out of the depths of that black velvet place that inexorably pulled him back. A place where nothing was familiar, yet somehow it offered the lure of total and everlasting peace.

He struggled to focus on a faint voice.

Familiar, yet completely foreign...drifting toward him through an incomprehensible world, spurring brief, fragile images of a child.

A slow dance in the moonlight.

Memories of love, and joy...and gut-wrenching grief.

A dim flicker of light appeared, then slithered away like