Confessions of a Girl-Next-Door by Jackie Braun Read Free Book Online Page A

a letdown, especially since he and my mother had no other children.”
    “But you’re still the heir to the throne, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “So?”
    Holly shrugged. “He wanted a son.” A fact that had caused Olivia no small amount of anxiety and dismay. Her mother had already felt her new country found her lacking. When she failed to produce a male heir, well …
    “I’m glad he didn’t get his way.”
    Her cheeks grew warm. Even the storm’sfury faded into the background as they eyed one another. Nate lifted a hand, stroked her cheek with his knuckles. The touch was light and brief. Her body’s response was neither. And that was before his head tipped down and his lips brushed hers.
    They’d kissed before. Her last summer on the island. A lifetime ago. The moment remained enshrined in her memory. It had been her first real kiss. Afterward, her heart had hammered and her breath had hitched.
    “I love you.”
    The words had slipped out, soft and almost inaudible. But Nate had gathered her close and kissed her again, this time with more urgency. Even so, that long-ago kiss was nothing like this one, even if it held much of the same desperate yearning.
    She’d never known this kind of need. It was every bit as brash and demanding as the storm battering the island. As such, it refused to be denied. She wound her arms tighter around Nate’s neck, pulling their bodies together and giving in to the kind of passion that she’d only glimpsed in the past, and never with anyone but this man.
    “Holly.” Nate murmured her name.
    His use of her nickname was enough tosnap her back to the present. As much as she might wish things could be different, she was no longer an idealistic girl. She understood the futility of “if only,” and so she ended things before they could progress too far.
    Afterward, Nate pressed the cold base of his beer bottle against his forehead and closed his eyes.
    “Some things get better with age,” it sounded like he murmured.
    She touched her lips. Indeed, they did.
    “I wrote you a letter the first summer I didn’t come. I wanted to explain why I wouldn’t be here.”
    He lowered his hand, opened his eyes. “I never got a letter.”
    “That’s because I didn’t send it.” It was folded up and tucked in her bureau drawer along with the other mementos of their summers together. Seashells, a picture of the first fish she’d caught, an old-fashioned glass cola bottle they’d found during a hike on the beach.
    “Why?”
    Because I was a coward. Because I was heartbroken.
She sipped her beer, took her time swallowing.
    “Because I didn’t think you would understand.”
    “What I didn’t understand was how you could just not return. Or write back. You never wrote back, Holly.”
    Guilt nipped hard as she recalled the letters Nate had written to her in care of the post office box her grandmother had set up. Gran had forwarded the letters faithfully, and Holly had read every one, her heart breaking anew when they’d finally stopped coming, although that was exactly what she’d expected to happen. What she told herself she wanted. Nate needed to move on with his life. Just as she was moving on with hers.
    Hank snuffled loudly on the couch. Where the thunder hadn’t roused him, the sound of his own snoring apparently did the trick. His eyelids flickered and he pulled himself to a sitting position, then scrubbed his face and offered a sheepish smile.
    “Guess I drifted off.” His gaze darted between the two of them. “Did I miss anything?”
    “Just one hell of a storm,” Nate said evenly before heading into the kitchen.
    Holly waited until the weather settled down to call her parents. She had been gone nearly eighteen hours. Her father would be irritated by her disappearance. Her mother would be livid. A small part of her hoped they would also be worried. Instantly, she felt guilty. Of course, she didn’t want them to worry. Besides, she was a grown woman. Wanting them to worry