There he was

Olivia froze, and then her heart took off in an out-of-control gallop. Any semblance of poise she might have gained in her years as a professional broadcaster completely deserted her. She stood in front of him as vulnerable as if she was seventeen again and head over heels in love.

To say he looked good would have been an understatement.

“Olivia.”

Olivia. Not Liv as she had once been to him. The greeting was arctic cold, his whole demeanor one of stiff politeness.

“Hello, John.”

“Mind if I ask what you’re doing here?”

People were staring. She felt their curious gazes and heard the whispers. She willed her voice toward something close to indifference when she said, “The same thing as everyone else in our class.”

“Everyone else is welcome here.”

Dear Reader,

I’ve always loved a good reunion story. I like to believe that certain people really are meant to be together, and that even when life throws them some pretty hefty obstacles, they still find their way back to each other. Such is John and Olivia’s story.

There are a lot of ways to define success in the careers we’ve chosen. For me, it’s the letter I receive from a reader who thought about my story long enough after closing the book to write and tell me so. With so many outlets to turn to for entertainment in our increasingly high-tech world, I think we readers share a special understanding of what it is to open a book and spend a few hours engrossed in the lives of characters we grow to love. I really hope you’ll enjoy following John and Olivia to their fifteen-year high school reunion and meeting their old friends Cleeve and Lori.

I would love to hear from you! My e-mail address is inglathc@aol.com, or write to me at P.O. Box 973, Rocky Mount, VA 24151.

All best,

Inglath

John Riley’s Girl
Inglath Cooper

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my Lori. Who would have thought, all those years ago,

we would still be best friends?

And for Mac. Again, for believing.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

The Invitation

“AND THAT’S YOUR update for this Friday evening, May 23. I’m Olivia Ashford sitting in for Robert Marshall.”

Olivia held her smile, a smile reflecting cool assurance that she was there to report the truth and nothing but. The cameraman directly in front of her signaled they were off the air and gave her a thumbs-up.

“Good job, Olivia,” he said.

A chorus of agreement from the rest of the crew followed the compliment.

“Robert better get back from that island soon, or he might not have a job waiting for him!” Mandy Overstreet was a young assistant producer whose smile held the same wattage as her red hair. Unlike Olivia’s, it did not reflect the polish of practice so much as spontaneity. But then she was still in the early throes of infatuation with broadcasting. Olivia had been, too, early on. Before she’d learned that expendable was a word that loomed on her career horizon with a billboard that read: Mess Up and There’s Always Someone to Replace You.

“Thanks, everybody. You guys make it easy.” Olivia unhooked her microphone and got up from behind the desk.

“Nicely done.” Michael O’Roarke stood a few feet from the anchor platform, his arms folded across his chest, his blue gaze warm.

“Thanks.” Olivia unbuttoned her suit jacket and loosened the collar of her blouse.

They wound their way through a maze of desks to the long corridor that led to Olivia’s office. “Hey, we like you up there in the top spot,” Art, a senior writer for the evening news, boomed out in a Boston baritone.

“Thanks, Art. Your words, though.”

He grinned. “You make ’em sound good.”

Inside Olivia’s office, Michael closed the door behind them. Olivia had intended to change the formal mahogany furniture in which someone else had dressed the room, but she had never gotten around to moving it to the top of the to-do list. And so she’d left it, feeling the ill fit of it, as if she were borrowing someone else’s clothes. Sometimes, her whole life felt like that, as if it didn’t really belong to her.

“It’s yours, you know. That job is yours.” Michael sliced a hand through the air, a smile cracking his face wide open.

“Isn’t that jumping the gun a bit?” Olivia laughed, raising an eyebrow. “This was my first night sitting in for him.”

“But Robert’s going to retire. Everyone knows it. You’ve been on the morning show for almost three years. And I’m sorry, but people are going to like your beautiful blue-eyed self in a spot where they’re used to seeing a stiff.”

“Michael—”

“I know. You don’t like to talk about things before they happen. But I don’t think you can jinx this one. It’s just about as sure a thing as sure gets.”

“There’s nothing sure or predictable in this business,” Olivia disagreed, even though it was clear she was at least being considered for the position. Who would have thought the nearly destitute young girl who’d answered an ad in a newspaper for the job of receptionist would ever end up here?

It had been a long climb.

Michael tilted his head in reluctant agreement. “Granted. But I think it’s going to be yours if you want it.”

Olivia rubbed the back of her neck where tension had unfolded and now blanketed her shoulders with clamplike intensity.

“Here, let me.” Michael stepped forward to knead the knotted muscles, his touch efficient. “Wow, you are tense.”

“You should do this for a living.”

“Michael O’Roarke. Personal masseur,” he teased.

“You’d miss the power lunches.”

“Ouch. But yeah, probably so.”

As the morning show’s executive producer, Michael had hired Olivia three years ago as a fill-in anchor. She’d eventually become full-time. The two of them had tried a route other than friendship in the beginning. But a week skiing in Aspen had given them both a reality check. Seven straight days together had etched a convincing enough picture of why permanent wasn’t in the cards for them.

It had taken them both a good six months to admit it wasn’t going to work. But miraculously, they’d survived as friends. Good friends, really. And that was something she didn’t take for granted.

Before Michael, she’d kept her life bare of serious relationships. There had been a couple of forays toward something more than casual dating, but there was always a reason to nip it in the bud. The guys were too assertive, too passive, too tall, too short, too aloof, too needy. Too something.

From this, she had developed a reputation for being career-driven in each of the stations where she’d worked. She’d heard the labels attached to her name by some of the men whose interest she had not indulged: ice princess, Miss North Pole. None of them exactly original, and there had been a few that didn’t get anywhere near that flattering. But the reputation suited Olivia. As did being alone. At least until recently.

Recently, the void in her life seemed to yawn wider with every achievement and every year that went by. She had once thought success, like ordinary old spackle, would fill the holes, heal any residual wounds and declare to the world that she was a person who had something to offer. But sometimes, mostly at night, she would wonder: Am I going to be alone for the rest of my life? Is that what I want? Isn’t there anything more than this?

In the light of day, the panic resumed its day job as logic, and her own answer to the question was that a person could not expect to have everything. She had made work the emphasis in her life, and for the most part, it was a good life.

The phone buzzed. She stepped away from Michael’s attentive hands and picked up the receiver. “Yes, Daphne?”

“There’s a woman on line three who says she went to high school with you. A Lori Morgan Peters? Want me to take a message?”

Olivia blinked. Her lips parted, then pressed together. Lori?

“You still there?”

“Ah, yes. Thanks, Daphne. I’ll take it.” To Michael, she murmured, “Excuse me,” then circumnavigated the desk and sat down in her chair.

He hooked a thumb toward the doorway. “See you in the morning.”

She nodded, exhaling hard. Lori. It had been fifteen years since they’d graduated from high school, since Olivia had left the town where they’d both grown up, without ever saying goodbye. Sheer cowardice nearly made her buzz Daphne back and ask for that message. But an inner voice taunted. Come on, Olivia, be an adult. The past is a lot of miles behind you. She drew in a deep breath and pushed the blinking light on her phone. “Lori?”

“Olivia? I can’t believe I actually got through to you!”

The voice, laced with shock, sent her reeling back a decade and a half, to another place, another life. “Goodness. What a wonderful surprise. How are you?”

“Fine, fine.” Her one-time best friend laughed. “And I don’t have to ask how you are. Obviously, great!”

The assertion carried not an ounce of resentment. But then that was the Lori she remembered. Olivia pictured her as she’d been during their high-school years. Barely five feet tall. Sky-blue eyes. Freckles scattered across her nose. A petite-framed girl with an unerring belief in herself and the possibilities available in the world around her. “Things are pretty good,” she said.

“We keep up with you around here, you know. The town library even has a whole section devoted to your career.”

Olivia knew this, of course. The Lanford County Library had contacted her a number of times, asking if she would be willing to address some of the high-school students interested in journalism, but she had never accepted the invitation. Doing so would have meant going back to Summerville, and after that one last time, it had never again been a consideration.

Olivia gripped the receiver. “Where are you? What are you doing these days?”

“In Summerville. After college, I worked as a chemist for a pharmaceutical company. Then I met the love of my life, moved back and now have four children. Dorothy was right. There’s no place like home.”

Home. By all rights, Summerville wasn’t really home to her. She had no family there anymore. No ties. Other than memories, of course. But while a person could pack her bags and leave a place behind for good, the same could not be said of memories. Memory had tentacles. “Your family. They’re all okay, I hope?”

“I lost my dad a few years ago,” Lori said, her voice softening.

“Oh, Lori.” Olivia’s hand flew to her chest. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.”

Olivia didn’t miss the catch in her old friend’s voice. She remembered spending nights at Lori’s house, a big white pre–Civil War farmhouse that had been in her family for generations. It had a fireplace in every bedroom, an amazing thing to Olivia who’d never imagined houses having such things. It was the kind of house that always smelled as though there were oatmeal cookies baking in the oven. And she remembered envying the closeness of that family. How they had all so obviously loved one another despite the typical arguments between brothers and sisters, which Lori’s round, cherry-cheeked mother had refereed with good humor. In many ways, it had seemed like heaven on earth to Olivia. So different from her own home.

“Mom’s fine, though,” Lori went on. “And Sally-Anne, you remember my youngest sister, she’s pregnant for the first time, big as a small elephant, and making us all pay for the fact that we said the family needed another grandchild.” An affectionate chuckle followed the assertion, setting off another unwelcome hollow echo inside Olivia.

“No, life’s pretty normal around here. Not too exciting the way your life must be. Interviewing celebrities every day. Sitting on the same couch as that gorgeous Derek Phillips.” She drew gorgeous out to three syllables. “I bet you can’t wait to get out of bed every morning. I know I wouldn’t be able to.”

The awe in Lori’s voice was something Olivia had grown used to hearing in the voices of strangers since she had become a public figure. But hearing it in her old friend’s voice felt off-key.

“So did you get the invitation?” Lori asked.

“Invitation?”

“To our high-school reunion.”

Surprise zinged through Olivia. Reunion. “No. I didn’t.”

“Oh, no,” Lori said, her voice devoid of its former buoyancy. “I was certain it would have gotten there by now. I was just calling to make sure. I sort of got lassoed into organizing the thing.”

Olivia glanced at the stack of mail in the center of her desk—three days worth. “It could be here. I have a bunch of mail I haven’t opened yet.”

“Well, anyway, it’s on the fifth of June. Is there any way you could come? It’d be so great to see you.”

“It would be wonderful to see you, too, but I don’t think I could possibly get away,” Olivia said quickly, not giving herself a chance to consider doing anything else. There had been times, through the years, when the yearning to go back to Summerville had throbbed like an old injury that makes itself known on rainy days. She had not indulged the throbbing, intense as it had become at times. Her old life in Summerville was over.

“I should have called you sooner,” Lori said, disappointment edging the words. “But actually, everyone else thought you’d be too busy to come. With your schedule and everything, I mean. I thought there might be a slight chance.”

Olivia felt somehow small and disloyal for proving Lori wrong and the rest of them right.

“I’m sorry,” she said, even as a little voice screamed in her ear: Don’t be a coward, Olivia! You could go! But logic asserted itself as well, and there was too much old pain there, too many memories better left in place.

“Oh.”

A dozen questions weighted the one-word response. Her friend from long ago would have asked them. Why did you leave? Why haven’t you ever come back? Olivia felt tangible distance between them now, and part of her rebelled. Lori had once been her best friend, and hearing her voice for the first time in so many years stirred up fresh regret for letting something so meaningful slip away.

“I’d really love to see you, Lori. Maybe you could come to D.C. and visit sometime?”

A pause and then, “Well, sure.”

The words sounded empty, and too polite. Not the kind of words you said to someone you’d once saved a seat for on the school bus every day, shared lockers with, written notes back and forth to during Mr. Primrose’s study hall. “Really, let’s plan a weekend sometime soon.”

“I might just take you up on it,” Lori said, her voice brightening a little.

“I hope you will.”

Silence gripped them then. How could awkwardness manage such a stranglehold on two people who had once been so close?

“Well, I know you must be busy, Olivia. It was good to talk to you. If you change your mind, here’s my number.” She reeled it off while Olivia scribbled it on the notepad in front of her, vowing to call and invite Lori for a visit just as soon as things slowed down a bit and ignoring the voice that said they never did. Or she never let them.

“We’ll talk soon, okay?”

“Sure, Olivia. Take care.”

They said goodbye and hung up. Olivia’s hand lingered on the receiver, some part of her reluctant to break the connection. She was overcome by a sudden urge to call Lori back and tell her she would come. She missed their friendship with a keen sense of longing and loss.

Olivia let go after a few regretful moments, then reached across the desk and picked up the pile of mail. Sifting through the stack, she singled out an envelope, turned it over and looked at the return address on the back seal.

Summerville, Virginia.

Her heart dropped, even though over the years, she had received what amounted to boxes of mail with postmarks from her former hometown. But her reaction was always the same. Her hope, unwelcome though it was, always the same.

Daphne had already slit open the envelope. Olivia slipped out the heavy card inside.

Hard to believe, but yes, we are old enough to have a 15-year class reunion! (Yikes!!)

Are you brave enough to attend?

We hope so!

What: A weekend of reuniting!

Events taking place Thursday through Saturday.

Where: Lanford County Community Center

When: June 5-7

Why? Because that’s the only way you’ll get to see how we all turned out!

She dropped the card onto the desk, overcome with a wave of nostalgia for some precious things she had lost long ago. She swiveled her chair away from the desk and settled her gaze on the D.C. skyline outside her office window. So many buildings. So many people. In comparison, Summerville was another world altogether. Had it changed? Were the people there any different than they’d been fifteen years ago? Was the dilapidated old house she’d grown up in still standing? Was the farmer’s market still held downtown every Saturday morning rain or shine? Was John still there?

With the name a memory came floating up and emotion knotted in her throat. Lori working the summer of their junior year at the Just-a-Minute Drive-In. Olivia and John parked out front in his battered old Dodge pickup boasting four different layers of paint. He’d bought it himself with money he’d saved working summers on his dad’s farm, and he couldn’t have been more proud of it had it been bought right off the assembly line. Olivia sitting in the middle of the seat, her shoulder tucked under his arm. Lori ducking inside the rolled-down window and telling them not to order any fries because Cecil Callaway had just dropped a fly in the deep fryer.

She could still hear John’s laughter, the deep, full rumble that had never failed to warm her, fill her with something satisfying and secure. She had loved to hear him laugh, had taken delight in being the one to make him do so. And as strange as it would have sounded to anyone else, considering that nearly every cheerleader at Summerville High would have given up her spot on the squad for a date with John Riley, it was his laughter that had drawn her to him when he’d asked her out at the beginning of their junior year.

There had been so little laughter in her own house. Her father had long before convinced himself he had nothing to laugh about. And Olivia had learned early on to censor hers if she wanted to avoid the frown of disapproval that always followed.

To her, John’s laughter had held the power of a healing touch, made her feel that everything would be all right. She’d been wrong about that part. Laughter didn’t fix anything; it just made things a little more bearable.

She could have asked Lori about him. Wished now with an ache that she had. But then what good would it have done? John had made another life for himself, moved on to someone else.

Olivia picked up the card, read it again, then stuck it back in the envelope. She thought of the possibilities in her immediate future—a chance at the main anchor position for her network, a position someone starting out in broadcasting could only dream of.

This was a good change, the kind that should fill a person with satisfaction and a feeling of success.

She got up from her desk, went to the window that took up nearly one side of the corner office and looked down at the traffic below.

With all that, why then this feeling of rootless-ness, as if her entire existence were only surface-deep and the slightest unbalancing would topple her over into nothingness? Why was it that she lived her life like someone afraid that a snap of the fingers would make it all suddenly disappear?

There was something about hearing Lori’s disappointment that made her wonder: Why can’t I go back?

It would be so great to see you.

Why not?

For so long, she had avoided too much thought of the place where she’d grown up, the people she had known there. She’d ignored it, as if in doing so the memories would eventually disappear altogether.

But life didn’t really work that way, did it? Wasn’t it only in facing up to those things with the power to haunt that a person ever stood a chance of overcoming them?

And Olivia had never done that.

She’d just walked away, closed the door.

Fifteen years ago, she had needed to cut all ties to her home. To maintain even one would have been to remain piped into things too painful for her to hear. And so she had shoved her entire life there into a box that she’d sealed up and vowed never to open.

But Lori’s call had brought front and center recognition of exactly how much she had lost fifteen years ago. Not just John and the future they had planned together. But so many other things, as well. A friendship whose equal she had never again found. And the simple right to revisit the place where she had grown up. Rocky as that childhood had been, it was hers.

Standing here above a city where she had never felt as if she really fitted, Olivia wondered if maybe it was time to go home. Maybe it wasn’t too late to reclaim some of the past—own up to it and then put it away for good. This time with peace and acceptance.

Was she strong enough to do that and walk away again?

There was only one way to find out.

CHAPTER TWO

Should Have Said No

HE DESERVED a good swift kick in the pants.

Any man who let his home be turned into a three-ring circus for a weekend deserved nothing less.

From the door of the brood mare barn, John Riley watched the half-dozen workers in his front yard hammering tent stakes into the ground, transforming the state’s biggest cutting-horse farm into the stage for his fifteen-year class reunion.

When a water pipe had burst at the Community Center earlier that morning, flooding the place and rendering it unusable, Lori Peters had called John in a panic, vowing indebtedness to him for life if he would agree to have the weekend-long reunion at Rolling Hills. In the face of her desperation— Please, John, I’ll never ask you for another favor as long as I live. The park is already booked this weekend, and there’s nowhere else we can rent last-minute big enough for all these tents—there weren’t many excuses he could have made without sounding like a selfish jerk. So here he stood, cursing the decision that ensured there was no earthly way he could get out of going to the thing now.

On a normal day, Rolling Hills Farm was not an inactive place. In the summer heat, horses were worked early, starting at 6:00 a.m. There was usually a tractor or two running somewhere within earshot, a cow calling for its calf, a mare nickering for her foal. But the reunion being staged on his front lawn had turned it into nothing short of chaos.

Given the choice, he’d gladly snap his fingers and make it all disappear, the Great Party Setup’s cotton-candy-pink van and all.

Across the yard stood a man in overalls, a sleeveless T-shirt and a tattoo of a rooster on his left arm. He hammered a tent stake into the ground, straightened and, without missing a beat, sent a stream of tobacco juice arcing over his right shoulder. It landed on a cluster of snow-white azaleas encircling the base of an old oak tree.

Anger launched John straight across the stretch of grass between the barn and the house where he lit into the man like fire on October leaves.

“Those were my wife’s flowers you just spit on,” he said, the words curt.

The man wiped the back of his hand across the tobacco leak at the corner of his mouth. “Hey, bud, I’m really sorry.”

“Next time maybe you could have a little more courtesy for where you’re aiming.”

“No problem.” The man grabbed his tools and trotted back to his truck, lobbing worried glances over his shoulder as he went.

John snatched the hose from the side of the house, turned on the faucet and rinsed every speck of tobacco juice from the flowers, turning them white again.

He looked down the hill at the farm spread out below with its bright spots of color. After Laura had found out she was sick, she had begun planting things everywhere. Pear trees, peach trees, boxwoods. Her favorite had been the white azaleas. She had never said it, and John would never have put his thoughts into words, but he knew it had been her way of leaving something of herself behind. When he had first realized what she was doing, he couldn’t look at her without going off by himself and crying in impotent rage. He had never let her see him. And it was now one of his greatest regrets. He’d wanted to be strong for her, to pretend that everything was going to be all right, when they both knew that it wasn’t. He wished now that he’d let her see his sadness. He’d tried to do what he thought was the right thing for her. It was only after she died, unexpectedly one night, that he realized she would never know how great his loss had been.

And for that he couldn’t forgive himself.

Looking back on it, he’d thought going on with their lives was the right thing to do. If they saw the doctors, underwent the treatments, then she would get well. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to work? Part of that had to be believing she would get well. If they talked about the possibility that she might die, then it might happen.

And it had.

He hung the hose up, stomped back across the yard to the white-and-green barn where Hank Owens stood in the middle of the big sliding doors, arms folded across his chest, a frown on his weathered face.

“I know I’m a jackass, Hank. I don’t need you to tell me again.”

Hank stopped him at the door with a gloved hand. “I don’t blame you for tearing into his butt. I saw how hard she worked on those darn flowers.”

A mixture of approval and disapproval laced his voice, deep and resonant, like a Baptist preacher’s at a revival. To most of the world, Hank was an intimidating man. He had shoulders wider than a stall door, hands callused from decades of hard work, legs slightly bowed from a lifetime of sitting on a horse. He had been at Rolling Hills longer than John had been alive, and John had no illusions about who was the glue that had held the place together in the first few months after Laura had died.

“It’s been almost two years, John.” Compassion softened the rough edge of Hank’s voice. “Maybe you oughta talk to somebody about this. Somebody impartial.”

“So they can tell me how it’s normal to be angry because my wife died long before I figured out how to make her happy?”

Hank shook his head and managed to look more worried. “She was happy, John.”

“Not the way she could have been if I—”

“If you’d what?”

“Nothing,” he said, putting brakes on the conversation. Talking about it didn’t do any good, anyway. He couldn’t change any of it—couldn’t go back and make himself a better husband. No matter how much he might wish for the chance.

“You gotta get a handle on this, son. Somehow. Someway.” Hank’s words were low and insistent. “If not for anybody else, then for her.” He tipped his gaze toward the road at the foot of the driveway where a school bus had just slowed to a halt.

The stop sign popped out from the side, warning lights flashing. The door opened, and out bounded Flora, pigtails bobbing, her Black Beauty lunch box in one hand, a Barbie backpack slung over her other shoulder.

She looked both ways before crossing the road, just as John had taught her. His heart swelled. She walked until she reached the gates to the farm, but as soon as her sneakers left the main road, she was off and running, up the long driveway to the house.

In the months after Laura had died, he had insisted on picking Flora up from school every day, but she had wanted to ride the bus and had finally told him so. “Daddy, I’ll come back. I won’t leave like Mommy did. I promise.” Her intuition had been entirely too accurate for a seven-year-old. Enough so that he had given in and made it a daily struggle not to let her sense his irrational fear that he would somehow lose her, too.

She was skipping now, zigzagging back and forth on the hardtop driveway. Halfway up, she stopped and picked a cluster of yellow buttercups, which he knew would be for Sophia.

He waited where he was, raising a hand in greeting when she looked toward the barn and caught sight of Hank and him. She made an all-out sprint across the grass then, the smile on her face putting that now-predictable squeeze on his heart. The strength of I’ll-do-anything-for-you love was something he had never understood until he experienced it firsthand.

“Daddy!” Her voice was strong and clear, and it carried across the wide expanse of lawn that stretched between the house and the brood-mare barn.

“Hey, sweet pea. Looks like you could just about outrun Naddie today.”

The sound of his daughter’s laughter was the only thing capable of thawing the coldness Laura’s death had left inside him. Flora loved nothing more than being compared to Nadine, the two-and-a-half-year-old filly who was all but guaranteed to become cutting-horse royalty.

Nadine’s entrance into the world had been anything but easy. They had nearly lost her, and once her spindly legs had found their way to the ground, the mare had rejected her. By all logic, the foal should have died. But she had more than her share of fight in her. John had his own belief about the connection between the young horse and his daughter. From the first moment Flora had stuck her hand through the rails of the foal’s stall, a bond had formed. Flora had witnessed her own mother’s extraordinary will to live, and John could only think that on some level, she and the young filly both understood what it was to fight for life and refuse to let go.

Ten feet from the barn door, Flora dropped her backpack and lunch box, and whirled at John like a tiny tornado, launching herself into his arms.

“Whoa there, little pony.”

She giggled again, locking her arms around his neck. Sweet emotion flooded through him. Love. Pure, simple, undiluted, unconditional. There were no strings attached, no “I’ll-love-you-forever-ifs.” It simply was.

“Are we having a circus, Daddy?”

“All but,” John said, ignoring Hank’s look of disapproval. “No, honey, those tents are for a class reunion.”

“What’s a reunion?”

“It’s when a bunch of people get together and talk about things that don’t matter anymore.”

“Oh. If it doesn’t matter, then why are you having it?”

“Because sometimes grown-ups have to do things they’d rather not do.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re grown-ups.”

More head shaking from Hank.

“Hi, Hank,” Flora said from her position in John’s arms.

“Hey, itty-bitty.” Hank tugged on one of her pigtails. “How was school today?”

“Good. Guess what I did?”

“Something smart, I’ll bet.”

“I drew a picture of Naddie.”

“Can I see it?”

Flora unzipped her book bag, pulled out a piece of green construction paper with an orange horse on it.

“That’s a mighty fine likeness,” Hank said.

“It sure is,” John agreed.

“Can I go see her?”

John set his daughter down. “You know Sophia’s got your snack waiting.”

“Just for a minute?”

“All right.”

She took his hand, then held out the other for Hank, skipping between them down the center aisle of the barn and chattering about her day along the way. He and Hank responded at the appropriate moments, smiles on both their faces. Hank loved her as if she were his own, and John was glad of it. If Laura had taught him anything, it was the value of love. That you could never have too much or give too much. He only wished he’d learned that lesson sooner. It was such an easy thing to give. Or it should be, anyway.

Outside, they crossed another expanse of grass and made their way into the barn where the two-year-olds were kept. A chorus of whinnies announced their entrance.

“I believe Miss Nadine knows you’re here,” Hank said.

“She always knows, doesn’t she, Hank?”

“Yep. She sure does.”

Hearing her name, the filly let out another loud whinny from her stall some twenty feet away.

“Just a minute, Naddie.” Flora darted into Hank’s office and charged back out a couple of seconds later with the filly’s customary afternoon carrots.

John and Hank shook their heads. By the time they caught up with her, Flora was already in the stall. The chestnut filly used her soft muzzle to gently poke about Flora’s body in a game of find-the-carrot. Flora giggled when Nadine nosed her right pocket and followed it up with a prod at her armpit. The horse reached around then and found what she was looking for, the three carrots sticking out of Flora’s back pocket. She let out a soft nicker that clearly meant: “I won—now give them to me.”

“Okay, okay.” Flora pulled one from her pocket and gave it to the young horse, who took one polite bite at a time, her beautiful head bobbing in enthusiasm.

“She looked pretty good on the lunge line this afternoon,” Hank said. “The stiffness in that right leg seems to have worked itself out.”

“No bute?”

“Nope.”

“Good. Let’s baby it a while longer, though.”

“Daddy?”

“What, sweet pea?”

“When can I ride Naddie?”

“Right after you start dating.”

Hank shook his head again and chuckled.

Flora gave him a look that would no doubt be perfected by the time she actually did start dating.

“Someday,” he said, refining his answer. “Naddie’s still green, honey. Popcorn is exactly what you need right now.”

“But Popcorn is slow.”

“Slow is good.”

A rumble sounded in the sky above the barn. Just as John reached to pull Flora out of the stall, a military jet roared over, so low it sounded as if it had grazed the very top of the barn roof. Nadine snorted, danced sideways, eyes wide, head high.

“There’s got to be something we can do to get them to alter their flight path,” Hank said as the sound faded. “Somebody’s going to get hurt.”

John sighed. He’d made a dozen phone calls. All to no avail so far.

The farm lay in the direct path of the drills the jets conducted periodically. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to their schedule so that they never knew when one would thunder over, so low they could see the pilot if they looked up.

“It’s all right, girl,” he said now to Nadine. And then to Flora, “Sophia’s going to fuss if you don’t get those cookies while they’re warm. Why don’t you go on up to the house now?”

Flora reluctantly said goodbye to Nadine who let out a protesting whinny.

“I’ll be back,” she promised. “Be good.”

“Fat chance,” Hank said. “As soon as you get out the barn door, we’ll have Miss Prima Donna on our hands again.”

Flora giggled. “She’s not bad, Hank.”

“Oh, just perfectly willing to kick the stall door down if you don’t come when she wants you to.”

“I’ll make some more calls about the jets, Hank,” John said over his shoulder as he and Flora headed out of the barn.

“Somebody ought to be able to do something,” Hank said.

The cell phone in John’s pocket rang. “You go on up, honey. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Okay, Daddy.” She sprinted off across the yard, disappearing through the back door even as he reached for the phone, punched a button and said, “Hello.”

“Hey. Hear you’re havin’ a reunion out there.”

John looked down at the grass, gave a renegade dandelion a booted swat. “Hey, Cleeve. Wish I could deny it.”

“What’d I tell you about being the nice guy?”

“I’m not feeling too nice these days.”

“Well, this oughta at least qualify you for sainthood or somethin’ darn close.”

“Somethin’.” John smiled, Cleeve’s intention, he was sure. Getting John to smile had been one of Cleeve’s goals for the better part of the past two years. It wasn’t often he succeeded, but Cleeve was a firm believer in humor’s ability to heal most of life’s gashes. “When’d you get back?”

“Just last night. Late. If they weren’t willing to pay so dang much for a good bale of horse hay down there, I’d find somewhere other than Florida to sell it. Takes me a few days to catch up on my beauty sleep.”

“Not that you’re vain or anything.” Cleeve Harper ran a dairy on the other side of the county. He was the closest thing John had to a best friend, if men admitted to such things. They’d known each other since the first day of first grade, had both been into horses and cattle when other boys they’d grown up with had been playing with construction sets and footballs.

“You gotta admit it’ll be interesting to see how all those girls turned out tonight.”

John tipped the bill of his baseball cap back, rubbed the spot in the center of his forehead where a dull ache had begun. “There’s that, I guess.”

Cleeve chuckled. “So you think she’ll—”

The cell phone squawked, then blanked out for a second.

“I didn’t catch that,” John said when it cleared up again.

“I said, do you think she’ll come?”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

Just the words sent a warning signal off inside John. All his vital organs seemed to have locked up, and breathing suddenly required a conscious effort. “Why’re you askin’?”

“I actually got a chance to watch her on that news show while I was waiting on somebody yesterday morning. She’s pretty damn good. And good day, she turned out to be a beautiful woman.”

“Yeah?” John tried for indifference. The few times he had accidentally caught a glimpse of her on TV, he had seen very little in Olivia Ashford, cable news anchor, to remind him of the girl he had known. But then he’d wondered if that girl had ever existed outside his imagination, anyway.

“I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m sure she’s too busy with the glamorous life to come to a high-school reunion.”

“No doubt.” John aimed the subject in another direction altogether. “Macy comin’ with you tomorrow night?”

“Hell, I don’t know, John. Half the time I don’t know whether she’s even coming home at night.”

“You in the mood for a lecture?”

“Nope.”

“Well, let me know when you are.” Cleeve had a knack for picking women who needed fixing, the majority of whom seemed to always end up on the other side of just-beyond-repair.

“Those calves are ready for you to pick up.” Cleeve said, his turn to change the subject.

“I’ll probably get over there this weekend. Maybe on Saturday.”

“All right then. See ya tonight.”

“Yeah, see ya.” John snapped the phone shut, shoved it in his pocket and refused to stew over Cleeve’s wife and the rumors that kept crossing his path when they were the last thing he wanted to hear. Besides, he couldn’t get away with crediting the burning in his stomach to the woman he personally thought was making his best friend miserable. No, that went to another woman. To his left, the breeze caught the flag on top of one of the big white tents and flapped it back and forth, while his thoughts went swerving to the part of the conversation that had shaken him up inside like a runaway roller coaster.

In truth, it had never even occurred to him that Olivia Ashford might come this weekend. Had he thought it the remotest of possibilities, he would never have agreed to have the reunion here, much less be anywhere within the vicinity himself.

But there’d been no reason even to entertain the notion. She had left Summerville without so much as a backward glance just a few weeks after graduation, and in all the years since, he tried not to think about her. Ever.

There were just some things in life better left alone. For him, this was one.

“Daddy!” Flora hung halfway out the screen door at the back of the house, waving at him. “Aunt Sophia says the cookies are getting cold!”

The impatient summons from his seven-year-old daughter reminded John that he was standing in the middle of his front yard, dwelling on a past that had nothing to do with the present—a past that no longer mattered. He waved at Flora. “Be right there!” he said, and headed across the yard. Olivia Ashford wasn’t even real to him, anymore. She was just a memory.

Nothing more than a memory.

CHAPTER THREE

Starting Points

CLEEVE HARPER DROPPED his cell phone into the front zipper pocket of his overalls, leaving the antennae sticking out one side. The reception here on the farm was hit or miss at best, and he’d taken to driving around in the air-conditioned interior of his tractor with his phone pointed toward the heavens like the new-millennium farmer he was, as if to miss one call would send his crops into a tailspin.

Summerville’s very own GQ farmer. That was what John called him. He’d even taken a picture of Cleeve one afternoon planting corn and sent it in to the County Times. Cleeve still owed him for that one, matter of fact.

He and John had always been that way with one another, ever in search of the next one-up. They were like brothers, looking out for each other as brothers would. It was this, and only this, behind John’s thinly disguised disapproval of Cleeve’s two-year marriage to Macy. Not a doubt in Cleeve’s mind as to the truth of that, and still, it stung in the way of something a man knows to be true but just isn’t ready to face up to yet.

Of course, John had his own off-limit subjects. And Olivia Ashford was one of them. What had possessed Cleeve to needle him about her this afternoon, he didn’t know. Maybe it was just seeing her on TV and thinking it was a shame they had gone their separate ways all those years ago. If any two people had ever belonged together, he’d have said it was the two of them.

But then with his track record, he wasn’t likely to be asked to talk to Oprah’s audience on the subject of relationships.

Cleeve trudged up the brick walkway that wound through the backyard to his house, kicking red mud from his boots as he went. A short hallway led to the kitchen where Macy sat at the kitchen table, checkbook and calculator in front of her, a weekend-size suitcase on the floor beside her.

Not this again.

She looked up, the neutral expression she’d been wearing changing in an instant to one of displeasure. “Cleeve. How many times do I have to tell you to take your boots off before you come in this house? You’re getting that awful red clay all over everything. And you know how impossible it is to get out.”

Cleeve looked down at his boots, the sides refusing to let go of a clump or two of dirt. For the first year of their marriage, he’d done what she asked, taking the dang things on and off so many times during the course of a day that he’d practically gotten dizzy from it. Macy liked a clean house. Not exactly something he could fault her for, but what he had initially taken as a wife’s admirable desire to keep an orderly home, he now realized was more about controlling his every move than anything else.

“Where you headed, Macy?”

“To visit Eileen.”

“But I asked you to go to my class reunion with me.”

“Cleeve.” Her drawn out use of his name implied that he’d just managed to make the world’s dumbest assumption. “I haven’t seen my sister in weeks. And besides, those are all people you went to school with. What in the world would I have in common with them?”

“You married me?”

She sent him a look from under her lashes that underlined her previous implication. “Would you want to spend an entire weekend at one of my reunions?”

“If you wanted me to be there, yes.” Cleeve folded his arms across his chest and studied her. Sometimes he wondered if he had any idea who she was. This was his third marriage, ashamed as he was of that fact, and he’d been hell-bent and determined this one was going to work. He’d met Macy at church at one of those group-counseling sessions for divorced people trying to figure out how not to get themselves in the same predicament again. They’d only dated a few months, but he’d been sure she was the one. Macy was completely different from any other woman he’d ever been involved with. Serious. Responsible. Only recently had he begun to wonder if he’d been mistaken. Pious and domineering might be better descriptions.

He sighed, pulled a glass from the cupboard by the sink and filled it with water from the tap, taking a few substantial swigs as if he could somehow douse the anger simmering inside him.

“Can’t you use one of those paper cups I leave on the counter for you?” Macy asked, her voice heavy with the burden of his sin. “I just finished doing up all the dishes, and now there’s another glass to wash before I go.”

Cleeve swung around, his gaze clashing with the disapproving one of his wife. He was going to his high-school reunion tonight. A milestone of sorts. Fifteen years ago, he would never have believed he’d end up here. If someone had given him a crystal ball and let him take a look at what lay ahead he’d have denied the possibility of this being his life. I’d never be that stupid, he would have said.

He would have been wrong.

“Have a good weekend, Macy,” he said, plopping the glass on the counter, then stomping down the hall and out the back door, glad of the trail of red dirt he’d left behind.

RACINE DELANEY was looking for a special dress. A wow-’em dress. A dress that said, “Bet you didn’t know I could look like this.”

She just hoped there was one in Joanne’s Fine Things—Summerville’s only specialty boutique—that she could afford.

She pulled a sleeveless periwinkle-blue filmy thing from the rack and held it up for a better look, a hand at shoulder and hem. Not bad. Not stunning, either. But then with a chest as flat as hers, and a face that was no longer wrinkle-free, who was ever going to call her stunning, anyway?

It was exactly the kind of dress she’d hoped to find, not too sexy, but alluring in a simple way.

What the heck did she know about such things? A girl who’d lived most of her adult life in a mobile home with her very own conditioned response to tremble as soon as her husband’s car pulled into the driveway. No more, though. That was over. The end. And she was determined to find some happiness for herself. Maybe she’d meet someone this weekend. Someone nice. Someone interested in living life like it was a picnic instead of a war zone.

A diesel truck rumbled down the street outside the shop. She glanced out the window and recognized Cleeve Harper’s silver Ford pickup, the twang of some top-forty country tune loud enough to damage ear drums. She wondered what he was trying to drown out.

“Hello, Racine. Could I help you with something?”

Racine looked away from the window. Joanne Norman hovered nearby. Her voice dripped honey, which seemed appropriate since her short, round frame resembled that of a bumblebee in the black-and-yellow-striped skirt and sweater she wore. Racine had never felt comfortable in this store, aware that Joanne’s eyes always seemed to question whether or not she could really pay for whatever it was she’d picked out.

“I, ah, thought I might try this on.”

“It’s lovely,” Joanne said. “Although not the most practical buy in the shop at that price.”

“I’m not really looking for practical,” Racine said, even as she heard the curiosity in the other woman’s voice. No doubt Joanne was wondering what a woman who worked in the post office sorting mail would be doing with a dress like that.

Joanne pulled a pink cotton skirt and blouse off the rack in front of her. Sweet. Sunday-schoolish. “This is really cute.”

It was cute. Much more like something she might have ordinarily picked out. She wavered a moment, sending a doubtful glance over the periwinkle blue. Maybe she was being silly to think she could pull off a dress like that. But she didn’t want cute today.

“I’ll think about it, Joanne,” she said, taking the pink outfit and draping it across the chair beside her.

“You do that. And let me know if I can help with anything else,” she said, heading for the register where a short, white-haired lady was waiting to pay for a scarf.

She glanced toward the window again. Cleeve had stopped at the gas station across the street. He was talking to Leroy Jones, who’d been running the gas station as far back as her memory went. Cleeve’s back was to her, and she noticed he had nice wide shoulders. He had changed little, if any, since their high-school days. On the outside, anyway. Why was it that guys like Cleeve always ended up with women like Macy?

But then if anybody understood putting up with the faults of a spouse, Racine did. There was always tomorrow, and it was sometimes easier to convince yourself it would get better by then than it was to walk away.

A long time ago, Racine had been more than a little smitten with Cleeve and had almost gotten up the nerve to flirt with him the summer before their senior year at a picnic out at Carson Lake. But she’d lost her courage, and looking back on it now, she knew he wouldn’t have given her a second glance. Guys like Cleeve had been way out of her league then. And were now.

She sent a glance back out the window where he was still talking with Leroy and then held the dress up to the mirror again. Was she really asking for anything so extraordinary? Just a good man who maybe saw something a little bit special in her? She’d once had some pretty lofty dreams. But her wants in life had gotten a lot simpler. And if she’d learned one thing in all those years since they’d left high school, it was that there was no point in wasting time wanting things you could never have.

THE SIGN WAS the same. Rolling Hills Farm. The Rileys. Since 1918. Hand-carved on dark cherry wood and mounted on one of two matching brick columns that marked the entrance to one of the prettiest pieces of land Olivia had ever seen. It hadn’t changed. The name fit the farm. Two hundred acres or so of virtually flat pastures surrounded by a background of rolling hillsides that amounted to a sum total of a little over a thousand acres, if she remembered correctly.

She had arrived in Summerville late that afternoon after the four-hour drive from D.C., then checked into Lavender House, the bed-and-breakfast where she was staying for the weekend. Michael was driving down Saturday morning. She’d tried to talk him out of it since he had a couple of work commitments that prevented him from coming before then.

“You cannot go to a fifteen-year reunion without a date!” he had insisted. “Not done. Unacceptable.”

She’d given in, finally. Now, she wished he’d come with her today. The message from Lori waiting at the front desk had nearly made her repack her car and head back up the interstate.

Of all places, why did the thing have to be moved to John’s farm? Of all places!

She’d tried calling Lori several times, only to get her answering machine. Not surprising. As the main organizer of the reunion, she’d no doubt left hours before.

Olivia had succumbed to a long shower and set about calming the flock of internal butterflies making her nearly lightheaded. There was a single question reverberating in her head: How could she possibly go out to Rolling Hills?

His wife would be there. And children. What about children?

Of course, he would have children. Maybe even teenagers.

Heavens, they were old enough for that.

The possibility peeled back a few layers of indifference beneath which lay a reserve of pain left untapped for years on end. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought of it. But somehow, here, with the imminent possibility of seeing them—at his home—the prospect cut deep.

But then she’d come here looking for closure, hadn’t she? Here was her chance. Had she really thought anything about it would be easy?

She was certain John hadn’t given her a second’s extra thought, but had gone on with his life, living it the way people do.

On that note, she had gotten dressed and left the bed-and-breakfast before she could change her mind, pointing her car down roads she remembered as if she’d driven them yesterday. Rationalizing the entire way that John probably hadn’t even aged well, had gained forty pounds, or lost hair. In all reality, she wouldn’t even recognize him.

Outside of storybooks, wasn’t that the way real life usually worked?

Olivia parked her car near the farm’s entrance sign, got out, quickly hit the remote security alarm out of habit, and set off up the asphalt road. No backing out now. She had never imagined walking up this driveway again. The years rolled back now like the curtain at a Saturday afternoon matinee, and she saw herself getting off a Greyhound bus on a cold January afternoon, her too-thin wool coat inadequate protection against the wind cutting into her skin. She’d walked the four miles from the bus station out to Rolling Hills, her heart sticking in her throat every time she heard a car coming, terrified one of them might be her father.

The impetus propelling her down that long road to John’s house had been some comic-Cinderella notion that he could fix what was broken inside her. But any hope of that had collapsed beneath the reality of John’s front door being answered by someone with smooth, beautiful skin, dark liquid hair. Someone who called herself John’s wife. “He and his father have gone to a horse show this weekend up in Culpepper,” she’d said, the words clear to Olivia’s disbelieving ears. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“No,” she had said. “No.”

“Can I tell him who stopped by?”

“Just Olivia,” she said. “Just tell him Olivia.”

Fifteen years, and here she was again, forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other and just walk. Don’t think. Just walk.

Three hundred and ninety-eight steps—she counted every one of them—and she was at the top of the driveway. Four white tents had transformed the front yard of the house. Cars were parked on both sides of the road. There were people everywhere, under the tents, leaning against the board fence, sitting beneath a couple of huge old maple trees.

She stopped at the edge of the yard and drew in a deep breath.

A sign-in table was positioned at the entrance. Banners in school colors of red and white hung above. Lanford County High—Class Reunion! Welcome!

And on a smaller banner below: We’re Only as Old as We Think We Are!

Olivia smiled, swept back on a sudden recollection of the time John had run for class president, and she and Lori had covered the halls with posters declaring him the only choice. They’d spent a weekend at Lori’s house coming up with all sorts of clever campaign slogans, some original, some not so. John and Cleeve had come by at regular intervals, bringing them ice-cream cones from the local Dairy Queen, and John would steal Olivia away for a few minutes, pulling her out behind the old sycamore tree in Lori’s parents’ backyard and hauling her into his arms for the kind of kiss that made her forget all about their campaign efforts.

“Oh, my gosh, that’s Olivia Ashford!”

Two women shot across the grass like arrows from a bow, welcoming smiles on their faces.

“My goodness, I can’t believe you’re here!” the one in front said. “Nobody thought you would actually come.”

Olivia smiled back, studying their faces for a moment before recognition hit her. “Casey. Sarah,” she said. “How are you?”

Casey had ridden Olivia’s school bus, Sarah had been in her homeroom.

They all hugged, then stood back to take a look at one another.

“Great. And no need to ask you that,” Sarah said.

“We are so proud of you,” Casey added. “Wow. You look so different in real life. Less serious, I mean. Who would ever have thought that you…I mean anyone from Summerville would end up on television every morning?”

Olivia smiled and steered the conversation away from herself. “So tell me what you’re doing. Are you living in Summerville?”

“Yep,” Sarah said. “Never left. I have three children, Casey has four.”

“You never married, did you?” Casey asked.

“No, I never did.”

“Well, with all the excitement in your life, who needs marriage and children?”

Olivia smiled again as the two women moved ahead in line. Their words settled over her with the implication that, despite all the opportunities her career had afforded her, she was the one who had missed out on something major.

“Olivia!”

The familiar voice sent relief flooding through her. She turned around to find Lori cutting her way through the crowd.

“Lori!” Olivia held out her hands to her old friend. Lori took them, and they stepped into a warm hug that lasted for several long moments. Olivia’s eyes grew moist; she had not expected the lump of emotion now wedged in her chest, preventing further words.

“Gosh, it’s so good to see you,” Lori said, when they’d stepped back to get a good look at one another.

Olivia swallowed. “You look wonderful. You’ve hardly changed at all,” she said, wishing she hadn’t waited so long for this particular reunion. Seeing Lori made all the years fall away. Just like that.

“Hah, compared to you, I don’t think so.”

“No, I mean it. You haven’t changed a bit.”

“A few wrinkles here and there. But we’re supposed to call those character lines, aren’t we?”

Olivia laughed. “I guess so.”

“Obviously you got my message?”

She nodded, hoping her expression said, “No big deal.”

“Were you all right with coming out here?” Lori asked with a hopeful squint.

Olivia drew in a breath. “I guess I should ask if it’s all right that I’m here,” she said, trying to keep the words light.

“Of course it is,” Lori said, squeezing her arm while something that looked a lot like apprehension flitted across her face. “Come on, let’s find a quiet spot where we can talk. We have so much to catch up on. It really is great to see you.”

They were headed to the side of the yard when a frantic voice from one of the tents called out, “Lori, could you come up here? We’ve got another problem with this darn drink machine!”

Lori sighed. “Don’t they know we have fifteen years worth of stuff to catch up on?”

“You go ahead,” Olivia said. “We’ve got the whole weekend. Just look for me when you’re done.”

Lori smiled and hugged her again. “Don’t go far,” she said.

JOHN HAD NEVER been good in crowds. Especially big ones. With almost three hundred people milling about his front yard, he found himself wishing Sunday would hurry up and get here so the whole thing would be over.

The caterer had set up camp near one of the pasture fences, now putting the finishing touches on the barbecue he’d been cooking since mid-morning. If it tasted as good as it smelled, he’d be a hit. A couple of mares had been glued to that section of fence for the past few hours, patiently waiting for the next round of sugar cubes the man had been slipping them on and off all day.

Opposite the barbecue was a DJ playing current top forty, the music persistent, but still enough in the background that conversation was possible. John spotted Cleeve joking with Amy Bussey and Sharon Moore who were working the front table and pinning badges with senior pictures to jacket lapels and dresses.

Cleeve glanced up, and John waved him over. He wound his way through the crowd, a white Stetson on his head, his yellow shirt and Wranglers freshly pressed. He was tall and lean with long legs that made him a natural in the cutting-horse competitions he made time to attend in the summers with John. He had the kind of face that would never look its age. Women called him boyish. It made Cleeve madder than a hornet, but as the years ticked by, he was starting to believe John’s admonishment that it wasn’t such a bad tag to have hung on you.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to stand over here in the shadows all night,” Cleeve said, giving him a shoulder joust and then an elbow jab to the ribs.

“Giving it serious consideration.”

“What? You mind beating women off with a stick?”

John gave him a sideways look and rolled his eyes.

“Even as we speak, plots are being hatched in the ladies’ room as to correcting your bachelor status,” Cleeve said with a grin.

“Widower status.”

Cleeve instantly sobered. “Ah, hell, John, that was damn callous of me. I’m sorry.”

“Forget it,” John said, letting out a long sigh. “Don’t pay any attention to my bark. I’m not fit company for being out in public.”

“Have to say, I was kind of surprised to see you down here already. Figured I’d have to come up there and reel you out of the house.”

“Sophia took care of it for you.”

“That’s my girl,” Cleeve said, his smile back.

John shook his head and gave Cleeve a once-over. “Aren’t you lookin’ spiffy tonight? I hardly recognized you without the cow manure on your shirt.”

“Figured I might as well show some of these gals what they missed out on.”

“Since you dated half the class, I guess you better get started.”

To Cleeve, this was compliment, not insult. He laughed.

“So where’s the one you married?” John asked.

Cleeve’s smile faded. “Visiting her sister.”

At the look in his friend’s eyes, John was sorry he’d brought it up. “Then I guess you’ll have to dance with some of these other gals, huh?”

“Guess I will,” Cleeve agreed, but with less pluck than before.

“Hey, guys.” Lori Peters stepped up and gave them both a hug.

John leaned back and gave her a long look. She had on a blue cotton sundress that picked up the color of her eyes and did nice things for her fair skin. “You look great,” he said.

Cleeve gave her a low wolf-whistle. “I’ll second.”

“You two are just used to seeing me with four kids climbing all over me,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the sign-in table where people were still filing in.

“I liked that look on you,” Cleeve said.

Lori smiled, but it was a noticeably weak attempt. “John, I need to talk to you about something.”

“You run the well dry? Somebody steal my best cow?”

“Not exactly,” she said, her teeth catching the edge of her lower lip.

Cleeve tipped his Stetson back. “Want me to va-moose?”

“You might as well hear it, too,” Lori said, throwing another uneasy glance over her shoulder. “I should have told you this earlier, this morning when I called, but I chickened out, and I know it was wrong—”

John’s gaze followed hers to the edge of the yard, and the rest of whatever Lori was saying was lost to him. The plastic cup in his hand slid from his fingers and dropped to the ground, iced tea splattering his jeans and Lori’s bare legs.

Cleeve put a hand on his shoulder. “What is it? You look like you just saw a ghost.” And then, “Holy smoke.”

John went numb. He felt like a teenage boy again, spotting for the first time the prettiest girl he’d ever laid eyes on, hit with an immediate blood-heating attraction that fills a boy with the absolute certainty that she is the one, and imbues in him the instant inability to speak in front of her.

His first uncensored thought? Cleeve was right.

She had turned out to be one beautiful woman.

Her hair was still long, shoulder-length and blond. His fingertips instantly ached with remembrance of it.

She was leaner than she’d been then, the bone structure in her face clearly defined with angles and hollows. Her lips were the same though, a shapely, full mouth that made his own throb with sudden memory.

But one difference was apparent. She no longer looked like the small-town girl he’d dated and loved. She looked, instead, like a woman who had made it in the world—clothes, posture, the whole picture.

“What is she doing here?” He tried to inject thunder in his voice and heard his own failure. He sounded like he’d just had the breath knocked out of him.

“That’s what I was trying to tell you.” Clearly, Lori had no idea how to handle this. She looked as if she thought he might strangle her. “I should have told you this morning,” she said, “but I was afraid you’d say no to letting us move the reunion out here if I did.”

“And you would have been right!” The anger hit him full blast then. There was thunder in his voice now. And plenty of it. “Damn it all to hell, Lori. She can’t stay. She cannot stay,” he said, unable to bring himself to say her name because to do so would drive a knife right through the heart of the fury that was the only thing keeping his knees from buckling. “Go tell her. Now.”

Lori shot him a look that somehow managed to convey both panic and absolute horror. “John! I can’t possibly do that. You’re blowing this out of all proportion.”

“Now wait a dadblame minute,” Cleeve began, reason in his voice. “She’s no different from anybody else here who was in our class.”

“She is different,” John said, hearing the steel in his own words. “Either tell her, now, Lori, or the whole weekend is off.”

“For Pete’s sake, John,” Cleeve said, “that was all a long time ago.”

“Not long enough.”

“You don’t have to talk to her!” Lori said, hands splayed in appeal. “I’ll make sure you’re never within fifty yards of one another. We can’t just ask her to leave.”

“Nobody’s askin’ you to throw down the welcome mat for her,” Cleeve tossed out, tipping back his hat, “but you can’t kick her out.”

They didn’t understand. They couldn’t understand. “She isn’t welcome here! And if you won’t tell her, I’ll tell her myself.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The Unwelcome Mat

THE LAST THING Olivia wanted was to be the center of attention. She wanted to blend in, just walk around and say hello to people she hadn’t seen in nearly half a lifetime. But she had only moved a few steps past the front table since she’d arrived. There were so many people she hadn’t thought about in ages, and yet remembered as if they’d seen each other only yesterday. Tommy Radcliffe, whom she’d sat beside in ninth-grade science class and shared homework notes with. Sarah Martin from eleventh-grade P.E., the only girl to consistently beat her at the six-hundred-yard dash. Noah Dumfrey who had ridden her school bus and whom she still hadn’t forgiven for putting chewing gum in her hair in eighth grade. “I can’t believe I actually did that to someone who’s now on TV every morning!” he’d said upon seeing her, reeling her in for a hug against his now well-cushioned chest.

Most people simply looked like adult versions of the children they had once been—some heavier, some thinner, some with gray hair, some with no hair at all. But they all looked at her differently now, with awe on their faces, as if they could no longer see the Olivia Ashford they’d known in the woman she was now.

And while it was good to see so many familiar faces, hear so many still-recognizable voices, her gaze kept skipping across the crowd. She glanced at her watch. Nine o’clock, and she still hadn’t caught a glimpse of John. If she could just get that part over with, she could relax. Seeing him was inevitable, and the longer the wait drew out, the heavier her dread became.

She envisioned the two of them circling the crowd, weaving in and out until they finally ran head on into one another. Olivia could not picture him as he would look now. Couldn’t imagine how time would have changed him. She found herself studying the face of every man who walked by.

How would she know him?

And then, suddenly, she didn’t have to wonder anymore.

Because there he was. Cutting a path through the crowd with long strides, his mouth set in a grim, no-nonsense line.

Olivia froze, shut down inside. And then her heart took off in an out-of-control gallop that would have made her EKG reading look like a seismograph monitoring an L.A. earthquake.

Any semblance of poise she might have gained in her years as a professional broadcaster completely deserted her. She stood in front of him as vulnerable as if she were seventeen again and head over heels in love. She couldn’t smile. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move.

He didn’t look old.

He hadn’t gained forty pounds.

He had all his hair.

And she would have recognized him in a crowd of a thousand on the other side of the world.

To say he looked good would have been an understatement.

Living in Washington, D. C., Olivia had gotten used to men in suits. The professional man’s uniform: polished loafers, socks with crests on them, starched white shirts, hundred-dollar ties. Washington was full of men like that. That was the kind of man today’s women were supposed to find irresistible.

She never had.

And now she realized why.

Because she would forever be comparing them to John. But John Riley as a boy was quite different from John Riley as a man.

There was no questioning which one he was now.

His shoulders had gotten broader. He was more muscular, solid, strong. The changes were unsettling, maybe because that John, she knew. This one, she did not. And the reality of him, standing here in front of her, felt like a kaleidoscope of then and now.

“Olivia.”

At the sound of his voice, she jumped. Olivia. Not Liv as she had once been to him. The greeting was arctic-cold, his whole demeanor one of stiff politeness as if he’d just bumped into someone he had vaguely known in first grade, but wasn’t quite sure he remembered.

“Hello, John.” She folded her arms across her chest to hide her shaking hands. The urge to flee was nearly irresistible. All of a sudden, she felt like a country girl who’d never been farther than twenty-five miles outside Summerville, who had grown up in a four-room house and gotten her new clothes from the church’s Helping Hand closet.

“Mind if I ask what you’re doing here?” The question was clipped, his anger barely concealed.

Olivia’s stomach did a roller-coaster plummet at the recognition of it. She locked her knees and forced herself to return his scrutiny.

People were staring. She felt their curious gazes. Heard the whispers. She willed her voice toward something close to indifference when she said, “The same thing as everyone else in our class.”

“Everyone else is welcome here.”

The words snagged her like barbed wire, cutting through the skin and refusing to let go, their harshness in opposition to the boy she had once known, a boy whose eyes had looked at her as if she were every good thing he’d ever imagined. A flash of memory hit her. The two of them up on Lookout Mountain, lying on their backs in the bed of his old pickup, a quilt beneath them, staring up at the stars and holding hands. Her head was on his shoulder. Amazing that with all the time that had passed since then, she still remembered the depth of the security she’d felt there. I want us to have four children, Liv. At least four. That way they’ll never grow up lonely. Days like Christmas will be loud and out of control. I like out of control.

Had he really said words like that to her, this man with undiluted disapproval in his eyes?

It didn’t seem possible.

She hated herself, suddenly, for the inability to forget, as he so obviously had. There was no doubt that he had put away all the good memories and had no interest in revisiting any of them.

He stood, arms folded across his chest, waiting for her to respond.

Her lips moved although she had no idea what words they were going to form. “I have every right to be here at this reunion, John,” she said, keeping her voice low. “But this is your home, and I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable by coming here.”

“I’m not uncomfortable,” he said, the denial instant. “Surprised. I never imagined you’d have that much nerve.”

His directness toppled her poise. “I didn’t know the reunion had been moved until this afternoon—”

“But you still came.”

Again, the words fired at her like missiles with computer-targeted aim. She felt under assault. Countless times, she had imagined what it would be like to see him again. What she would say. How she would feel. None of her scenarios had ever depicted John angry. Indifferent, yes. But not angry. He had married someone else within six months of her leaving here. Why would a man who had forgotten her that quickly have an ounce of anger inside him?

“Just as long as you know this,” he said, before she could manage to respond. “Your being here makes no difference whatsoever to me. Let’s just make sure we let this be both hello and goodbye, okay?”

And with that, he left her standing there, cutting his way back through the hovering crowd of slack-jawed classmates who had sidled in close enough not to miss a word.

JOHN GRABBED a glass from the cabinet above the kitchen sink, flipped the tap on, then downed several swallows of cold water. He set the glass down on the counter, braced his hands on the sink’s edge, head down, yanking air into his lungs. Over the years, he’d done some serious speculating about what it would be like to see Liv again. None of his scenarios had ever even hinted at the reality of it, at the fact that standing there in front of her, close enough to touch her, close enough to see confusion in her eyes, was like having someone drive a semi straight through the wall of his chest.

He’d expected to be protected by his own indifference, had wrapped himself up in it. Liv hadn’t spoken five words before the edges unraveled, leaving him completely vulnerable, and it would be a long time before he thawed out again.

“What on earth are you doing in here when there’s a party going on outside?”

John looked over his shoulder. Sophia stood in the kitchen doorway, the frown on her face the same one she’d been giving him for suspicious behavior since he was ten years old. When John’s mother had died, Sophia, his father’s sister, had come to live with them. Since Laura’s death, she had also become so important to Flora that John couldn’t imagine either of them getting along without her. “Just biding time, Sophia,” he said.

“You planning to stand there all weekend?”

“Might.”

“Then you won’t be setting your sights on Most Sociable, I take it.”

“I had about all I could handle,” he said, ignoring her smile.

“So what are you going to do about the rest of the weekend?”

“The view from here looks pretty good.”

Sophia chuckled and pulled a clean apron from one of the cabinet drawers, gave it a shake and tied it around her waist. “So she did come then?” She reached for a dishtowel and began drying the few bowls that had been left to drain in the sink. The question came totally without fanfare, as if she had just asked him whether he’d remembered to pick up some milk when he’d run into town earlier that afternoon.

“Who?” John asked, neutralizing his expression.

“You know good and well who.”

As much as John loved Sophia, he did not, at that moment, appreciate her uncanny ability to cut to the heart of things. He avoided her gaze, glaring, instead, at the row of pink sponge curlers on the left side of her head. “I told her she wasn’t welcome here.”

Sophia uttered something that sounded like a snort and flapped her dishtowel. “John Crawford Riley! Where are your manners? You were not raised like that.”

“She showed up at this house uninvited,” he dug in.

“She was invited,” Sophia reasoned. “She’s a member of this class just like you were. And if you were indifferent to the girl, you wouldn’t care whether she was here or not.” For emphasis, she plunked a just-dried cup in the cabinet above her head.

John gave her sponge curlers another glare. It was hard to argue with Sophia on this subject. She was, after all, the one who had found him in his room, spilling tears all over Liv’s picture after she’d left Summerville. He wasn’t going to fool her. Nor was he going to give her the satisfaction of saying she was right.

“But I suppose you could make her believe you care if you had a mind to.” She put down the towel and turned to look at him.

John shot her another narrow-eyed glare. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that if you hide out in the house all weekend, it’s going to be pretty clear to everybody that you never got over her.”

Something exploded inside him. “If you think I’ve given her a second thought in all these years—”

“You were a good husband, John,” Sophia interrupted in a quiet, firm voice. “I’m not accusing you of anything. But I know what that girl once meant to you. And now here she is on this farm again. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about her. You’re human, aren’t you?”

“She wasn’t who I thought she was.”

Sophia untied her apron and put it away. She reached for a glass from the cabinet by the sink, filled it with water from the faucet. “This weekend could be a bridge in your life, John Riley, maybe even make you want to live again. You just think about that.” She left the kitchen.

John glared at her retreating shoulders. He had every right to mind the fact that Liv Ashford would just show up here after the way she had left and never called, never written. It had been years before he’d even heard where she was living. Someone had seen her on a local news channel in Johnson City, and the rumor had spread through Summerville until it had reached him one afternoon when he’d been in the hardware store with Laura buying a new light fixture for the back porch. Lenny Nelson had no way of knowing what the information would do to John, no way of guessing he might as well have stuck a knife inside him. John had paid for the light fixture, smiled and said, “Oh, really, well, that’s great!” while Laura listened with mild interest, and his heart was being torn right out of his chest.

It wasn’t the first or the last time he had questioned whether emotional infidelity was any less wrong than physical.

How many times had Laura said “I love you,” and he’d tried to say it back with the same conviction? How did he explain the regret he felt now for not having given her the same kind of love she had given him, uncluttered by something that could have been, that never was? He still lay awake at night, cursing himself for not making their marriage what it should have been.

And yet, Laura had never made it an issue between them. She had been aware that there had been someone else not long before she’d come into his life, although she hadn’t found out about Liv until after they were married. She’d run across a shoebox of old letters one day while cleaning out the attic. They were letters from Liv, which he’d had no business keeping but hadn’t been able to throw away. Liv had written him notes in school, putting them in places where he would find them throughout the day, in his science book, his locker, the front seat of his truck. Some of them had been no more than a line long: Hey, just thinking about you! And some of them longer: So that’s what it’s like to be kissed by someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. Highly recommended.

He could still remember so many of them line by line.

He remembered the look in Laura’s eyes when she’d admitted to reading them—understanding tinted with sadness and resignation, and awareness that what had come before her would always be between them.

It had been almost two years since Laura had died. If he could give her nothing else, he would make sure that everyone at this damned reunion knew he had loved her. That she had been his wife. The mother of his daughter. The one who counted.

He owed her that much.

And Sophia was right about one thing. He wasn’t going to prove any of that by standing up here acting like he cared whether Liv Ashford had waltzed herself back into town or not.

So he yanked open the back door with enough force to make the old hinges groan and headed outside.

OLIVIA MADE her way to the back of the house, keeping her head down to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes, grateful for the darkness that concealed her from view. A few minutes to get herself together, and she would be fine. Just fine.

What in the world had she been thinking?

Coming back here had been nothing but a mistake. How could she have believed anything else?

Once, she’d had a panic attack on a crowded elevator in an Atlanta bank. She’d been standing in the back, and it had hit her before she ever saw it coming, tightening her chest, refusing to let air in her lungs.

That’s how she felt now. As if breathing had become something she had to think out second by second.

Tall, old oak trees threw evening shadows across the backyard. Wrought-iron chairs were arranged in a circle on the brick patio. Olivia pulled one away from the halo of light dancing out from the lanterns hanging by the French doors. She sat down and dropped her head onto her hands.

How could something still hurt this much after so long? She had not seen John Riley in fifteen years, and in all that time her heart had not gained an ounce of immunity to him.

“Whatcha doin’?”

Olivia shot up from the chair and whirled around. A small face stared down at her from the second story of the house, the curious eyes disturbingly familiar.

“Oh. I was just…”

“You’re crying.”

“No. I…well, not really.”

The little girl disappeared from the window, popped back seconds later and said, “Here.”

Two tissues floated down. Olivia caught them. “Thank you.”

“They’re the soft kind. Are you sad?”

This was John’s child. If Olivia had not been able to tell from the eyes alone, her shoot-from-the-hip manner would have been a dead giveaway. “A little, I guess.”

“It’s okay to be sad. That’s what Aunt Sophia says. And she says sadness can’t get better until you ’knowledge it’s there.”

A name from the past. How many afternoons had she come with John to this house after school where they would do their homework at the kitchen table while Sophia fixed dinner? Olivia had helped her peel potatoes or shred lettuce for a salad. Sophia had taught her how to make homemade biscuits. They were John’s favorite, and he’d made her promise she would make them every morning for breakfast after they got married. After leaving Summerville, Olivia had never made biscuits again. “Sophia is a wise woman,” she said.

“She’s real smart.” The little girl nodded, rubbing an eye with the back of a small hand. “My mommy died. I’ve been sad a lot. I think my daddy has been, too. Only he won’t admit it.”

Olivia took a step back. Shock ricocheted through her like a stone skimming the surface of a pond. Laura Riley had died. That pretty girl who had answered the door on a winter afternoon so long ago was dead. John’s wife.

How many times had she imagined the kind of life John would have had with Laura? Imagined her being the kind of woman who sent him off each morning with a hot breakfast and greeted him at the door each night with the smell of bread wafting from the oven.

The wondering seemed trivial now, intrusive even.

She took a deep breath and finally managed, “I’m so sorry.”

“She was a good mommy.”

“I’m sure she was,” Olivia said, her throat so tight she was surprised the words had actually made their way out.

“Daddy says she’s in heaven, and that it’s a good place. He says she gets to have her real hair there, and she won’t even have to chew sugarless gum. She can have real bubble gum.”

Olivia’s heart contracted. “That’s nice, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “But I wish she didn’t have to go. I miss her. Daddy says God sometimes takes the good people and leaves the rest here to give them a chance to figure out how to be that way. I’m not good sometimes ’cause I don’t want to leave Daddy. He needs me. Every once in a while I won’t eat all my dinner or forget to make up my bed.”

“I bet God understands.” Olivia swallowed hard at the little girl’s matter-of-fact assessment. “What’s your name?”

“Flora. What’s yours?”

“Olivia.”

“That’s pretty.”

“Thank you. So’s Flora.”

A black nose appeared in the window and nudged Flora’s arm aside. “We woke up Charlie.”

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