Read Online As If You Never Left Me (Crimson Romance) by Katriena Knights - Free Book Online

he supposed, you had to come up with arrangements like that. Heaven forbid the city or county or whatever would do it for you. He thought about the big snowplows that cleared the streets at home, and about alternate side of the street parking. That kind of thing probably wouldn’t work on these narrow, winding roads.
    Sipping his own tea, he looked at the black, wood-burning stove and wondered if she’d ever tried to cook anything on it. “It’s like a whole different world out here, isn’t it?”
    She shrugged. “In some ways. But it’s really not all that strange.” She turned back to her magazine.
    Not that strange. She had to burn wood to keep her house warm, and pay somebody to plow the road. Her house was made of logs, and the TV weatherman couldn’t predict the weather for her piece of his viewing audience. No, this wasn’t strange at all. Hell, it was so much like New York City, who could tell the difference?

Chapter Five
     
    Joely sat at the kitchen table and sketched for a time, trying to pretend Rey wasn’t sitting across from her. Not the easiest task.
    He’d gotten his computer out and connected to her wireless so he could catch up with the news. Apparently, the idea of trudging down her driveway through eighteen inches of snow to get the paper didn’t appeal to him. Of course, that was assuming the paper was even there. Given the conditions, Joely suspected it wasn’t.
    So, between the scratching of her pencil and the tapping of his keys, they filled the silence companionably.
    It didn’t seem right, though, to sit and say nothing. There were fourteen months of silence between them already — shouldn’t they find some way to address that?
    “What are you working on?” Rey said suddenly.
    Joely tweaked a line she’d been fussing over before turning the sketchpad to show Rey. He perused the picture. “Nice. This goes with the one you drew at the hotel.”
    She nodded. Finally happy with the vase she’d sketched, she’d tried variations of the columbine design on a bowl and mugs. “I like to do things in sets. Sometimes somebody even buys them all together.”
    He nodded thoughtfully. “And yet they work as single pieces as well, so if somebody only buys one, you can still sell the rest.”
    “That’s the plan.” She turned the book back around, eyeing the drawing again. “These mugs I’ll probably price as a set of four, though.”
    “You know what you need?”
    There was a loaded question. “A million dollars?”
A good lawyer in tight blue jeans?
    He plowed past her joke. “You need somebody to handle the financials so you can concentrate on the creative end of the business.”
    “If I had a million dollars, I could hire someone.”
    He opened his mouth, but closed it again, an oddly disappointed look on his face. She had the strangest feeling he’d been about to volunteer for the job. Instead he picked up his laptop and put it back into its case.
    She found herself watching him, her eyes fixed on the sure movement of his long fingers. She’d always loved those hands. He pulled the zipper shut and pushed the computer case aside, bumping it up against the end of the couch.
    Something in her throat started to burn. She swallowed hard before it could turn into tears. “I shouldn’t have said what I did,” she said abruptly.
    He looked up, puzzled. “When?”
    She swallowed. “Last August.”
    The puzzlement faded from his face and he nodded slowly. “I probably would have come after you sooner if you hadn’t.”
    There was no answer for that. When she spoke again she spoke to his hands, unable to meet his eyes. “I was angry.”
    “You don’t say.” His mild tone caught her off-guard. When she looked up, he had a quirky smile on his mouth. “I never would have guessed.”
    She returned his smile, sadly. “We have a lot of things to talk about.”
    “Do we?”
    “I think so, yes.”
    “We can’t just … forget about it and move forward?”
    “I don’t think I