Page 53 of Confessions

Hayden was on his feet in an instant and when he reached for her arm, she drew it back. “I can handle this,” she said, when he tried to touch her again.

“I just want to see—”

“If you want to help, watch the damned eggs.” Spinning quickly out of his grasp, she headed for the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.

Hayden felt like a fool as he slid the eggs in the pan. What the devil was he doing here anyway? If he had any sense whatsoever, he’d climb into his Jeep and head back around the lake before he got himself caught in the mystery and mystique of a woman he barely knew yet felt as if he’d known for a lifetime.

“Eggs are done,” he yelled, and when she didn’t reply, he set the pan off the burner and turned off the stove. He buttered the toast and slid the eggs onto small plates and had settled down to wait when she emerged from the bathroom dressed in a long denim skirt and blue sweater. Her hair was braided away from her face and a dusting of powder colored her cheeks.

“You okay?”

“Right as rain.”

“And your wrist?” He glanced at the red burn mark on the inside of her arm.

“I’ll survive,” she replied.

“I could kiss it and make it better.”

She grinned a little. “I’ll bet.” Then, as if the subject were already too intimate, she glanced at the table. “So you do know how to cook.”

“Just the basics.”

“I’m surprised,” she admitted as she sat down.

“Why?” He reached for the blueberry jam and slathered a spoonful onto a piece of toast.

“I thought you had cooks and nannies and governesses to do all that.”

“I did.” He munched the toast and grinned, dabbing at a spot of jelly near his mouth. “But I walked out on my family after the accident and I learned by trial and error.”

“Walked out?” She had been pronging a piece of egg, but her fork paused in midair. “Why?”

“The old man and I had a falling-out.”

She waited, watching his facial muscles alter. Gone was his good mood, and in its stead was the same darkness that she’d begun to recognize. “You fought.”

“More like a war.”

“Over what?”

His eyes glittered with pent-up fury. “Over the worst possible thing—a woman.”

“Wynona,” she said aloud.

“Bingo.”

“He thought you should marry her.”

He hesitated for a beat, then nodded quickly. “That was the gist of it. I didn’t think he should tell me who I should marry or when or even why. We started shouting at first, then, before you knew it, I threw a punch at him. That was it. By the time my mother found us, we were both panting and swearing and had done significant damage to the other. Mother tried to send me to my room. I was nearly nineteen, and instead I walked out the front door.”

“But you returned?”

“Not until I’d proved myself, my own way.”

“What about your parents—?”

“I hurt them,” he said quietly. “Especially my mother. The old man, he had it coming, but I should’ve thought of my mom. She wasn’t the best mother in the world, but, in her own way, she tried, and for the first six months after I left, I let her wonder if I was alive or dead. They sent out private investigators, of course. Eventually one of them caught up with me, a slimy bastard named Timms, but there was nothing they could do. I was legally an adult. So I told the P.I. to take a hike and then called my mother.” He tossed a scrap of his toast into his partially congealed eggs. “I agreed to keep in contact with her if she’d call off her dogs. So we came to an understanding. I lived my life my way—they lived theirs differently. My dad was predictable. He cut me out of his will.”