Jilted: Promise Harbor, Book 1 Read Online Free Page B

had moved to Boston to go to college, Josh had graduated with a degree in fire science and was working with the Boston Fire Department. Allie had contacted him and asked him to call Devon to see how she was doing in the big city all on her own. The first time she’d heard his voice on the phone, she’d gone all sticky-tongued, her heart hammering. He’d suggested meeting for coffee sometime, and at first she tried to decline, but he insisted that Allie wanted him to see her and see how she was doing, so she agreed.
    After that first coffee together, they hadn’t seen each other much, but Josh had kept in touch and helped her out with so many things, looking after her in the big city. She’d told herself he was like a big brother and pushed away those feelings of attraction for him. Until one day…things had changed.
    Devon poked at her lasagna as Susan talked. Dad made brief, unhelpful responses as Devon drifted off into memory land. That first time Josh had kissed her was a memory she liked to pull out every once in a while and relive, a memory that made her heart both fill with joy and ache with sadness. It was kind of like when you had something stuck in your tooth, or a canker sore that you just couldn’t leave alone, even though it hurt. She kept that memory alive and well even though it…hurt. She guessed the word would be bittersweet . Kind of like coming to his wedding, with a bride who wasn’t her.
    She was brought back to the present by the peculiar sight of her father and Susan talking and smiling at each other. After they’d eaten, Devon went do the dishes as she always had as a teenager, and Susan stayed in the kitchen to help. Dad left them alone, and she heard the television in the living room come on.
    She shot Susan a glance as she squeezed some dish soap into the sink. “Have you lived next door long?”
    Susan looked at her and gave a crooked smile. “Doug hasn’t told you about me, has he?”
    “Um. No.” They didn’t talk much, and when they did it wasn’t much beyond the basics. A relationship with a woman, though? Hell, that was something to mention. You would think.
    Susan smiled. “Well, I’ll leave that to him.”
    “Ha,” Devon said. “You might as well tell me. Apparently he isn’t going to.”
    Susan lifted an eyebrow, and guilt nudged Devon for being so disloyal to her father as to criticize him to a stranger.
    “Dad’s been alone a long time,” she said. “I guess I’m just a little surprised.”
    “He told me about your mother leaving.”
    “Yes. That was sixteen years ago.”
    Devon understood why her mom had left. She’d been beautiful and fun, and Devon had always known her mom had wanted more than living in Promise Harbor, married to a man who ran a little charter fishing business. She liked to dress up and go out for dinner, and although there were some lovely restaurants in Promise Harbor that catered to the huge influx of tourists every summer, she’d always wanted to go to Boston or New York to shop and dine and go to plays and concerts. That wasn’t exactly Dad’s kind of thing.
    Even as a kid Devon had wondered how they’d gotten together, and later in life she figured it out between the pieces she knew, the small things her dad shared and what she learned from others in the town. Her mom’s family was wealthy and had owned a summer property just outside town, and the summer she’d been eighteen, she’d met Dad. They’d fallen in love and her mom got pregnant. With her. Somehow Mom ended up staying in Promise Harbor and stayed for twelve years that apparently were torture for her. Eventually she just couldn’t do it anymore and returned to her family in New York, to the life they wanted her to lead.
    What Devon didn’t understand then, and probably never would, was why her mom hadn’t taken her with her.
    “That must have been difficult,” Susan said in a gentle voice. “I can’t imagine leaving my children.”
    “You have