RaeAnne Thayne - Coming Home For Christmas

She gave a shaky breath as he closed the vehicle door. Then she settled into her seat and pulled her seat belt across with hands that trembled.

She couldn’t do this. Eight hours alone in a vehicle with Luke Hamilton. How could she survive it?

He climbed in and fastened his seat belt, then pulled away from Brambleberry House. As she watched her refuge disappear in the rearview window, she told herself it was only a drive. She could endure it.

She had lived through much worse over the past seven years.

Luke drove at a steady pace through the falling snow, heading east on the winding road toward Portland. On summer Sunday evenings, Elizabeth knew, this road would be packed with tired, sunburned beachgoers heading back to Portland for the week ahead. Now, on a Sunday evening in December, they encountered very little traffic going in either direction.

He said nothing, the silence in the vehicle oppressive and heavy. With each mile marker they passed, she felt as if the weight of the past pressed down harder.

“How did Elliot find me?” she finally had to ask again.

He sent her a sideways look before jerking his gaze back to the road. “You will have to ask him. I don’t know all the details.”

“I’m still having a hard time believing he and...Megan are together. Last I knew, she was still grieving Wyatt Bailey. Now...you tell me she’s marrying his brother.”

“She grieved for Wyatt for a long time. But I guess people tend to move on eventually.”

He said the words in an even tone but guilt still burned through her. She had earned his fury through her choices.

“What is Megan up to? Is she...still running the inn?”

He didn’t answer her for a full moment, focused on driving through a tight series of curves. Finally, he glanced over. “Don’t expect that we’re going to chat the entire drive to Haven Point.” His jaw was firm, his hands tight on the steering wheel. “I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want anything to do with you. In fact, I’m going to pretend you’re not here, which isn’t that hard since you haven’t been for seven years.”

She folded her hands in her lap, telling herself she couldn’t let his words wound her. “You don’t want to know...what happened or why I left?”

“I especially don’t want to hear that. I don’t give a damn, Elizabeth. After all these years, I can honestly say that. You can spill all your secrets, spin all your explanations, to the district attorney.”

She wanted to argue but knew it would be pointless. Her words would tangle and she wouldn’t be able to get them out anyway. “Fine. But I’m not going to...sit here in silence.”

She turned on the radio, which was set to the classic rock she knew he enjoyed. She was half tempted to turn the dial to something she knew would annoy him—Christmas music, maybe—but she didn’t want to push.

After several more moments of tense silence, the leaden weight of everything still unsaid between them, she settled into the corner and closed her eyes. She intended only to escape the awkwardness for a moment, but the day’s events and the adrenaline crash after the shock of seeing him again seemed to catch up with her.

She would never have expected it, but somehow she slept.

Elizabeth.

Here.

Sleeping next to him. Or at least pretending to—he couldn’t be sure. Her eyes were closed, her breathing even and measured, but he couldn’t tell if she was genuinely asleep or simply avoiding conversation. He couldn’t really blame her for that, since he’d shut her down hard when she tried to talk to him.

She was close enough he could touch her if he wanted—which he absolutely didn’t.

His hands tightened again on the steering wheel. At this rate, his fingers would stiffen into claws by the time they reached home.

Since the moment Elliot had handed him that piece of paper with a single name and an address, he had imagined this moment, when he would see her again.

His whole world had been rocked by the revelation that she wasn’t dead. Months later he still hadn’t recovered. He had done his best to put it aside, figuring if she wanted him to know where she was, she would have told him herself.

After finding out about the district attorney’s plans the day before, that choice had been taken out of his hands.

He had to retrieve her and take her back to Idaho so he could clear his name. He had been so focused on the task at hand, though, that he hadn’t given the rest of it much thought.

The grim reality was sinking in now. He would have to spend several hours trapped in a vehicle with the wife who had walked out on him and their children without a backward look.

Or had she looked back? He had to wonder. If she hadn’t looked back, why would she continue returning to Haven Point to check up on her children?

He thought of her the last time he had seen the mystery woman, at a play Cassie’s school had performed for Halloween. Cassie and a couple of her friends had played a trio of witches trying to prove they weren’t as bad as everyone thought. He remembered seeing the intriguing stranger—how again hadn’t he guessed she was Elizabeth in disguise?—sitting in the back row, clapping enthusiastically.

That jarring information seemed again to twist everything he thought he knew about her.

He cringed, remembering he’d actually had the wild idea at the play that the next time he saw her, he should strike up a conversation to at least ask her name and what child she was there to support.

What if he’d done it, walked up to her and tried to talk to her without knowing she was his own freaking wife?

He felt like a fool.

He released a breath, fighting down the resurgence of anger.

How was he supposed to endure several more hours of this proximity with her?

He could handle it. For the sake of his children, he had no choice. He had to clear his name. A cloud of suspicion followed him everywhere he went in Haven Point and it was long past time he shed it.

He knew Cassie and Bridger heard the whispers. While he had his undeniable supporters, with his sister and her friends chief among them, plenty of people in Haven Point still believed he had murdered his wife and dropped her body down an abandoned mine shaft or carried it up into the mountains where it had never been found.

Hell, the new Lake Haven district attorney was so convinced Luke had done just that, she was willing to press charges above the protests of nearly everyone in local law enforcement.

He had to move on. He had known where Elizabeth was for months. He could have hauled her back to town long ago and this whole thing would have been done, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to face her.

He hadn’t been ready, he supposed, and had needed time to absorb the new reality that she hadn’t taken her own life—she had only chosen to walk away from the one they had created together.

The winds began to blow harder as he left Portland, swirling sleet and snow against the windshield. It was taking most of his concentration to keep the vehicle on the road, yet Elizabeth slept on soundly, face tucked against the leather seat as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

Once, she had been the best thing in his life, the one who made him laugh and see the joy and beauty around him. Sometimes he felt as if he had loved her forever, but it hadn’t been until the summer after her junior year of college that he’d really known her as anything more than one of his younger sister’s friends.