Chapter 1
October 2008 -
Jamie Martin knew that he should have come back to Pine Valley sooner but it just never seemed like the right time. There had always been a million other things that he would rather be doing. Maybe he was running from his past, like his grandmother Ruth had once told him that he was. Maybe he didn’t want to face reality. Maybe he had just wanted an escape from this oppressive, gossipy little town…
Whatever it was that had driven him away, he didn’t relish returning now. As he pulled his car up in front of his dad’s place – a place that he didn’t even recognize (it would never be home), he let out a long, soft sigh. He popped open the car door, thinking about how he was going to meet his sister for the first time. Well, meet Kathy again knowing she actuallywas his sister this time.
This of course made him think of Her. Julia. The woman he felt like he had loved more than any other in his short life. The woman he had broken when he refused to give her children and had then left town. How hard would it have been to stick around? To give her those dozen babies she had craved- or even just one of them? How hard would it have been to put himself out there and not be a selfish bastard? It would not have been difficult at all and now she was gone.
Forever.
Maybe he could have saved her, protected her from her deadly fate but he would never know now and he had yet to even cry about it. Definitely had not allowed himself to feel the pain and guilt and the sadness of the loss. Not until now.
Now tears pooled in his wide blue eyes as he had pushed open the car door and started to climb out. As soon as his feet hit the pavement, he realized that he just could not do this. Face his family. Face the whole world. At least not right now. He had to somehow make peace with the past first.
He climbed back into his Jetta and sped off before his father ever knew he had been there at all.
XoXoXo
Greenlee Smythe Devane would have done almost anything at this point to convince her husband Aidan that she was no longer in love with her ex, Ryan Lavery. Aidan had left her and she knew there was no going back but she’d never known when to call it quits so she would at least try one more time to get through his thick British skull. She loved Aidan, she did; she just needed to focus on that and nothing else.
She walked up the front steps of the grand manse known as Wildwind and pressed down on the doorbell. She waited on the porch, silently praying that he would open the door. He had moved back there a week and a half ago after he had overheard her and Ryan kissing. Yes, overheard. Or assumed he had when he planted a listening device in Greenlee’s earring. That sounded like some asinine move in a spy movie or a cheesy soap opera but it had been real and it had happened. At the time, Greenlee hadn’t known whether to slap the shit out of Aidan or ask his forgiveness for kissing his mortal nemesis. She had been undecided because she was so angry but now she was ready to do the latter. Ask for his forgiveness and beg him to come back home where he belonged.
She bounced around anxiously on the balls of her feet as she waited for Aidan to open the damned door. After standing there for five minutes and repeatedly shoving her acrylic nail down on the bell, she knew no one was going to open the door.
With a sigh she turned up the collar of her black fur-lined jacket and started to turn and walk back to her car when she heard the rumble of an engine just up the road. Aidan. It had to be Aidan. She broke out into a little smile and crossed her arms to wait for him. When she saw the dark car pull into the driveway, she raced over to it. “Aid-" she started to say but seeing who it really was, the response died on her tongue.
Jamie Martin, appearing older and more reserved than she had ever seen him, looked at her as he climbed out of his car. “Hey,” he finally spoke in a soft voice. “I take it you were expecting someone else ...”
She just sighed and tried her best to conceal her disappointment.
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