Carol Arens - Rebel with a Heart

But he wasn’t. And that was as clear as could be.

* * *

Trace stood on his back porch watching Lilleth and her brood, valises in hand, walking down the path that led into the woods. Cold sunshine winked on the snow and glinted off his fake glasses. He’d have to keep them on, though, even though the glare was making his eyes sting.

At the tree line, Lilleth turned and waved. The confident smile on her face wouldn’t last long. In another five minutes she would discover that her cozy, furnished cabin was barely fit to live in.

Trace waved back, but watching while she vanished among the trees made him feel off-kilter. As if something precious had been given, and then snatched away before he’d even had time to blink at the wonder of it.

Trace was a man grounded in reality. Facts were what he lived and breathed.

Still, it couldn’t have been an accident that his long-lost Lils had spent the night under his roof. It couldn’t have been pure chance that put them both on the same train platform at the same instant in time.

Letting her walk away now felt like an act against their common destiny.

Or could it be that their destinies weren’t common? Maybe letting her walk away was fulfilling that.

It was all just a bunch of fancy thinking, anyway, fate and destiny.

Facts, on the other hand, were what they were, no guessing or wondering involved. It would serve him well to keep them in mind.

Here was a hard and cold fact: Lils was walking into a bad situation and taking her children with her.

Another fact was that Trace was honor-bound to protect the inmates at Hanispree, and the safest way to do that was to let Lilleth take that path into the woods and deal with her problems on her own.

And the last fact on his mental list...he would not do it.

Trace picked up the ax leaning against the woodpile beside his back door and followed Lilleth’s footprints into the woods.

He grinned, considering a fact he had just added to his mental list. It didn’t have a thing to do with fancy thinking; it was as hard as facts go.

Clark Clarkly was going to kiss Lilly Gordon.

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