Another Summer Read Online Free

apology. Better yet, an explanation–one that I can believe this time.”
    “You deserve more than me telling you how sorry I am,” he said with heart-stopping humility. “And I don’t know how to explain something I no longer understand myself.”
    “Why did
you
come here tonight?” She fought to maintain her emotional footing, to remember the pain he’d so easily inflicted on her, to remind herself that if she let him, he would have the power to hurt her that way again.
    “I wanted to see you.”
    “Just me?”
    “Just you.”
    In the background she heard someone announce that dinner was being served. Panic set in at the thought of spending the next hour making small talk between bites of salad and prime rib. Cheryl glanced at the double doors leading to the dining room. “Do you want to stay?”
    He shook his head. “Do you?”
    “No.”
    “Let’s get out of here.”
    “Where?”
    “I don’t care. Anywhere we can be alone to talk.”
    She didn’t know anyplace. She’d only been back to Santa Cruz twice since her parents moved sixteen years ago. So much had changed since the earthquake, she hardly recognized what had once been favorite haunts. “The Last Wave?”
    “Closed down a couple of years ago.”
    “Wilson’s?”
    “Never reopened after the earthquake.”
    “You choose.”
    “What about my place?”
    “You live here?”
    “Twenty minutes away.”
    Her immediate thought was to say no. But then she questioned her reasoning. Why not his place? “I’ll follow you.”
    She turned toward the door. He put his hand in the small of her back. The casual, intimate gesture stole her breath. She stopped and stepped away from him.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I’m not going with you for anything but conversation.”
    “It’s me, Cheryl,” he said softly. “I know why you’re going with me. And no matter how much I wish it were different, I know what to expect.”
    If so, he was a step ahead of her.

2
      C HERYL LEANED AGAINST THE RAILING that surrounded the small, flagstone deck at the back of Andrew’s house and tasted the Chardonnay he had poured for her. She stared at the ocean from the vantage point of being on top of a fifteen-foot cliff, took a deep breath, and let a sense of homecoming fill her mind. She knew this beach; it was one she and Andrew had come to when they wanted to escape the crowds at Santa Cruz. Every memory they’d created here was a good one. Nothing painful had happened that she could summon to use as a shield if she felt herself slipping too close to forgetting the years between then and now.
    The beach beckoned. She could almost feel the warm grains of sand between her toes. She knew exactly how the water would feel as it hit her legs,how free she would feel if she dove into a wave and released herself to its power. From the day her father had moved the family from the mountains of Idaho to the beaches of Santa Cruz and she saw the ocean for the first time, she knew she’d found her spiritual home.
    Andrew came to stand beside her. “I can see it still holds you the way it used to.” He put his hand on the railing next to hers, close but not touching, and turned to face her.
    She both loved and hated that he knew her so well. “How long have you lived here?” More than that, she wanted to know why he lived there. Why this house on this beach?
    “Twelve years, off and on. When my grandfather died I wound up with a great deal of money that no one knew he had.”
    “Your grandfather was still alive all the time you were in foster care?”
    “He and my mother were estranged. Or at least that’s the way the lawyer put it. Seems he didn’t know I existed until the detective I hired to find my mother showed up on his doorstep.”
    Andrew had refused even to consider the possibility of looking for his mother when Cheryl had suggested it. What could have happened to make him change his mind? “Did you find