Angels Don't Cry. Amanda Stevens

his mouth and eyes were far more deeply etched than she had first judged. It would have been a kindness to call them laugh lines when Ann somehow knew they weren’t. They gave him a visage far more mature than his thirty years.

      “That was all a long time ago,” she said softly, reminding herself as well as him. It had been a long time ago. The years had slipped away and taken their youth. They had each lived their lives and time hadn’t stopped for either of them. “Why are you really here, Drew? What do you want from me?”

      His eyes raked her face, then looked away. She wondered suddenly and unpleasantly in the silence that followed whether he’d found the changes in her own face as disturbing as she’d found those in his.

      What did he expect? she thought bitterly. Ten years wrought changes in everyone. So did pain and disillusionment and anger.

      “I want your goodwill, Ann,” he said at last. “No matter what the outcome of the Riverside project turns out to be. This may sound strange to you, but I’d like to establish some sort of—I don’t know—peace between us. I want to put the past to rest once and for all.”

      Ann plucked a chandelier of honeysuckle from the trellis beside her and spun the blossom beneath her nose like a tiny pinwheel. She closed her eyes as the thick, haunting scent triggered a thousand memories. Abruptly her eyes opened. “You’re a little late to be asking for my goodwill.”

      He fixed her with a long, searching gaze. “It’s been ten years, Ann. I can’t believe you still hate me that much.”

      “You flatter yourself. Hate is a powerful emotion. I don’t feel anything for you anymore.”

      “Is that why you ran away from me earlier? You ran away from me a long time ago, and you’re doing it still. What are you afraid of?”

      She gaped at him in open-mouthed indignation. “I’m certainly not afraid of you!” she snapped in sudden anger.

      “Then why did you leave like that?” he asked softly. “Why did you leave without telling me where you were going, without even saying goodbye?”

      For a moment she thought he was still talking about her leaving the meeting, but when she realized he was referring to the past, her gaze sliced him with scorn. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that. You, of all people, know exactly why I left, why I had to.”

      “You didn’t have to,” Drew argued reasonably, as though the discussion was no more important than idle dinner conversation. “You could have stayed and given me a chance to work something out.”

      Her laughter had a bitter, hollow ring to it that had them both blanching. “You got married, remember? You had a child on the way. What could we possibly have `worked out’?”

      “I never meant to hurt you.”

      She merely stared at him, crushing the honeysuckle blossom tightly in her fist. Abruptly turning away from him, she threw it, lifeless, to the ground.

      “It was only one night.” Drew’s voice had grown quietly insistent, as though he meant to have his say whether she wanted to hear him or not. “I made a terrible mistake, but you would never let me explain. You wouldn’t even try to understand.”

      Ann whirled around, her cheeks burning with indignation, her eyes glittering like green embers. “What was there to understand, for God’s sake? You betrayed me!”

      “And you sure as hell didn’t take long to get over it, did you?” Drew blazed, his temper quick and explosive, as though anger had been simmering all along, just beneath the surface.

      Ann stared at him in speechless outrage. That he could presume to know what she had endured! The pain, the loneliness, the sheer hell. She rallied her anger, not bothering to confirm or deny his allegation.

      “How dare you say that to me?” Her voice shook with the unleashed emotion of a decade as she clenched her hands into white fists of fury.

      “Truth hurts, does it?” Drew taunted cruelly. “I’ve had to face ten long damned years of truth, Angel. You ran away without a word and it took you, what?—all of six months to find a replacement—”

      In the strained silence that fell between them the slap resounded like a tree that had been split by lightning. Ann saw the glaring red on the left side of Drew’s face, saw the blue of his eyes darken to a deep and dangerous indigo. She took a faltering step backward.

      “Get out of here!” The words were more forceful this time, but she had to turn away, had to put a hand to her lips to quell the trembling.

      She felt rather than saw Drew stride angrily down the steps and across the yard. She looked up to see him at his car, his hand poised over the handle. He was looking back at her, but the darkness cloaked his expression.

      “Just tell me one thing,” he demanded coldly. “Why is it you could forgive Aiden, but you could never forgive me?”

      At the sound of his car door slamming, Ann collapsed weakly onto the porch swing, telling herself it was all over now. She could relax. She was safe here in her little world. She could hear the crickets chirping, could feel the soft, night air against her flushed face as it stirred the wayward tendrils of hair at her nape and temples. Everything was as it should be. She could forget Drew Maitland.

      But almost like a warning, his car engine leaped to life, intruding into her private domain. He gunned the motor unnecessarily as he turned the powerful car, and with a sputter of gravel, roared down the narrow lane at a furious clip. His brake lights flashed momentarily as he approached the highway, and then he was gone into the night.

      Ann tried to muster up the relief she knew she should be feeling but she was too numb, too dazed. Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment.

      Her first instinct on seeing him walk across the yard toward her, even after everything that had happened between them, had been to run down the steps and throw herself into his arms, to cling to the protective shelter she’d once found there.

      And what a horribly embarrassing mistake that would have been. The man she’d once loved was gone from her forever. He’d made his choice a long time ago, and she’d had to learn to live with it. At least she thought she had until the moment their eyes had first met after the long years between them...

      “Oh, God,” she whispered raggedly, opening her eyes, seeing the comforting surroundings of her porch waver into focus. With trembling hands, she pushed back a tangled wisp of red hair from her forehead.

      Why hadn’t she been enough? How many times in the past ten years had she asked herself that question? How many times had she provided herself with the same brutal answer?

      Because Aiden had been more. Aiden, her twin sister who had had the same looks as Ann, but with the personality and confidence to use them. Aiden, who had never been afraid to go after what she wanted, and she’d wanted Drew.

      Drew had wanted Aiden, too, Ann reminded herself relentlessly. He’d wanted her enough to make love to her. He’d wanted her enough to marry her, to stay married to her even after Aiden had lost the baby. For three long years, he’d stayed with her. And then Aiden had wanted out.

      For the next seven years, with both he and Ann free and clear, Drew hadn’t so much as called her. In many ways that was the deepest hurt of all, the hardest to forgive. For years she’d kept her life on hold, wishing and waiting for Drew Maitland to come back to her.

      Those long, empty years were like dust in her throat now.

      Ann held her hands out in front of her. They were still trembling. She squeezed them together, trying to stop the shaking, trying to block the torrent of memories flooding over her, drowning her, pulling her back to a place she did not want to go....

      * * *

      “Happy birthday, Angel.”

      “Oh, Drew, look! A shooting star. Do you suppose that was meant just for me, so I can have another wish?” Perched on the top rail of the fence, her face