Read Online The Homecoming by Anne Marie Winston - Free Book Online Page B

and glowing, and gave a shining luster to her silvery blue eyes. Her arms and legs were bare, as was a generous amount of cleavage, and his fingers actually tingled with the need to touch all that flawless, lightly muscled skin. Her hair was nothingspecial, a no-frills brown in a straight, shoulder-length cut. But it gleamed with red highlights and swung in a perfect bell around her bare shoulders in the dying sunlight.
    Danny closed his eyes for a moment. Maybe it was his imagination, maybe she didn’t really look that good. But when he opened his eyes, her impact hadn’t faded one bit.
    Except for the expression on her face. When he’d first walked onto the terrace, her heart-shaped face had been warm with welcome. Now she looked puzzled, and increasingly concerned.
    â€œDanny?” she said. “Are you all right?”
    â€œYeah.” He cleared his throat, remembered the manners he’d learned from watching his brother Trent work a room at a business function. “Would you like a glass of wine?”
    She nodded. “That would be lovely.”
    Good. That was good. He busied himself uncorking the wine and poured a glass for each of them. “So,” he said, “do you work?”
    She laughed, sounding startled. “Of course I work! I’m a campaign manager for a big public-relations firm.”
    He raised his eyebrows. “What firm?”
    â€œKremler, Dalhbright and Ackerman.”
    He nodded. “Crosby Systems has used them for a couple of things.”
    â€œI know.” She smiled. “We got the account for the new client-presentation package three months ago.”
    â€œSo you’ve probably met my brother, Trent.”
    She shrugged. “We’ve sat in a meeting or two. But his wife, Rebecca, is a friend, so yes, I’ve met him. I, uh, actually was at a bridal shower for them not long ago.”
    â€œHe’s a good guy,” Danny said quietly.
    â€œHe’s been good to Rebecca.”
    A silence fell. Danny wondered if she was feeling as awkward as he was. “Tell me about your childhood.”
    Sydney laughed. “Nothing earthshaking to tell. I grew up with an older brother and sister in a rural county outside Seattle. My mother was a teacher, my father was a plumber. They’re both retired now. We got our first dog the year after I was born and he lived for fourteen years. We got our second dog, Bistro, the same year that Heath died and—”
    â€œBistro?”
    She smiled wryly. “My sister was pretending she was a sophisticated cosmopolitan at the time.”
    â€œAh. So what happened to Bistro?”
    Her eyebrows rose in question. “Nothing. He’s old and gray now but still tottering around after Mom.” She took a breath. “We all went to the same schools and graduated from the same high school. My brother Stuart played football. Shelley and I were cheerleaders—”
    â€œStuart, Shelley and Sydney?”
    She shrugged, a wry smile curving her lips. “My parents were on an S-streak, I guess. Anyway, I was a Student Council representative and I sang in the choir. Went to church every Sunday and helped with Bibleschool. And in the summer, my dad made us kids help weed the garden, which we thought was one of the subtlest forms of torture ever invented. I still can’t stand peas after shelling bushels of them and helping my mother make split-pea soup for the church bazaar year after year.” She laughed. “I’ve never served Nick split-pea soup in his life, but I bet he’s been introduced to it by my mother this week.”
    Wow. She hadn’t been kidding about the normalcy of her growing-up years. He could barely imagine such a blessedly mundane experience. In his house, his mother had always been screaming at one or the other of them, him more often than not.
    â€œWhat about yours?”
    He glanced up from the roast beef he was cutting. “My