The Man She Left Behind by Janice Carter Read Free Book Online Page B

in his eyes held her to her chair. A strand of hair dangled across his tanned forehead. He obviously hadn’t shaved that morning, but thanks to his fair complexion he’d always been able to put off that daily task. The weather lines etching the corners of his blue eyes—cornflower blue, she used to call them—and the permanent groove between his thick reddish blond eyebrows did make him look older than his thirty-five years.
    But he’ll never be an old-timer, Leigh knew. Not in spirit, anyway.
    “I’ll drive you back,” he finally said, and headed for the cash register.
    His walk was suddenly as familiar as the cutoffs she’d found in her bureau drawer last night. Leigh’s breath caught and she had to move, unable to sit and watch the replay of the past another second. She stood up and walked toward the screen door he was now holding open for her. Once inside the truck she thanked him for the breakfast.
    “No problem.” He turned on the ignition and braced his right arm along the top of the passenger seat while he backed out onto the road. His fingertips brushed Leigh’s shoulder and for a moment their eyes connected.
    Leigh gave a tentative smile.
    “Sorry,” he mumbled, and returned his hand to the steering wheel.
    Strange how something so trivial could resurrect so many memories, Leigh thought. She stared at his long tanned fingers, the blond hairs on each knuckle. They’d always been working hands, even when Spence was a teenager, and they still bore the callused skin from years of scaling fish, hauling nets and knotting lines. But the nails were trimmed and clean, a personal statement in defiance of work and weather.
    Spence had come from a home quite different from the rest of the gang on Ocracoke. His father had been a fisherman like most of the men in the village then, but alcohol had lost him first his wife and then the stability of a home. Everyone in Silver Lake agreed that Spence McKay had more or less raised himself.
    Leigh could still remember when Spencer’s fingers had first slipped through hers, the night of the Sadie Hawkins dance two years before graduation. They’d arrived at the dance separately. Leigh, who’d come with Jen after her friend had begged her to for days, and Spence, who’d been towed around by a girl in his class. His expression of utter boredom had spurred Leigh to take Jen’s dare and ask him for a dance. From the moment he’d halfheartedly taken her in his arms slow-dancing, Leigh Randall had determined to walk home that night with Spencer McKay.
    “Something on your mind?”
    Leigh glanced up.
    Spence smiled. “You looked faraway.”
    Leigh cleared her throat. “Yes, I was.”
    “Thinking of New York?”
    She shook her head. “Not faraway in miles. In years.”
    “Ah. Well, I suppose coming home brings back a lot of memories.”
    That’s an understatement. “Yes,” she said in a voice as noncommittal as she could muster.
    After he shifted into drive he glanced sideways at her. “I hope they haven’t all been bad ones.”
    “Not all of them.”
    Spence drummed his fingertips against the steering wheel and wished he could think of something clever to say. But he figured he’d already said more than he ought to have. He thought back to a few weeks ago when he’d first heard Leigh Randall was returning to Ocracoke. Seemed like a day hadn’t passed since that he wasn’t thinking about her. Remembering things—too many things—they’d done together, and later, how it had all ended up.
    At that point his mind always shut down. Some things, he decided, should not be lived again but laid to rest forever. That was the philosophy he’d adopted long ago. Somewhere around the time he’d grown up—after Leigh left and then Jen. But every now and again his errant mind delved into the past like a wayward child, and memories flashed unbidden before him.
    He’d first noticed how beautiful Leigh Randall was about the time she turned fourteen. He’d met up with