And he probably would hate her when he awoke. When reality surfaced and he realized the lengths she had gone to in ensuring his engagement was broken.
She wondered, though, if he would remember her arrival here, or the brief time he had touched her as a woman, rather than the troublemaker he had always called her.
Forcing herself to her feet, she left the penthouse, locked the door on the way out, and told herself, this was over.
No more.
Loving John Walker was a dead-end street, and Sierra needed more than brick walls to bang her head against.
It was time to go on without those girlhood dreams.
It was time to go on without her heart.
ONE
ONE YEAR LATER
John C. Walker Jr., son of the formidable John Calvin Walker, had finally come home. He could feel the knowledge sinking inside him, filling all but one part of his soul and reaffirming a decision that had been made on a rainy Boston night a year before.
Standing on the upper deck of the Nauti Dreams as it coasted slowly down Lake Cumberland, he drew in a deep, relaxing breath and felt something slowly relax inside him further. Some inner tension, a deep-seated longing that had finally come to rest.
His father had left Kentucky years before, long before John had been born, and wiped the dust of the Kentucky mountains off his feet. Unfortunately, as his father liked to claim, some of it had managed to adhere to his children.
One of his daughters, as well as his only son, had retreated back to Kentucky.
The mountains rose around him like comforting arms, nestling him within a strong, nurturing embrace. A whisper of a breeze rustled through the trees and over his sweat-dampened shoulders, while the strong heated rays of the sun further bronzed his once pale flesh.
He felt stronger here, more in charge. He felt as though, for the first time in thirty-two years, he was finally himself.
The sun had bleached his thick, light brown hair almost blond, darkened his flesh, and put small lines at the corners of his eyes. The hard, physical labor of helping his sister and her husband build their home, and rebuild the bar that had been burned down by an arsonist the year before, had honed his muscles and sculpted his body.
He’d been in good shape before, but now, he felt at his peak. He felt invigorated and alive.
The houseboat he’d bought from the Mackay Marina was perfect. A floating home that suited the need to push away conformity and embrace that vein of gypsy wildness his father had always scowled over. It gave him peace. Or at least a large measure of the peace he had been searching for.
For the first time in his life, John Walker was close to finding satisfaction. If there was one little niggling worry that continued to prod at him, then he fought to ignore it. Nothing was perfect. No life was completely serene, but he was as close as he had ever been to it.
If dreams haunted him of one woman, a night he wasn’t so certain of, and a pleasure so perfect it couldn’t be real, then he tried to push it behind him.
Other than that night, that woman, he’d finally found a place he belonged.
Now, he understood why his sister had fought her family’s insistence that she return to Boston when the people of this county had turned on her for a brief time. Why the gypsy in her had rebelled and returned to where the mountains nurtured that spark of rebel fire inside her.
He understood things now that he had never grasped before, and the regrets that had once filled his life began to fade away.
All but one.
Shaking his head, he refused to allow himself to touch that thought again. He was beneath the sun, the water lapping at the boat as it coasted gently along the channel. Above, an eagle soared and called out to its mate while a coyote watched him suspiciously from the far bank.
Deer grazed in a small clearing close to the water across from the coyote, as though taunting it with its inability to reach them in time for a meal. It reminded him of the woman he refused to think of, and the months he had spent attempting to chase her down.
The sounds of nature enclosed him. The traffic, squawking, blaring horns, and raised voices of the city were blocked by distance and by his own determination to put it behind him.
He’d found friends here in the past year. He’d found purpose. And he’d finally figured out the sister he’d never understood before.
Rolling his head, he let the breeze caress his neck as his eyes narrowed, his hands confident on the wheel of the large craft as he maneuvered it along the lake.
He wasn’t John Calvin Walker Sr.’s son here. Here, he was that damned Walker boy, and that suited him fine. He had family here that understood the mountains, brewed their own liquor, and laughed when he choked on it.
Mountain parties, barbeques, and pig roasts. And he was loving every minute of it.
Hell, he was more than loving it, he was reveling in it.
He worked when he wanted to, took the legal cases that interested him, and the rest of the time he worked with a nonprofit group that built homes for the poor and looked after the elderly. And he let the mountains embrace him.
The only thing he couldn’t run away from, though, was the damned cell phone he couldn’t seem to throw away, no matter how many times he tried.
The bastard insisted on getting excellent reception, even here, deep within the forested land rising around him. Proof of it was the insistent beeping at his hip.
Glaring at the water stretching out before him, he pulled the phone from his pocket, scowled at the number on the display, and against his better judgment, accepted the call.
“No, I’m not bored yet,” he told his father as he brought the phone to his ear.
A second of silence greeted him.
“Of course you’re not,” his father’s cultured voice drawled sarcastically. “There’s rarely time to be bored when you’re pretending to be the luckless playboy of Lake Cumberland. The novelty hasn’t quite had a chance to wear off, has it?”
“Not yet,” John agreed happily. “Do you know what I’m doing right now?”
“Do I want to know?” his father asked warily.
“I’m maneuvering my houseboat down the lake. I’m sweating like a pig and grinning from ear to ear. When was the last time you did that, Pop?”
“You don’t want to know,” John Sr. growled warningly. “When are you returning home?”
“I told you, I am home,” he retorted. “If you called to argue with me again, then you’re wasting your time and I have better things to do.”