Summer at Willow Lake by Susan Wiggs Read Free Book Online Page A

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    “Hey?” called a voice from the entryway.
    Uh-oh. She looked at the orange dust clinging to her fingertips. It was probably crusted around her mouth, too.
    “I’m back,” Rand called unnecessarily. Then: “Wow. Hey, this place looks awesome.”
    Olivia threw the Cheetos bag and the beer bottle in the trash and rushed to the sink to wash her hands. “In the kitchen,” she answered, her voice a tad shrill. “I’ll be right out.”
    She was bent over the sink, her hair falling to one side as she rinsed her mouth, when he walked in.
    “Olivia, you’re a freaking genius,” he said, opening his arms.
    She hastily wiped her mouth with a tea towel. “I am, aren’t I,” she said and walked into his arms.
    He held her for a moment, then kissed her forehead. “You need to bill my real-estate agent for everything you’ve done here.”
    Olivia froze. Her heart knew, even before her mind caught on. The awareness prickled up her spine and over her scalp. There was something in the way a man held a woman when he was about to let her go. The knowledge was in his frame and in his muscles—a tangible stiff reluctance. The air of discomfiture hovering around him was unmistakable.
    She stepped back, stared up at his handsome face. “Oh, my God,” she said. “You’re breaking up with me.”
    “What?” Her blunt observation clearly took him by surprise. “Hey, listen, babe. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    The protest only underscored her conviction. She was right, and they both knew it. Many women with more powerful denial mechanisms than Olivia were able to shut out the warning sign. Not Olivia, not with her sensitive radar, not after two previous failures had left her bleeding. She was like one of those dogs trained to an electric fence. She only had to be popped twice, and then she got it.
    The Cheetos and beer formed a cold, unpleasant knot in her stomach. It isn’t going to happen again, she thought. Not even if I have to do it first. “I completely misread you,” she said. “God, what an idiot.” She took another step away from him.
    “Slow down,” he said, and the hand he laid on her arm was gentle and made her want to cry.
    “Do it fast,” she snapped at him. “Like ripping off a Band-Aid. Get it over with quick.”
    “You’re jumping to the wrong conclusion.”
    “Am I?” She folded her arms across her middle. Don’t cry, she told herself, blinking away the tears that boiled behind her contact lenses. Save the crying for later. “All right. How about telling me exactly what you intend to do after selling this apartment?”
    His gaze flirted ever so briefly with the light fixture on the ceiling, the one she’d replaced at two o’clock this afternoon. That was another symptom of man-on-the-run. He didn’t want to meet her eyes. “Something came up while I was in L.A.,” he told her, and despite his obvious discomfort with her, his face lit with enthusiasm. “They want me there, Liv.”
    She held her breath. He was supposed to say, I told them I couldn’t make a decision until I talked to you. She already knew, though. With a dry laugh of disbelief, she said, “You told them yes, didn’t you?”
    He didn’t deny it. “The firm’s going to create a new position for me.”
    “What, asshole-in-residence?”
    “Olivia, I know we talked about a future together. I’m not ruling that out. You could come with me.”
    “And do what?”
    “It’s L.A., Liv. You can do anything you want.”
    Marry you? Have your babies? She knew that wasn’t what he meant.
    “My whole life, my family, my home, my business, everything is here in New York. I put the last five years of myself into Transformations,” she said. “I built it. I’m not going to just walk away.”
    “L.A. needs a company that does what you do,” he claimed. “The market’s just as hot there as it is here. Hotter.”

    She thought about starting over from scratch, all over again. Networking, cultivating