Never Stopped Loving You (2 page)

She’d been prepared for this to be hard. She hadn’t considered how much it was going to hurt with a constant clamp on her chest. She squeezed the binder tight as she could to try to hide the trembling. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell him.”

A hollow laugh raked over Whitney’s tongue. “I wasn’t telling him a thing. It’s all a done deal now, so it doesn’t matter what he thinks.”

Oh, but it did. It always mattered what Wade thought. She couldn’t help it. To this day she could still feel that glow of teenage love he put in her by just a compliment or a smile. When they dated, she all but walked on air. Years spent dreaming of a prince coming and there he was. Until they broke up.

As strong as she felt the fluttering hope from the past that he’d ask her out, the sharp pain ripping her in half as her teenage dreams crumbled was stronger. Back then, she just knew he’d realize he was wrong about them. That he lay in bed at night thinking and cursing for breaking up with her, and that he missed his chance. That he was plotting ways to take her on another date and see the chemistry they had. She’d have bet everything she had that was true. And she did. She gambled it all and lost.

Dumb
,
dumb
,
dumb.

They say don’t date your friends. They say don’t date your friend’s brother. They say those things for a reason. She placed her binder over the messy desk and smiled at it. The unorganized papers turned every which way still signaled home, but for far different reasons than what she thought as a child.

She faced Whitney.
Forgive and you will be forgiven?
Kara was about to test
what they say
because she would never forgive herself, but hoped Whitney could. “I would love to walk around. Just to see the place.”

Chapter Two

Wade stood in the shadows under a tree and watched as Kara and Whitney walked their way through the orchard. A mix of anger and pleasure settled in his gut and kept him churning.

Anger was good. Getting pissed because of remembering how their brief relationship had ended—perfect. Seeing her stirred up all the regret of that night when he’d crossed the line from friends to more. If he’d kept his hands to himself, stayed on his side of the truck—hell, taken one night to even think about it—none of this would have happened.

There wouldn’t have been all those damn infuriating nights watching John paw at Kara in a packed-out bar. Or having John’s voice describing the shape of Kara’s breasts and nipples etched into the side of Wade’s head. As if that wasn’t bad enough, listening to his heartbroken sister crying because Kara quit talking to her was the worst.

All his fault.

It was a blow he’d never even considered. Thick as thieves, Whitney and Kara had been called. Never would he have thought those two would be separate for longer than a couple hours.

Having Kara here had nothing but disaster written all over it, but maybe Whitney could uncover why Kara dropped her and gain some closure.

He scrubbed over his face and ignored the tingles pricking across his skin. Kara. Back in town. In less than fifteen seconds he’d managed to say and do all the things that sent her running off in the first place. A sigh seeped past his lips and he dropped his head back against the hard bark of the peach tree. This was going to be hellish. He just didn’t know what to do with the woman. Not since they’d agreed to date. Or do whatever they’d done for that month after she’d graduated high school.

The warm early-summer night from way back then washed over him. The high of winning against their biggest rival in the church softball league for the first time in four years had his blood pumping. There was Kara. She’d smelled like heaven while he was still sweaty after the game in the thick humidity. It was dark. The parking lot nearly deserted. Their usual funny banter had happened while Kara explained Whitney was sick and Kara was picking him up instead.

That precise moment, with the summer moon bright overhead, was when it started to change. That old farm truck, which generally smelled like dirt and work, was filled with the fresh-fruit scent of her skin. A ripe peach flavor that’d watered his mouth for a quick taste. That had only been the beginning of seeing a very different Kara. There was this way her thin thigh had slid against the tan cloth of the truck’s bench seat. How her denim skirt rode high on her leg while she held the break and clutch, shifted to first and started the truck. Those creamy, soft legs he’d seen so many times, had never thought twice about, looked different.

There’d been a shy glance sent his way while she’d tucked her light brown hair behind an ear. Another as she tugged at the bottom of her little blue shirt and then gripped the steering wheel. Her breasts were cupped in thin cotton. Rounded and high and where did those come from?

Kara had boobs.
Very nice boobs
. Her nipples, dear God, he’d nearly been done in by the way they’d pressed against her tight shirt. He’d been helpless but to be drawn in, to scoot across the bench seat until he was able to free the soft hair she’d stuffed behind her ear. He never should have crossed that line. Should have just put his seat belt on and let her take him home.

Wade adjusted his stance under the shade of the tree and hoped any evidence of his wayward thoughts wasn’t showing against his zipper as his sister and Kara walked close. The wind was in Kara’s hair. Her cheeks were red. Something she said made his sister laugh and a pang struck his chest at the familiar sight of the two of them together like that.

They stopped in front of him and immediately Kara’s face turned up. The move elongated her neck, showed him the turn of her jaw and her feminine shoulders under the thin straps of her shirt. His throat dried as he stared at the spot. That was one of the most sensitive spots on Kara that he’d been able to find. One of the only places he’d been able to touch and taste her desire beginning to stir. Tongue thick in his mouth, he turned his head completely away from that maddening spot and focused on Whitney.

Whitney put her hands in her pockets and looked between them both. The laughter that had been widening her smile was gone. Her lips were flat. Her eyes narrowed and on him. “Kara works with us now. You two are going to have to put the past behind you and figure out a way to work together.”

“Whit—”

“We need this.” She tucked a wad of thick curls behind her ear only to have them bounce right back out. “We maintain tourism with the locals, a few others in the next towns, but we need to branch out.” She turned to Kara. “And you can’t find work anywhere else.”

The lines around Kara’s eyes softened. “Whitney—”

The years that work and stress had put on his sister’s face surfaced. The pretense that everything was fine between Kara and her faded off Whitney’s face as she stared them both down. Wade straightened and paid attention. This was partly his fault and he’d do what he could for his sister’s sake to ease that strain.

She focused on Kara. “I know you likely called every last farm you could before calling me.” Her gaze hit Wade now. “Kara’s new marketing could mean a new attraction for us. Kiss and make up, shake on it, call a truce or whatever and get over yourselves.” The swallow moving down Whitney’s throat was audible. “Whatever happened between you two was a long time ago and it’s over. Chester Farms is a family-run business. It’s a happy place and I won’t have you two making a scene when we open.”

A smile tugged at his lips but he resisted. He’d never seen her look so much like Mom in that moment, but he doubted now was the time to mention that. Whitney marched off, her arms across her middle, and left him standing a few feet from Kara to muddle through this. He tried thinking of something to say that wouldn’t lead to an argument, but came up blank. Truth was, anything he said to Kara would lead to an argument. It was physics.

“So.” She dropped her gaze to the ground. “I thought Whitney told you I was coming.”

Polite talk. He could do this. If only he couldn’t smell that sweet perfume. The scent used to be so strong along her hairline and behind her ear. Just looking at the delicate sweep of her neck reminded him of the smooth skin against his lips. That spot had haunted him forever. How that one time he’d gotten her to crack when it was dark behind the barn. Her hands had come up and pulled at his shirt while her breath was lost.

He glanced away from her, wanting to forget those all-too-brief memories that drew all his muscles tight. “Are you all settled and unpacked wherever you’re staying?”

She nodded. “I’m staying at the old house.”

Shock smacked him hard. “Your mom’s?”

She tapped her thumbs against her thighs the exact way she did anytime she was nervous. “That’d be the one.”

He wanted to say something else. Against everything, he wanted to open his home to her as his parents had, but he didn’t. Couldn’t. “How is she?”

“Fine.” Kara’s voice was distant. “Happy as she can be, I guess.”

Last he heard, her mother had been put in a home because she all but lost her mind, reverted to thinking she was eighteen and just married. No memory of her daughter. No memory of the life she’d had. As far as he knew, that hadn’t changed. It couldn’t have been easy on Kara, couldn’t be easy to stay in that house, but there was nothing he could do about that. He didn’t need her in his house and figured the last thing she’d do is agree to stay there anyway.

If things could somehow be like they used to, Kara wouldn’t be at her mother’s house much anyway. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to find some balance between mere tolerance of the woman who’d left and the happiness at seeing the laughing girl he’d known growing up.

Whitney was right and a truce would be good. “Do you need help moving anything in?”

Her brows lifted. “Thanks, but I just have a bag of clothes. I’ll be fine.”

Back to being within walking distance of the farm. It was part of why she’d been around so much. Her momma’s house was only a couple blocks down the road. When Sally Duncan cracked after her husband left her, his mom saw to it that Kara stayed with them more than at her home. He didn’t understand why his mom always insisted she just stay the night when he’d been a kid. Not that he cared either way. As he got older, especially after Kara left home, he got it.

He pushed away from those old memories. “About before. Between us.”

She shook her head and thumbs were back to drumming on her legs. “I’d rather not. We can’t take it back, let’s just forget it and move on.”

Forget it? How he wished he could forget it. Wished he could forget her, forget how damn bad he’d wanted her, how she hadn’t returned those feelings. Not for him, hell no. He’d lost count of how many times he found her all over John. As much as he’d tried to stir those feelings in her, get her to open up to the chemistry he constantly felt shaking through every part of him, it’d never been that way for them. Maybe they’d just been too good of friends. She’d seen him as her big brother and nothing else. It was all he knew to tell himself, but he would never, ever forget.

She walked away and he started to let her go, but couldn’t and called out. She stopped.

This was it. With the wind pulling at her hair as she looked back, it was time to be honest. It had festered on his chest long enough and if he was going to let this go and move on, he had to try. Or do something. Maybe Whitney wasn’t the only one who needed a few answers. He’d sure like to know where he’d gone wrong with her to make so much of her change so fast. He never wanted to do that to another woman. Whatever
that
might be. “I can’t.”

“We made a mistake. That’s it.”

He put a hand to her arm and he shouldn’t have done that either. The touch burned through him, sending the hairs along the back of his neck to prickle. Intense and needy desire weighed heavy in the air. He should let go of her. He couldn’t.

When she started to pull out of his reach, he held her a little tighter to keep her with him a few moments longer.

All these years. Her cheeks were fuller now. Her eyes a deeper blue than he remembered. Little pieces of hair framed her face. She was all soft woman and he craved more. He slid his hand along her arm. Her gaze fell to where he touched and he could nearly imagine how the turn of her naked waist would widen into the fullness of her breasts as he stripped her shirt overhead.

How would her stomach feel against his? Her thighs squeezing on his hips? The pinked tips of her nipples against his tongue? Haunted dreams and questions he’d had since that one cursed night when she’d picked him up after the game. After all this time, he wanted to know now as fierce as ever.

But she pulled away. His touch fell from the warmth of her skin. He fisted his empty hand against his side and found himself in the same place with her: wanting, but never having. He couldn’t do this either. “You’re right. We shouldn’t have even started. I shouldn’t have ever touched you then.”
Or now.

She stared at the ground and, damn it, all he wanted to do was touch her more. Get her to look at him so he could stare in her eyes and search for answers.

If he could somehow cup her face and turn her up to him. If he kissed her again, today, would she feel differently? Could he make her feel how he did? Make her hands tremble, cause her breath to catch and have her believing her heart couldn’t be contained in her chest? God, it was tempting to try. He stuffed both hands in his pockets instead. All this time, he’d thought he’d gotten over her. “After we went out a couple times, I realized that. I let it go too far before breaking it off. Maybe if I had stopped us sooner, none of this would have happened.”

That got her attention. Clearly, he’d already walked into saying the wrong thing by the way her gaze snapped and met his. That wasn’t the look he’d wanted to see. Her eyes were narrowed. Lips tight. “Right. Maybe so. I have things to do.”

“Kara.”

She continued walking away. That maddening sway of her hips in cargo shorts fired up his blood with equal parts frustration, anger and sexual need. That was something he’d seen before too. Often her walking away had ended with her in John’s arms and that chaffed.

Even knowing better, he opened his mouth. “Kara, I have to know why.”

She looked over her shoulder. “Why what?”

The questions that burned in his mind for so many years stopped in his throat. She didn’t know? Didn’t have a clue how she affected him, made his insides twist with want until he was aching and always unfulfilled.

He forced out the words. “Why did you change after we broke up? You were a sweet girl and then...and then...” He couldn’t say what over half the community had said. “And then you weren’t. You changed. You turned your back on Whitney. There was John. Then you just left.”

Tears welled in her eyes. Her lower lip trembled.

Hell.
“Kara.”

She ran and he let her go like he should have done the first time. He groaned and sat against the tree trunk. That probably wasn’t the way Whitney had wanted that conversation to happen. At the slamming of what could only be Kara’s car door, he pushed off the tree and headed for his sister who was now at the top of his shit list for dragging all this out.

He stalked through the house, turned into her office and found her. It could be like any other day. She sat studying a sheet of paper and then typing on a computer. This was no normal day. “What in God’s name were you thinking?”

Whitney looked up. “What?”

What?
No, she could run that innocent act past other people, not him. She knew exactly
what.
“How dare you bring her here without asking me first?”

“Don’t be so self-centered. I can’t imagine what it took for her to have called me in the first place. Of course I couldn’t say no.”

“Yeah, you could have. We don’t owe her anything.”

She stacked several sheets together. The tight curls of hair surrounding her face bounced with her jerky movements. “We’ve been friends with Kara since we were all in diapers. I’m surprised you have your panties twisted this much because I offered my old friend some work.”