ick gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. The insistent throb in his groin urged him to turn his Jeep around and relieve his aching need between Delaney’s soft thighs. Impossible, of course. For so many reasons.

If he wanted, he could ring Gail on his cell phone and have her meet him. There were a few others he could call, too, but he didn’t want that. He didn’t want to have sex with one woman while thinking of another. While wanting another. He wasn’t that big a bastard. He wasn’t that sick, either.

Instead of calling anyone, he pulled his Jeep to a stop next to the burned remains of Henry’s barn. He left the engine running and shifted into neutral. He didn’t know why he’d come here. Maybe he’d come looking for answers in the blackened rubble. Answers he knew he’d never find.

I don’t belong here. I hate this town. I hate everything about it. I can’t wait to leave. I want my life back. Her words still echoed in his head. Still made him want to grab her and shake her.

But she was right. She didn’t belong in Truly. From the moment he’d looked across Henry’s casket and seen her standing there in that green suit and dark sunglasses, she’d complicated his life. When she’d moved back, she’d brought the past with her. All the old complicated bullshit he’d never understood.

Nick looked down at the front of his shirt and raised his hands to the buttons. The Jeep’s engine and the steady hum of the heater were the only sounds disturbing the late morning air.

I hate you, she’d whispered, and he believed her. Earlier, when he’d arrived on her doorstep with her new locks, he hadn’t purposely set out to make her hate him, but he’d done a pretty good job of it. Her hatred was best, and he actually felt a little relieved. No more kissing her and touching her. No more filling his hand with her firm breast, her nipple hard beneath his thumb.

He leaned his head back against the seat and stared at the beige canvas rag top. All she had to do was look at him and he had an urge to mess up her hair. Squeeze her between his hands, and eat the lip gloss off her mouth. Maybe Henry had been right. Maybe he’d known what Nick refused to admit, even to himself. He was still drawn most to the things he couldn’t have. In the past, once he’d gotten those unattainable things, he’d easily moved on to the next. But with Delaney, he couldn’t. He couldn’t have her and he couldn’t move on. If it weren’t for Henry’s will, he would have had sex with her already, and he would have forgotten about her by now. She really wasn’t the kind of female he liked to spend time with anyway. Her clothes were weird, and she had a mean mouth on her. She wasn’t the most beautiful female he’d known. In fact, she looked horrible in the morning. He’d seen his share of women who weren’t looking their best when they first rolled out of the sack, but damn, she’d looked downright scary.

Nick raised his head and stared out the windshield. But it didn’t seem to matter what she’d looked like. He’d wanted her. He’d wanted to kiss her sleepy mouth and soft skin. He’d wanted to take her back to her bed where her sheets were still warm. He’d wanted to strip her naked and bury himself deep within her hot thighs.

He’d wanted to touch her like he had in any one of the thousand fantasies he’d had growing up. As he had the night she’d jumped in his car. The night he’d driven them to Angel Beach. She’d acted like she’d wanted him that night, too, but she’d left with Henry. She’d left him alone and aching for her. Just one more unfulfilled fantasy.

He swore to himself and shifted the Jeep into gear. The wide tires chewed up the dirt road as the four-by-four sped toward town. He had some building contracts waiting for him to sign at his offices, and his mother and Louie were expecting him for lunch. Instead, he drove to a job site fifty miles north in Garden. The subcontractors were surprised to see him. The framers were even more surprised when he pulled on his work gloves and picked up a nail gun. He shot the hell out of the subfloor and wall studs. It had been several years since he and Louie had taken part in the physical part of construction. Most of his time was spent driving or talking with contractors and suppliers. If he wasn’t driving or talking or doing both at the same time, he was creating new business. But after the day he’d had, it felt good to shoot something again.

By the time he got home, it was past dark outside. He tossed his leather jacket and car keys on the marble countertop in the kitchen, then reached for a Bud. He could hear the television in another part of the house but wasn’t concerned. His entire family had a key to his front door, and Sophie often came over to watch a movie on his big screen. His boots echoed on the hardwood floors as he made his way to the great room.

The television blinked off and Louie rose from the beige leather sofa. He tossed the remote on the pine coffee table. “You should call Mother and tell her you’re not dead in a ditch.”

Nick took a pull off his beer and eyed his older brother. “I will.”

“Both of us have been trying to reach you since noon. Did you forget about lunch?”

“No. I decided to drive to Garden.”

“Why didn’t you call?”

He hadn’t wanted to hear the disappointment in his mother’s voice or listen to the guilt she’d heap on his head. “I got busy.”

“Why didn’t you answer your cell phone?”

“I didn’t feel like it.”

“Why, Nick?”

“I told you why. What in the hell is this all about? You haven’t been waiting for me because I didn’t answer my cell phone.”

Louie’s brows lowered over his brown eyes. “Where were you?”

“I told you.”

“Tell me again.”

Nick’s scowl matched his brother’s. “Go to hell.”

“It’s true then. What everyone is saying about you is true. You were screwing Delaney Shaw on the counter in her salon. Right there on Main Street for anybody walking by to see.”

A slow smile started at the corners of Nick’s mouth, then he burst into laughter.

Louie didn’t see the humor. “God damn you,” he swore. “When Mom told me she’d heard you were kissing Delaney at Hennesey’s, I told her not to believe it. I told her you weren’t that stupid. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, you are!”

“No I’m not. I didn’t screw Delaney in her shop or anyplace else.”

Louie sniffed and scratched the side of his neck. “Maybe not yet, but you will. You’re going to go right ahead and lose it all.”

Nick raised the beer and took a drink. “Now we get to the real reason you’re here. Money. You don’t care who I screw, as long as you get to develop Silver Creek.”

“Sure. Why not? I’ll admit it. I want it so bad the thought of it keeps me up at night just thinking of all those million-dollar houses and ways to spend all that money I stand to make. But even if that piece of property wasn’t worth a pile of shit, I’d still be here because I’m your brother. Because I slithered through bushes with you. Spied with you, flattened the tires on her bike with you, and I thought we did it because she got a nice new Schwinn. She got what you should have had. And because I thought you hated her. But you didn’t. You flattened those tires because you wanted to walk her home. You said you walked with her so Henry would see you and get all pissed off, but that was a lie. You were infatuated with her. You’ve had a hard on for Delaney Shaw since you could get it up, and everyone knows you think with your dick.”

Slowly Nick set his bottle on the stone mantel of the fireplace. “I think you better leave before I kick your ass all the way out of my house.”

Louie crossed his arms over his barrel chest, not looking like he planned to leave any time soon. “That’s another thing. This house. Look at it.”

“Yeah?”

“Look around. You live in a thirty-eight-hundred-square-foot house. You’ve got four bedrooms and five bathrooms. You’re one guy Nick. One.”

Nick glance about at the fireplace made of smooth river rock, the high ceiling with exposed beams, and the bank of cathedral windows that looked out at the lake. “What’s your point?”

“Who’d you build it for? You say you’re never going to get married. So why do you need such a big house?”

“You tell me. You seem to know all the answers.”

Louie rocked back on his heel. “You wanted to show Henry.”

It was close enough to the truth that Nick didn’t deny it. “That’s old news.”

“You wanted to show her, too.”

“You’re full of shit,” he scoffed. “She didn’t even live here.”

“She does now, and you’re going to screw up your life for a piece of high-price ass.”

Nick pointed toward the front door. “Get out before you really piss me off.”

Louie walked forward, stopping within an arm’s distance. “You going to throw me out, little brother?”

“You going to make me?” Nick was taller, but Louie was built like a bull. Not only did Nick not want to fight his own brother, he knew Louie hit like a bulldozer. He was relieved when Louie shook his head and walked past.

“If you’re going to have sex with her, do it now.” Louie sighed as he picked up his jacket from the back of a leather arm chair. “Do it before you get other contractors involved in Silver Creek. Do it before you contact more lenders, and do it before I waste any more of my time.”

“You’re worrying about nothing,” Nick assured his brother as they walked to the front door. “I’m not going anywhere near Delaney, and I have a feeling she’ll be avoiding me for a long time.”

“Then what happened in her salon today?”

Nick opened the heavy wood door. “Nothing. I changed her locks for her. That’s it.”

“I doubt it.” Louie shrugged into his jacket and headed down the steps. “Call Mom,” he said. “The sooner you get it over with, the better.”

Nick shook his head and walked back into the great room. He wasn’t in the mood to call his mother. He didn’t want to hear her rant about Delaney. He snagged his beer off the mantle, then headed through a pair of French doors to the deck. Steam rose from the octagonal hot tub, and he flipped the switch to start the jets. His right shoulder ached from the work he’d done in Garden. He stripped naked and goose bumps broke over his arms and chest before he stepped into the bubbling hot water. The windows from the house threw oblong patches of light but didn’t reach his corner of the deck.

Louie had been right about some things and dead wrong about others. Nick had originally built his house as an “up yours” gesture toward Henry. But before construction had been halfway completed, he’d lost interest in proving anything to anybody. As far as Delaney, he hadn’t really expected to see her again. His brother was way off the mark with that theory. He’d been close to the truth with the bicycle conspiracy theory of his though. Originally Nick hadn’t planned to push the bike all the way to Henry’s, but then he’d looked at her face when she’d seen her tires. She’d looked as if she were about to burst into tears and he’d felt so guilty, he’d helped her. He’d even given her a Tootsie Roll, and she’d given him a stick of gum. Peppermint.

Louie had been right about the other—although he’d call it a strong interest rather than infatuation. But contrary to his brother’s opinion, he wasn’t going to have sex with her. He might not be able to control his body’s reaction, but he sure as hell could control what he did, or didn’t do, about it.

People said a lot of things about him. Some were true. Some weren’t. For the most part he didn’t care. But Delaney would. She would be hurt by the gossip.

Nick took a drink of his beer and looked at the reflection of stars in the black water of the lake.

He didn’t want her hurt. He didn’t want to hurt her. It was time he stayed away from Delaney Shaw.

The telephone inside the house rang, and he wondered how long it would take his mother to give up on the phone calls. He knew she’d want to talk about the gossip like she had some sort of maternal squatter’s rights on his life. Louie didn’t seem to mind the constant prying as much as Nick. Louie called it love. Maybe it was, but when Nick had been a boy, she’d sometimes held him so tight he couldn’t breathe.

Nick set his beer on the side of the hot tub and sank further into the hot water. His mother didn’t like to drive after dark so he figured he was safe for the night. He’d call her in the morning and get it over with.

Gwen placed the telephone to her ear for about the fifth time in the last hour. “Delaney has obviously taken her phone off the hook.”

Max walked across a thick Aubusson rug and stopped behind her. He took the receiver from her hand and hung it up. “Then she obviously has her reasons.” He rubbed Gwen’s shoulders and pressed his thumbs into the base of her skull. “You’re too tense.”

Gwen sighed and lazed her head to one side. Her soft blond hair brushed across his knuckles, and the smell of roses filled his nose. “It’s the latest rumor about her and Nick,” she said. “He’s out to ruin my daughter.”

“She’ll handle Nick.”

“You don’t understand. He’s always hated her.”

Max remembered the day Nick had barged into his office. The man had been angry, but Max hadn’t received the impression that Nick held any animosity toward Delaney. “Your daughter is a grown woman. She can take care of herself.” He slid his hands to her waist and pulled her back against his chest. It seemed their time together was always the same. Gwen fussing about Delaney, and him wanting to touch her like a lover. He’d seen quite a bit of her since Henry’s death, and he’d found pleasure in her bed on several occasions. She was beautiful and had a lot to offer a man. Yet he was growing tired of her immersion in her daughter’s business.

“How? By creating a scandal?”

“If that’s her choice. You’ve done your job. You’ve raised her. Let it go or you might lose her again.”

Gwen turned and Max saw fear in her eyes. “I am afraid she’s going to leave me. I always thought she stayed away because of Henry, but now I’m not sure. A few years ago I went to visit her when she lived in Denver, and she said that I always took Henry’s side when she was growing up. She thinks I never stood up for her. I would have, but Henry was right. She needed to get good grades and go to college and not run around town like a hoyden.” Gwen paused and took a deep breath. “Delaney is stubborn and holds a grudge for a long time. I just know that she’ll leave in June and never come back.”

“Maybe.”

“She can’t go. Henry could have made her stay longer.”

Max dropped his hands to his sides. “He wanted to, but I advised him that a judge might strike down the will if Henry stipulated a lengthier period.”

Gwen turned and walked to the fireplace. She gripped the brick mantel and gazed back at Max through the mirror in front of her. “He should have done something.”

Henry had done everything he could to control the people in his life from the grave. He’d stayed just to the right of what a court would consider fair and reasonable restraints. The whole thing had been extremely distasteful to Max, and it bothered him that Gwen supported her late husband’s manipulations.

“Delaney needs to stay here. She needs to grow up.”

Max looked at Gwen’s reflection; her beautiful blue eyes and pouty pink mouth, perfectly flawless white skin and hair like ribbons of caramel and butterscotch. Desire settle in the pit of his groin. Maybe she just needed something else in her life to think about. He walked toward her, determined to give her that something else.

Nick didn’t get the chance to call his mother the next morning. She rang his doorbell at seven a.m.

Benita Allegrezza set her purse on the white marble counter and looked at her son. Nick obviously thought he could avoid her, but she was his mother. She’d given birth to him, which gave her the right to drag him out of bed. No matter that he was thirty-three and no longer lived with her.

He’d pulled on a pair of ragged Levi’s and an old black sweatshirt, and his feet were bare. Benita frowned. He could afford to dress better. Nick never took very good care of himself. He didn’t eat when he should, and he spent time with loose women. He didn’t think she knew about the women, but she did. “Why can’t you just avoid that neska izugarri?”

“I don’t know what you’ve heard, but nothing happened with Delaney,” he said, his voice rough from sleep. He took her coat and hung it in the hall closet.

Obviously, he thought she could be fooled, too. Benita followed him into the kitchen and watched him pull two mugs from the cupboard. “Then why were you there, Nick?”

He waited until he’d filled the two mugs with coffee before he answered her. “I installed some locks at her shop.”

She took the mug he offered her and looked at him standing by the kitchen sink as if nothing had happened in that beauty salon. She knew better. She knew the less he said, the more he left unsaid. Sometimes she needed a Mack truck to pull anything out of him. He’d been that way for a long time now. “That’s what your brother told me. Why couldn’t she hire a locksmith like everyone else? Why does she need you?”

“I told her I’d do it.” He leaned one hip against the counter and shrugged the opposite shoulder. “It was no big deal.”

“How can you say that? The whole town is talking about it. You haven’t returned my phone calls and you’ve been hiding from me.”

His brows drew together, and he frowned at her. “I haven’t been hiding from you.”

Yes, he had, and it was Delaney Shaw’s fault.

From the day she’d moved to Truly, she’d made Nick’s life harder than it had been before she’d arrived.

Before Henry married Gwen, Benita could tell herself and everyone else that Henry ignored Nick because he didn’t want to have children. Afterward, everyone knew that wasn’t true. Henry just didn’t want Nick. He could lavish love and attention on a stepdaughter, yet reject his own son.

Before Delaney’s arrival in Henry’s life, Benita would sit with Nick on her lap and hold him close. She’d kiss his sweet forehead and dry his tears. Afterward, there were no more tears or hugs. No more softness in her son. He’d grow stiff in her arms and tell her he was too big for kisses. Benita blamed Henry for the pain he caused his own son, but in her eyes, Delaney became the living, breathing symbol of deep betrayal and rejection. Delaney had been given everything that should have been given to Nick, but everything hadn’t been enough for her. She’d been a troublemaker to boot.

She’d always had a way of making Nick look bad. Like the time he’d hit her with a snowball. Although he shouldn’t have thrown a snowball at her, Benita was sure that girl must have done something, but the grade school hadn’t even questioned her. They’d just blamed the whole incident on Nick.

And then there was that horrible episode when those awful rumors had spread through town about Nick taking advantage of Delaney. Ten years later, Benita still didn’t know what had taken place that night. She knew Nick was no saint when it came to women, but she was sure he hadn’t taken anything Delaney hadn’t been more than willing to give him. Then like a coward, she’d fled and escaped the stinging gossip, while Nick had stayed behind and braved the worst of it. And the rumor about Nick taking advantage of that girl hadn’t been the worst of it.

She looked at him now—her tall, handsome boy. Both her sons had succeeded on their own. No one had handed them anything, and she was extremely proud of them. But Nick... Nick would always need her to watch out for him, even though he didn’t think he needed her at all.

Now all she really wanted for Nick was for him to settle down with a nice Catholic girl, marry in the church, and be happy. She didn’t think it was too much for a mother to ask. If he married, the loose women would quit chasing him—especially Delaney Shaw. “You probably wouldn’t tell your mother if something did happen with that girl anyway,” she said. “What am I to believe?”

Nick raised his mug and took a drink. “I’ll tell you what. If something did happen, it won’t happen again.”

“Promise me.”

He gave her an easy smile meant to appease her. “Of course, Ama.”

Benita wasn’t appeased. Now that girl was back and the rumors were starting again.