Elizabeth Harbison - Beyond Business

Beyond Business

ELIZABETH HARBISON

BRENDA HARLEN

ALLISON LEIGH

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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ELIZABETH HARBISON

My thanks to Andre Coutu and James Price,

who got me out of my old house. Thanks also

to Charles Clark of Waterworks Plumbing

in Snow Hill, MD — a true hero in times of need

(and leaky pipes and bathtubs) — who made my

new house so much nicer…and drier.

The fact that he actually asked her if she was really sure she was ready to do it made her love him all the more.

What other eighteen-year-old guy with a normal libido would be that considerate? Meredith Waters knew—she absolutely knew —that if she’d told Evan she wasn’t ready, that she was chickening out even though they’d planned this romantic evening together for the past five weeks, he would have backed right off.

He might have needed a cold shower. A really long cold shower. But he would have let her off the hook without the usual guy nonsense about everything from promises broken to the supposedly serious medical consequences of unsatisfied desire.

Guys were, by and large, idiots.

But not Evan Hanson. Evan proved there really were Prince Charmings out there, though they were few and far between. Evan was Meredith’s soul mate. She was sure of it. Not that they were the same kind of people—far from it. He was wild and she was conservative. But they complemented each other. And they felt the same way about the most important things. They had the same standards and the same goals for their lives.

Most important, Evan was a guy she knew she could count on through thick and thin. The school and their parents might have thought he was sort of a wild kid, but Meredith knew he’d always be there for her.

Which made her all the more sure that she would never regret what they were about to do. She was a lucky, lucky girl to have her first time be with a guy like Evan.

“Are you sure?” he asked her again, running his hand down the length of her upper arm.

They were lying in her canopy bed, facing each other. Her parents were out of town for four more days, so not only was the guy perfect but the setting was, too.

She smiled at him, taking in his dark good looks like a tall glass of cold water on a hot day.

And it was definitely hot in here.

“I’m sure,” she said, then cocked her head playfully. “But I’m getting the impression you’re not so sure.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” He pulled her over to him and kissed her deeply, rolling onto his back so she was on top of him. He wrapped his arms around her tightly, pulling her so close she almost couldn’t tell where she stopped and he began.

She loved that feeling.

They kissed and kissed, just like they always did. They’d done it so much at this point that they practically had it down to a science. He moved his mouth this way, she moved her mouth that way, their tongues touched, and— poof! Magic.

“I love you, Mer,” Evan whispered, slowly rolling her over so she was on her back on the soft mattress and laced-edged sheets she’d bought last month with this moment in mind.

“I love you, too,” she said, her response automatic and completely without doubt. “More than you’ll ever realize.”

He gave that Cheshire-cat grin she adored and reached over to turn off the light on her bedside table.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light, but when they did she noticed a slash of moonlight cutting through the curtains and spilling onto her bed.

Perfect.

And it was. It was just … right.

Afterward, as she lay in the bed looking out the window while the moon slowly floated higher and crossed the sky like a big silver balloon, she felt more joy than she’d ever felt in her entire life.

Meredith smiled in the dark as Evan talked to her in hushed tones about how beautiful she was and how he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her and how if he didn’t get over to the Silver Car Diner for some blueberry pancakes and vanilla cola fast he was going to die.

This, she realized, was perfect contentment.

What she didn’t realize, in these last few moments of blissful ignorance, was that within two months Evan would be thousands of miles away, without so much as a goodbye, and that he wouldn’t look back for more than a decade.

“And that concludes the reading of the will of George Arthur Hanson.”

Evan Hanson sat still in the stiff leather chair, feeling like a caricature of the prodigal son, drawn in invisible ink.

He’d returned, as prodigal sons always did, against his better judgment. Instinct had warned him that this would be nothing but trouble—and probably painful to boot—but he’d ignored instinct.

That was a mistake.

His uncle, David Hanson, had been unusually persuasive in convincing him to come back for the reading of the will. David knew Evan had suffered years of conflict with his father, and that George hadn’t spoken to his son since he’d left. Still, David had pointed out to Evan that, while it might be too late to mend fences with his father, he could at least come and hear the patriarch’s last message to him and perhaps gain some peace.

It had been peaceful, all right. In fact, his father’s message was a resounding silence.

George Hanson had neglected to so much as mention Evan’s name in his will, not even to say, “And to my second son, Evan, I leave absolutely nothing. Nada. Zip. Not even a stainless-steel spoon.”

It was as if Evan didn’t exist to his father.

No, it was worse than that. Evan knew his father well enough to know this lack of mention meant that, to George, Evan really hadn’t existed anymore once he’d left the country twelve years ago. Since George had effectively run him out of town twelve years ago, that was, by holding the worst kind of emotional blackmail over his head.

Since then, his job presumably done, George had written Evan off, forgotten about him completely.

Everyone knows it’s more of an insult to ignore someone than to tell them off. And George had ignored Evan like a champ. They hadn’t spoken in twelve years. Sure, Evan could shoulder half the blame for that, but when he’d left he was only eighteen, and his father knew damn well he’d created a situation that made Evan feel as if he couldn’t come back.

Surely George should have seen the crisis he’d sent his teenage son into and done something to fix it, or at least make it better. It wasn’t in George’s nature to extend an olive branch, but even pelting Evan with olives would have been better than the eerie silence.

George hadn’t bothered to do anything. He probably hadn’t even thought about his middle son more than once or twice in the time between Then and Now.