The jeans she’d borrowed hugged her curves like they’d been painted on, clinging to her hips and thighs in a way that made my mouth go dry.
The way the denim stretched across her ass was practically obscene. I’d been salivating over the view all day, trying not to stare and failing miserably. I liked a woman with some extra padding on her, and Cassidy wasmadeof padding.
Every time she shifted in her seat, I caught the movement from the corner of my eye. I was spending too much time looking at her legs, and not enough at the road.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter and forced my eyes off her thick thighs and back to the windshield in front of me.
“So,” I said, my voice coming out rougher than I intended. I cleared my throat. “Why’d you move into that old farmhouse, anyway? Seems like a lot of work for someone on their own.”
Cassidy was quiet for a moment, looking out the window at the pine trees blurring past. When she spoke, her voice had lost some of its usual brightness.
“I had to get away.”
“From where?” I wasn’t usually one to dig, but the woman had talked about everything under the sun over the last two days. And she hadn’t mentioned anything about where she was from.
“I grew up in a small town in North Carolina called Abeline. It’s small enough that no one’s ever heard of it.”
“Oh.” I glanced at her. “I thought Abeline was a person. The way you talked about it before.”
That got a small smile out of her. “No. Just a town. Population three thousand, give or take. The kind of place where everyone knows everyone, and nothing stays secret for long.”
“Sounds like Red Oak Mountain.”
“A little bit.” She picked at a thread on her jeans.
As my truck bounced over a pothole I asked, “Did you like it there?”
“Actually, yeah, for a long time. My whole life was in that town.”
I heard the “but” hanging in the air. Waited for it.
“Until…” she trailed off, her gaze distant.
“Until what?”
She shook her head. “It’s stupid. Ancient history.”
“Doesn’t sound stupid.” I kept my voice gentle. “Sounds like something that still hurts.”
Cassidy looked at me then, and her expression shifted. I got the feeling she was deciding whether to trust me with something private.
She sighed, and the hurt inside her flowed out. “I left because ofRodney. He was my high school sweetheart.”
It figured a man would be involved.
I grunted in response. Relationship crap could be messy. If she had more to say she’d tell me.
She turned to look out the window, her voice muffled. “We were together for years. Everyone assumed we’d get married.Iassumed we’d get married.”
Cassidy let out a bitter little laugh. “Then one night, I thought he was going to propose. He took me to our favorite restaurant. But instead of giving me a ring, he told me it was over. It was our goodbye meal. He said he loved me, but he wasn’tinlove with me anymore.”
“Shit,” I muttered. “That’s cold.”
“It gets better.” Her voice had gone flat. “Two years later, he and my best friend announced they were dating. They just got married last spring.”
I felt a surge of anger on her behalf, hot and unexpected. “Yourbestfriend?”
“Since kindergarten.” Cassidy’s hands twisted in her lap. “Marcy swore nothing happened while we were together. And maybe that’s true. But it doesn’t matter, does it? She blew up our friendship over a man.”
