The Maverick's Return by Marie Ferrarella

Author:Marie Ferrarella
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-10-18T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

He needed to talk to her.

It was obvious that he had demons, despite his outward facade.

“Would you like a drink?” she offered. Whenever Hank had been tense about something in the past, he always said that a little scotch and soda could always make him feel calmer.

The mere mention of a drink brought that awful night back to Dan in vivid, chilling terms. He could almost feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

“Danny, what’s wrong?” Anne asked, reacting to the way the color had drained from his face. “You just turned pale.”

It was a mistake coming inside, he told himself. He needed to get away.

“Maybe I’m coming down with something. I should go.” He turned toward the door. “I don’t want to risk you catching anything from me.”

But Annie caught his hand in hers. He found her grip to be surprisingly strong.

“You’re not coming down with something,” she told him knowingly. “Danny, trust me. Please,” she implored. “You have to tell me what’s eating away at you, what kept you away from me all these years.”

He fell back on his old standby. It was, after all, true. “I left because my grandparents didn’t want me. You know that.”

Anne’s gut told her that wasn’t true. “You didn’t leave because of your grandparents. You left because something was wrong. I sensed it at your parents’ funeral. Just talk to me,” she pleaded. “You can’t keep running from whatever this is for the rest of your life.”

There was no reason to burden her with this. It was his cross to carry, not hers.

“There’s no point in talking about it. I didn’t deserve you then, and I don’t deserve you now.” It was crazy for him to have thought things could be different from what they were. “I should have never come back to Rust Creek Falls.”

“Don’t tell me what I deserve or don’t deserve,” she told him angrily. “I’m the only one who can be the judge of that. And in order to be the judge, I need to know what’s at the bottom of all this.” Her eyes held his as she begged, “Talk to me, Danny. You owe me that much. If I ever meant anything at all to you, you owe me that.”

Danny sighed as he stared up at the ceiling, searching for the right words to tell her about this awful segment of his life.

There were no “right” ones, he realized. There were only the ones that described what had happened and what he did that brought about the horrific chain of events. Words that he had kept locked up inside of him for more than a decade. Words he’d never shared with anyone, not even his brothers.

Words that weighed so heavily on him that right now he felt close to the breaking point.

“Please,” Anne whispered, squeezing his hand, her eyes silently pleading with him to tell her what had taken him away from her and what was still ripping him apart this way.

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