One Wild Wedding Night_ No Way Out - Leslie Kelly [5]
He’d never hit her. Oh, no. He’d do something worse.
Like kiss her and prove to the world—and to Vanessa—that when it came to this brown-eyed boy, she had absolutely no willpower at all. Never had, and, judging by the way her heart was pounding her eardrums out at just the thought of him kissing her, never would.
The bartender walked away, shaking his head and mumbling under his breath. Once he was gone, Stan tilted his head and cocked a brow. “Nice to see you, too.”
Oh, she’d like to say it was not nice for her, but she had to admit, some parts of her—not her brain, of course—thought it was very nice indeed. God, the man had gotten even more handsome with age, if that was possible.
As a boy, he’d been gangly and cute, all arms and legs like a puppy dog. He’d started growing into them as a teenager, his body filling out, growing wiry and powerful. She almost shivered when she thought about the way that long, lean form had felt pressed against hers, naked and wet from the secret swim they’d taken at a local pond. Back when they were lovers. Back when they were young. Back when she’d still believed in promises and true love.
“So how have you been, V?”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “Only people I like get to call me that.”
“I called you that all the time,” he said softly. “Every day of every summer I’d come to spend with the old folks.”
Yes, he had. From the time she was a child, Stan Jackson had been a part of her summer life—and had definitely been someone she liked enough to let him call her by her nickname.
He and his brother would come to their grandparents’ house every July, sent away from Atlanta by their hardworking parents to enjoy the sweet-smelling air of the South Carolina countryside. And from the very first time Vanessa’s older brother had brought his new friend around—when both boys were about ten years old to Vanessa’s nine—she had been wild about Stan. Wild enough to stalk him like a cat going after a canary, licking her chops right up until the minute she’d caught him.
He hadn’t minded.
“I talked to Frank a few weeks ago,” he had the audacity to say. “He and his wife caught a game when they were on the West Coast.”
She sneered. “Just goes to show my brother has a short memory and no taste in friends.”
“We were friends once, you and I,” he said softly.
“Yeah. Right. Until you got what you wanted. You scored your touchdown, didn’t even wait to see if you made the extra point, then skipped out of town forever.”
Leaving his grandmother to clean up any possible messes he’d left behind. Lord, it infuriated her to this day.
He shook his head. “You’ve got a long memory, but not what I’d call an accurate one.”
She rolled her eyes, not wanting to hear his excuses and lies. “Just go away.”
“You really been hatin’ on me for twelve years?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, noting the way Stan’s eyes zoned in there. This was a man who liked beautiful women; he was probably with a different one every week.
While she had her faults, her looks weren’t one of them. Vanessa was beautiful and she knew it. There was something rather nice about seeing the want in his eyes, especially since there was no way in hell the man would ever touch her again.
“Watch that ego,” she replied. “I just saw the chance to pay a debt that was owed.”
“You owed me a sock in the jaw? Wouldn’t a letter have done the trick to get your feelings across?”
A letter. Sure. One final letter to ask him how he could have humiliated her the way he had. It hadn’t seemed nearly enough. All the paper in the world couldn’t have held the raging emotions—fury, abandonment, humiliation—she’d felt.
She’d written plenty of letters to him after that last summer, when she’d been fifteen and he a year older and they’d been playing some very grown-up games during his annual visit.
He’d stopped responding. And she’d soon found out why.
The day his grandmother had shown up at her door to confront her own grandmother about whether Stan had put a baby in Vanessa’s belly that summer had been the most