It was as though someone had filled her stomach with ice. Rock-hard, burning-cold ice. There must be some mistake. There had to be. This couldn’t be happening to her. Not again.
“Are yousure?” Her voice, high and tense, didn’t sound like her own. “You’re absolutely positive they’re together?”
“Yeah.” Jake nodded. “Saw them kissing in his truck yesterday.”
The Jeep swerved on the road, Annie’s grip tightening so hard on the steering wheel that it squeaked under her fingers.
“Whoa, careful there.” Jake laughed, but Annie couldn’t breathe. She could barely see the road ahead as the trees rushed past in one long emerald blur.
It was happening again. She was once again being cast aside for someone younger and prettier, and Walt Proudy was dead wrong. The berries were not worth the briars. No amount of happiness was worth the moment of heartbreak when it was all torn away like a layer of flesh, leaving her raw and bleeding.
“Anyway, Jamie’s a cute little thing,” Jake said. “I’m not sure how serious they are about each other, but time’ll tell.”
Annie swallowed mutely.
She couldn’t just stare ahead in stone-faced shock forever. She had to say something, but the words would not come, so she forced her head up and down in a nod instead.
“Gives you hope, you know? Seeing a guy like that find someone. Makes me feel like I might, too.”
Annie didn’t respond. Her fingers were still so tight on the wheel that they ached. She was fighting, fighting hard and losing against the lump welling up in her throat.
“Good for him,” she managed, though she could hear her bitterness plain as day, and Jake must have, too, because his head tilted, and his gaze became searching.
“Hey,” he said gently, “you’ll find someone. I know you will.”
Annie nodded. He had misinterpreted the resentment in her voice, and that was for the best.Let him think it was because she was lonely. Let him think she was missing Brendan. That was far better than the truth, that a man she had only been seeing for a few weeks had already managed to mend her broken heart and shatter it again.
Jake turned away, moving the conversation on to the Justin Grimes case, and Annie stopped listening, staring instead at the green forest outside as it streamed by in a jeweled flow of light and shadow that blurred as her eyes filled with tears.
Chapter 23DANIEL
Daniel woke to the sound of laughter, high and feminine, as it cracked through his dream-filled sleep.
Annie…
His eyes fluttered open and he pushed himself up onto his elbows.
A gentle night breeze, warm and fragrant, was stirring through the room from the open window in the hall, carrying with it the sugar-sweet scent of the rhododendrons behind the alders, just past their prime.
A silent minute passed, and Daniel stayed propped up on his arms in the bed as his muddled mind sorted dream from reality. In the distance, a faint rumble of thunder boomed, and the laugh came again, louder this time, and followed by a splash.
Confusion brought his brows together, and Daniel sat up fully, pushing aside the blankets.
He hadn’t seen Annie since the rodeo, and she hadn’t returned any of his calls in the three days since. He didn’t know it with certainty, but he worried that word had gotten back to her about Jamie’s kiss in the truck.
He’d called at least a dozen times yesterday alone, and the one time she’d actually answered, he had only managed to say, “Annie, listen,” before the receiver slammed right back down. He’d tried, but at somepoint, he was just banging his head against a wall. The ball was in her court now, and when she was good and ready, she’d call him back. Or maybe she had decided to come up here in person and hash it out tonight instead.
Daniel pulled on a pair of jeans and walked to the front of the boathouse.
On the other side of the windows, the sky over the southern woods flickered with the lightning of a far-off summer storm. The lake glowed with plankton, the edges thin ribbons of electric blue, and there she was, just beyond the dock, facing away from him as she treaded water, her bare shoulders bobbing up and down in the moonlight.
Daniel’s heart leaped into his throat, and he quickly unlocked the door and stepped out onto the dock, his eyes falling on the set of clothes heaped in a pile on one of the Adirondack chairs with a pair of sneakers placed neatly beneath them.
“Annie?” his voice broke the night stillness.
The woman turned in the water, and Daniel’s breath hitched as he found himself staring into the dancing blue eyes of Jamie Boyd.
“Hey.” Her voice was as casual as if they were passing one another on the sidewalk in town.
