Christmas at Twilight by Lori Wilde

Author:Lori Wilde
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Of all the things Hutch thought she might say, this confession wasn’t even on the list. Uncertain that he’d heard her correctly, he cocked his head, stared into her urgent eyes.

She nodded, moistened her lips, and ran her open palms over the tops of her thighs.

He’d spent his life prepared for anything—first with his unpredictable mother, and then in the military—but she’d still taken him by surprise, and it took a moment for the information to infiltrate his stupefied brain. Jane was on the run for trying to kill a police officer.

Meredith. Her name was Meredith.

He liked the name and he liked her. Liked? Who was he kidding? What he was feeling was several notches above like.

She looked much more like a Meredith than a Jane—regal, self-contained, a cut above the rest. He was glad, now, for his inability to speak because he had never called her by the wrong name. When she heard his voice for the first time, he wanted her real name to roll off his tongue. Meredith.

Getting ahead of yourself, Hutchinson. First, you gotta speak. Second, she has to be here in order to hear you say her name.

She sounded so lost that he reached out a hand to touch her, to reassure her, let her know that he did not judge her, to encourage her to keep going. But he hesitated, not wanting to scare her or upset her by breaking her rules.

Hey, the hard-ass devil on his shoulder argued, she broke the rules first by lying about who she was. All bets are off.

Acting on instinct and hoping it was the right move, Hutch gently took her by the shoulders and turned her around. Her eyes were forlorn, but her chin notched up defiantly. “The policeman I shot was my abusive ex-husband.”

But she hadn’t killed him? Too damn bad. Any man who would abuse a woman deserved his comeuppance, and Hutch was of a mind to finish the job for her.

“I suppose I should start at the beginning,” she said, although she looked as if she’d rather have all her teeth pulled without novocaine.

He shook his head, letting her know that she owed him no explanation, but she raised an index finger and pressed it to his lips. “You need to know what you’re dealing with. I should have told you before, but I didn’t know how to go about it. And secrecy has been my protection for so long, I’ve forgotten how to trust.”

Yet here she was, trusting him now. She didn’t have to. She could have just packed up and walked away.

Clearing her throat, she told him about her parents, hot air balloonists who dragged their young daughter around the country on their nomadic lifestyle.

“We were gypsies, living in a small motor home. I was homeschooled. In spite of—or maybe because of—my unorthodox upbringing, I was a happy kid. Who knows?” A soft smile came over her lips as she told him about her parents and how loved they made her feel.

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