Read The Way They Were for Free Online

She just lost her husband a few months ago. She’s grieving.”
    “I can appreciate that.”
    “She’s vulnerable.” She jabbed a finger at him, stopping just short of nailing his chin. “You, better than anyone, know how to exploit that.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?” Now she was annoying him.
    Her voice dripped with accusation. “Who left her, huh? Who walked away without even saying good-bye?”
    It wasn’t supposed to be good-bye. He’d be damned if he’d admit that to her. “I had a lot to deal with, or have you conveniently forgotten what happened?”
    “Of course not. But you could have been a man about it instead of pulling a disappearing act.”
    He didn’t like to think about the early days without Kate, when he was filled with confusion and misery. Diana had guided him straight to Princeton and out of Kate’s life.
    Angie continued her little barrage. “Two months of nothing. No phone number, no address, nothing but silence.”
    Her words clogged his brain, jabbing him with memories of Kate. “I needed some distance.”
    “Right.”
    He didn’t bother to respond. So what if she didn’t believe him? She’d never believed a word he’d said, especially when it came to Kate.
    The witch opened her mouth and blew him away like a nor’easter. “Kate was innocent and you deserted her.”
    “Damn you, I wanted to come back.” Like a fool.
    Angie Sorrento shook her head and a spray of dark curls fell across her forehead. “You are such a liar.”
    “I don’t care what you believe.” Anger festered in his gut and spiraled out in his next words. “All I know is when I called ten weeks later, Clay Maden answered the phone. Kate’s phone. He said they’d gotten married.” The words burned his tongue. “You tell me who got played.”
    “You bastard. You don’t know anything.”
    “So enlighten me.”
    “Not on your life. Kate will get through this just like she did before, and the people who love her will be here to help her, just like they were before.”
    “Before what?”
    But she was through sharing information. She turned on him and rattled off personal data about him as though they were a list of priors. “I know all about you, Rourke Flannigan. You traipse around the world in your little jet, wearing your fancy suits, bedding every woman who catches your eye, and you don’t care about any of them. All you care about is money and power and your own ego, which is bigger than your whole bank account.” Her dark eyes glittered with loathing. “Why don’t you just go back to Chicago and your little uptown girlfriends and leave us peons alone?”
    Rourke stared at the spitfire in front of him, half expecting her to blow flames from her nostrils. “What in the hell have I ever done to you?”
    “Not me. Kate.”
    “She’s the one who married somebody else.” He could barely get the words out. “Got that?”
    “Right.” She let out a snort of disgust. “You ran back to Chicago and hid in your little rich life and then off you went to Princeton and a gazillion other conquests and I’ll bet not once did you think about her.”
    “That’s enough.”
    She actually had the gall to sneer at him. “Is the truth a little too real for your type? You just wash it all away with a disappearing act, that’s your style, isn’t it?”
    “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” But a sick feeling gripped him as her words settled in his brain. Part of what she said had been true, at least in the beginning. He’d been hesitant to tell Diana about the girl from Montpelier whose mother had brought tragedy to his family, but when he came home from Princeton one weekend, she guessed and that made the telling so much easier. When he finished his heart-wrenching tale of undying love for Kate Redmond, Diana had kissed his cheek and with an uncharacteristic show of sympathy, told him to follow his heart. All that honesty and it had been too damned late. “Did she