Allison Leigh – One Night in Weaver... (страница 1)
His eyes sharpened. “You sure about that?” Seth’s expression was tight. “I need to stay away from you. Until this thing with McGregor is done with. For everyone’s sake.”
She swallowed the knot in her throat. She was shaking from her head to her toes. “Then stay away.”
A muscle in his jaw flexed. “Believe me,” he said. “I have tried.” He slowly moved around the island until he stopped in front of her, trapping her in the corner where she stood near the sink.
She couldn’t seem to look away from his blue, blue eyes.
“And I can’t,” he finished in a low voice.
Her lips parted.
His head dipped toward hers, his lips grazing hers, lighter than his whisper. “Don’t trust me, Hayley. Be stronger than I am.”
A sound she didn’t recognize slid from her throat. Her hands curled into fists against the counter on one side of her and the cool edge of the old-fashioned apron sink on the other. “I’m not strong.”
* * *
Return to The Double C Under the big blue Wyoming sky, this family discovers true love
One Night in Weaver…
Allison Leigh
A frequent name on bestseller lists, ALLISON LEIGH’s high point as a writer is hearing from readers that they laughed, cried or lost sleep while reading her books. She’s blessed with an immensely patient family who doesn’t mind (much) her time spent at her computer and who gives her the kind of love she wants her readers to share in every page. Stay in touch at www.allisonleigh.com and on Twitter, @allisonleighbks.
For my family.
Contents
He really
A good six feet tall. Probably more. Dark brown hair that she suspected he kept cut short because it might have the tendency to curl into girlish prettiness if he didn’t. Bright blue eyes that seemed startling in contrast to the dark hair.
The first time she’d seen him was at least a year ago, in the Weaver Community Park. Running and looking far more natural at it than she did. After that, the chance of catching a glimpse of him provided a major incentive for Hayley to drag herself to the park a few times every week, where she would meet up with Sam Dawson, her running partner and one of her best friends.
Sam ran every day. And trained with weights. She was a fitness fiend; she claimed it was because she needed to keep up with the guys in the sheriff’s department, where she was the only female on the force. Hayley figured that even if Sam worked behind a teller’s window in a bank all day long, she’d still be in the park every morning, snow or shine, doing her thing. Hayley was thirty-five. Too old to kid herself that she ran for the pleasure of it. No. Hayley joined Sam a few times a week because she liked being able to fit into her suits and still indulge in her favorite cinnamon rolls from Ruby’s diner.
And she liked catching glimpses of
The man—she knew his name was Seth Banyon because she’d heard it around town—obviously subscribed to Sam’s methodology, though. The man was a walking advertisement for the benefits of physical fitness.
She’d also seen him around town. Often at Shop-World, where his grocery cart tended to be more heavily loaded than hers. He always seemed to buy the same things. A six-pack of beer. Giant loaves of bread. Steak. Bacon. Eggs. Several packaged frozen meals.
Her cart, on the other hand, contained fresh vegetables and fruit. And never a steak, despite Weaver, Wyoming, pretty much being located in the center of the beef universe. The only item their carts ever had in common was coffee. Same brand. Hers, whole bean. His, already ground.
“Bring you another cosmo, Dr. Templeton?”
Hayley gathered her wandering thoughts and blinked once, focusing on the cocktail waitress who’d stopped next to the small high-top that Hayley was hogging all to herself.
She didn’t ordinarily drink cocktails; usually she stuck with a glass of white wine, which suited the expectations the citizens of Weaver had for their local psychologist, Hayley Templeton, PhD. And she certainly never drank alone.
Nor did she ogle men bellied up to the bar of Colbys, no matter how nicely they filled the rears of their faded blue jeans and the shoulders of their long-sleeved T-shirts, or how long it had been since she’d had a man’s arms around her.
One who wasn’t related by blood, at any rate.
She pushed aside the thought of her family. They were the reason she was there in Colbys, alone, trying her hand at the age-old practice of drowning her sorrows in alcohol.
“Yes, please.” She offered up the two glasses that she’d already emptied, surreptitiously steadying her hands by propping her elbows on the tabletop. If she’d had anywhere else to go to wallow in her liquor-glazed misery, she would have.
But tonight, Colbys was going to have to suffice.
All around her, people were knotted together in clusters, still celebrating the passing of the old year and the arrival of the new, even though New Year’s Eve was two evenings past.
She’d expected to still be celebrating, too. At home in Braden, some thirty miles away, with her family.
Celebrating not just the fresh new year. But a fresh, new beginning for the Templeton family.
The
She was a good therapist. But obviously not good enough to heal the rift in her own family. A rift that—according to her father—she was actually
She sighed and let her gaze drift back to Seth Banyon. One foot was propped casually on the metal rod that ran the length of the bar near the floor. He was leaning on his forearms, which rested atop the glossy wooden surface.
Unlike ninety percent of the men—and women—in here, who wore cowboy boots on their feet and cowboy hats on their heads, his head was bare and he wore sturdy black work boots. They weren’t exactly shined.
But they weren’t covered in the ranch dust that was typical of the boots around Weaver, either. He was a security guard out at Cee-Vid, the consumer electronics and video gaming company located on the edge of town. She knew that about him only because her other best friend, Jane Cohen, had once mentioned it.