Page 43 of Love Me Sweet

CHAPTERTWELVE

Sylvie wished she’d insisted Josie drive her home. But even as the thought crossed her mind, she realized this might be the perfect opportunity. After she shared more about her background, if Andrew couldn’t see just how unsuitable they were for each other, well, then he didn’t want to see.

But she didn’t want to share those painful memories in the car. Neither did she want to do it over dinner or pretending to relax with a glass of wine. “Stop the car.”

He didn’t quite slam on the brakes but she did jerk forward in her seat as he wheeled the van to the side of the road and shifted into park. “What’s wrong?”

The worry in his eyes matched the concern in his voice. His gaze anxiously searched hers.

“I’m fine.” The way her heart raced at his intense scrutiny made it a less than honest response, but she wanted to reassure. “I want to walk.”

Andrew sat back, stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “You want towalkhome?”

“No.” Sylvie gave a little laugh, which sounded strained even to her own ears. “I just want to…walk.”

He glanced down the busy ribbon of concrete. “Along the highway?”

“Hardly.” She gave a half-hearted chuckle. “If we walk on the roadside, everyone will think the van broke down and want to give us a ride.”

“If you say so.” The puzzlement remained on his face. “If not down the road, where is it exactly you want to walk?”

She gestured off to the right, to a relatively flat span of ground made up primarily of dirt and scrubby plants. The mountains loomed far in the distance.

She saw his gaze drop to her shoes. Okay, they weren’t hiking boots but they were flat and comfortable. “I need to get out and move.”

His gaze searched her and he shrugged. “Lead the way.”

After a couple of minutes, Sylvie stumbled across a dirt trail of sorts winding its way through the brush. She wasn’t sure what to think when Andrew took her hand but found the support steadied her.

“Any memories of my parents together were of them fighting.” She kept her gaze focused straight ahead. “When he left, things were…quieter.”

His fingers tightened around hers but Andrew remained silent.

“It took me awhile--quite a while in fact--to realize that the man with the red hair who sometimes lifted me high in his arms to touch the ceiling was never coming back.” She lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “Though there were no more loud arguments, my mother was so angry. She bad-mouthed him all the time.”

They walked for a couple of minutes in silence.

“The hardest,” Sylvie paused and swallowed hard against the lump that had formed in her throat, “was when she told me it made her sick to look at me.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Sylvie saw Andrew’s jaw clench. “Because you were his child?”

“That was probably part of it,” Sylvie admitted. “I also looked like him. My hair wasn’t as red as his, but our facial features, well, it was easy to tell I was his daughter.”

“The sins of the father…” he murmured.

“Exactly.” Sylvie heaved a sigh. “For the next five years, I heard more times than I could count that my father was a coward who didn’t even have the guts to tell her to her face he was leaving.”

“Then she did the same thing to you five years later.”

“She did,” Sylvie confirmed in a matter-of-fact tone as she climbed a small incline, Andrew still beside her. She tried not to think that she’d done virtually the same thing to Andrew three months ago.

“Tell me about when she left.” Though uttered in a conversational tone, it was more of a demand than a request.

Thinking back to that horrible day, Sylvie’s heart twisted, but only for a moment. She reminded herself it had been a long, long time ago. She’d moved past the hurt and anger that had permeated her life for so many years of her childhood.

Once again Andrew appeared content to wait.

Sylvie paused at the top of a mound of dirt too small to be called a hill. For a second, she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. She loved the scent of pine. “I came home from school and she wasn’t there. That wasn’t all that unusual. But the apartment appeared less…cluttered. It took me awhile to realize that was because her stuff was gone.”

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