A Puppy's Tale Read online

  Two and a half weeks. Wow. Evan didn’t know exactly what Addie was up against, but he could imagine it would take some elbow grease.

  “I assume you’ll have help.”

  Her head quirked, questioning. She was married, wasn’t she? The Addie he knew wouldn’t just hook up with someone. Granted, they were a bad example of that, but he’d always known her heart was much more conservative than they’d acted back then. They’d been teenagers—young and in love and stupid and careless. A winning combination. “I mean your husband. He must have some remodeling skills.” Especially if they’d taken on a project of this magnitude.

  “Actually, I’m divorced.” The wounding that flashed on her face cut into his chest with a dull butter knife.

  Over the years, despite how things had ended, he’d always held a soft spot in his heart for Addie. He’d hoped and prayed for good things for her—especially once he’d gotten over his anger at God and started talking to Him again. But in all his wondering of what had become of her, he’d never imagined this. Never imagined she’d be broken and bruised at twenty-six years old.

  His sympathies flared, and that Don’t get attached/don’t get involved mantra he’d been following since he’d arrived in town shot into the red zone. Addie was a once upon a time. A representation of what used to be. He was here for his mom…to get her place ready to sell, to honor her life somehow—whenever he figured out a way to do that—and to keep his existence as it was. With ten degrees of separation and a world to explore.

  Addie, though she tugged on his heartstrings, didn’t have anything to do with any of those.

  * * *

  Evan’s face registered with all that Addie Ricci felt over her situation—concern, disappointment, surprise.

  She had never planned to end up here. Divorced. Raising a child on her own. A decade of guilt and so much shame strapped to her back as a constant companion. And yet, the school bus of life had driven up, swung open the door and dumped her out on her rear end.

  “I’m fixing things up on my own.” The confession, as always, sent fear pulsing through her. What was she thinking? What was she doing taking on a project like this by herself? Believing she could run the B & B when she had no business training? She’d only stayed with Tito and Tita over three summers. Her mom’s older cousin and her husband had loved on Addie like she was a daughter. They’d always talked about her growing up to run the B & B someday. That dream had been planted in Addie from a young age. But with Tito’s sickness, things hadn’t gone as planned.

  They’d left Addie a small inheritance, and she’d saved it. The minute there’d been even a whisper of the B & B coming back on the market, Addie had launched her plan into action. She’d used the money for her down payment, and here she was, completely out of her league and determined beyond logic.

  Those summers in Colorado had been the best of her life. Addie had loved the small town of Westbend and the opportunity to explore at will. Helping out with guests, answering phones, taking reservations, serving breakfast. Even cleaning rooms had been fun because it had all been a novelty to her.

  That last summer in Westbend, she’d been less of a help, no doubt, because she’d been completely infatuated with the boy in front of her. Evan Hawke had been all sorts of temptation. Lean and muscular—he’d been riding bulls at the time, which had only added to his appeal. A bit of a risk taker, but when she’d gotten to know him, completely kind down to the marrow of his bones.

  She’d loved him fiercely.

  In the last ten years, Evan had changed from a boy into a man. Especially with that close-trimmed chestnut beard. His face, his shoulders, his build had all become more defined. The surge of attraction and interest Addie had experienced as a teenager stirred inside her even though Evan was the most off-limits of all the guys in the world.

  “The last time I saw you…” The last time Addie had seen Evan, he’d been laid out in a hospital bed, frightened and lost, enduring excruciating pain. The night Addie had convinced Tita and Tito to let her sleep in the chair next to his hospital bed so that his mom could get some rest had been agonizing. When all of the busyness of the doctors and medical staff and family and friends had faded, Evan had been left with only the agony from his amputation. He’d writhed and cried out, and she hadn’t been able to do anything to make it better except beg the nurses for more medication for him.

  Evan rubbed a hand over his whiskered chin, the emotion she experienced at the memories seeming to surface for him too. “Yeah. That was the worst week of my life. And you stayed with me through it.”

  “Of course.” Addie had always known that Evan had been distracted the day of his accident because of her. Staying beside him, supporting him—she hadn’t wanted to be anywhere else. And when she’d had to go home to Michigan while Evan was still recovering and in shock…that had ripped a gaping hole in her chest.

  The man in front of her now made that time and those memories seem as if they’d only existed in her imagination. His pants and shoe hid the results of the amputation that had taken his foot and lower portion of his leg so well that if she hadn’t been present after his accident, she would never know a prosthesis hid beneath.

  But of course it had all happened.

  Including the aftermath. Their actions and his accident had contributed to a chain of events that Addie would never have imagined possible.

  “And then you had to go home.” Questions brimmed in his eyes, a shade of brown that reminded her of her favorite coconut latte.

  “Yes, I did.” And things had spiraled out of control so quickly. Her parents had found out what she and Evan had been up to, and they’d cut off their relationship. Not with a trimmer, but with a sharp shovel, chopping straight at the root.

  “But look at you now.” She motioned to him. “All grown up and put together. Successful from what I hear.” Just a few minutes in Evan’s presence and she could sense his quiet self-assurance. He seemed at peace with himself in a way that Addie had been striving for since that time.

  Reinstating the B & B was part of her attempt to reclaim her confidence, her life. To start over and leave the sins of her past behind. And yet one had just walked into the same store as her as a blatant reminder.

  “Ah, I don’t know about that.” The tops of Evan’s ears pinked endearingly. “So you and the little guy are on your own?” He nodded to Sawyer, who’d copped a seat on the floor. There the man went, changing the topic away from himself. He’d been like that as a teen too. Lots of guys liked to talk about themselves, but Evan had always focused on her, asking her a million questions about her childhood, the Filipino culture that made up her mom’s side of the family, what her dreams were. Where she’d live if she could choose anywhere.

  Those last two answers had been running the B & B and this town.

  Addie’s dreams might finally be waking up from a deep sleep, but she still had a long haul to actually make them feasible.

  “Yep. Sawyer and I are a mom-and-son-superhero-crime-fighting duo.” She paused. “But without the crime-fighting or superhero part.” Her attempt at humor fell flat, ripping open the curtain into her personal torment.

  “That has to be hard. I’m sorry, Addie.” She could tell Evan was exactly that by the worried pucker that wedged between his eyebrows and the downward slope of his mouth.

  She was sorry too. Sorry for the onslaught of painful, gut-wrenching memories that were choking her during this supposedly small-talk conversation. Sorry for the mistakes she’d made that had led up to this moment. Sorry for what Evan didn’t know and how it would most definitely hurt him.

  “It’s certainly not what I’d dreamed about or planned for.” She acknowledged Evan’s sympathy and shrugged as if her bad choices didn’t matter, but of course they did. Adding a divorce to her What was I thinking? tally was embarrassing and excruciating. She should never have married Rex in the first place. He’d been a way to escape her parents, and the attempt had bombed, big-time. When she’d fou
nd out she was pregnant, their marriage had been over and done in a flash. Rex hadn’t had any interest in becoming a father, or really, in her. “Sometimes life doesn’t go like we expect it to.” That was the understatement of the century.

  “Mommy.” Sawyer tugged on her leg. “We go.”

  “You’re right, buddy. We do need to go.”

  The fact that Sawyer was still in the aisle with her was shocking. Asking any two-year-old boy—especially this one—to sit still or remain in one place for any amount of time was like asking a puppy not to have an accident on the carpet.

  Addie’s hands were full with a smattering of items Sawyer had “gifted” to her. She quickly placed them back in the correct spots. No need to destroy Herbert’s while they were there. She was desperate for the people in this town to support her business and send referrals her way, not view her as incompetent.

  “It was…good to see you, Evan.” More lies. It was simply painful to see him. When a person had buried something for as long as she had, coming into contact with the initiating factor was like ramming repeatedly into a stone wall at top speeds.

  “You too.”

  Addie scooped up Sawyer, retrieved her cart and headed for the checkout, her breathing shallow, her heart shredded into a thousand pieces of regret.

  How many times had she begged a God she’d barely believed existed for an opportunity to share the truth with Evan? More than she could count. But what was she supposed to do? Blurt everything out in a hardware store? She didn’t see that going well. And while Addie would happily shove off her shame and guilt and be free from the secrets, she couldn’t get sidetracked either.

  The B & B would require all of her energy and attention in the next couple of weeks. She could not fail. Her and Sawyer’s livelihood depended on its success. So the fact that Evan Hawke had just walked back into her life was the biggest, most confusing wrench she could have imagined.

  And she’d never been very good with mechanics.

  Copyright © 2020 by Jill Buteyn

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  ISBN-13: 9780369700407

  A Puppy’s Tale

  First published in 2003. This edition published in 2020.

  Copyright © 2003 by Harlequin Books S.A.

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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