A Searing Acquaintance (Modern Mrs Darcy #2)

Prologue

Sometimes, at the oddest moments, she would remember the feel of the scars on his back.

One ran up to his shoulder, and he tensed as she caressed it.

They were hard to the touch and hard to forget, and he never really explained how he got them.

She told him about her scar, explaining the injury and the change it made in her life.

But when she asked him for his story, he closed his eyes and covered her mouth with his.

And she lay back and decided it didn’t matter because after that night he wouldn’t matter, and their actions there and then could be forgotten—welcomed and savored in the moment and then forgotten.

But now, more than half a year later in one of those rare flashes of total self-awareness, Elizabeth Bennet could acknowledge that she’d never forgotten him, had never truly wanted to.

The feel of his hands gently touching her face and his dark eyes gazing into hers—those were memories she held onto.

She pulled out those images on hot summer days or when it was raining and her leg ached.

She remembered those feelings whenever she saw a happy couple kissing on the street.

And she felt the ache of regret for the words not spoken.