Rebuilding Her Life by Ruth Logan Herne

Author:Ruth Logan Herne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-01-11T21:21:43+00:00

* * *

Pete met Shane at the door of the cabin. He’d taken charge of the kids so that Shane could make his presentation to the town. “Went well, I take it?”

“It did.”

“Good.”

Pete shrugged into his jacket. “Kids are asleep. Dishes done. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Thanks, Pete.”

Shane tossed his jacket onto a wall hook and drew a deep breath. When he’d brought his crew down to offer assistance to a town that believed he’d betrayed them, he couldn’t have anticipated the pull on his heart the moment he spotted Jess in that car.

They were both here to help, and that put them on the same side at long last. And when she’d cheered his proposal, when he’d met her gaze from the podium, he hadn’t wanted to break the connection.

The internal warning bell sounded more like a gong right now. Jess was amazing, but she put more faith in the teachings of man than God. He embraced the thought that the two worked hand in hand. He had to keep the truth from the kids, which would be tougher than he’d thought given the people who knew what actually happened. And, to top it off, he didn’t dare put the kids in cancer’s crosshairs again.

But as he set the coffee maker to switch on automatically in the morning, something else stirred him.

Change.

Shane didn’t like change. He preferred to know what was happening in two weeks, six months, the coming year. He scheduled jobs inside of jobs to layer the most effective work production he could maneuver and kept his finger on the pulse of every project. Here it was different because old ties tugged him in multiple directions.

His phone buzzed a text. He lifted the phone and saw Jess’s words. Great job tonight.

He wanted to text her back. Have one of those silly text conversations that moved things forward between them.

He didn’t do that. He sent a simple thumbs-up emoji instead.

He didn’t have the option to explore the unexpected with Jess, but seeing her, talking to her, made him want to.

He couldn’t.

He wasn’t in Kendrick Creek to complicate his life. It was knotted enough.

But he wasn’t blind to the feelings swirling inside him, a hole that narrowed when Jess was around.

He went out onto the broad front porch. Graham had rebuilt the supports and added country-style railings. A pair of matching rocking chairs flanked a small table next to a stack of seasoned firewood. Above the unforested section of yard, a generous pattern of stars shone in the dark night sky.

The beauty of this land called to him. The rolling waves of the Blue Ridge were steeped in his bones. He’d worked so hard to show the world that he wasn’t the person he’d pretended to be to save Chrissie. He’d stayed the course so that his goodness and honesty became his stake in the growing business, but being here didn’t seem to be the answer he sought. It just seemed to bring more questions.

Be still...

The old words had been a huge comfort to him in prison.

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